3 Keys to ‘Killing It’ in Your First 90 Days in Sales

Posted on by Craig Elias

PART 8 OF MY FIRST 90 DAYS IN SALES SERIES

In my first blog post in this series, I shared three keys that anyone in their early 20s who just got their first job as an inside salesperson should apply, to set themselves up for a long and successful sales career.

In this blog post, I’ll share my suggestions for absolutely ‘killing it’ during your first 90 days in a new sales job.

Research shows that up to 28% of vendor switches are ‘triggered’ by a change in salespeople.

There are two reasons why this happens: a) The new salesperson does not understand the customer’s expectations, so they are more likely to disappoint them; and b) The customer does not yet have a relationship with the new salesperson, so they are less likely to complain, when they do disappoint them.

When this happens, the customer enters the Window of Dissatisfaction™ and is often easy pickings for the next savvy salesperson who comes along.

So with that said, here are my three best suggestions:

1) Ask the right questions to understand your existing customers’ expectations

To keep your existing customers, I think it’s critical to ask decision makers in each of your important accounts three key questions:

  1. What did my predecessor do well that I need to keep doing?
  2. What do my competitors do well that I should start doing?
  3. What does nobody do that you wish everybody did?

2) Ask for guidance, not business

You want to establish a relationship with decision makers as soon as possible for two reasons: a) you are more likely to keep customers because they are more likely complain when things go wrong; and b) you establish yourself as the preferred person to do business with when your competition lets them down in the future.

The fastest way I know to foster a relationship with key contacts is to email them asking for their guidance on what they think you should do in your first 90 days.

This allows you to start building a relationship in a non-selling manner: what Jerry Vass calls ‘Flanking.’ You can think of this as enrolling people in your career.

See the LinkedIn post by Doug Landis – the VP of Sales Productivity at Box – that shares how he helped a hungry salesperson because he asked for help.

3) Identify the events that triggered quick win opportunities

Research shows you are five times more likely to win business when you are first-in with decision makers who are in a Window of Dissatisfaction. Not only that, but you are more likely to get loyal, core customers who decide quickly, and if you ask, they will give you two things every salesperson should ask for: testimonials and referrals.

The best way to be first-in with decision makers in the Window of Dissatisfaction is to understand the Trigger Events that create them.

The easiest ways to identify the best Trigger Events for what you sell is to conduct a Won Sales Analysis™.

Here are the first three questions of that analysis:

  1. What events (or changes) led up to this purchase?
  2. When did these events happen?
  3. What made you choose us?

If you lose a good customer, you should do a Lost Customer Analysis to learn what events triggered customers to leave by asking similar questions:

  1. What events (or changes) led up to changing vendors?
  2. When did these events happen?
  3. What made you choose them?

If you ask the questions above, you’ll soon learn that the top two Trigger Events are a change in decision makers or a change in your competitors’ salespeople. But you won’t know what the third or fourth ones are, if you don’t do the analysis.

Feel free to call or text me (+1.403.874.2998) if you have any question or send me a LinkedIn connection request if you would like a free copy of my award-winning sales book, ‘SHiFT! Harness the Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers.’

craigelias

 

Craig Elias is the creator of Trigger Event Selling™, and the Chief Catalyst of SHiFT Selling, Inc.

For almost 20 years, Craig used Trigger Event strategies to become a top sales performer at EVERY company that has hired him – including WorldCom where he was named the #1 salesperson within six months of joining the company.

Craig’s Trigger Event strategies have:

  •  Won him a $1,000,000 prize in a global “Billion-Dollar Idea” pitch competition
  • Earned him coverage on NBC news, in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, Nikkei Marketing Journal,Business 2.0, Sales and Marketing magazine, Venture Magazine, Calgary Inc.
  • Earned his last company, the distinction as one of “Silicon Valley’s 40 hottest”

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Prepare to go Global with B2B Email Marketing

Posted on by Zeb Khan

Global opportunity

The phenomenal rise of ecommerce and email has transformed global B2B marketing. Overseas markets that were once the sole preserve of corporate giants are now a tremendous growth opportunity for organisations of all sizes.

As competitive advantage shifts from the biggest to the most agile, your marketing messages are as easily read in Brisbane as they are in Beijing and at relatively low cost. Today the world is your local market ─ but you should be prepared.

Local knowledge

While the need for vast budgets to conquer new markets has gone, there is another consideration ─ local knowledge. It’s often overlooked but always painful for those businesses that fail to take regional variation into account when reaching out to new markets.

In my last blog I talked about the importance of understanding variations in EU email marketing law, but worldwide the picture is more complex. It’s a constantly changing web of established and developing regulatory frameworks. Here, local knowledge goes a very long way indeed. Let’s take a look at just a couple of global markets and the bear-traps awaiting the unwary email marketer:

AUSTRALIA: the Privacy Amendment Act 2012 became law in 2014, consolidating existing legislation. There are severe penalties for companies in breech that include a AU$1.8 million fine, search and seizure powers and even imprisonment. Any company venturing into Australia needs to have solid data policies and procedures to remain compliant.

CANADA: the Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL) came into effect in 2014. With penalties of up to C$10 million, it’s imperative that you know the details. Beware of data companies offering to sell you Canadian B2B emails, as this is more likely to fill court time than order books.

Prepare ─ to go global

The first thing to note when embarking on a global B2B email marketing campaign is that compliance is extremely complex and no blog can ever come close to providing you with a full explanation of legal guidelines ─ so this is simply a very high level overview. Consequently, it’s critical that any company consults closely with its legal team ─ because you don’t want this complexity to land you in trouble.

But nor should it dissuade you from seizing global opportunities. Rich email marketing rewards are there for the taking, but like Boy Scouts everywhere, be prepared. And the best way to do this is through a data partner that lives and breathes global legislation:

  • Choose a data provider that demonstrates knowledge of local legislation in each country and how their email acquisition procedures are compliant.
  • A good way to rule out an international data provider is to ask them if they sell Canadian B2B emails ─ if they do, then they are not compliant.
  • Ensure that your data partner has the global footprint necessary to understand local markets and their regulatory regimes ─ and the agility to react to fast-changing legislation.
  • Find a partner with a strong reputation ─ particularly when it comes to the quality of data used.
  • Data aggregators have a network of local providers across the globe that can get you niche data for difficult global markets. A data aggregator does the hard work for you and uses their global network to get you emails in any compliant region.

Preparation in securing the right data partner will always pay dividends because they have the power to open up a world of opportunity ─ literally. Take the time because now is the time to go global with your B2B email marketing.

5 Tips to Rock Your First 90 Days in Sales

Posted on by Devin Golden

PART 7 OF MY FIRST 90 DAYS IN SALES SERIES

As a sales leader for close to 20 years, I have had the opportunity to work with many outstanding reps.  While every successful rep is a little different in the way they plan their work and work their plan, newly hired reps that become successful take a very common path during the first days of their tenure.  Aside from important attributes such as communications skills, drive, and track record of sales skills, it is their approach to the new job that can dramatically increase the likelihood of success.  Early new hire success is important in terms of ROI but it also serves to foster confidence, reinforce the right hiring decision and assimilate the new rep into the corporate culture. Whether a sales leader likes it or not, all eyes are watching new hires to see if they have the right stuff to be successful in their new selling environment.  Here are a few quick tips for reps to help them on their new journey.

  1. Do not re-create the wheel – High performance sales organizations develop sales messaging that enables the sales team to be successful.  As a new sales reps, you should avoid the temptation to stray away from that messaging and start creating your own talk track. It is a recipe for failure because you do not have enough experience with the company selling the product to know what is truly important to their customer and prospects;  therefore, the message gets muddled and is, ultimately, ineffective.
  2. Find the best rep on the floor or in the field and mimic what they do – Imitation is the highest form of flattery and it is a best practice for new sales reps.   Too often, new reps struggle to understand what it takes to be successful in their new environment.  Their enthusiasm and excitement for their new position leads to frustration when they do not see short term success. As every sales environment has a different success quotient, it is critical to quickly identify the right behaviors and successful norms to get off to a great start.  Every day wasted has an opportunity cost and can make a difference in internal perceptions, financial rewards and long term job satisfaction.
  3. Build your pipeline now; Don’t wait –The first 90 days are a critical time to start building pipeline to avoid a slow start.  Regardless of your sales cycle, the faster you can find opportunities to put in the top of the sales funnel, the faster you will taste success.  If a sales person does not start building pipeline in the first 30 days, there is a strong chance that they will not have success.
  4. Outwork the person next to you – When I was a rep, I always had confidence in my ability to be successful.  Starting in a new role means that you have a new peer group to measure up against.  I found that working harder than anyone else on the team was the fastest way to stand out.  You should work hard and work smart letting your natural abilities take over.
  5. Be Passionate and Have fun! –  Sales is about passion.  If you do not have passion for your job, you will not reach your full potential.  Find a job where you wake up each morning and want to get to work to start the day.  It will help you work your way through adversity, reach your goals and make a lot of money.

Follow #First90Days on Twitter for more great tips!

My 1st 90 Days: What I Wish I Knew When I First Started in Sales by Steve Rankel

Posted on by Steve Rankel

PART 6 OF MY FIRST 90 DAYS IN SALES SERIES

I started in sales almost 25 years ago, so there are so many things I wish I could do over.

But the top three I wish I had in my first 90 days would be:

1. Don’t regret the role. Crush it.

When I hit rock bottom many years ago due to my first startup going bust, the only job I could find was selling home heating oil at night via phone, from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (Talk about a humbling experience!) .

I decided that if the only position I could get was selling oil on 100% commission, then I would crush it. In truth, it was one of the best proving grounds I ever had. I took crazy notes, documenting details from every sales call, and began tracking statistics on the % of prospects with certain objections, decision rates, etc.

Here’s where it got even more crazy: using this intense level of focus and detailed recordkeeping, plus a very pleasant demeanor with prospects (even though THEY didn’t want to be disturbed at home after dinner), I began to sell more than my colleagues.

How much more? I became the #1 sales rep within two weeks, and stayed at the top until I left. The CEO actually began calling me (!!) for advice on what was going on in the market, because I could tell him “17% of the leads I called were not valid, I close 1 out of every 21 calls, etc.”

It wasn’t an easy time, but I am super proud of this particular victory, even years later. And the CEO remains a personal friend.

Punchline: Just decide to crush it, wherever you are. You’ll be amazed at what happens next.

2. Don’t just study sales books. Study your Sales Rock Stars.

In every company, there’s a wide gap between the performance of sales rock stars and average reps. Ask yourself: “What do our rock stars DO, either on purpose or by accident, that helps them sell more than anyone else?” What do they SAY? What language and stories do they use?

You can go to the best sales training or adopt any sales methodology you want. But the truth is that your rock stars have already figured it out. Find one who can explain what they do right. Buy them lunch. Share leads. Add value to them. Then emulate what they do, adding your own personal touch.

The punchline: Don’t reinvent the wheel. Just learn from the leaders and do what they do.

3. Listen & Take Notes: It Does the Closing FOR YOU

I talk too much. So I need a system that helps me listen and validate what prospects have to say. Taking notes helps me do this. (Tip: take typed notes with the prospect when on a Gotomeeting and just watch them help you document everything correctly! I also try to mute my phone so I don’t talk over the client).

Several years ago I met with a potential customer’s senior team for a 1-hour meeting, which turned into 3.5 hours of taking notes and listening. As they watched me write down 6 pages of notes, in small print, they remarked more than once about how I really understood their situation (I was just reading the notes back!). They were clearly not used to this.

On the way out, the CEO remarked about how impressed he was. He literally rode the elevator down with me, and walked to my parking garage, where he stood for almost HALF AN HOUR more talking with me (woo hoo!). Days later we closed the 1st phase of a $75,000 project. I probably would have lost it if I was busy selling. Thank God I was busy listening.

Punchline: listen, take notes, and let the prospect see & know you’re doing it. It adds value immediately – and when done right – will speed you to advisor status, and a close.

These three lessons have been tough ones for me to learn, but ultimately have been game changers. I hope you test them, and get value from them in your sales journey.

To hear a podcast that accompanies this blog post, click HERE.

SteveRankel

Steve Rankel is a gifted storyteller who has helped grow multiple companies using the Value Storytelling system. A teacher and coach at heart, his passion is helping others communicate their unique value to the world. Steve resides in Boston with his wife, two daughters, and too many woodworking projects.  You can connect with Steve on LinkedIn. 

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Your Essential Travel Checklist for EU Email Campaigns

Posted on by Zeb Khan

The big picture

Europe is open for business. In 2014 EU GDP topped €13.9 trillion and it remains the world’s largest importer and exporter, eclipsing even the US and China. With around two-thirds of all EU members’ trade done within the bloc[i], there are huge opportunities for businesses wanting to expand across borders.

From Aberdeen to Zagreb there is freedom of movement in goods and services. Combine this with the ease of email marketing and companies of all sizes have access to hundreds of millions of potential customers at the touch of a button.

The small print

But…there’s a but. Despite the existence of E-Privacy Directive 2002/58 which covers email communication, there are important variations in national and regional law. Embarking on your EU email journey with a one size fits all approach can lead to painful penalties rather than rich rewards.

As an example, let’s take the two biggest ecommerce players in the EU – the UK and Germany ─ on the issue of consent:

UK customers are familiar with pre-ticked boxes that indicate their agreement to being contacted by email when they sign up for something. Here this qualifies as consent, but it’s known as ‘single opt-in’ because it takes just one step. Moving from B2C to B2B, marketers can contact a business email as long as the recipient is given the opportunity to opt out. If they don’t after a specified period ─ 10 days or so ─ this can be taken as implied consent.

In Germany, however, companies must abide by the national Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) and a welter of other national and state laws. Any unsolicited B2C or B2B email is prohibited without explicit consent. In the absence of a definition of ‘explicit’, the double opt-in applies ─ where customers must first tick the consent box and then confirm by email.

This kind of variation ─ from the subtle to the significant ─ is reflected across all 28 EU member states, multiplying complexity.

Your travel checklist

Confused? You needn’t be. As with any complex system, it pays to take advice from experts. Choosing the right data partner gives you access to specialists in ecommerce and email marketing law. As the success of any European email marketing adventure depends upon this choice, the following checklist will help you to make the right decision. Your partner must be:

  1. Responsible: ensure they provide details of their email collection and compliance procedures so you can be confident you’re partnering with a responsible provider.
  2. Dependable: be wary of small offshore companies that claim to have high volumes of European direct emails that are compliant. They may be web-scraped and could lead you to a large fine.
  3. Smart: as we’ve seen with Germany, compliance in many EU states demands the double opt-in. Ensure your data partner is dynamic enough to offer different approaches as appropriate, such as double opt-in generic emails ─ this type of approach could help you find the only way to legally market to some highly sought after organisations.
  4. Reputable: any email campaign puts your reputation and that of your data provider on the line, so pick a provider that is visible enough in the market to have one to protect too.

The right data partner will ensure that your business and its email campaigns have a passport to the world’s largest trading bloc. In my next blog we journey even further afield ─ looking at email across the globe. Happy travels!

This blog does not cover all EU email communication legislation and requirements. To ensure you are fully compliant you should seek legal guidance.

[i] http://europa.eu/about-eu/facts-figures/economy/index_en.htm

My First 90 Days in Sales by Steve Woods

Posted on by Steve Woods

PART 5 OF MY FIRST 90 DAYS IN SALES SERIES

Congratulations! You’ve recently embarked on a career in sales, which can be an incredibly rewarding, interesting, and fulfilling path. However, you are joining the sales profession at a very interesting time and old approaches and techniques will not serve you as well as they did for salespeople in past years. Before we look at your first 90 days, let’s look at three major recent shifts in the sales landscape.

1) Information is no longer a unique asset for starting conversations. It used to be that sales people were the key source of much of the information buyers would need in understanding a space, evaluating competing offerings, and forming a decision. No longer. Almost all required information is available without talking to a salesperson, and thus the information itself is not something that will get you into a conversation. You will have to earn your right to the conversation in another way.

2) Contact data is not rare. It used to be that the names and contact information of key people was a difficult information asset to acquire. CRM systems were built around this premise and the value of storing litle more than the facts on who a person is and how to reach them. In today’s world, that is no longer the case. Contact data can be readily acquired, but will no longer get you into the conversation as calls are screened and emails ignored.

3) Business change is more complicated. The speed and complexity of today’s business world is mind-boggling. Decisions of any significance involve a breadth of considerations; financial, economic, regulatory, training, and many others. Navigating this change in an organization requires coordinating a disparate group of interested parties with needs that are each deeply complex in their own area of expertise.

I introduce this complexity not to dishearten you and have you reconsider the career path you have recently embarked on, but to show you how this changing landscape creates an opportunity to become a highly succestsful salesperson. To do so, however, you will need to develop a mindset that sees each person you interact with as an ally on a long journey towards mutual success. The paradox of modern selling is that most of your current interactions will not lead to near-term revenue, and most of your near-term revenue will not come from interactions that started recently.

To truly build the trust it takes to convince a buyer to enact significant change, you need to build a relationship over a long period of time. This means you need to start long before a deal is in sight. This means that a successful mindset is one that discards any thoughts of how any particular person can help you, and instead thinks about how you can help them.

In the first 90 days of your career, you should put the groundwork in place to build these long-term relationships. The effort will not be trivial, but the payoff will be huge. Here are 5 key points you will need in your approach:

1) Help first. With any interaction, and especially with any new interaction, think first about how you can help them. Are they looking to hire? Looking for a job? Need to talk with someone with who has a particular set of skills? Any opportunity you have to deepen a relationship by helping without looking to receive is a great opportunity to build trust and gain an ally.

2) Build depth over time. Relationships deepen over time as long as you stay in touch. Learn what people are interested in and what’s important to them, and make notes on it to give you a chance to restart the conversation later. You’ll be surprised how much you wish you had jotted down a few interesting notes when you’re trying to restart a conversation after 6 months has passed.

3) Build breadth in your network. Organizational change requires a wide variety of people to be engaged. You never know when that person who knows the tax code for charities, or how to organize a supply chain across the artic, or how to engage municipal governments on regulation changes will come in handy. Build strong relationships with anyone who seems bright and motivated.

4) Don’t lose touch after a job change. People change jobs frequently. You will, and your connections will. Don’t let that cause you to lose touch. Relationships that span multiple jobs are very often the strongest and most impactful of any relationships.

5) Get personal. The best relationships are ones where business is secondary. Be interested in who people are outside of work, and be an interesting person yourself. Get involved in organizations, charities, or sports, and don’t be afraid to show yourself as a more interesting person with more than one dimension. Any conversations that are not directly work related will give you a stronger reason to stay in touch.
You will notice that none of these tips will close deals for you in the current quarter. However, the relationships that you build by truly being interested in people and finding ways to help them will remain with you for decades. The success you will have as a salesperson who is able to leverage this breadth and depth of network will far surpass any results you would see by fine tuning your sales pitch for deals in the current quarter.

Happy selling!

SteveWoods

Steve is an experienced SaaS CTO. Guided the building of Eloqua to a market leading position in Marketing Automation and Demand Generation. Passionate about innovation, SaaS and cloud computing software evolution, marketing automation, and analytics.

Author of the book “Digital Body Language” about deciphering customer intentions online. Frequent speaker at various forums involving B2B marketers. Now CTO and Co-founder of Nudge, an application focused on helping sales professionals leverage their network to engage the right business opportunities.

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How Your Weekly Schedule Determines Your Yearly Success

Posted on by Joe Lim

Does your schedule include the critical tasks you must do to ensure that 2016 is a successful one for you and your sales teams?

Does 2016 already seem busier than last year? For me, the intensity has built since January 1 and, as an Avention OneSource country manager, I’m juggling a diverse range of tasks including sales leadership and coaching, while working within a multi-national company with colleagues in many time zones – and still trying to achieve that elusive work/life balance.

For me, ensuring that my team and I achieve our 2016 targets requires getting the most out of every week. A new calendar or financial year is a great opportunity to review your schedule to ensure you are including the tasks that are critical to sales success.

Monday (Sydney):

For me, the best way to start the week is a team meeting with my salespeople. It’s an opportunity to ensure I’m across what are usually numerous and competing challenges.

Coaching my team is one of my most important roles. It’s not always easy but coaching is critical to creating a united, goal-oriented team that works to its strengths. For me, the most important element of coaching is clarity. For many of us, a new year means new budgets and new territories, which often can mean uncertainty for some team members. Being clear about exactly what these changes mean, what action is required and how these activities should translate into sales targets will make for a happier, confident team that is equipped to make more sales.

Tuesday (Sydney):

What sales professional doesn’t love discovering new products and collateral? Today I’m familiarizing myself with our new OneSource DataVision solution, which centralizes multiple customer and prospect data sources to provide deeper insights that our customers can use to identify and address key customer and prospect segments. It’s an incredibly powerful system so I need to be fully aware of how its capabilities align to the requirements of a financial services customer I’m meeting on Thursday.

The key when introducing new solutions is to be curious but cautious. Explore their capabilities and the problems they solve before taking them to market. Spend time to fully understand their value and correctly position them for your sales team and your customers. This applies specifically to your engagement strategy – always ensure that you keep the customers’ interests as your first priority.

Wednesday (Home – conference call):

I’m up at 5am today for a call with my US counterpart regarding our global marketing plan. Working for an international firm and liaising with resources across multiple geographies presents both challenges and opportunities in terms of productivity and engagement. In my experience, being part of a global team requires these key elements:

  • Clarity in messaging and methods: When you catch up with your team via phone conferences and email, ensure your directions are clear and to the point. End calls with a concise list of action points and responsibilities to avoid follow-ups.
  • Exercise sensitivity and fairness: Try to ensure it’s not one time zone that’s always having to set the pre-dawn alarm. And remember that flexibility goes both ways – empower team members to sometimes customize their hours to suit tricky scheduling.
  • Meet in person: Technology makes communication easy but it’s never as effective as when it’s conducted face to face.

Thursday (Melbourne)

Today I’m meeting with a senior marketing contact from a Financial Services customer to demonstrate how our new content and API functionality will create opportunities for their business. We discuss how connecting Avention content into their own CRM and marketing automation platforms will differentiate their ability to use data to unlock insight for their sales team and add more value to their existing client information. The presentation went well and we managed to secure a follow up appointment to demonstrate value to a larger group of stakeholders including groups from CRM, Analytics, Commercial Banking and Compliance.

 Friday (Sydney and on the road)

Today I meet with a new customer. Preparing for sales meetings is one of the most important parts of a sales professional’s role, and one I believe that is often a missed opportunity.

Can you imagine walking into a meeting with the confidence that you know more about this prospect than your competition? And that these extra insights will not only help you win the sale but, as occurred in my appointment yesterday, generate multiple sale opportunities? That’s what better preparation, including a deeper level of research and a more efficient, value-focused approach to this research, will give you. My preparation for what I call the perfect sales meeting depends on each prospect but my ’must haves‘ include:

  • Understanding key developments in the company’s industry over the short, mid and long term.
  • Knowledge of the activities and performance of the company’s peers
  • Insights into the impact on the company of relevant business trends

I’ll talk more about how you can prepare for the perfect sales meeting in my next blog. I hope you all have a great start to 2016 – please get in touch if I can help you improve your weekly schedule and meet your sales targets this year.

3 Tips to Jumpstart Your Sales Career by Mike Schultz

Posted on by Mike Schultz

PART 4 OF MY FIRST 90 DAYS IN SALES SERIES

One of the best Henny Youngman one-liners goes something like this: “I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.”

If you’re just starting out in sales, you’re about to go to those places, you just don’t know it. Selling is not like other jobs. Let’s say, for example, you’re an accountant. You go to your job, you get everything 99.9% right every day, you succeed.

If you’re in sales and you close 3 in 10 sales, you may just be wildly successful! That means, however, 7 in 10 of those sales end in failure. Sure, sometimes the buyer decides not to do anything at all, but the sales landscape is littered with lost sales that should have been one if a seller just did this or that differently.

New sellers are going to take their lumps and make mistakes, but you might as well avoid the ones you can. Here are three tips:

1. Learn what selling really is. I told someone I know from high school that, basically, we at RAIN Group teach people how to sell. She said, “What’s so hard about it? All you have to do is…” and spent a few minutes talking about something or other. Don’t make assumptions that professional selling is this or that because your grandfather (like mine) sold appliances in the 60s, or you really killed it when you spent a summer working at the shoe store. If you think selling is ‘just about this or that’ you are in for a rude awakening.

For example, the RAIN Group Center for Sales Research recently conducted a study of 731 major business-to-business purchases from buyers that represented $3.1 billion in purchasing power. We asked them to compare what the winners of their business did differently than the sellers who came in second place.

Turns out it wasn’t just about one thing or another. There was a rich mix of factors that influenced whether a buyer chose one provider over another, and whether they were inclined to buy from that seller again. Go here to find out the core of what we found, but under no circumstances think professional selling is easy or simple.

2. Sell with others. Go out of your way to sell with people who are very successful. This might mean tagging along for a needs discovery or early sales meeting with a pro, going to a networking event to see how a master relationship builder works at the event, or flying to a finalist presentation to see how the big guns bring the sale home.

Whatever it is, make sure you go out of you way to make this happen. Nobody is going to come down to your office and say, “Hey, do you want to tag along with me so you can get the experience and glean tips about what makes me really successful?” You have to be proactive.

3. Be brave. Selling can make you nervous, kill your mood, and derail your actions. Meetings with executives can be nerve-wracking, especially when you are early in your career or don’t have an MBA. Call reluctance is such a phenomena that psychology books have been written about it. I once was speaking with Mike Sheehan, now CEO of the Boston Globe, about prospecting. He said that whenever he ran into someone on his team avoiding it, he’d say, “What are you worried about, getting punched in in the nose?”

And when a buyer says, “No” or, “We’ll have to do it for less money,” many sellers tend to just wilt, tuck their tails between their legs, and go home. The best sellers don’t get rattled. They don’t let their emotions get in the way of their energy, activity, logic, and focus.

Fear of failure can be debilitating. Don’t let it get to you. Sure you might fail, but if you fail when selling, you started with nothing, and still have nothing. As Wayne Gretzky once said: you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

Instead, remember what Gandalf said to Frodo in the Fellowship of the Ring: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your front door. You step on the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” When you step out in the road, you might fail (though it’s unlikely you’ll get punched in the nose). If you don’t step out in the road and take some chances, however, you’ll never know what success you might have been swept off to.

MikeSchultzMike Schultz is President of RAIN Group, a sales training and consulting firm, and Director of the RAIN Group Center for Sales Research. He helps companies around the world unleash the sales potential of their teams. Mike is bestselling author of Rainmaking Conversations and Insight Selling. He also writes for the RAIN Selling Blog. Follow Mike on Twitter at @mike_schultz.

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The Good, Bad, and Fearful First Days of Sales by Nancy Bleeke

Posted on by Nancy Bleeke

PART 3 OF MY FIRST 90 DAYS IN SALES SERIES

It’s so easy now to look back and see what I should’ve, could’ve, or would’ve done in my first days in sales. The reality was that it wasn’t an easy start for me.

There were many reasons it wasn’t easy: I wasn’t convinced selling was the right path for me. I was scared. I was ill-equipped and unskilled. Yet somehow it all came together and a year later, I was rookie of the year.

Of course that didn’t just happen. I sat at my desk many a morning trying to figure out what I should be doing, and wondering why I was doing this anyway. I found myself wanting to stop after making my 25th cold call of the day. I also worked hard, learned, failed, and got back at it the next day.

When I think back to the things that worked for me, there are several key actions that most anyone can duplicate in their first days to make their start in sales easier, whether it’s a new career or a new company:

  1. Secure a mentor. Identify and ask someone to help you learn, point you in the right direction, help you lick your wounds when things don’t go as planned, and recognize you for when you do things right. It doesn’t have to be your boss; it could be a co-worker, a neighbor, or a family member. My first mentor was a manager in another department. He saw something in me in our first meeting and offered advice that I took. Because I listened and acted on his suggestions, he continued to mentor me.
  2. Adopt and adapt best practices. Watch and listen to everyone around you and what they do that works and what doesn’t. Ask those who are doing well for one or two key actions they take to be successful in your type of sales. Try them without too much scrutiny. Ask them what they did that bombed. Adopt the best practices and adapt them to become your own; you’ll never be ”just like Bob or Sue,” which is great. The more genuine you are, the more your prospects will buy into you. This lesson took me a while to learn, and the more I became my best “me,” the more I sold.
  3. Make everything you do about THEM. Take the time to learn about and build belief in the value of what you sell and service. Knowing how your product or service addresses the problems, opportunities, wants, and needs of your prospects allows you to focus on the value that matters to each buyer. They don’t care about what you like or the long list of features, make it about what is important to them, and you’ll win. Succeeding in sales means being a good team member, so this tip applies to interactions with your manager and colleagues as well.

Thinking back to the first days, it’s now easy to see what worked and what didn’t. I’d love to say it was all planned but it wasn’t. I’d like to say it was easy, but it wasn’t.

It’s why I am so passionate about bringing effective habit-building training to as many salespeople around the world as possible and why I wrote, Conversations That Sell; to help others adopt and adapt best practices that make them more productive. These tips are helpful whether you are brand new in sales, or for the experienced sales pros who find themselves complacent, wondering why they are in sales, or desiring a way to be more productive.

With planning, focus, belief, desire, and commitment, you can become a successful (or more successful) sales professional. Seriously, if I did, you can too!

NancyBleekeNancy Bleeke, President of Sales Pro Insider, Inc., and author of Conversations That Sell, a must-read for sales teams around the world, is known as someone who gets things done. She is driven by a battle cry that companies need to systematically make their conversations count-with customers, prospects, and team members. When the right people have the right conversations, companies thrive. Her focus since 1998 is equipping companies to grow sales, customer loyalties, and employee engagement with training, consulting, assessments, and tools that stick.

Follow #First90Days on Twitter for more great tips!

Close the Marketing Intelligence Gap with OneSource DataVision

Posted on by Jennifer Nash

Two crucial tenets of any marketing strategy are customer segmentation and new opportunity identification. Companies need accurate, deep data to gain the marketing intelligence needed for better targeting and advancing customer relationships. The ripple effects of greater marketing intelligence within the enterprise are improved sales cycles, cost of lead and sale and revenue generation. Today, Avention is putting the power of data into a marketer’s hands with the introduction of OneSource DataVision, a new product in the OneSource Solutions portfolio. OneSource DataVision helps marketers increase the value of existing customer and prospect data by centralizing, analyzing and visualizing multiple data sources.

OneSource DataVision doesn’t promote efficiency solely by providing information. It increases the value of in-house customer and prospect data by making it more actionable through:

  • Segmentation of companies and contacts by common key attributes (e.g. geography, industry, revenue and employees) and also along any number of segment attributes defined by the company; and
  • Comparison against OneSource’s global universe of companies to identify new targets that match relevant segments.

Faster recognition of market gaps, instant comparisons of target segment attributes and existing prospect information to find “look-alikes” that represent new opportunities, are delivered by OneSource DataVision. Of course, the product also leverages the historic strength of OneSource in data cleansing and updating, keeping customer and prospect data fresh.

Gaining new customers has become increasingly challenging and competitive. Customers engage with vendors later in the buying process and have more options than ever before. Equipping marketing teams with powerful technology that delivers meaningful data and insights speeds the sales process. OneSource DataVision has helped initial customers improve marketing intelligence to generate more positive business impacts and results. OneSource DataVision is now available along with other OneSource Solutions from Avention to improve data-driven marketing and sales strategies. For more information, contact, info@avention.com.

Learn more about the state of data today and how OneSource Solutions can transform your data-driven initiatives by signing up for our webinar featuring panelists from Cisco and Venture Development Center.