Sales Is Not For Sissies

Stay Top of Mind - Part 1

2012-02-13T08:18:00.000-05:00

Salespeople miss opportunities all the time for one simple reason. The potential customer forgot to call them when they were finally ready to buy!
The recipe for top of mind success calls for three ingredients. This week will review all three ingredients.

The first is to maintain regular, frequent contact with customers. Don't let more than a month go by without touching the customer with a piece of mail, a phone call or an email-or all three if you think the customer will be ready to by in the near-future.
Check back on Wednesday for the second ingredient in the recipe for staying top of mind.

Business Development Strategies: Looking for Immediate Revenue

2012-02-10T07:26:00.000-05:00

You have ten minutes to make phone calls, and you’re looking for immediate revenue. Who should you call?

The pyramid is your guide. Start at the top and work your way down.

First, call customers who could buy more from you right now. Get a meeting to talk about immediate needs. Let them know other ways you could serve them. Find out what is coming up so you don't miss an opportunity.

What if you’re already the preferred vendor at an account and getting the majority of the work? If you’re wondering if calling them is the right way to spend time, consider three factors.

· Are there threats to your position in the account?

· When was the last time you had a face-to-face meeting? If more than a month has passed, make a call and schedule a meeting.

· Is there something new you want to sell them? If the answer is yes, go talk about it.

Second, call prospects you have met with 3 or more times. Meet with them to find a way to get an opportunity and convert them into customers.

Third, call prospects you have met with once or twice. Continue the process of developing a relationship and identifying a need. Focus on building trust, demonstrating competence and identifying a problem you can solve to move them forward in the sales cycle.

Fourth, call suspects. These are leads who you haven’t met. Call to get an initial introductory meeting.

In ten minutes, you can call three people. If you’re looking for immediate opportunities, be smart and selective about who you dial and you will sell more.

What Would Get Your Customer a Raise?

2012-02-08T06:56:00.000-05:00

Your customers were hired to do jobs. When they perform well, they get raises. If you can help them look good to their boss by helping them solve a problem or accomplish a goal, they are happy to talk to you.
Plan your "Let me help you get a raise" selling conversation by filling in the blanks below.

· My customer's job is _____________________________.
· They look good to their boss when they_________________.
· My product/service helps them accomplish this because______.
· This is important because ________________________.

If you're not completely sure what your customer is responsible for within their organization, ask. We all like to talk about ourselves, especially when we are talking to an interested listener.

While You're Waiting in the Lobby

2012-02-06T07:53:00.000-05:00

The next time you visit a customer, take advantage of the time you spend sitting in the lobby to think about the following:

What do you want to accomplish in the meeting?
What would stop you from achieving it?
How will you overcome those obstacles?

Spending a few minutes thinking (instead of checking e-mails on your smart phone) sharpens focus and improves performance. And it's an easy way to make smarter sales calls.

Sum it Up and Sell More

2012-02-03T07:50:00.000-05:00

Great salespeople know how and when to paraphrase. By restating what the customer has said, they demonstrate they were listening and give the customer an opportunity to clarify when necessary.

Summing up information helps you understand the customer's buying criteria and their definition of value. For example, the customer tells you about a problem they want to solve. The conversation is wide-ranging and covers a lot of ground. After thirty minutes, you think you have a solution. To find out if you're on the same page as the customer, you sum up what you heard.

The customer responds one of three ways.

"That's exactly right. Can you help me?"
"No, you heard me wrong."
"I don't think you understood exactly what I meant. Let me clarify."

Summing up information keeps you focused on the shortest route to success, and it pays to do it at least once in every selling conversation.

Stress-Buster Strategies

2012-02-01T07:41:00.000-05:00

Here are four steps for organizing non-routine selling tasks:

Bob was thrilled when a new prospect asked him for a proposal on a new service. He assumed it would take him about two hours to complete. Because Bob underestimated the amount of time, he didn't start until 3 p.m. on the day before the proposal was due.

Five o'clock rolled around, and Bob was still working. Worry plucked at his nerves. What if he couldn't finish the proposal in time for the 10 a.m. meeting? That would be a disaster! He would look disorganized and unprofessional.

Anxiety increased and Bob's output slowed to a crawl. At 7 p.m., he stared at what he had written. Three pages finished and two more sections to go. What if he was taking the wrong approach? What if he had the customer's buying criteria wrong? What if the price was too high?

He slogged onward, finally finishing at ten. Exhausted, he gave the final product one final read-through. "This will have to do," he said.

Bob turned off his computer and headed for home, vowing the next time he got a big opportunity he would not procrastinate.

###

Salespeople are optimists by nature. Usually, this trait benefits us, but occasionally, our sunny view of life causes us to underestimate the amount of time a non-routine task like a proposal will take. To avoid anxiety and late nights, follow these steps:

Make a complete list of everything that must be done.
Prioritize the steps.
Estimate how much time each step involves.
Total the time and develop a realistic schedule.

One last tip . . . when you take on new tasks, get started sooner! It's the smartest way to avoid stressing out over the possibility of missed deadlines.

Online To-Do: January 2012

2012-01-30T07:46:00.000-05:00

Does your company have a Facebook page that you think looks boring and unprofessional? Then check out ShortStack. It's a great program to help you and your company design a better social media page.

Ten Tips to Leave a Better Message - Part 2

2012-01-27T08:00:00.000-05:00

A continuation from Wednesday, here are Tips 6 - 10 to help you be the message master.

     6. Speak with positive enthusiasm.
     7. Call with the right attitude. Or fake it until you feel it.
     8. Expect voicemail and be prepared.
     9. Rehearse three times to sound confident.

10. Single task when talking. Stay 100% focused on leaving a great message.

Ten Tips to Leave a Better Message - Part 1

2012-01-25T08:46:00.000-05:00

Voicemail is a fact of life. Be the message master with these 10 tips.

Prospects and customers pay more attention to your tone of voice then they do to your words.
Start messages by announcing who you are, the company you represent and your phone number.
To state your name, say, "This is Linda Bishop," rather than, "My name is Linda Bishop."
Be sure your message is 20 seconds or less.
Be specific.

Check back on Friday for Tips 6 - 10.

Fast Company: U R What U Tweet: 5 Steps To A Better Personal Brand

2012-01-23T08:00:00.000-05:00

Another great article by Fast Company. Scroll down to read the 5 steps to building a better personal brand online. Good Selling!!

U R What U Tweet: 5 Steps To A Better Personal Brand
BY Amber MacMon Jan 9, 2012

If you take a look at the top 10 Twitter users you'll see a list of famous men and women, from Justin Bieber to Selena Gomez, who have used the popular platform to further expand their personal brands. Perhaps more interesting, however, is how everyday people are investing more time and energy into social networking for professional purposes.

Just over a year ago, a local 16-year-old high school student emailed me out of the blue, proposing that he join me as a guest on a TV show I host. Winston Sih didn't send along a resume, but instead included links to his website, Twitter account, Facebook page, and three relevant YouTube clips.

While there are plenty of examples of teens jeopardizing their digital reputation, with bullying and threats on friends' walls or late-night "I hate my job" tweets, Sih is a perfect example of someone who has learned how to use the web to his advantage--building a strong and positive personal brand before he even reaches his adult years (12 months into his brand-building exercise, he is already a well-known regular tech TV expert and blogger--and he's not even out of high school yet).

While few of us will ever have the celebrity factor to drive our online networks (or a PR spin team to protect us if we post something stupid), there is a lot we can learn from Sih and other personal brand-builders. In 2012, if you have a plan in place, smart social networking is the key to taking control of your professional life. Here are 5 steps to building a better personal brand online.

1. Have a home base online. While Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are excellent destinations to promote what you do, make sure that you also invest time and energy into your own personal website. Whether you take advantage of easy-to-use tools such as Squarespace or WordPress, a simple and clean online home for all your professional information and social streams is a necessity. Not only is it critical to build this home base, but it's also important to drive traffic back to this site to further educate visitors about what you do (or want to do) for a living. Finally, use a professional headshot on your site to give you that competitive edge (sorry--a cropped Facebook photo just won't do!).

2. Be a better blogger. Although online pundits regularly declare that blogging is dead, such as Jason Calacanis did at a tech conference toward the end of December, blogging has simply become much more diverse. It's no longer necessary to write multi-paragraph posts, but instead services such as Tumblr make it easy for individuals to share shorter entries or snippets of text that often include photos and other multimedia. A weekly blog update (or more frequent if you can afford the time) that includes some shareable content is a useful way to drive traffic back from social channels to your website (and to establish yourself as an expert on a topic).

3. Avoid mobile mistakes. In April 2009, we often referred to Ashton Kutcher as the King of Twitter. This past November, the actor posted a tweet defending Penn State's Joe Paterno (without realizing the sex abuse controversy surrounding the coach) that inspired a "hailstorm of responses" from Kutcher's many followers. Once again, this was an example of how 140 characters or less can immediately damage someone's reputation. Moreover, with more people posting from mobile phones, it's far too easy to make a real-time mistake like this--whether it's updating your status with an inappropriate comment or letting auto-correct do some digital damage. In other words, when networking on the go make sure you carefully review what you're about to push live or, perhaps a better idea, wait until you have a few minutes to review the update without so many mobile distractions.

4. Never stop networking. For non-celebrities who build themselves into well-known brands online, take a look at how frequently they interact. For example, social media author Scott Stratten has tweeted more than 80,000 times. If he's not sharing digital wisdom across his many online channels, he's responding to messages and reaching out to people to keep the web conversation going. If you don't know where to start, whether it's on LinkedIn or Twitter, find five new people to follow or connect with every day. Make an effort to share something these people have posted or, a simple task, reach out and say hello.

5. Adopt new services. When it comes to personal branding, there is a lot of emphasis on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but there are plenty of other channels to tell your story. Take a look at how well author Timothy Ferriss has used short YouTube videos to promote his 4-Hour mantra and other activities. Google+ is a solid new service for building a personal brand and apps, such as Path, will also allow you to network with people you care about connecting with on a professional level (keep in mind that the latter has a 150-friend limit). While it's not critical to jump on every newly launched service, it can help to choose two or three of the most popular services and then every few months try a new platform on for size.

Fast Company: Reboot Nation

2012-01-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

I came across this article in Fast Company last fall called Reboot Nation. For those who have clients making changes to their brand, I encourage you to read it here.

Why Is Your Company Different?

2012-01-18T08:00:00.000-05:00

Customers look at the benefits you offer, and compare you to your competition. They pay higher prices for higher value, and that results from differentiation.

What distinguishes your product/service from the other available alternatives?

Being able to proudly state your difference in a clear manner helps you close deals-if the customer cares about the difference.

To pinpoint differences that matter, fill in the blanks below.
One important benefit we offer our clients is _____________________.
This makes us different from the competition because _____________________.
This difference matters to our customers because _____________________.

Never Underestimate Easy

2012-01-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

It's hard to get organized for a marathon cold-call session where you dial 20 prospects. It's easy to find the time to call one person.
Sure planning is important, but sometimes the smartest way to outsell the competition is to do more by doing what's easy.

Who should you call right now if you want to sell more? Don't over think. Do make the call. It's easy and it works.

5 Ways to Start a Conversation - Part 2

2012-01-13T07:01:00.000-05:00

Today, part 2 of 5 ways to start a conversation.

4. Problems Solved-Start by stating a problem a customer recently had.
-Explain how you solved it.
-State the outcome for the customer.

Example: Hi Barbara. Recently we had a client who needed a complicated job with five different components produced in only three days. We met the schedule because we have extensive production facilities and a dedicated team. The client was happy because the deadline was critical and they needed a partner they could rely on.

5. Upcoming Event-Explain what's coming up.
-Let the client know why you're excited.
-Tell the customer how it benefits them.

Example: Hi Steve. We will be holding a lunch and learn for customers next week. We have a great speaker and a great topic. I hope you can attend because you will get great information along with a free lunch.

Last Thoughts - Focus on sharing one piece of news. Keep your message short and leave out boring details.

End with a call for action. Ask for meeting. Ask for a return phone call. Ask them to let you know if they're interested in knowing more via e-mail.

5 Ways to Start a Conversation - Part 1

2012-01-11T08:55:00.002-05:00

Most prospects hate it when salespeople call and say, "Hi. I represent Widget World and I was calling to learn more about your widget needs."
If you want more meetings, be more interesting on the phone. It's easy when you pick one of these five topics for a selling conversation.

1. New Hires in Key Positions-Tell who is new.
-Share one or two facts positioning the hire as an expert in their field.
-Tell the prospect why this benefits them.

Example: Hi Bob. I thought you would be interested to know we have a new vice president of manufacturing. His name is Greg Thomas. He is a long-time veteran of the industry who graduated from Purdue University. Our company is always looking for new ways to manufacture more efficiently and help customers like you. Greg will definitely make a difference in our efforts.

2. New Products and Services-Explain what is new.
-Be a company cheerleader and tell why you're excited.
-Let the prospect know how it helps them.

Example: Hi Susan. I thought you would be interested to know we're offering a brand-new type of widget. I am excited because many customers have requested bigger widgets in the past and now we can offer them. This new widget is supersized and the largest widget available anywhere.

3. New Equipment-Explain what is new.
-State why you're excited.
-Explain the benefit to prospects and customers.

Example: Hi Fred. I thought you would be interested to know we have just installed a brand-new widget cutting machine. I am excited about this because it increases our production capacity by 50%. For customers, that means faster production cycles.

Check back Friday to learn the last two ways to start a conversation.

Prove Competence and Ask Questions

2012-01-09T08:00:00.000-05:00

The 2 for 1 Method for Better Results

Good salespeople ask questions to gather information. Great salespeople take it one step further. Before asking a question, they disclose a morsel of information. That small step helps three ways:

It helps to position the salesperson as an expert.
When the tidbit includes a customer name, it offers proof to potential customers that current clients are happy with your product or service.
Sharing information helps build trust because solid relationships are built on mutual disclosure.

Here's a scenario to illustrate. You're discussing a new service with a prospect, and it costs $5,000.00. You want to know if the prospect thinks the price is reasonable, so you say, "We just set this service up for WidgetWorld, one of my long-time customers. They spent $5,000.00 because it solved a major production problem for them. Do you think $5,000.00 is a fair price for the benefits?"

In the second scenario, dropping WidgetWorld's name lets your potential customer know other companies bought the service and used it to solve their problems. Psychologists call this "social proof."

It's a powerful persuasion technique and it will help you sell.

10 Before 10

2012-01-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

Does this sound familiar? You're very busy. Most of your time is spent servicing current customers. Often a day or a week whirls by and you don't find time to make prospecting calls.

This concerns you because you know:

10% to 15% of current business vanishes every year for reasons outside a salesperson's control.
20% of customers are loyal and 80% of customers are satisfied. Satisfied customers will shop.
When the funnel is relatively empty, new sales run dry.

To ensure you prospect every day, adopt Thought Transformation's "10 Before 10 Plan." It's simple and effective. Here's how it works.

-Get out your list of prospects.
-Call 10 of them every day.
-Do it before 10 a.m.

Calling 10 people takes approximately 30 minutes. By accomplishing an important task before 10 'clock, you'll feel better all day and sell more by prospecting consistently.

Reality Marketing

2012-01-04T08:30:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year! To start off the year, I wanted to share a great marketing campaign. Tommy Hilfiger has created a spoof on reality TV families—I’m sure we’re talking Kardashians here—and created a series of ads based on the Hilfiger family.

They have Youtube videos, and they are very clever. Here are other reasons why I think this campaign is smart:

The videos show this large, ethnically diverse family of beautiful people wearing the clothes.
From the hair lengths, choice of apparel, you get a sense of the diverse personalities—and they are able to demonstrate that Tommy H’s clothes fit everyone.
It taps in nicely to a fairly universal desire to be one of the super-rich, (sure money can’t buy happiness, but it might be more fun to be unhappy in a pricy Mc’Mansion than in a run-down trailer).

Any way, this is good fodder for selling conversations.

Click here to read an interview from Ad Age with the new Tommy Hilfiger Chief Marketing Officer.

Looking Ahead To The New Year

2011-12-16T09:24:00.000-05:00

We are just weeks away from the end of 2011. I hope that it's been a productive year for you and that you've met your overall sales goal for the year. For those of you who are avid readers of the blog, but do not subscribe to my monthly sales newsletter, Self-Taught Sales, I invite you to sign up today. The January newsletter will focus on the number one question to ask yourself to start of 2012 right.

To sign up, visit www.thoughttransformation.com. In the middle of the homepage there is a link to sign up.

We'll be back first thing next year with more tips to help you succeed!

Happy Holidays!
Linda

10 Places to Look for Leads in 2012: Part 2

2011-12-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

Back today with part 2 of "10 Places to Look for Leads in 2012."

6. Check out the local business news.
7. Read the want ads on hiring websites like Monster.com and Career Builders.
8. Purchase a list of names.
9. When you visit customers, determine who else is located in their neighborhood.
10. Swap leads with co-workers. Buyers who didn't click with a fellow salesperson may click with you, and vice versa.

There are plenty of leads out there, but keep this best practice in mind. Call the leads you have before you spend time collecting more. Who knows? A phone call today might be all it takes to put you in the right place at the right time for a big opportunity.

Good Selling!
Linda

10 Places to Look for Leads in 2012: Part 1

2011-12-12T08:58:00.004-05:00

In this month's Self-Taught Sales, I shared my thoughts on "10 Places to Look for Leads in 2012." Knowing is can never hurt to share new ways to find new leads, I thought you'd be interested in these 10 places that I suggest you look next year.

1. Do a little digging around in the lost business graveyard. Past customers can be great prospects for future business.
2. Take the "twin" approach. Find enterprises similar to those customers who currently buy. For example, if your best customer is a bank, find other banks to call on.
3. Use LinkedIn. Keyword search functions allow you to locate companies and decision-makers.
4. Business intelligence websites like Hoover's, Jigsaw, Manta, and others are excellent lead sources. Some information is free while other data is available for a fee.
5. The Internet is a gold mine of information. Search for key attributes like "Corporate Headquarters for software companies in Atlanta" and see what pops up.

Check back Wednesday for places 6 - 10.

Avoid Deer In the Headlights Sales Calls

2011-12-09T07:52:00.000-05:00

Imagine this. You spend weeks calling, mailing and emailing your perfect prospect. Finally, they agree to see you. You show up at the meeting. The initial pleasantries go well and you start asking questions. Quickly, you discover the prospect is genuinely interested in making a purchase.

They start asking you questions. Smart questions-ones you're not fully prepared to answer.

By the third time you've said, "I'll have to check into that," you're wearing a deer-in-the-
headlights expression. The prospect's enthusiasm is waning and their belief in your competence is gone.

The meeting ends with a whimper. As the buyer gives you a limp handshake, they tell you they'll get in touch if they need to know more. You walk out, kicking yourself for not being better prepared.

Great salespeople win more sales because they're prepared to answer all questions from potential customers. Questions like . . .
* How does this help me?
* What does it cost?
* Who else has purchased this from you?
* Why are you the right choice?
* Why do I need to buy this now?
* Are there any quality problems I should know about?
* What could go wrong?
* How long have you been doing this?
* Who are your competitors?

Knowing how to answer these questions helps you look competent in a sales call. That's important because customers prefer to buy from sales professionals who understand the products or services they're selling.

Online To-Do: December 2011

2011-12-07T07:00:00.000-05:00

Ever heard of Paper Because? If you're in the print industry, you MUST check it out. I first learned about it via a tweet from CANVAS Publisher Mark Potter.

Besides all the funny and clever videos like these:

This one, which is different from the others, was really eye-opening:

JC Penney Takes QR Codes To A New Level

2011-12-05T11:07:00.000-05:00

2011-12-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

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