Conrey is for Closers

Out of Office Emails: A Different Look

conrey — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:23:46 +0000

Sorry I cannot respond immediately to your message as I will be away from the office January 11th through 13th. For urgent matters, please contact me at xxx-555-1212.

Thanks,
Prospect

The bane of a cold-calling salesman’s existence is the Out of Office reply. It means for certain that your email will be relegated with the rest of the newsletters, Groupon deals, junk mail, and solicitations that will clutter an inbox on their return. It means a cold, dead lead for most of you.

But does it have to?
What if you did something different?
What if you separated yourself from the crowd?

What if you replied to the Out of Office email?

Yeah, I went there. I’m putting it out there. I’ll even admit this isn’t my idea, but it’s genius. It shows that your email didn’t come from a robot or an automated list. It shows that you actually can respond (maybe with some humor, if you’re like me) and give them something new to remember.

Not only that but you can use that for intelligence. You now know things about your prospect. You know when they’re gone and when they’ll be back. In some cases you’ll know what they are doing while they aren’t answering your email so you have conversation starters when they get back. I received this real Out of Office message yesterday:

Please note that I will be out of the office with no access to
email/phone as I attempt to hike to the roof of Africa (Mount
Kilimanjaro).

Kindly note the following points of contact:

You’re damn right that gives me all kinds of ammo to work with. Imagine the response I’ll get when he gets down from the mountain and sees an email like this:
“Awesome! That sounds like a great accomplishment and something that is a cool story. The kind of client who takes some time to climb a mountain is the kind of client I want to work with, I’d love to hear about your climb when you get back!”

What have you thought about differently today?

Out of Office Emails: A Different Look is a post from: Conrey is for Closers

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The Bar is Raised

conrey — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:16:17 +0000

The bar is only getting higher every day.

You used to be able to pretty good at one part of your job to stand out from the crowd. Have slightly better customer service? Have a 24 hour phone line? You won the game if that was your model 20 years ago – be the least painful option.

Then you had to be excellent at one part of your business to stand out. Win awards, get recognized, be brilliant. That is how you stood out 10 years ago, by being a better option.

That doesn’t work anymore. Being brilliant is no longer a differentiator, it is expected. It’s the minimum level needed to be truly successful and sustainable. Buyers are looking to only spend their money on the things that will give them the best result, the best experience, the best return. This is double so as the recession continues globally.

If you are not absolutely brilliant at what you do, and you don’t show that to your clients, you are losing. Start to show your awesomeness now if you have it, and if you don’t – it’s time to change what you do.

The Bar is Raised is a post from: Conrey is for Closers

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Business Disuse Atrophy and 3 Steps to Fighting It

conrey — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:55:05 +0000

Disuse atrophy of muscles (muscle atrophy) and bones, with loss of mass and strength, can occur after prolonged immobility, such as extended bedrest, or having a body part in a cast (living in darkness for the eye, bedridden for the legs etc.). This type of atrophy can usually be reversed with exercise unless severe. Astronauts in microgravity must exercise regularly to minimize atrophy of their limb muscles.

From Wikipedia

In the course of recording Don’t Sell Me Bro last week, we interviewed Andia Winslow – US Olympic hopeful in the Skeleton and someone who is looking to get her business off the ground. Coming from an athletic background she dropped a great term on us – Business Disuse Atrophy.

Much like the muscle atrophy above, your business skills will lose mass and strength. It’s easy to get away with taking some time off from selling when business is good, your future work schedule is stacked up and you’re no longer worried about paying rent next month.

However, just like your endurance wanes when sitting on the couch watching sports instead of playing them, your sales skills will get rusty just the same. Some simple steps to keep this from happening to you:

Educate Yourself: My guess is if you are here you’re already doing some of this. But read about your craft, read about what you want to get better at, take a class, read things that don’t seem necessarily related but tax your brain. Give yourself the chance to learn something that you can apply to your business and try something new.

Schedule Your Workout: Take some time on your calendar every week to do sales related tasks. Block a couple of hours for prospecting, a couple of hours for reconnecting with past clients, and even some time for checking on deals you thought were dead. Put that time on your calendar as an appointment with yourself and keep that appointment!

Get a Coach: When you want to take your game up to the next level, you’ll have to have someone push you beyond what you think are your limits. A coach or trainer in the gym will push, yell, bribe, and pull you to your best workout, so why not in business? Have a coworker partner with you on this, where you’ll work to hold each other accountable to getting better. Work by yourself? Get a fellow solo entrepreneur to have lunch with once a week and check in on each other. If you can’t do that, find a group online to start this process

Keep your business muscles worked out and they’ll be there when you need them.

Business Disuse Atrophy and 3 Steps to Fighting It is a post from: Conrey is for Closers

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How To Not Sell Anymore And Keep Your Business Rocking

How To Not Sell Anymore And Keep Your Business Rocking

conrey — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 15:21:01 +0000

This may sound like heresy but as a salesman your greatest aspiration should be to stop selling.

I’ll let you re-read that again and catch your breath before I move on.

The best brands out there do not sell you – you seek them out. You want to buy from them even with minimal visible effort on their part to convince you of that. Contrast the number of commercials you see on TV for Hondas, Chevys, and Toyotas versus the number of ads you see for Rolls Royce or Maybach. Those are all great cars that will get you to where you need to go functionally but you want the form and style of the latter ones. That’s an extreme example but let’s break down why it works.

Ultimately it comes down to one thing: Rolls Royce (and their analogs across other verticals) know themselves.
They know what they are, what makes them desirable, and what their buyers want. They know that they are the top of their food chain because they perform at a level above and beyond functional. They are flawless in style and performance. For an average user the differences aren’t something that you can really tell, but you know you want them. They go above and beyond to demonstrate, often by literally holding their buyers hands and showing, the most detailed of features so that there is no mistake of what you’re getting.

As a salesman if you know yourself, you’ll be able to identify what makes you so desirable to your buyers, and in time turn them into your sales force. It takes a commitment to excellence that is difficult to hold yourself to, but all great rewards come with a great cost.

How To Not Sell Anymore And Keep Your Business Rocking is a post from: Conrey is for Closers

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ANNOUNCEMENT – The Dont Sell Me Bro Podcast

On Being Professional

conrey — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:42:08 +0000

In working with a number of small businesses and solo entrepreneurs I’ve noticed there’s a struggle on deciding when to bring in a professional salesman versus doing it yourself. The common theme I’ve heard from my friends and clients is that they don’t “feel like” a salesperson. They don’t feel like they can do the sales game.

In most of these cases, these are people whose greatest sales asset is themselves – they are selling their expertise, their talents, and their skills. In these cases you don’t need a professional salesperson, in fact it will probably hurt you more than help. If you are selling yourself, no one is going to do a better job of that than you.

If you love what you do, or what you are selling in a way that is self actualizing, then that same truth will ring here as well. Most of you don’t need to hire a salesperson, you need to put in the work yourself and unlock your inner salesman.

On Being Professional is a post from: Conrey is for Closers

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Are you Afraid of Your Quote?

conrey — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:23:46 +0000

I was asked a great question by a salesperson I was consulting with recently:

Chris, how do you deliver an estimate when you know that it is going to be significantly higher than what they expect or can afford?

This is an experience that I’m sure a number of solo-entrepreneurs and salesmen have encountered. The real question here is why are you afraid of your quote? Are you not sure that you have built enough value into your pitch to justify the budget you’re proposing? Follow along for three easy steps to not being afraid of your pitch:

Build Value – Give solid reasons why the quality of what you do is worth what you cost.

Build Value – Give solid reasons for why you cost what you do and why you’ll give them more than they expect

Build Value – Give them a taste of what they’re in for once they sign up. Get them hooked on the service and attention to detail you provide.

Never give a quote until you’ve put in the time to do those things. And once you do put in the time and effort to build that value up, a quote with a big number on it is just that – a number. If you believe that you’re worth it – and build the value up the same way -if they can’t afford you it wasn’t going to be a great client for you anyway. But you may have salvaged an opportunity for them to either unearth new budget or refer you out to someone else who can afford the excellent work you do.

What would you do to overcome a proposal you’re afraid to send?

Are you Afraid of Your Quote? is a post from: Conrey is for Closers

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RIP Steve Jobs

conrey — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 01:17:18 +0000

There have been better salesmen, showmen, thinkers, innovators and business leaders. But no one that embodied all of these things the way that Steve Jobs did.

Some of my posts that reference Steve’s salesmanship:
Are Salesmen Sociopaths

Birth of a Salesman

RIP Steve Jobs is a post from: Conrey is for Closers

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What’s the Difference Between Good and Great?

conrey — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 22:17:33 +0000

What’s the difference between me and you?
You talk a good one – but you don’t do what you supposed to do
-Dr Dre, What’s The Difference

There is wisdom in what Dre is saying here in a song that doesn’t make his Greatest Hits album. The difference between a good salesman and a great salesman is 15 minutes a day of “doing what you’re supposed to do”.

Make the extra effort to make the calls, meet your deadlines, do the little things that other salesmen don’t want to do, like sending something personal out of the blue, remember birthdays, spend some time bettering your skills, go to a new meeting, make a change in your process and measure what works and what doesn’t.

Spend the last fifteen minutes or so of every day finding a way to be better than the competition. Just over an hour a week making small changes incrementally will take you from good to great.

What’s the Difference Between Good and Great? is a post from: Conrey is for Closers

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Where Are Your Racing Toward?

conrey — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 20:41:29 +0000

I need you to do something before reading the rest of this post. Take a hard look at what you’re selling. Not the idealized 30,000 foot view of what you’re selling (i.e. “I’m selling confidence!”), but what you’re actually selling. If you are selling cars, or medicine, or insurance, or training then I want you to think about what that product has done over the last few years. Has that product gotten easier to purchase as time has gone on? Has the average price gone down? Is supply up or demand down? Are you working harder on fewer smaller deals?

I want you to start there because you need to know if you’re racing towards zero. Signs of a race towards zero include the things above, but also smaller margins, more customer churn and general lack of joy in your business day. You’re selling a commodity man. You’re a few steps away from being the guy inside the window

That’s right, you’re dangerously close to being an order taker instead of a salesman. If you’re the business owner and have access to them you need to start figuring out how to de-commodify your business. If you’re just the salesguy, you should start polishing that resume up, because the Magic 8-Ball is predicting smaller commissions in the near future.

Newspapers, Publishers, Software Developers, Insurance Agents, Travel Agents. Those guys have or will be racing toward zero very son. Are you next and what are you doing to prevent it?

Where Are Your Racing Toward? is a post from: Conrey is for Closers

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Forgetting the Front Line

conrey — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:51:55 +0000

Originally posted at The Whale Hunters blog

There are many ways to lose a deal, we all remember the spectacular flameouts. The one where the salesman was late, rude, unprepared, or some combination of those. The one where they forgot the names of the people around the table they were selling to, or misdiagnosed the pain point they should address. But what about the fatal mistakes that are much smaller, more insidious, and easier to fall into.

One of the easiest to trap yourself with is to Forget the Front Lines.

It is normal for you to have a meeting with “The Boss”, a C-suite or VP or Department head who is the decision maker you have to get to sign off on your proposal. What you forget though is they are the person who will be least directly affected by what you are selling (unless it is a new set of golf clubs or luxury vehicle). The Boss is looking to gain efficiency, productivity, ROI and bottom line. Your job is to show him how what you are selling provides those things.
However, along the way you’re going to interact with the receptionist or assistant, plus one or two of the folks who report directly to The Boss. What you can easily forget once you’re used to hobnobbing with the Executive Washroom crowd is that these folks on the front line are the ones who will really be the decision maker.

No executive will make a big decision without consulting with the people who will be directly affected – odds are you were in a meeting with some of them, or talked to them while waiting for the Boss to show up. If you weren’t on your best behavior with them, they certainly won’t be kind in their review of your product. Treat them just as you do the guy who has a watch more expensive than your car, and they’ll use their influence to pull for you. I’ve seen many a deal won or lost based on the way a simple receptionist was talked to before the big meeting.

Don’t kill your deal before you get the chance to pitch it. Be as humble and respectful to the people who answer your calls and greet you at the door as you can, because they are the ones who really make things work around a busy office.

Forgetting the Front Line is a post from: Conrey is for Closers

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