When presenting a complex solution, the most effective means of engaging the audience is to create and tell a story that is relevant and is modeled around the prospect’s business.

Most will have a story built around their demo data, for ex. “This is ABC Company and they produce widgets”.  ZZZZZZZ…oh sorry…I was just thinking about ABC Company and thier god-forsaken widgets.

The mantra that our teams use for prepping for presentations is “Accurate, Compelling, and Timely“.

Accurate

This sounds obvious but even demo data has to be accurate.  If you produced watches and the demo model was wrong are you going to get the sale?  Treat all information presented in your presentation with the same care that the prospect would treat their live data.

Compelling

If you have a solution that can not be customized on a per presentation basis, at least have examples ready to go that are very relevant to the prospect.  Example, “<PROSPECT>, so lets discuss how your team would use our workflow to publish out a press release to your website. ”

The one thing that is actually more compelling than talking about the prospect, is talking about the prospects main competitors.  When our team presented our web content management system to a large private equity firm, we went out to their three top competitor’s sites – captured some screens and pointed out flaws in their sites.  Then knowing the systems they used, we explained the specific advantages that our system would deliver and the advantages that would provide them over their competition.

Timely

Keep your presentations, demos, and sample data timely.  If your “current” information is over a year old, update it.   While it doesn’t matter in the execution of the presentation, if the prospect sees a bunch of old dates on the screen this will enforce the thought of “this is not real”.  Your goal is that you want them engaged to the point they can visualize your system working in their organization.

The Greatest Sin

Is having no story at all.

If yours is a technical solution, resist any urges to “let the technology speak for itself”.   Remember that “Cutting Edge” = “Still Has Bugs That Can Kill Your Deal”.

In an effort to keep your presentations from becoming too literal, we share this video.

After my arranged engagement/marriage fell apart over religious differences, she drove a Chevy, I a Ford;  I went to drown my sorrows at the only place appropriate to fill the emotional void that filled my heart….the Waffle House.

Now for our Yankee readers, our Waffle House is the equivalent to your Dunkin Donuts.  They are everywhere.  You can’t really swing a dead cat in the South without hitting one of those pillars of culinary delight.

I found my future wife sitting next to the only vacant seat at the counter.  While I did not notice her face, I heard her say to the waitress that she would like her hash browns prepared in the same manner that I ordered mine…scattered…smothered (in cheese)…and covered (in onions). 

As soon as the words left her lips, I knew that was the woman with whom I needed to spend my first marriage.

What lesson can the Waffle House teach us about sales?  Keep it simple.

You know how when you go into some restaurants they have fabricated crap on the walls?  There’s pictures of old stuff, old dead people, and old movies starring old dead people?  There are ferns, maybe some sports trophies, and the menu is nine pages long with long-winded narratives how the chicken will be prepared in a manner similar to those shown on Man vs. Wild.

The Waffle House is simple.  Look on the walls, there are pictures of food.  Want to see a plant?  Go outside.   In the Waffle House you are there to enjoy a good meal, at a  reasonable price, and then to get the hell out.  There’s no wasted space and people who want to sit and talk can do that in the car.

Right now, Sales teams around the globe are trying to figure out how to drive new revenue with very little new investment.  Most are pursuing a course of action that will be bourne from internal group think, with little real integration, and a questionable value proposition.  Gems like the Cadillac Cimarron were create in these environments.

Go Waffle House. 

1. Simplify your message so that it can be easily consumed by a broader audience, not just Subject Matter Experts in your field.
2. Provide a quality product
3. At a reasonable price

Number 1 is the most challenging of course.   But if you haven’t done so, craft your elevator pitch.  In 90 seconds or less, describe why someone would choose to do business with you.  If you need help,  ask yourself; do your customers do business with you because you are a mid-tier vendor with 200 customers in the perverted arts vertical OR because you can help them solve their widget problem?

If you are thinking of ways to possible build a new revenue stream, take your solution with its widget solving capabilities and boil it down.  Is there a fundamental tenet that if everything else was stripped away it would still contain value?  Does a niche market exist that this would serve?  Can you take this fundamental solution, combine it with a RELEVANT product/service and improve on the value proposition?  Does this new solution present logical upsell opportunities?

If you explained the new solution to your receptionist, how long would it take for them to get the concept? If its longer than 90 seconds, start over.

If you want to brain storm (or mind map) on this idea, here’s a few key questions:

• Look at your customers, what common characteristics do they share? 
• Why did they choose to purchase your solution? 
• Why do people/companies choose to do business with your competitors?
• How can we make it easier, within reason, to purchase a solution from you?
• If you had to cut 90% out of your sales pitch, what is the 10% you choose to keep?

If you havent tried mind mapping yet, I encourage you to do so.  Go to www.thebrain.com and download the free version of their solution. 

Good Luck

Kevin Sasser

From Doyle Slaton at SalesBlogcast.com…

I’m giving away my new eBook “15 Rules for Becoming a Top Producer!”

*IMPORTANT NOTE: This eBook is best suited for highly driven sales and leadership minded business professionals.

I’d appreciate your help in spreading the word. Please let everyone know they can get the FREE eBook at http://SalesBlogcast.com

Let’ see how many eBooks we can give away!

Sincerely,

Doyle Slayton
SalesBlogcast.com

In my years of sales experience and supervised release, there are only two deals, only two, that are burned into my cerebral cortex and awaken feelings of anger and frustration whenever I am forced to recall them.

The first we’ll save for a later date.

The second…..arrrrgggghhhhh!  Sorry, had to vent.

When I was selling Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions, our inside team uncovered an opportunity at a company with whom I used to do business in a former career.  Having left our relationship on good terms after a productive career, I was eager to go visit and see some old friends.

After seeing the state of their web presence, this company needed an ECM like my cousins need a good bail bondsman.  They had over 10 sites, in 3 languages, that were stale, inconsistent, with no logical flow among and within the sites.

I am a big believer in “bird in the hand” so I stayed calm and conservative when forecasting our probablity of winning,  however, in the back of my mind, I knew this deal looked good. 

To improve our chances, I threw out my super, double secret, only good for the next 30 seconds, discount.

I sent our proposal and then waited.

The next day I received a call from the Project Manager, they had a counter offer.

 It seems that a few years previous they had acquired another ECM solution and they wanted me to match the terms of their former vendor….free.

Yep.  Free.

Their current vendor needed a brand name on the customer list to establish credability so they gave the software for free in exchange for some marketing press.

If you are a small company and thinking about using this tactic, unless the prospect is Jesus, don’t do it.  It never pays off like you think.

In the case of my former prospect, because it was “free”  they never paid enough attention or respect to the software.  They did not allocate budget for training, they never assigned a team to get the thing installed, and they never upgraded, because in their eyes, since it was “free” they should not have to invest anything in it…ever.

Evidently this vendor pulled this tactic multiple times, because they went bankrupt and were liquated.

So the counter offer to me was for me to match the same deal as the bankrupt vendor.

As politely as I could, I restated for clarification “You want me to match the same pricing structure as your last vendor of whom you complained about lack of training, support, and the dismal failure of thier solution.  Who, based on these types of business practices, went bankrupt?”

“Yes.  That was the only way we could get this project approved by management.” came the reply.

 ”We’ll withdraw from the project and we wish you the best”.

The motivation for this post came from my good friend DJ sent me this link.

Good Luck.

Sasser

Pretend you are Rhett and Scarlett is the economy. 

Tell me if this clip just doesn’t speak to you.

Did you just read about the CFO of Freddie MAC being found dead of an apparent suicide?

Good God almighty, I can only imagine the darkness in the state of mind that views suicide as a viable alternative. 

Our prayers are with David Kellermann’s family.

So let’s talk about our world.  While rewarding, sales, especially in these times, can be a dark, lonely, depressing pursuit. 

These conditions worsen if the following are true:

• Historically, you are an under performer in relation to the rest of the team
• Your boss and/or management has no firm grasp on the reality of your marketplace
• Management has added unnecessary levels of scrutiny to you and your performance 
• You work remotely with minimal contact with other people

If you are battling a bout of the blues or self-doubt is worming its way into your pitch, here are two recommended remedies:

1. Update Your Resume

In our world, your resume should never go 6 months without being freshened up.   Trust me, there are days when I update mine ever 15 minutes.

In addition to needing it for a job search, especially if your boss catches you writing a blog post during business hours, updating your resume provides the benefit of reminding yourself of just how good you are.  If you haven’t done so, make room and add a list of your major accomplishments to the front page.  For example:

·         Over the past ten years, consistently placed in the top 10% of performers across multiple sales teams selling complex IT solutions and financial services

·         Help lead sales team from startup to annual sales of $10mm, personally leading the team three out of five years in new license revenue and follow-up customer sales

·         Introduced sales team to Strategic Account Management and the benefit of using a structured sales methodology, multiple reps shorten their sales cycles by 20% to 30%

·         Assigned to lead a troubled business unit; able to grow fee income by 25% in the first six months and lower client attrition rate by 50%

If you do this excercise, you will feel better about yourself and will gain a better sense of control over you current situation.

2. Go Learn Something New

I read, on average, one business book a month.  I started this practice during the dot com meltdown as a way to help keep my head as times got slow.  My first books where the ones I would see on the shelves of the “C’s” of my clients.  If you would like to do this and don’t know where to start, read a Jack Welch book.

Along these lines, our friends over at Meeting to Win have clued us in to a free webinar on Sales Leadership from a group that usually commands a premium for their content and insight.

Do yourself a favor and attend “The Sales Leadership Imperative”  on Thursday April 23rd at 1pm EST.

They will discuss how you can:

• Leverage your personal strengths as well as the hidden talents of your team.
• Communicate, connect and captivate your team during each meeting or conversation.
• Utilize a proven coaching model to impact performance immediately.
• Engage in daily revenue-generating activities and stop doing the things you shouldn’t be doing in the first place.
• Master the language of leaders, to get people into action without resistance.
• Build internal coaching program and ignite a power team.
• Develop the infallible confidence of a true champion to model what you want your people to achieve.
• Recruit, retain and motivate your top producers and turnaround underperformers.
• Turnaround or terminate an underperformer in less than 30 days

We highly recommend this session.

Good Luck.

Joey Asher’s How to win a Pitch would be more accurately titled as How to Reinvigorate Your Sound Sales Strategy or How to Regain Your Contact With Reality.  Asher makes no claim to have a magic formula, no claim to a 12-step process to fill your pipe.  He promises work.  Sales requires effort – effort to listen, understand, assimilate client requirements and communicate that match to the client. 
 
HTWaP builds on 5 core components:  Focus on the Business Problem / Organize Around Three Memorable Points / Show Passion / Involve Your Audience in the Presentation / Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehears – matching the “pitch” a formal presentation to a client to a broad concept of the solution sales process.  Refreshingly, his approach avoids jargon, clichés, and focuses sales people on the common sense of engaging the prospect, communicating interest, and presenting yourself and the company as a credible information source. 
 
Asher spends an appropriate amount of time and emphasis on rehearsal.   The simple act of pulling the team together and walking through all aspects of a sales meeting gets overlooked in the vast majority of organizations and sales teams do not prioritize it.  If you read back over the life of The Sales Wars, you’ll see a good deal of success and failure in our posts can map to Asher’s book.  
 
Given the current economic situation, HTWaP resonates – salespeople do not need to focus on gimmicks – we need to actively listen, creatively engage, and understand our customers from the beginning of the process all the way through to the pitch.

Kevin Cahill

Here’s our two cents on the topic of Job Searches.

You either sucked or you were unlucky

Why are you out of job?  You were either a person whose level of performance deemed you expendable or circumstances beyond your control robbed you of your career.  So there you are.

If you are, or are about to be, without a job you need to prepare for the following emotions:

1. An almost overwhelming desire to beat somebody’s a**.

2. Extreme self-doubt

3. New levels of pisstivity (past tense of “pissed off”)

4. Victimized

5. Blind optimism (that your next job is right around the corner)

6. Back to #2

7. Because you dealing #2 again, Back to #1

8. The confidence to deal with the situation

You have to deal with all of these, so inform your close circle of friends that you are going to act like a real horse’s butt over the next few weeks, deal with it and move on.

Your mom thinks you are special, everyone else?  Not so much.

Five years ago at a company that very few would actually recognize, I had a great run in comparison with the rest of the people on my team.  For some reason this does not impress that recruiter on www.theladders.com who will not return my email.

Doesn’t he know who I am?

I’m that guy that is so good, I didn’t bother to proof-read my resume , because my results speak for themselves.

Do you know how bad it sucks to be a recruiter right now?  Because of the overwhelming number of candidates, the amount of resumes delivered for one job at a brand name company can easily break 10,000.  That’s 9,923 crap resumes that have to be filtered before finding the qualified candidates.

If you slapped your resume together and did not have at least two other qualified people read it, you’re most likely going to be a member of the 9,923.

A person who gets paid to write resumes will think your resume sucks.

Several of the job boards, including www.theladders.com and www.bluesteps.com will include a free resume critique.  I highly recommend you take advantage of this offer.

That being said, people who review resume’s for free will have an “upgrade” package that cost more than “free”, so be prepared for that.  Usually the nuggets of knowledge that they throw into the freebie review will substantially improve the average resume.

If you are looking for a heavy hitter type of job, I would recommend you spring for the $1,500 and have your resume professionally done.

Stay away from the free job boards

“Mom, I found the woman I want to marry!!!!”

“Really, where did you meet her?”

“Last night, she was standing on a street corner, down by the overpass.  She came up to my car and we started talking and we just connected.”

“Did she ask for money?”

“A little, why?”

No offense to those job boards that are well-advertised and do not charge anything to submit your resume, but stay away from these.  Your odds of getting noticed are small, and if you associate yourself with the “job seekers too cheap to pay for a higher-end job service”, you will be labeled as such and will not be taken as seriously.

We welcome any additional tips or tidbits that may be helpful to our Sales Brethren.

Ive been on the road a lot lately and recently had a panic situation that prompted a frantic call home. One of my bellwether measurements was out of range.

Let me explain.

When you’re married with two kids and managing two careers things get hectic and you actually forget to focus on certain intimate aspects of your relationship with your spouse.

The warning system that I use to alert me to that fact that my wife and I haven’t shared any “alone time” is Flo, the car insurance girl.

You’ve seen the commercials where Flo is the customer serviced rep in a white-washed virtual store that sells all types of insurance coverage. Under normal circumstances, Flo doesn’t strike me as all that attractive. But as the time between spousal “sessions” grows, Flo becomes more appealing.

This past week, one of Flo’s commercials inspired a visionary desire to wash over me.

I felt a longing to find a little cottage on Cape Cod where Flo and I could spend our summers and focus our time on Flo’s life, her thoughts, her dreams, and her unrealized ambitions.

We will stroll hand and hand down the beach while she shared the manuscript that she wrote in college and tried to get published only to find that there was no demand for political manifestos inspired by the writings of Alfred E. Neuman.

Later, after I finished painting her toe nails and agreeing that she should have been the captain of the cheerleading squad in high school and not that tramp Jennifer, I would craft a series of sonnets celebrating her life, her womanhood, and the inspiration Flo has given to dozens of aspiring insurance professionals. I would then sing these to her while accompanying myself on the lute.

And so that I could imbibe all that is Flo, I would invite her mother to come live with us.

We hear a lot of negative news these days on the state of the economy. GDP has shrunk, unemployment has risen to all new levels, all of the banks are failing………wait a minute.

There are over 8,000 banks in the U.S. How many would you guess are on the FDIC’s “Hot List”?

8,000?

4,000?

How about 171. (As of Januanry, 2009)

Yep, for all the news of the troubles with BoA, Citibank, and others, over 95% of the banks are operating within normal capital requirements. It may surprise you to find that some banks are actually growing.

So, as the bad news flows like malt liquor at a tractor pull, keep your eye on the measurements that apply most to your business.

• What is your customer attrition rate?

• Is revenue/client dropping or stable?

• What does your 90 day sales pipeline look like? Are there new accounts on the pipeline or they just carry overs from previous quarters?

Real Estate, Economics, and Politics are all local, don’t let a “national trend” blind you to a “local opportunity”.

Now back to me.

So I call my wife and tell her that the”Flo Alarm” has gone off and that when I get home, she needs to bar the door because she is in for the most intense four and a half minutes of her life.

As she starts to cry, she recites the passage from the Southern Junior Leaguers handbook that says that these types of acts are no longer required since we have birthed a girl and/or junior republican.

I politely interrupt her to let her know that I love her and that I have a court order.

You know its that time of year again.

Its that time when strategic sales plans are updated, balanced scorecards are re-balanced, and your sale manager lays in a fetal position chanting “Sell on Value….Sell on Value….”.

One of our fans (contrary to belief we have more than one) just pinged me to let me know he was heading out to his sales meeting…..in Michigan.  Not Vegas, Miami, L.A., but Michigan.

Trying to put an optimistic spin on this locale, I commented “well, at least you don’t have to worry about your reps marrying strippers” to which he replied “yeah, but there will be plenty of booze and they have a lot of farm animals”.

This was followed by a moment of awkward silence.

This is also the time year when your marketing department provides you with a new set of updated slides for your pitch.

One of the members of my “Yankees that I like” group IM’d me the other day as his team was trying to deal with this year’s PowerPoint and wanted to hear my thoughts.

Before we get into that, do you remember our favorite sex shop, The House of Love? It seems that they made enough money in their “Going Out of Business” sale that they not only stayed in business, but have come out with some new billboards along the interstate.

The first new sign is emblazoned with the slogan “We Support the Troops“.  Being five miles away from an Air Force base, I assume that the troops support them too.

The second new sign was delivering a new set of “value add” that The House of Love is incorporating into their overall  Unique Selling Proposition:

• Pet Rest Area

• Free Coffee

Now, when you salute the troops your target market is pretty obvious.  But I had to put some thought into who would find sex toys, a pet rest area, and coffee an appealing motivator to pull off the highway, stop, and make a purchase.  My guess is retired RV’ers.

Imagine if you will, a big RV rolling down the highway with the stickers on every state visited on the windows, big-ass mud flaps swinging in rhythm, and maybe a couple of mountain-bikes attached to the back.

Behind the wheel is a distinguished looking gentleman with a head of silver hair, age lines, and a few sun spots.   His wife is sitting next to him with a pound of gold hanging from her ears and neck with a sun visor that she bought at that cute little gift shop in Boca. On her lap is an overweight toy poodle, named after their favorite waiter as some resort, looking out the side window and looking in need of relief.

As they are approaching the HoL’s billboard, the husband turns to the wife and says

You know honey, I wish we could find some place convenient where the dog could take a crap, I could top off my travel thermos, and maybe you could find a high quality sexual appliance that will satisfy you in ways that could only be achieved by a contortionist on a crystal meth binge…..Holy smokes, look at the sign!!!!

So what’s the lesson?  Have your target market in mind when building your marketing and sales strategies.

Now, back to my Yankee friend and his Powerpoint.

Our instant messenger conversation started off with the agenda

” Here’s what we are thinking:

• Our company overview
• What we see happening in the industry
• Our “vision”
• Our unique approach
• Our customer’s project

what do you think?”

To which I replied “If you pitched to me, here’s what would be going through my mind:

• Blah
• Blah, Blah, Blah
• What do I need to do for my next meeting?
• Man my boxer’s shorts are riding up this morning
• Time to fake an emergency and get out of this meeting

Then I directed my Yankee friend to watch Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule.

Then I suggested the following agenda:

• Why you are in my office taking up my time
• My problem that you can solve for me
• How you will solve the problem in clear, concise, concrete terms
• The benefit that you will deliver to me that your competitor cant

Now, if you will excuse me, The House of Love is having a sale.

Sasser