Tag Archives: Sales

Sales

Yeah, It’s a Number Game Too…


Like success in any professional career, there are many ingredients to success in selling.  Accurate opportunity targeting – as my friends at Selling To Zebras will tell you, is a critical one.  Chase the right prey and your hunt will be more successful.  

Another key element is using a solid framework (pick a methodology that fits your situation) for high-gain conversations with prospects to elicit their needs and to link your solutions in meaningful ways.  

Also important are elements like pre-call planning, lead-nurturing, compelling proposal creation, Ferocious Follow-up – the list is too long to discuss in one post.

One inescapable success factor is activity.  A wise sales mentor once told me that activity yields opportunity which yields results.  Sometimes hearing that sales is a “numbers game” is a turn off.  It makes the sales process seem cheesy or pushy in some way.  But the fact that you need to produce quantity as well as target quality is not a contradiction.  It takes both. You can have the best targets in the world, but unless you are acting on them daily, all you have is a glorified list.  Go ahead – put up some numbers today!

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Sales

Is Your Follow Up Ferocious?


We’ve just crawled out of one of the toughest patches in business that any of us can remember.  Thankfully, things seem to be stabilizing and even slowly beginning to grow again.  However, every opportunity will be harder fought – tougher to find, tougher to close. 

Yet, I see the cardinal sin being committed –  A lack of priority follow-up on business leads.

In this fragile recovery, you must execute strong follow-up – no – Ferocious follow-up.

In his fantastic sales blog, Sales and Sales Management, I recently discovered this post from Paul McCord in which he explains that he has experienced the same.  He says, “…A quality lead has a very short shelf-life—whether we’re talking about the retail situations above or a long sales cycle, sophisticated product or service.  Someone–you or your company–has paid good money to get the phone to ring, to get a lead card mailed back, or get a form filled out on the internet.  Every minute you wait to contact a prospect is a minute you’re giving the competition to close the deal before you even get there…”

Get Ferocious.  You competitors are!

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Sales

“10 By 10”


I am a relentless for citing authors of great ideas.   I picked this one up from a blog post in the past few days, but for the life of me, I can not find where I picked it up.  So my apologies to the author (I’ll keep looking and give you your kudos soon) – but the idea is too AWESOME not to share… 

Challenge yourself to complete 10 outbound client touches toward advancing the deals in your funnel by 10am each day.

Sounds easy, right? 

Try it for a week and get back to me when you hit 8 for the first time!

Enjoy.

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Marketing, Sales

Handouts, All But Worthless? —– I Think So…


In a blog post yesterday by HR Specialist Rebecca Masin in allbusiness.com, the author makes a great case that handouts are no longer worth it for a myriad of reasons including cost, economic impact, and efficacy. 
 
Her favorite reason, from a book called “Saving the World at Work” is that “Over the course of the last few decades, we’ve gotten into a habit: We print, then think. Instead, we should think first and only then print-maybe.”
 
I agree with Rebecca’s rationale – AND, I would add a sales and marketing twist to the list of reasons not to use handouts – handouts don’t work.  If you’re deal comes down to handing out (or mailing) a piece of paper to get your point across, you need to seek a fresher alternative.
 
I rely on social media, email, and voicemail combinations to get critical points across.  In rare instances, a customized slide show (not printed but distributed via email or USB drive) does the trick. 
 
For more information, please request a handout of this blog post at tim@salesandmarketingmashup.com KIDDING!
 
What are your thoughts on handouts?
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Sales

Focus on Your Clients


A mentor once told me that “Sick companies are internally focused – Healthy ones are focused on their customers.”  Wise words from a wise man.  Thanks, Larry. 

With the economy slowly crawling out of the funk, where are the leaders in your company focused?  It’s easy to become entranced with YOURSELF.  Think about it.  Do you spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy looking at your own company’s Operations?  Alliance Relationships? Cost Containment/Reduction?  Organizational Structure?  Market Segmentation? Inventories? Corporate Branding?  If so – STOP!

These are all necessary concerns.  But they are also a very  – dangerous – distraction from your most vital area of  focus in this moment –           The Client! 

If you take your eyes off the client right now, you run the risk of buying your stock high and selling it low.  How so?  You burned a lot of calories keeping clients during the downturn (never worked so hard for so little myself).  If you focus internally now, you may have burned them in vain – only to have a competitor snatch the client away from you as you focus inward and miss the first signs of the recovery.

Instead…Spend as much of your time as possible with clients.  Have progress report meetings to brag about all that you did for them in the past year, hold peer-to-peer executive lunches with them, bookmark web articles of interest and share them with clients, make twice the cold calls than you did last month, do a speaking engagement, double your contacts at a given account this week…

…However you want to…

…FOCUS ON THE CLIENT right now!

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Sales

The NEW NORMAL…Buying Power Has Changed


In their great white paper, Selling in the New Normal, Jeffrey and Chad Koser (authors of Selling to Zebras) cite Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, coining the term a “New Normal” to focus and re-engage GE  in the economy we’re dealing with for the foreseeable future.  More on this white paper in future posts, but for now…

One of their more interesting points is that post Great Recession, the people you sell to don’t have the decision-making power they once had.  It’s dangerous for your sales if you don’t realize that.  What’s worse is, sometimes even they don’t know it.  “A decision that once required director-level approval now goes to the CFO.  Previous CFO-level decisions go to the CEO or board.”  

Not talking to C-level executives?  You’re going to need to change your approach.

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Sales

3 Buckets…All That Matter


In his bestselling book, Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty, business guru Ram Charan says that during [and after] the world-wide business crisis  “…company executives are categorizing all expenditures into one of three buckets…” 

1. Keeping the lights on
2. Compliance (MORE than ever)
3. Discretionary Spend (LESS than ever)

If your solution doesn’t keep the lights on or help with compliance; you’ve got a fight on your hands for discretionary dollars. 

When is the last time you described your solution in terms of a business case?   

You can’t kick these buckets! 

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Speed Kills


Speed Kills.  This may have negative connotations in sports like auto-racing or billiards, but in sales – it’s a positive.  I once set a personal record and closed at $300,000 deal in 2-1/2 days.  As with all sales, luck played a role.  But even more important was SPEED!  I had an excellent team on this pursuit with just the right skills and experience, but what really set us apart from the competition was a drive to understand and respond to the client.   It started with the client asking us for a personal visit with 12 hours notice.  We jumped right in, took them up on that offer, and proceeded to have a great introductory meeting.  We then responded in kind and told the client that we would like a proposal review the very next day.  They were impressed that we heard their urgency and answered the call.  Needless to say that meeting went very well and we won.  Moral of the story?  My competitors may have had a better solution (doubt it), but we moved so quickly they did not have time to breathe.   Speed Kills!

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Marketing, Sales

Selling and Marketing Services vs. Products


While a great number of companies make and sell products, the past 20 years have seen a revolution in the professional services industry.  So there is a good chance that you are responsible for selling services vs. products.  However, many of  the sales techniques used today still echo a product sell.  A great book on the subject of the difference here is called “Selling the Invisible” by Harry Beckwith.  He’s written some other great books too, but this in my opinion is his best.  Here are a couple of my favorites from this book… 

“The first step in service marketing is your service.” – In other words, do your craft with excellence before thinking up a wiz bang marketing plan.

“One Thing Experts Don’t Know…” – In most professions,  you ARE NOT selling your competence.  Your client can’t evaluate you fully.  They are not the professional – you are.  That’s why they are seeking your help in the first place.  Your competence is assumed.  What you ARE selling is a relationship.  Do you pick up the phone and respond quickly?  Are you a good listener?  Am I important to you? Do you deliver to me with excellence? etc.

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Marketing, Sales

Things May Come to Those Who Wait…


But only the things left by those who HUSTLE! 

This quote sits in my office as a reminder of a person who failed many times over his life, but always worked harder than everyone else and ended up as one of our most famous Americans – Abe Lincoln. 

Imagine if you got up each morning with this at the top of your mind.  How many more calls would you make?  How many more meetings would you have?  How many extra value would you deliver to your clients? 

…AND…

How much more success would you see?

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Sales, Social Media

Ode to LinkedIn


LinkedIn has reached 60,000,000 members!  RT @techcrunch: LinkedIn Now 60 Million Strong – http://j.mp/9vkPWB

Think about that.  60 MILLION members.  It is even more incredible when you think that these are people connecting regarding their public/professional lives vs. the private/casual users of other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. 

This service is one of the most fundamentally game-changing new tools for professionals.  What did we do without it?  

When I imagine what the first half of my career might have been like if I started out with this tool for helping and leveraging my network of relationships as I began in sales, it makes me want to cry.

But we have it now!

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Sales

You Can’t Cut Your Way to a Funnel


Here is a link to today’s Harvard Business Review “Daily Stat.”  Interesting research numbers on firms and their behavior during the recession.  http://web.hbr.org/email/archive/dailystat.php?date=021010.     HBR says “Sales reps get hit with double whammy…”   The gist: 67%. That’s how many companies froze or reduced lead-generation budgets for sales reps last year, at a time when salespeople needed help the most, according to CSO Insights’ survey of more than 2,800 companies worldwide. The percentage of reps making quota in 2009 dropped to 51.8% from 58.8% a year earlier, the survey shows.

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Uncategorized

Super Bowl Sales Tips


What an awesome Super Bowl last night!  Watching it, you could not help but root for the Saints.  They were unstoppable.   Here are a few observations that struck me as relevant to sales people…

–  Focus & Common Purpose.  This was about more than any one star or any one game for these guys.  They were focused on winning the season and the championship for their city. Sean Payton kept them on task.  What’s your purpose?  Are you that focused?

– Keep the Momentum.  One or two bad plays will not slow you down if you are charging fast at your goal.  You can absorb a touchdown by the other team or a penalty (or an objection / rejection) along the way as long as you have the momentum.

– Celebrate the Wins.  Whether it was Drew Brees holding up his baby son and welling up, Sean Payton getting the Gatorade shower, or the party on Bourbon Street that looked more like Fat Tuesday than Sunday night – These folks know how to celebrate a win.  It’s been a long 18 months of recession.  Are you still celebrating when your team delivers?

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Social Media Is for Sales People Too!


So often, Social Media is described as the domain of Marketing.  But “…While marketing owns the message, sales owns the relationship, so using social media to build deeper relationships on a customer by customer basis just seems like a pretty natural thing for the sales team…” 

That quote is from an article called “5 Ways That Sales People Can Benefit From Using Social Media,” by John Jantsch, founder of Duct Tape Marketing.  The points it makes are very valuable to sales people.   If you are in sales, you need to read this.

I got this link from at tweet by Mike Stelzner.  Mike is the founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com, and a great source of information on social media (20,000+ followers on Twitter).  Thanks, Mike!

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Bad Telemarketing – WOW – I Hung Up On Him!


Here is a lesson on cold-calling ripped straight from my Tuesday…

I wondered what my post would be  today – that is until I received a phone call at 1:30pm local time during a flurry of activity at my desk. 

It was a salesperson pitching a seminar where I would be guaranteed 1 of only 20 appointments that several C-level executives will have booked during their stay at a nice hotel in Arizona.    This guy was classic.  He must have been breathing through his ears, because he would not listen to me.  I said “I’m busy can you please call me at another time..” – simple, and more than an unwanted telephone caller deserves in terms of my politeness.  BUT he would not stop pitching me his service. 

As my grandmother said, you have one mouth and two ears, use them proportionately! 

These days you are fortunate to catch a prospect on the phone in person.  If they seem very busy and agree to schedule some time with you on another day –  book the meeting.  Send a calendar invite to them.  Say thank you.  And hang up.  You’ve made an advance.

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Selling Services Challenge – How to Multiply Your Pipeline by 10


I’m writing this blog entry in response to a challenge from one of  my favorite sources for great marketing advice for services firms, RainToday.  The folks at RainToday write a great blog, and one to which you should subscribe: http://www.raintodayblog.com.  This month they are laying down the “Selling Service Challenge.”  They are asking readers to “share your real-world B2B sales challenges or successes…”  For my topic, I’m picking a challenge and an opportunity that is guaranteed to multiply your pipeline – Getting everyone at your firm selling.

You set sales goals for your sales reps.  You work these goals with the sales team aggressively.  But, when is the last time you checked in with your non-sales staff on the topic of business development?  There are typically orders of magnitude more non-sales than sales staff in a services organization.  In my firm, for example, the ratio is 20:1.  Even a  small uptick in the effectiveness of this larger group to identify and qualify opportunities on which the sales team can then follow-up can have a substantial top-line impact. 

I recently had the pleasure of addressing a group of associates at my firm’s new employee orientation.  In this  “Sales for the Non-Sales Professional” session  we reviewed “principles of networking,” “signals to listen for while at clients,” an “elevator pitch” on my firm’s offerings, and finally a “questioning framework” they could use to guide them through some initial client conversations in the hopes of seeking out some early stage opportunities.  We were not talking about forcing non-sales folks to sell.  But we were discussing ways to stoke the sales funnel.  10 consultants walked into orientation that morning, 10 Lead-Seekers left.

At your next all hands meeting, why not have some sales training for non-sales professionals?  Multiply your “feet on the street.”  Do the math – it’s worth it!

http://www.raintodayblog.com/take-the-selling-services-challenge/trackback

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Sales from Non-Sales Staff – Guaranteed To Increase Pipeline


You set sales goals for your sales reps.  You work these goals with the sales team aggressively.  But, when is the last time you checked in with your non-sales staff on the topic of business development?  There are typically orders of magnitude more non-sales than sales staff in an organization.  In my company, for example, the ratio is greater than 10-1.  Even a  small uptick in the effectiveness of this larger group to identify and qualify opportunities on which the sales team can then follow-up can have a substantial top line impact.  At your next all hands meeting, why not have some sales training for non-sales professionals?  Multiply your “feet on the street.”  Do the math, it’s worth it!

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Time to Freshen the Funnel


When is the last time that you took an honest look at your full sales funnel?  Did you get to it during the holidays?  If you are like me and many of my peers you took a swing at it but still missed a thorough review.  You may have some stale pursuits, suspended deals , or worst of all – some fresh opportunities that are not yet represented in your funnel.  Before we burn through January, it’s time to do a little cleanup.  While you’re at it, it may be an interesting exercise  to turn your funnel inside out and look at it from an important perspective – The Customer’s.  I’m midway through Mark Sellers’ (yes that’s his real name) book “The Funnel Principal,”  and I like what I’m learning.  This book espouses the creation of a “BuyCycle Funnel.”  Just when you thought all that could be said about selling has been said, Mark has come up with an original way to prioritize your deals.  Think traditional funnel stages – but each from the customer’s perspective.  Each stage is defined by customer committment.  What do you know about your customers’ buying process?  Perhaps not enough.

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