Since the beginning of my sales career I knew of Zig Ziglar – the Southern, memorable motivational speaker that sales people loved to hear preach about life, about setting and attaining goals, and creating the life of one’s dreams. His “Zigisms” or sayings that many of us remember years later make for perfect Tweets, according to Tom Ziglar, his son and CEO of Ziglar, Incorporated. Zig’s stories, seminars, and quotes have made a great impact on my life and in my success after starting out as a teenaged, single mom. We had a fun conversation talking football quarterbacks, Super Bowl,  sales, and creating dreams. Listen for the Ziglar tips for success, and find great resources plus a free chapter of the Ziglars’ new book at Born to Win.

Special thanks to Zig Ziglar (and Tom) for everything that Ziglar, Inc does. Be well, Zig… at 86 years young – you are still very much relevant and appreciated.

To listen to the interview click here.

Lori Richardson is recognized as one of the Top 25 Sales Influencers for 2012 and speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside and outbound sellers in technology and services companies. Sign up for the award-winning blog and the Sales Ideas in a Minute Newsletter for tips and strategies in selling.

B2B Sales Podcast With Ziglar on Football and Goal Setting originally appeared on Score More Sales on February 3, 2012.

You’ve listened online and are following your prospective customer – the one you are about to close a big deal with-  socially via every means possible.  If they have a Twitter account, you’re there.  Through LinkedIn you found a company profile, your contact’s professional past, and all of his or her colleagues’ as well. You know these guys through dozens of web searches and references.

The sales opportunity has stalled – which we talked about last week. Through a very strategic conversation with your prospect, both they and you are in agreement, and things get moving forward.  Still, the deal has not come to closure.

At the end of the pipeline, deals come to fruition. In simple transactions, it can happen from prospect to closure in a single series of steps – ah, but in the complex world of business, many sales opportunities are complex as well.

Some quick general tips to help you get to closure (note: there are a wide-range of deals happening as we speak. One size ideas do not fit all, but they should spark other ideas that could work specifically for your business)

• Ask about timelines, if you haven’t already. Why is  your prospect interested now (as opposed to last year or later this year?) By understanding their urgency you will know more about their buying cycle.
• Suggest you move forward with the contract or agreement. This is a point where your prospective customer will strongly hesitate if they are not ready, or they will move with you – sharing any last concerns or requirements. Often we don’t try to move forward and everything gets stagnant.  Typically you would offer moving forward earlier in their buying cycle – sometimes you are re-offering.

• One reason sales opportunities get stalled is because somewhere along the line, you misunderstood your buyer and they very nicely will sit in a holding pattern forever. Check with the customer to see if you are really focused in the same place they are. Geoffrey James has a great post on how to close business, based on a conversation with sales guru Linda Richardson (no relation… but high admiration).
• Make sure that, assuming you have determined a win for both companies in working together, you ask for the business. When the buying cycle is coming to an end, and it makes sense to them, your buyer will say yes.
• Be open to an alternative strategy. There is more than one way to bring sales opportunities to closure, depending on the situation – whether competitors are closing in, or the customer may be about to choose to do nothing. Sometimes a new strategy is appropriate, such as creating segments of a deal rather than a whole one, or changing your offering based on new information. Be flexible.
• We know that most deals are lost (STILL) because sales reps do not follow-up enough and at the right times, with the offer of perceived business value to the buyer. Make sure you’ve covered the basic issues and are compelling with great value. If so, follow-up and engage until you get an answer.  Simply by doing this, your sales will grow.

There is a helpful, short video from Jill Konrath on the topic of bringing up and understanding the WHY of making a change.

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

Lori Richardson is recognized as one of the Top 25 Sales Influencers for 2012 and speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside and outbound sellers in technology and services companies. Sign up for the award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for tips and strategies in selling.

Sales Tips for the End of the Pipeline originally appeared on Score More Sales on January 31, 2012.

Most everyone focuses on the front of the sales pipeline, and there is much written about all of the things that happen early on. But what about once you have potential sales opportunities? How are they moved forward to closure, and what happens during that “dark phase’ when your once-wonderful prospective customers are not returning your calls or e-mails?

Welcome to the middle of the pipeline, or for those of you using a funnel approach to track sales opportunities, welcome to MoFu (as coined by Hubspot, for middle-of-the-funnel). This less talked about period is where your prospects live, breathe, and sometimes hide – and during that time many opportunities disappear due to lack of nurturing from you.

We need to work on ways to accelerate the pipeline. In simple terms, get a “YES” or a “QUICK NO” rather than slow, drawn out turn-downs and shut-outs.  When you end up losing an opportunity, it is often the case that you probably could have had a quicker sales cycle and moved on to better opportunities for you and your company simply by getting a “NO” quicker.  Find ways to move stalled opportunities forward or move them back as a lead to nurture further.

Nurturing your leads can be time consuming and sporadic if not  in a process of some sort, and if not partially automated. If your system is only automated with no human touch points, you will turn off some opportunities, particularly if they are complex sales cycles. Take a look at a great post on the “why” of nurturing leads by Ardath Albee.

This is why you must have a place to keep your leads in a system that allows you to move opportunities forward or not – depending on the situation.

The dark time in a sales opportunity can be as real as the deal is dead, or it can be stalled due to so many other reasons, including:

• You did not qualify well up front – you are talking to the wrong person(s)
• You did not qualify well up front – you did not involve all of the influencers
• You did not qualify well up front – the opportunity is not a priority with the client
• You did not clearly discuss value – they don’t see what you can bring, or don’t think they need it
• You did discuss value – but the price to implement involves changing things – and that’s time consuming
• They have bigger problems since you last communicated – things like compensation or legal
• They are not in the same rush that you are – it is a buying cycle, not a selling cycle
• They are “just not that into you”. (seriously, there are several other issues & reasons – we’ll get into that at a later time)

So what can you do?  For starters, don’t assume.  It’s so easy to do, we’ll be posting about this in detail. Keep an open mind and do some or all of the following:

Find another potential contact point if appropriate (if you are talking with lower-level decision makers, who else might be impacted by this project and can you engage them in a way that adds value?  If nothing else, you might be able to determine if something has changed.

Speaking of adding value, how can you? Find a new way. You might be surprised. For example, you sell a software solution but you know a prospect of yours is dealing with a big compensation issue. Connect them with a comp expert, or download something you have pre-read that IS or could be of value to your prospect, and send it their way. (note to pre-read things, because just sending any white paper is not adding value. If you trust the author or skim to see if relevant, you will know this is not a blatant waste of time for your prospect to read.)

If you do not nurture the relationship with your prospect, you have very little chance of working with them. If you reach out to them through a multi-faceted strategy (e-mail, social, phone) you are more likely to reach them. Some of our prospects respond immediately via Twitter. Others need a phone call. Do you know which mode your prospects prefer?

Revisit your pipeline or funnel today – who do you already have in your sights and how can you move those opportunities forward? If they are dead, mark them so, and get them out of your daily view – they need to be nurtured less frequently.  You will make room for new and better opportunities, and you’ll clearly see those staring you in the face that simply need more nurturing from someone who can really add value to their business  – if that is you, then move forward.

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

Lori Richardson is recognized as one of the Top 25 Sales Influencers for 2012 and speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside and outbound sellers in technology and services companies who are doing award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for tips and strategies in selling.

Middle of the Sales Pipeline – Acceleration originally appeared on Score More Sales on January 25, 2012.

Being recognized this month as a Top Sales Influencer made me wonder: What IS an influencer, and how can this help build a business or a brand?  I mean, it is a great thing to have happened – quite an honor –  but what is it, really?

Wikipedia talks about identifying influencers:

Market research techniques can be used to identify influencers, using pre-defined criteria to determine the extent and type of influence. For example, Keller and Berry propose five attributes of influencers:

• Activists: influencers get involved, with their communities, political movements, charities and so on.
• Connected: influencers have large social networks
• Impact: influencers are looked up to and are trusted by others
• Active minds: influencers have multiple and diverse interests
• Trendsetters: influencers tend to be early adopters (or leavers) in markets

OpenView Labs, the company who did the research for the Top 25 Sales Influencers for 2012 discuss how they develop a prioritization scheme to get to their results when doing this type of project.

Ultimately we don’t know if it is our minds, connections, activity, impact, or setting trends that got noticed – but we do understand that these areas are what need to be developed here and in our client companies to stand out, be recognized, and grow revenues.

David Spark wrote a post for Mashable on How to Become an Online Influencer – we have implemented many of the ideas he mentions.

is 2012 the year of INFLUENCE for you and your company? Post a comment on what you are doing to gain visibility – these ideas help others. Post your challenges and successes – we’ll share them.

Lori Richardson was recently ranked as one of the Top 25 Sales Influencers for 2012. Read the award-winning blog and sign up for the twice-monthly newsletter with sales tips to grow B2B revenues.

Five Attributes of Top Sales Influencers originally appeared on Score More Sales on January 24, 2012.

Last week we shared a recent interview with Michael Boylan, best selling author of The Power to Get In, Accelerants , and TEETH – Does Your Value Proposition Have Any? Michael is an award-winning keynote speaker at hundreds of conferences and Fortune 500 company meetings. Michael can take any organization through the sales process with dramatically increased results. We were honored to speak with him not just once but twice.

Today’s conversation shares how once you gain access to the C-level decision makers you wanted to get in front of in the first place, now what do you say to move the conversation forward? Many organizations have poor value propositions and their visit to the C-level suite is short-lived. Listen as Michael talks about a proven framework – a common sense roadmap for crystallizing, condensing, and calibrating your message so you close more business. Listen to the interview here

You can reach Michael through Accelerant International to talk about a speaking engagement or to purchase TEETH: Does Your Value Proposition Have Any?

Join our B2B Value Proposition Contest for some great prizes. Post your company name, and your value proposition in the comments portion of the blog (look below where it says, “add new comment”). The TOP THREE value propositions (as judged by our panel of 3) will WIN one of Michael’s books, or Score More Sales books + coaching or a coffee card) but you must submit by January 30th.

B2B Sales Podcast With Michael Boylan on Value Propositions originally appeared on Score More Sales on January 19, 2012.

In conversations about managing sales opportunities you need to reference either a pipeline or a funnel to really understand that it takes many more potential deals than what will come to actual closure.

All of the things you are working on won’t close – even if you think they will.

Deals get stalled, especially if they are complex sales that take more than one meeting to close.  Even with the best of intentions and promise of a new customer, things slow down. They even go silent.

The power of using steps or phases to track your sales opportunities is huge for three reasons:

1. If you are working with a lot of prospective companies you’ll forget what you set as a next action and in general, who needs what next to move the sales opportunity forward. A pipeline view can trigger what you need to do next.

2. Visually seeing at what phase of the pipeline each of your opportunities is can indicate when more revenue should be coming in. When you overlay all of your opportunities this way, you can easily tell what you need to do today – contact that qualified but not yet committed customer or do some rainmaking to generate more opportunities since the pipeline looks light.

3. A pipeline tool is needed for leadership to be able to have a snapshot view of what reps are working on at any given time.

Accurate, predictable pipelines are used in financing presentations for investment and for loans.

Assuming I’ve harped enough about the power of the pipeline, let’s dive deeper and expand on the previous pipeline post.

We received numerous questions about offering more specifics and detail on what you need tools for, so using the same bullets as last time, we expand:

Tools to help find or attract prospects – Inbound marketing tools work to help you attract those searching the web for your offerings and then help you convert them to prospect status.  Look for tools that are simple to put in place for your team, and that offer the reporting capabilities you need to understand success rates.

Databases of prospective contacts help with your outbound efforts. There has been a huge migration within B2B with LinkedIn as the “go-to” tool for smaller companies to do searches for contact names or roles within an organization.  LinkedIn Tip #1: If you don’t have an upgraded LinkedIn account, you can’t access as much good stuff. Put an upgraded account into the budget.  LinkedIn Tip #2: Make sure that your profile is up-to-date, that there is a LinkedIn page for your company, and updated profiles for each of your team members. Use keywords within your profile to help those searching for your products and services to find you, and join groups in LinkedIn that are in your clients’ industries. Give value and post resources – people will be attracted and engage with you this way.

Identify trigger events in prospect companies – Business opportunities come about when there are changes in companies, geographic regions and in industries. We call these triggers – because they trigger an opportunity. Do you know the triggers within your niche? Tip: Next time you look at a prospect’s website, go to the “news” or “press release” page and see what has happened recently. If they are public, download the latest annual report.  Set alerts in Google for your customers’ company name and industry niche – when news happens you’ll get notified.

Gain information about them and what they need – Search services and search tools can help you to learn more about what is going on inside an organization. Are you aware of the research capabilities just in Twitter, for example? Even if your B2B company is not engaging on Twitter, a “real time” network, you need someone to search for and monitor specific words, terms, companies and phrases on a regular basis.  This is guaranteed to grow your industry knowledge of what is being talked about.

Give prospects something of value – at every connection point with prospective customers, find ways to add value. In some cases it could be through well-thought out content, or specific industry tips to help them get a taste of your company and how you work. You could offer a trial if you are a SAAS company, for example.  You could offer a phone consult if you are a services provider (something we put in place a while back to make us easier to connect with) In these economic times, anything you can do to help reduce risk for your prospective customer in getting to know you and in demonstrating how your products and services can solve their issues, is a great first or second step. Then, after they come to understand more about your solution, they will be more definite as to whether yours adds value or not – giving you a quick no or a yes, which is the best way to move forward.

Build and maintain a set of probable customers – this goes back to having a robust CRM system as well as a sales process and methodology in how you are nurturing and growing relationships.  Know that a “set” of probable customers is a living, breathing group – it will change and morph over time. This is the science of selling – and the idea that people don’t become buyers just because you desire to sell to them. Work to offer value and nurture these relationships. Find ways to reconnect with prospects, knowing they can move forward with you as qualified (meaning that you are a good fit to do business together according to both parties) and ultimately coming to closure.  In a world of two-way communication, you don’t “close” a customer – you work with them on a solution and together the opportunity comes to closure or not.  Make sure you have enough prospects in your pipeline so that this is not a stressful or desperate (lack of prospects = pressure to want to bring business to closure).

Do you see selling as a science or an art? Post your comments and let’s build the conversation.

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

Lori Richardson is recognized as one of the Top 25 Sales Influencers for 2012 and speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside and outbound sellers in technology and services companies who are doing award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for tips and strategies in selling.

Build the Front of Your Sales Pipeline originally appeared on Score More Sales on January 17, 2012.

It was a random salon I chose when I first moved to  Boston  - I simply went to the internet and did a search, which back in 1998 yielded just a few results.  As soon as one relocates, you need to find certain services, and a hair salon with a great stylist was at the top of my list. Assigned to a stylist named Roz, I happily showed up and quickly became a loyal customer.

The salon was OK, but Roz was amazing. Her sense of style, competence, lightheartedness, and wonderful Irish brogue had me hooked.  A few short years later, I moved away, but before I did, I raved about her to my friend Mary. Mary is of Irish heritage so I knew she’d appreciate Roz, and I had a feeling she’d like her skill and personality.

As a master connector, I connect folks all the time – I mean almost daily. Sometimes it’s a match made in heaven (I’ve connected people who have gone on to be great business partners and I’ve connected consultants to their biggest new customer. I have come to accept over the years that this is one of my gifts and I embrace it). Did I ever underestimate this connection though.

Mary became one of Roz’s best clients as well as a good friend. Mary introduced many of her family members and friends to Roz and her style, cut, and color  services. It’s been more than 10 years of Mary’s referrals including hiring Roz on-site for weddings and other occasions. My loose ballpark math puts business done since my introduction of Mary to Roz around $30,000  - could be less, or more.

What’s great is that Roz moved a while back to an amazing home in a great neighborhood. I asked her how she found out about it – and she said with a smile, “Mary’s sister – she and I have become very good friends and she lives just down the street. When she heard the house was going on the market, she tipped me off – and we grabbed it.”

Priceless.

This is a reminder to mention those who give you great service to endorse them. Offer them testimonials. (Check out our scrolling testimonials at Score More Sales – we love the plug in that we use called Testimonial Director.)

Don’t ever underestimate the power of a referral – what worked for Roz can work for you and your business. Start by making a list of those who know and trust you. Keep in contact with them, and help them by referring others their way. Download our no-cost ebook on building strategic partners. Let us know your success stories.

Lori Richardson was recently ranked as one of the Top 25 Sales Influencers for 2012. Read the award-winning blog and sign up for the twice-monthly newsletter with sales tips to grow B2B revenues. 

Thirty Thousand Dollar Haircut – Power of Referrals originally appeared on Score More Sales on January 14, 2012.