Two New Books Made Me Think

 Articles, Management, Marketing, Negotiating, Prospecting, Selling  Add Comments »
Nov 262009
 

Common wisdom in sales and management circles has revolved around the need to set personal goals, visualize, negotiate, and achieve.
A new school of thought suggests that the secret to success could actually be to take the opposite route.
Two new books regarding happiness, success, communication and persuasion argue respectively that happiness should not come at the expense of realism and the way to negotiation is to be receptive and listen with purity.

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, from the author of over a dozen other books, has used her experience as a breast cancer survivor to argue that the advocates of positive thinking are doing their followers a disservice. She insists that being positive about everything is not always good or superior. In other words, in corporate-speak, not every problem is a challenge and not every challenge is an opportunity. Ehrenreich claims that the incessant abuse of positive thinking has lead to a culture of not confronting problems. This school of thought leads to tangible problems.

Dr. Mark Goulston’s Just Listen: Discover The Secret To Getting Through To Absolutely Anyone comes from the perspective of a psychiatrist and an FBI negotiator. He claims that the contemporary needs for ‘producing’ costs us business and personal relationships. Should we accept that sales, marketing and management have relating and relationship building as their cornerstones then we would do well to delve deeper into his thoughts. The book takes the stance that the best way to achieve what we want – be it a sale, a promotion or a concession – is to be receptive to the other party – i.e. empathy. The book insists that taking a more ‘natural’ stance is actually the better way to succeed. Goulston believes by listening, and listening even more deeply, could one get through to the angry customer, narcissistic co-worker or dissatisfied employee. He goes on to insist that the social media does us a disservice by emphasizing quantity over quality. According to the book, the best way to listen is to listen without an agenda. This would be the purest form of listening. Oddly enough, he does have a Facebook account!

Just Listen To Buy The Book

Just Listen More information

justlisten

Bright-sided To Buy The Book

Bright-sided More information

brightsided

Identifying And Marketing To Your Best Customers

 Articles, Marketing, Prospecting, Selling More  2 Comments »
May 202007
 

Marketing, in recent years, has morphed into a jumbled exercise of costly practices with next to no identifiable result or return on investment. Marketing departments spend lavish amounts on ‘analysts’ and far-flung exhibits and seminars during which untargeted masses float by uninteresting vendors. Gaining new customers should be a more targeted exercise. Step one, find out who your current ones are and keep them.

More customers should mean better profit, better income and job security. That much is obvious, but do you have a method to identify them? It all starts with information.

Gather and go over data for the past two years on all your sales. A longer record may be needed for higher dollar value sales that would limit the quantity of transactions, while a shorter time span might be considered for smaller ticket sales.
Identify the customers’ industry or vertical and map it to their NAICS* (which is replacing SIC), employee count, location/geography, revenue or even their age and gender if appropriate and available. Note all commonalities. Use a public or paid private database to find more customers of similar demographics. http://www.accoona.com is one example. Company websites and government records will also help.

If using software then do not forget to leave space (in CRM, spreadsheets, PIM, etc.) for notes about their particular likes and dislikes and significant milestones so you can input the information into your a calendar for reference. This idea is more valid the bigger the transaction size. Use your reminders to dispatch a call or a card. This is the customer retention side of your effort.

Always ask for referrals from your current customers. They typically know their industry and have contacts therein.

Focus your efforts and pursue business where you have been successful in the past. This approach also allows you to conduct reference selling. It is less difficult and more fruitful to do targeted work than casting a wide and expensive net. Make your existing company data work for you. Never mind the expensive booth, at the expensive conference that modern marketing types prefer. You know better if you are on a budget.

*NAICS is used by business and government to classify and measure economic activity in Canada, Mexico and United States.

Sales Leads

 Articles, Prospecting  1 Comment »
Mar 272007
 

Every salesperson knows that leads are useful and a pre-requisite to a transaction and sale. Leads are simultaneously abhorred, however, because many recognize them as potentially time wasted or unfruitful. Others dislike the responsibility and subsequent scrutiny that a sales lead entails.

Sales leads should be treated as a process. They can always get better and they need continuous work, but each of them must be treated with care in the meanwhile. There is no question that among the leads one receives many will remain non-responsive, but inevitably a portion of one’s sales leads do end up becoming customers. Even if 20% of leads become actual sales opportunities – incidentally a realistic proportion – that number still is 20% more than zero or, in other words, 20% more than the number of potential sales had one not called the prospect… and called and called again!

Therein lies much of the problem. Customers consistently have real plans and equally real budgets to spend, yet this does not automatically translate to calls being returned. Be it plain rudeness, a lack of common courtesy, customers’ settling for the least busy solution/vendor or the busy nature of people’s lives salespersons and the lead generation teams hardly ever hear back from prospects – even those who need to return calls.

Therefore, the shrewd salesperson will keep on calling until he reaches the prospect in person. It simply is worth the effort. The less tenacious salespersons will lose out.

* Those who reach the customer will be in the running for the business – so keep trying.
* Despite the horror stories rampant in sales circles about ‘tire kickers’ (and similar descriptions) most prospects will actually and eventually buy. Unfortunately, it is easier to remember those prospects that did not buy in the past because they became irritations.
Use the tools at your disposal. Put the lead generation team, your CRM, your contact manager or note pad to use and be persistent.. Just do not abandon the lead.
* Should a prospect be unavailable and non-communicative or be in the market only much later find out if your company can assign a lead generation or marketing representative in charge of keeping these opportunities ‘warm.’ This will free you to concentrate on the more imminent sales. Alternatively, for bigger organizations, there might be a division of duties in order between the inside and outside sales groups.

The prospect that becomes a sale might be only one telephone call away. Can one afford not to call?
The customer who will only consider buying next year might be the difference between achieving and not achieving quota next year. Can one afford to be dismissive of the opportunity?

Things That Need To Go Away: Abandoning a customer that you know needs you solution.

Reaching A Prospect – Last Call

 Articles, Prospecting, Selling  Add Comments »
Feb 242007
 

Ever tried to reach a prospect without any luck whatsoever? Of course, everyone in sales has. When is a good time to reach someone? It is unreasonable to call their number every hour of every day hoping to find the person at the office and available. What can one do if leaving a voice-mail has already been tried with no reaction at the other end?

If all else has failed send an e-mail and require a return reciept to it.*

If you have the prospect’s e-mail address send them an e-mail explaining your request or send follow-up information and request a return receipt. Your e-mail program will let you know as soon as your message is being picked up and read by the party on the other side. Your client is in the office and at his or her desk. Wouldn’t now be a good time to pick up the telephone to call?

The client is reading your e-mail and you can mutually decide whether there is reason to pursue the relationship. Technological limitations aside, reaching a person when one knows he or she is available and on the computer is a good time to decide whether there is a process to pursue or it is time to move on.

*In Tools>Options in certain versions of Microsoft’s Outlook
*On the actual e-mail window pane on certain e-mail programs.

Attitude

 Articles, Prospecting, Selling  Add Comments »
Mar 272006
 

Rejection is almost a given in sales. Even people with bad personal hygiene at pubs see less rejection than salespersons.
Improving your attitude and mentality can help salespeople overcome the problem. It will keep you moving and doing the series of things needed to succeed.
1- It is not personal! The customer rarely hangs up, does not return messages or turns you down in person because of your name or address.
2- Keep trying without worrying. Tenacity will be rewarded.
3- Clients can see or hear a lack of confidence and a defeated attitude. Don’t give the person who rejected you the pleasure. Keep at it.

Sales managers need to dispense confidence. Threatening, setting ultimata or deadlines is counter-productive. Instead, sales managers need to praise the sales team as a group and individually. Pick one quality for each salesperson and make it known to the person. Remind the salesperson why they were hired, which qualifications they have and how you beleive in them. Do it often.

Shunned?

 Articles, Prospecting, Selling  1 Comment »
Mar 272006
 

You might have the wrong job title if you have ever introduced yourself to or presented a business card to a prospect only to find that you did not create the intended effect!
Customers sometimes prefer to buy from more established companies. In the customers’ mind, a larger company implies more experience, bigger infrastructure and more support.
Considering downgrading your business card. Often salespersons looking for credibility acquire titles like Regional Vice-President or Senior Director Of Sales. The customer might be thinking that your company is too small if the Vice-President Of Sales has just walked in the door without an appointment or is the person answering the sales line.

 Newer Entries