What’s your biggest competitor? If you’re in IT sales is it IBM. Apple, Google, Wipro, some dudes in Bulgaria? Probably not. You’re biggest competitor is Status Quo Inc. Boy those guys are tough to beat! The thing is a lot of the time our prospect will choose the status quo, aka do nothing vs. any [...]
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Prospecting the Hard Way
I’m not that keen on banging my head off walls. But some sales people are. Mostly sales people that have been trained in “old school selling techniques”. The ”old school” maintains that “sales is a numbers game” and the numbers that matter are all about effort. All about volume. One of the key indicators of [...]
Prospect Lists a Social Selling Way
From my research and analysis of thousands of prospecting calls, I’ve found the three biggest factors that super-charge your chances of getting into a busy prospect’s office are:
ThisWeekIn Sales Interview – Video
Just interviewed by Kevin Gaither on his ThisWeekIn Sales web TV show. I talk about my definition of Sales 2.0, where I created it and why I came up with it. Then I drill down into the three key components of Social Calling that can boost your prospecting results eight times.
Cold Calling Tip. You’re Now on a Two-Way Street.
Marketers are shifting their dollars to inbound techniques like being found by search engines and being popular on social media. But sales people are still dialing-for-dollars. Who’s right? Both. I’ve approached this particular problem from both ends. I’ve placed plenty of cold calls over the years and amped up my effort by having an inside [...]
4 Ways to Make a Cold Call Warmer with Social Media
Guest post by Gaurang Tanna [editor’s note: Gaurang is a real inside sales “Ninja” out on the front lines of technology sales. He prospects every day for a living in a very competitive environment. You can follow him on Twitter at @GaurangTanna and add him on LinkedIn at GaurangTanna] Over the last five years of [...]
Sales People Sharpen Your Pencils!
Future sales pros are going to need to write – and decently. Think about your day-to-day already. You send a lot of emails — to prospects. Over the years I’ve seen lots of sales people that almost couldn’t write English at all (I’m going with English as the language of choice for today please apply [...]
Customer 2.0 and Channel Fragmentation
I’ve been noticing something recently. First it was a suspicion and now I managed to cobble together some data that makes me think this is real. I’m calling it “channel fragmentation” (not sure where that came from but it will do as a working title). What I think is going on is as we introduce [...]
Customer 2.0 has Different Shoe Sizes
I’m into smart prospecting. I believe we should find out as much as we can before we call someone. Our ability to know more before the call is increasing all the time as the tools that can inform us are constantly improving. But there is a limit. These tools are all drawing from the pool [...]
Cold Calling: Forget Plan A, B & C. Let’s Use Plan D
Why do sales people use “plan D” as the default when cold calling? As you may also know I’ve come up with this approach called “Social Calling” that works so much better than traditional cold calling. I came up with this approach not because I found some tablets hanging out on a hill in Northern [...]
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