Ready - Set - Sell!!!

Recently, a small business owner approached me with a challenge he was facing in his business. His business was growing and he was in the process of transitioning out of the role of primary sales person and had hired an experienced sales person to replace himself.

He was excited about this milestone for his company, but never having led a sales person before, he was anxious about how to help his new sales person become successful in his company. Like most entrepreneurs, certain elements of running the company come naturally to him, but building and leading sales team was not one of them. He credits his sales success to his hunger (literally) and passion (obviously).

So when he called me with the question, “How do I make sure my new sales guy is prepared and stays motivated while he builds a pipeline of his own?” I thought I would use this opportunity to briefly review the 10 steps needed to bring a sales person up to speed quickly.

1. Determine the sales persons financial goals – Think in terms of annual goals and break it down quarterly and monthly from there. If the sales cycle is shorter than 30 days or is transactional in nature, weekly or daily goals may be appropriate.
2. Focus on the core – Establish a plan to quickly educate the sales person on your core offerings. This is more than handing them a stack of sales collateral. Even if no formal product or service marketing materials exist, invest the time required to make sure the new person is comfortable with your businesses value proposition and differentiators. Review this often and don’t be afraid to role play to check for understanding.
3. Train them on the internal business processes and culture – getting this out of the way quickly lessens the wasted cycles and accelerates integration. Remember to ask the new employee to share their experience with a focus on identifying opportunities to improve. New employees bring with them tons of experience from other companies. Don’t waist an opportunity to learn how to improve your business with this information.
4. 90 day marketing plan - Have the employee create a 90 day marketing plan that aligns to the goals you have already given them. Work-shopping this with the employee will help them get a better feel for what your expectations are and how you make decisions. This is invaluable to the employee.
5. Be realistic with the goals – For a new sales person, missing early sales targets is discouraging and can serve to demotivate. Balance setting practical goals with giving the employee the opportunity to “feel” successful early.
6. Check-in often, but don’t micro-manage - Schedule morning check-in calls/meetings for the first few weeks to make sure bad habits don’t take root and that little questions can be answered quickly. Make these conversations priority. Missing these calls will send the message that you do not think they are important. Spread these calls out to weekly after a few weeks, but keep them on the schedule even if they don’t seem necessary. Great sales people want to give you the impression that they have everything under control, but you can break through this façade with just a couple challenging questions. Use real issues from your inbox to spark conversations and talk them through.
7. Don’t answer every question - Resist the temptation to answer every question and take the time to ask the sales person what he/she thinks would be the best way to handle difficult situations or problems. By investing a few more minutes to help coach them through the decision process you use, they will make better decisions. This means less time in your office looking for help and more time taking care of clients and growing the business.
8. Inspect what you expect - If you give the sales person a task or a deadline, make sure that you follow-up and that it is completed. Any time you hand out tasks make sure there is a specific time when you expect that task to be completed by. When you give out tasks and don’t follow-up on them, you tell them it is not important. In time these task no longer become priority and are not completed. This is a slippery slope that is hard to reverse.
9. 10 meetings – Help them get their first 10 meetings as soon as they are at about 60% – 80% ready. There is no better learning experience than these first 10 meetings. Help them prepare for each and take the time to debrief after each one. Enlist non-sales team member to join these meetings to add support. Send the head of finance or HR. This will improve the connections between sales and other functional parts of the team while providing the rep with some high level support for his/her first few meetings.
10. Fire quickly – If it is not a good fit and you know it on day 2. Admit it and correct it quickly. It is best for the employee and for the business.

Follow these steps when adding new sales people to your business and you will have less employee turnover and will dramatically shorten the time required for a new sales person to be productive.

This list could have had 50 actions on it… What are some of the others ways to ensure a new sales person’s success.

Don't be this guy!

I thought I would start today’s blog on ways to never get past the gatekeeper when cold calling with a sports analogy.

If the process of selling was a basketball game, moving beyond the gatekeeper is akin to the inbound play. The offense can’t move the ball or score until they can effectively pass the ball into the field of play and maintain possession. Although I make the point below that the gatekeeper is NOT THE ENEMY, they are in effect playing defense and your role is to find a way past the defense to engage the decision maker.

Below is a list of 19 strategies for getting past the gatekeeper that are virtually guaranteed not to work long term.

1. Don’t deceive – Telling the gatekeeper a lie may get you past the gatekeeper, but you will never sell them anything. You remove credibility and you can’t start a successful business relationship with a lie. If you define success as having a conversation with the prospect, then you might feel like deceiving the gatekeeper to get access to the decision maker is a success. However, if success is a landing a new loyal client, this approach is not recommended.
2. Don’t be a jerk – Talking down to a gatekeeper is not a winning strategy either. At times they will let you past them, but what do you think they say to their boss when you get off the phone with him/her? Do you think you are good enough to get someone to buy from you after offending their most trusted employee? I don’t think so.
3. Don’t say you know the prospect when you don’t – If you don’t know the prospect, don’t tell the gatekeeper that you do. If you didn’t meet him at a trade show last quarter or if you didn’t play golf with her recently don’t say that you did.
4. Don’t tell the gatekeeper you have an appointment when you don’t – The gatekeeper is often the keeper of the prospect’s calendar. This is a rookie move and is impossible to recover from.
5. Don’t bull rush the gatekeeper – I define bull rush as not giving the gatekeeper an opportunity to object and using a tone of self-importance. It might include something like, “Just put me through now.”
6. Don’t be intimidated – If you sound like you shouldn’t be speaking to the prospect, you never will. Just be confident that you have something of real value to say to the prospect.
7. Don’t be sneaky – Fishing around and not telling the gatekeeper who you are or what company you are with when asked falls into this category.
8. Don’t forget their name – Using the gatekeeper’s name once or twice during your short conversation will help you build rapport and will do wonders for your second call if you are not able to get through on your first attempt.
9. Don’t be stressed – Just relax. The gatekeeper can sense when you are nervous, and if you are nervous to speak to the gatekeeper, they will never let you through to speak to their boss.
10. Don’t read a script – Reading is a dead-end approach. Practice your opening line and then role-play with your boss/spouse/colleagues how you will respond to the 3-4 most common objections you expect to hear from the gatekeeper.
11. Don’t wing it – Have a goal for every call you make. Know exactly what you want to accomplish with every conversation you attempt to have. It is too hard to get people on the phone these days to not capitalize on each conversation.
12. Don’t treat them like the enemy – The gatekeeper is not the enemy. They are simply doing their job. Don’t give them any reason to not connect you with the prospect. Treat them with respect and give them credit for their position.
13. Don’t sound like a sales rep – Decision makers talk with one another at an “eye-to-eye” level. Sound relaxed, confident and friendly. If you sound like your rent is counting on getting through, the gatekeeper will sense it and shut you down.
14. Don’t stop listening, just because they are the gatekeeper – Pay attention to everything the gatekeeper says. They often will pass along clues and bits of information that can be useful when you do speak to your prospect or decision maker.
15. Don’t sell to the gatekeeper – You might need to explain your reason for calling, but don’t “pitch to the gatekeeper.” If they ask for more information after your short explanation of the reason for your call you might counter by asking them to explain how they are involved in the decision making process. I call this charging for information. Don’t give information away without asking for information in return.
16. Don’t underestimate the gatekeeper’s influence – In smaller companies people wear lots of different hats. In large organizations gatekeepers can carry tremendous influence over an executive’s time and priorities. Don’t assume the gatekeeper is not involved in the decision. Treat them with respect and you will never have a “Pretty Woman” moment.
17. Don’t get too personal – You want to build rapport, but some sales people go too far and waste valuable selling time building relationships with gatekeepers. Keep your eye on the prize.
18. Don’t give up – Gatekeepers are a part of the fabric of sales. There is not a silver bullet for moving beyond the gatekeeper, but a successful sales person must remain committed to prospecting if they are to have any significant long-term success.
19. Don’t burn the bridge – Burning the bridge with a gatekeeper is a fatal mistake. At small companies gatekeepers get promoted to decision making positions and at large companies gatekeepers move to support different executives. Worse yet, gatekeepers are often promoted along with the executives that they support. Burning a bridge with a gatekeeper could lock you out of a potential client for years.

For some additional reading on Gatekeepers, please check out the following articles. One published by me recently and the other by one of my personal favorite sales experts Anthony Iannarino.

From Mike Faherty – 3 Ways to Make Gatekeepers Love You

From Anthony Iannarino – The Gatekeeper

Click here to download our Free White Paper, 5 Secrets for Cold Call Success

Simon Cowell

One of the most intimidating scenarios that professional sales people find themselves in is selling to an expert. At times it can feel like standing on the American Idol stage being judged by Simon Cowell.

Business prospects that are experts in their field have a tendency to make even the most confident sales people fearful of not being able to answer a technical question or inadvertently saying the wrong thing and looking foolish.

In some industries like technology, finance and other complex solution sales environments it is common that your client will have a deeper and more seasoned understanding of the technical nuances of the industry or even your specific solution than you do. It is just a fact of life.

For instance, a CIO at a fortune 500 company will almost always have a deeper technical background than your average technology account manager. You might have a better understanding of your niche or your specific suite of products but that might be where your advantage ends.

So, how do successful sales people handle these types of sales scenarios? After all, you are going to have to go through an expert if you want to close big deals and blow out your number, right?

Here are 3 things you need to do to sell to an expert effectively:

1. Let them be the expert – It may sound simple but don’t get sucked into a pointless game of “who’s the smartest!” This is what the negotiating books call a “lose-lose scenario.” If you win and prove you are smarter or as smart, you have likely just lost. Acknowledge the expert’s experience and expertise early in the meeting and give him/her the opportunity to “flex” a little and show-off a bit. People like to impress an eager audience and by asking the right questions you can learn all you need to know to make the case for your solution when the time is right.
2. Known your own product or service – You don’t have to be an engineer, but you shouldn’t be tripped up by simple features and functions. Knowing the “speeds and feeds” is simply table stakes for a good discussion with an expert. They will likely test you on this early in the discussion to size you up. Don’t fail and be confident.
3. Focus on the solution – If you can effectively extract the specific issues the expert is experiencing and can keep the conversation focused on the business impact and not the technical minutia you will have much better long-term success with these expert clients. To do this effectively you need to do your homework on the business, be able to articulate how similar organizations have used your solution to solve essential business problems. You must listen carefully to identify the business challenges they are not ready to come straight out and admit to a sales person.

Selling to experts is challenging but if you are going to make a difference for your company and earn the big commissions you will have to skillfully navigate these types of scenarios with confidence.

What strategies do you use to sell to experts?

The Keys to Moving Beyond the Gatekeeper

The question I get asked the most about cold calling by professional sales people is for strategies to get past gatekeepers. It is a tricky task that can frustrate even the most successful sales people. However, if growing your business is the goal, then you will have to find more new clients. That means you will have to pick up the phone and make cold calls, thus conversations with gatekeepers will be inevitable.

The first thing to remember about gatekeepers is that they are people too. They are not just a barrier that has to be overcome at all costs. This attitude will backfire eventually and makes for a frustrating day on the phones.

So, the question then becomes how to move beyond the gatekeeper and speak with your prospective client.

#1 – Treat them like the expert

Talk to the gatekeeper like you would any influencer to the decision process to buy your solution. Don’t underestimate their knowledge and input into the major decisions your target prospect makes. Give them credit for their role in the process and assume it is a major role.

#2 – Appeal to their sense of wanting to help

I always start a conversation with a gatekeeper with some variation of, “I bet you can help me out…” people want to be helpful and gatekeepers have usually earned their position in part because of their resourcefulness. Appeal to this talent and you might find them being an advocate for you and not an adversary.

#3 – A little humor never hurt anyone

Nothing breaks down barriers like a smile or laughter. A little humor can humanize you to a gatekeeper and quickly separate you from all the “drones” and “script-readers” the gatekeeper has to deal with every day. I am not talking about telling them a “knock-knock joke,” but maybe you make a funny observation about the awkwardness of this “dance” the two of you are engaged in or you comment on how grateful you are to speak to a live person and not a machine.

WARNING: If no one has ever accused you of being funny, this might not be the best time to break-out your comedy material… stick to the first 2 strategies and you will be fine!

What strategies do you use to get beyond the gatekeeper?

Before the date you are anxious and excited, but you have prepped for success. You know exactly how you are going to start the conversation and if the conversation lags, you have thought-out questions to help you get to know your date a little better; to understand their background, to determine where they are at this point in their life, and to inspire the sharing of future plans.

Then you have the date. It goes great. You have butterflies at the end and you talk about meetings again soon. Then comes the problem… you’re not sure exactly when or how best to connect with them again.

This follow-up step is not only critical in romantic relationships, but also in business relationships. There always seems to be confusion amongst sales people when it comes deciding when and how best to follow-up after a successful first meeting.

The ideal approach to following-up after a first sales meeting with a potential prospect consists of 3 simple elements:

Steps 1 – Next Day – Quick thank you call

The idea here is to call the next morning to say thank you for taking the time to meet. This is a very short call and you should expect to get their voicemail. You simply want to convey your appreciation for their time and summarize the action items that you took away from the meeting. Let them know that an email will follow in the next day. Make sure that if you make this self-imposed deadline you don’t miss it. Don’t start the relationship by missing a deliverable.

Steps 2 – Day 2-4 (or when you committed to deliver the letter) – Short email letter to clarify your understanding and preliminary recommendations

Next you need to draft a short letter that outlines the following:

1. Your understanding of their present situation
2. What they would like their future to look like
3. How you recommend achieving this desired outcome
4. Any budget or time-frames that need to be considered
5. Confirm what you understand to be the decision process
6. The recommended/agreed to next steps

This is a detailed letter, but it needs to be succinct as well. Aim for 2-3 pages at the most. Make sure your contact understands that it is a “living document” and that they are encouraged to edit and clarify any of the details of the letter. In order to cover all of the content recommended above, you may have to make some assumptions. This is perfectly okay, but be sure to acknowledge when assumptions are made and ask your contact to validate them as well. This participation will help you ensure the solution is a mutually beneficial solution.

Steps 3 – Day 4-5 – Follow-up on the letter to ask for edits and corrections and to schedule the next meeting.

Your goal now is to schedule a time to review the letter with the decision making team. Remember that significant business decisions are seldom made by just 1 person, so encourage you prospect to invite stakeholders, users and business influencers to the meeting. This will ensure that all potential objections to moving forward with your solution are uncovered early in the sales process so that you can overcome the objections and shorten your sales cycle as much as possible.

Use your follow-up letter as the basis for the second meeting agenda and make sure that everyone invited has the most recent version of the letter before the meeting.

Using this follow-up process will help you transform your relationship with the prospect from a “selling relationship” into collaboration. Done right, you will turn more first dates into meaningful long-term relationships.

Regardless of your unique business requirements, below are some of the benefits of leveraging an outsourced sales and marketing company to expand your business.

1. Trust – Add local and experienced sales and marketing experts to the business team without the cost and long-term commitment of recruiting and hiring directly.
2. Speed – Bring a talented and experienced sales team on line in a fraction of the time it would take to recruit and hire from your Headquarters.
3. Cost – Outsourcing the sales and marketing allows a business to expand the sales and marketing team quickly at a fraction of the cost of hiring internally and building the infrastructure to support a growing sales team.
4. Flexibility – One of the great advantages of outsourcing is the ability to scale the effort up or down easily based on the business circumstances. Whether you need to double the sales force or the business wants to shift investment to a different market or priority it can be as simple as a phone call.
5. Results – A well-structured program will have realistic goals and objectives that can quickly enable companies to accelerate new business revenue. Also, by allowing the business to focus on its core business, an outsourced sales and marketing program can have a positive impact on business productivity and revenue generation in your existing markets as well.

At the end of the day, you need the best resources you can afford to grow your business. Outsourcing is a great way to leverage up your resources to quickly and efficiently expand your business.

The “Rule of Thirds” is a rule of thumb that I teach my sales people and that I use on a daily basis as I engage with clients and prospects alike.

The concept is very simple, break your expected time during a sales meeting or sales call into thirds. Each third of the meeting has a specific goal. The first third of the meeting should be used to focus on getting to know the people you are meeting with and to build rapport with each of them.

1^st third: Build Rapport

It is well documented that people prefer to do business with people they like. So, as a professional sales person it is your responsibility to put your best foot forward with your prospects and clients and… simply put, being likable. You must help your prospect understand who you are as a person.

Daniel Newman recently wrote a simple but thoughtful article called “12 Most Necessary Traits to Sell More You” where he highlights the 12 most important actions we must take to sell ourselves. The idea of selling yourself is very close to the concept of rapport building. At the end of the day rapport building comes down to three simple things:

1. Be genuine and authentic – People can see a fake person a mile away. You are not fooling anyone. If by the way, you are not a likeable person and don’t aspire to be… find a new profession.
2. Make it about them – Focus on the other people in the room. Ask them thoughtful questions about themselves. You must be “tuned in” and develop a feel for how personal you can take the conversation. Watch or listen for clues to indicate how comfortable your prospects are with the conversation. Making people uneasy or probing to far is counterproductive to rapport building.
3. Find the common ground – As you begin to uncover more about your prospects you should be looking for common ground that will serve as the basis for future conversations. Did you go to the same school? Have you worked for the same company in the past? Do you both have kids the same age? Do you share a favorite team? Finding an anchor in common ground will allow you to pick-up your next conversation on a personal note before moving on to business. This is a huge advantage.

In summary, building rapport is essential to a productive sales meeting with a new prospect. Take the time during the first third of your meeting to do this and you will improve your chances of winning business, you will keep business with the client longer and will enjoy more testimonials and referrals than those sales people that jump right to the sales agenda. Don’t make this mistake, take time to build rapport.

For emerging companies, particularly technology oriented businesses, the real “brain-power” inside the organizations is usually dedicated to product development and servicing existing critical clients. There simply isn’t the bandwidth, “know-how” or funds available to build an entirely new marketing and sales force on the other side of the world to penetrate this new market.

Businesses that need to expand to the US in order to capture the sales volume needed to establish a viable business or to attract funding are often overwhelmed with the task of building a team on another continent.

Business leaders in this situation struggle with concerns like:

1. Time zone challenges
2. Travel expenses
3. Local business regulations (taxes and licenses)
4. How to manage the productivity of the employees
5. Local business customs and culture
6. Language barriers
7. Recruiting
8. Employee performance management

These are just a few of the challenges businesses face when expanding internationally to the United States.

For businesses that need to expand into the US market from places like New Zealand, Australia, India, China, Russia, Germany, UK and South America there is an alternative to building and internal sales and marketing organization in the US.

Outsourcing the Sales Function

Many businesses today are choosing to outsource the sales function to an outsourced sales partner based in the United States with experience bringing new products and technologies to the market for their clients.

Some of the advantages of outsourcing the sales function to a firm in the US are obvious:

• Quick start – often in just a couple weeks a sales team can be up and running
• Local expertise – a professional firm will have established business networks and expertise that they can leverage immediately
• Turn-key operation – Programs can be easily budgeted for
• Skilled sales force/Management – An experienced sales force that is managed and driven to meet your business goal and objectives.
• Flexibility – An outsourced sales partner offers the ability to “turn-up, turn-down or turn-off” the program if business circumstances change.

At ProSales Connection, we specialize is working with international businesses, particularly New Zealand and Australian based businesses that have great technologies that need a dedicated sales and marketing effort in the US to take their business to the next level.

If you have a business based outside the US and you are planning to enter the US market, consider outsourcing the sales and business development function to an established and experienced firm while you keep your focus on product development and growing your business in your established local markets.

Early in my career, I worked for a company that felt so strongly about “smiling with your voice” that management purchased desktop mirrors for everyone’s desk emblazoned in big red letters with the phrase, “Customers Can Hear You Smile!” I remember thinking it was juvenile and more than just a little silly, and to be honest it was a little silly.

Here is the funny part of the story, even though I received that little desktop mirror over 15 years ago, it has sat on every desk I have worked at ever since. As my career has developed and I have had the opportunity to lead larger sales organizations and now as the Founder and President of ProSales Connection, an outsourced sales and marketing company, I continue to reserve a prominent place on my desk for the “silly” mirror.

In reality, its message is 100% true; customers CAN hear you smile. I believe strongly that if you can smile while speaking on the phone with customers, prospects, business partners, even your mother… anyone, the tone of the call is improved and your effectiveness is dramatically increased. As I train and mentor sales people, this lesson is always a foundational element. We all have learned that communication is mostly non-verbal. This fact is significant when communicating over the phone. Over the phone, there is obviously no opportunity to communicate visually, so all we are left with is our words we choose, the tone and quality of our voice and the pace in which we speak.

I have NO scientific study to back up my claims, but it is my experience that when sales people smile during their calls; customers are friendlier, prospects stay on the phone longer, business partners have more trust and your mother doesn’t ask you, “Honey, is there something wrong?” These are all good things!

So run, don’t walk down to the neighborhood drugstore and drop a couple bucks on a small mirror for your desk. It is a great reminder to smile when you speak on the phone and watch how this reminder will improve your day and your sales results.

I spent the first 12 years of my career at a Tier 1 technology company where internally it was not considered a “real” meeting unless someone presented a PowerPoint slide deck. That was the culture of the organization and it started at the very the top. However, as a sales person and eventually one who led sales people, I rarely used PowerPoint presentations with my customers and clients and was very successful.

What I learned was that there are 3 unique tools for leading a meeting and that a skilled sales person will choose the most effective tool/strategy for the meeting given the objective and the circumstances.

Bruce Gabrielle of Speaking PowerPoint recently wrote a well-researched post on this very subject.

Gabrielle identifies three effective presentation tools to consider.

1. PowerPoint with handouts
2. Story Telling
3. Whiteboard or Flip charts

In this article he summarizes the best uses as follows:

1. When you want to educate and inform, use PowerPoint and handouts. Several studies show PowerPoint improves learning or has no effect. There are no studies showing PowerPoint harms learning. That means 3-4 bullet points per slide, not 10. And learning improves even more when the audience has handouts of the slides so they don’t have to write so many notes, and only write notes to capture important nuances.

2. When you want to excite or persuade, use storytelling, analogies, metaphors, props and – sparingly – slides with pictures and limited text. People are more likely to agree with a message packaged as a story than the same message packaged as a list of facts. Distractions from the story, like lengthy text on a slide, interfere with the storytelling effect.

3. When you want to drive a decision-making meeting, like with executives, use a whiteboard or flip chart. Research shows visuals help people express different perspectives and understand differing viewpoints with less conflict. Without visuals, assumptions remain hidden and disagreements become more heated and personal.

For years I have avoided the use of PowerPoint and have gravitated towards storytelling and whiteboards for my sales meetings. This was instinctive on my part, but after reading Gabrielle’s research the reasons are obvious.

I usually conduct the overwhelming majority of my business over the phone. And because PowerPoint is not convenient for early stage phone meetings, I have crafted a storytelling approach to my initial sales meetings. In these meetings I talk to my prospects about the challenges I experienced at a major technology company with poor quality leads and how when I started ProSales Connection I heard over and over again the issues companies faced with generating quality sales leads and real sales meetings. Then, I talk about how we listened to their problems and built a business around solving these pain-points with a new process and commitment to quality and service.

At this point in the process my goal is simply to build rapport, demonstrate competence as well as excite and persuade my prospect that there is something different about our company and the services we offer our clients.

If the client is not sold yet and more conversations are needed before a commitment can can be made, I will schedule either a face-to-face meeting or virtual meeting and we will use a whiteboard or flip chart to help them build the business case for acquiring our services.

In one of Gabrielle’s sources, “Seeing versus Arguing The Moderating Role of Collaborative Visualization in Team Knowledge Integration”, by Jeanne Mengis and Martin J. Eppler (University of Lugano, Switzerland), the authors create a diagram that could be used as a guideline for any sales person seeking a decision from either a prospect or even when driving internal decisions inside their organization.

This is similar to the approach I find effective. Regardless of the model you leverage, the whiteboard allows you to capture commitments, however small, as you lead the prospect through the decision making process. These small decisions should support your larger objective and if you plan your approach carefully, should make a favorable decision self-evident.

As for PowerPoint, there is still a place for it as a tool to educate and inform or report out on data that needs to be summarized and consolidated. However, in my opinion it is a terrible tool for selling. Sales professionals should be looking for ways to create a story or narrative that gets prospects excited about their product or solution and then drive decisions with the use of whiteboards and flip charts.

How do you use stories and/or whiteboards to win new business?