Good prospecting is boring. We've noticed over the last couple of weeks how true this is for our own telesales organization.

We had been on quite a "roll" securing new business and leads all over the place for our clients for a few months. Then we relaxed a bit, got a bit less detail-focused and "voila" things slowed up in the pipeline. So we spent the last couple of weeks looking into what was causing this slow down what we have found was details. It turned out small differences in how "type A" we were being really impacted our results.

Some specific areas that we found:

I've said before "sales is just like accounting". In prospecting this is so true.

The details count a lot. The cliché of sales people is as loud backslappers buying drinks at the golf club. Great characters but lousy at administration...and details.

The reality in a "Sales 2.0 world" is that sales people need to be "boring" and not miss a detail -- or they will miss a deal.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As the main contact point for Jigsaw’s Community of salespeople, I am bombarded by recruiters, sales managers and company founders seeking account executives. While some of these searches are grounded in reality, the vast majority of these people have a better chance of finding the Easter Bunny and convincing him to work for their company than actually landing the applicant they seek.

Take the example of a startup technology company that I spoke with recently. They had secured their second round of funding and were interested in expanding their sales team of three. The VP used all the common words: “hunter, rainmaker, experienced enterprise sales, self starter, technical expertise, outstanding communication skills…”i.e. a salesperson. But it was the last line of the job req. that caught my eye- “Must have a strong industry rolodex with solid relationships with CxOs from Fortune 500.”

In that statement he betrayed an ignorance of the sales process that is plaguing not only start-ups, but larger companies alike.

Allow me to key on three word groupings used in that sentence that says it all:

Fortune 500: Whatever template that company founders use to get their initial round of funding (we couldn’t seem to find it in 2003 so we had to wing it) seems to come hard coded with Fortune 500 companies as the target, no matter what you are selling. The smallest Fortune 500 company has over $1B in sales and 1000 employees. You might as well try to stand out in the local American Idol audition. I’m sure Simon wants to hear how blahbablabable your whatsit is.

CxOs: C-Level. Those magical leaders of every company with nothing better to do than field calls from salespeople and shower small companies with Revenue. Whatever your product does, everyone wants to “sell high.” The company above sells a highly technical $10,000 software program and they stated that their customer target is the CFO. The CFO of a 10 person company would defer a technical decision like internet security to his IT ops person. The CFO of a Fortune 500 company should be able to have you arrested if you happen to catch him and want to talk about internet security software.

Strong Industry Rolodex: This is my favorite. I have an image of Jack Lemon coming in out of the rain with the Glengarry leads in a worn briefcase. Top executives change companies at an average rate of every 18 months. Even if you know one of these people well enough to call them and they actually have a need for your product, the days of C-Level managers making huge buying decisions by themselves over golf are over. Budget outlays are scrutinized by committees and require input from every department affected. Salespeople need to know everyone that is involved in the decision.

Anyone that has a strong network of Fortune 500 C-Level folks is one of two things:

1- a current C-level Fortune 500 exec himself
2- the future president of your company

He’s not carrying a bag for Acme software in the square states.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

...and start obsessing over the decision-making process.

One of the changes in B2B selling is that, instead of decision makers making their own, often arbitrary decisions, purchase decisions today are made through a collaborative process involving multiple people and teams. This has always been a part of B2B sales, but now it's dominant. The 'decision making process' is now more important than 'the decision maker'.

Instead of this question or its variations:
"Who is the decision maker?"
"Who signs the check?"

Use questions like this:
"Who is involved in making the decision?"
"How will the decision be made?"
"What is the decision making process?"

Yes, there usually are the same old players like a main functional decision maker and the guy who signs the check. However, in the past, when decision makers would defer sales people to their subordinates, it was to blow the sales people off. Sales people were rightly trained to fight to get around this objection and obtain the decision makers' time.

Today, because executives are busier than ever, getting referred to their "get it done" contacts, the influencers, is usually the right way to begin selling into an account. Win over your internal champions and coaches first, and then you'll be perfectly positioned to win over the decision makers.

Should you ignore decision makers early? No!

Is the importance of reaching the ultimate decision makers any less important? No!

But the emphasis in the initial stages of a sales cycle should change. The focus of salespeople early in the sales cycle...
Past: 80% decision makers / 20% influencers
Future: 20% decision makers / 80% influencers

You do want to build a relationship with the decision makers early, but don't "sell" them until you've begun winning over the influencers, or at least until they've begun to agree with the value of your business case. You'll just look weak if you're pitching a business case to the decision maker that their influencers disagree with.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You’re on the trade show floor, ready to make the most of the time and effort it took to get there. People drift in and out of your booth throughout the day and you’ve got to quickly judge who’s hot and who’s not.

The trick is to start a conversation that will help you determine if a visitor is a qualified sales lead. The best way to do that is by asking questions.

Typical closed-ended questions such as “May I help you?” get you useless answers like “No thank. Just looking.”

So start off with an open-ended question like “Out of all the places you could be today, why did you choose to come to this show?” or “With all the exhibits you could visit this afternoon, what brought you to ours?”

Then keep the conversation going by turning your typically closed-ended questions about budget, authority, need and timing into open-ended questions. For example, ask “How does this kind of purchase get funded at your company?” and “Who all is involved in the decision process, and what are their roles?” and “What problems are you trying to solve?” and “When do you think you’ll be making the decision to go ahead?”

And one last tip…

If you have determined that a visitor to your trade show exhibit isn’t qualified, but he continues to monopolize your time, end the conversation quickly but politely. How? By handing him a brochure while saying something like, “Here’s some additional information about our product that you can review back at the office.” Next say “Thanks for stopping by.” and shake his hand. Then turn and walk away.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

LinkedIn, the online business networking site, connects over 17 million experienced professionals from over 150 countries. Yikes! That's so many that it makes my head spin. I'd love to fantasize that a few of these people would stumble onto my profile, be suitably impressed and initiate contact. But so far, it hasn't turned out that way.

Yet many sellers have learned how to leverage LinkedIn to drive more sales. They're not sitting around waiting for their phone to ring. Instead, they're using it as an additional resource that supports their prospecting efforts.

Here's how your peers are using LinkedIn to grow their business. True stories. Real results.

Launching Account Entry Campaigns
Kent Speakman of Suitcase Interactive says:  We're very deliberate in pursuing certain targeted accounts. LinkedIn is a tool that allows our business development department to look for connections or contacts within their network they already know.

For example, when creating an account entry campaign for larger organizations, my team generates a list of people within the organization to be contacted to discuss our value proposition. By spending a short time span looking at the contacts they have, and who their contacts know, we can then ask for introductions to people at the target account. We usually have a much warmer response if we do it this way.

Connecting with CxOs
Stu Garrow, Managing Director of Software Traction Pty, Ltd adds: I've used Linked-In a few times to discover that the CxO who I was trying to meet with was a contact of one of my direct contacts. It certainly opened some doors when I needed it, but it isn't a replacement for proper research. Accessing second level contacts works, but 3rd, 4th and 5th level contacts would be a very long shot at success.

Inside Information
From Nick Ehrman, Director of New Business Development for Voltaggio Johnson: I always look everyone up. You can glean all sorts of info this way. You can learn where someone has worked, where they went to school, hobbies and more. You can also find out who they're linked to. Knowing "who knows who" is powerful. Plus, the idea is to become a subject matter expert, right? Well, LinkedIn is a cool tool to help that along.

Replacing Cold Calling
John-Erich Mantius, Director of Business Development at Arvato Digital Services offers this advice: While not everyone you'd like to know is in LinkedIn and the database is only as reliable as those users who keep their profiles updated, I find that it's an indispensable part of my sales tool kit.

I'm pretty methodical about using it regularly to determine if anyone in my network "knows somebody who knows somebody." I'd prefer not cold-calling. Even if my network comes up empty, I'm sure to find someone at the company I was going to cold call who  can help me navigate into an organization.

An example: At a conference last month, I was looking for the head of supply chain at one of the leading headset manufacturers in the US. I got the name, but the person was not sure of the spelling. Back in the office, I tried a few different ways of spelling his name on LinkedIn and voila ... confirmed I had the right person. Alas, his profile was out of date. A quick Google search eliminated any doubt who I needed to call as a press release confirmed he'd left and where he was working now.

Sure, a Google search could have eliminated LinkedIn altogether, but what it could not do is tell me who within my network could connect me to my targeted contact. Continuing my search within LinkedIn, I found additional relevant contacts at this manufacturer. Now that I had the e-mail protocol, I could add their names to my contact manager and begin strategizing my sales approach.

Assessing Interest
Dan Coates, Co-Founder of SurveyU - The Voice of the American Student writes: I recently started a company that provides marketing data on the college student population. We're a new entrant within a new space. It's tough identifying prospects as not all marketers have an interest in collegians.

Sending InMails via LinkedIn is a great way to qualify interest. Rather than cold calling into an organization and pestering people, we simply send InMails that ask if the target knows of anyone within their organization who would be interested in knowing more about college students. It's easy for someone to ignore an InMail if they aren't interested.

Three out of ten InMails result in a response. One out of three responses lead to an actual conversation with an interested party. Results like this simply can't be achieved via telephone.

Making a Connection
The managing partner of a consulting firm adds: We needed to reach the VP of Sales of a larger company. Repeated attempts to connect had failed. I used LinkedIn to find the individual and found 5 different paths that connected with her. I sent different messages through 2nd, 3rd and 4th level connections to get to her. I sent out my requests to have people forward my request to talk with her on Thursday. Tuesday she called me and asked why four different people suggested she call me and ask me the question I had posed to all five connections.

Finding the Decision Maker
Silvia Quintanilla of Industry Gems contributes: I use LinkedIn as a "people finder." For example, I wanted to get into technology company in my area. I typed their name into the company search field. Then I perused who came up. I found a guy who was Director of Financial Services.
I then "cold" emailed him using their corporate email pattern. He wrote back and told me he was leaving, but I should contact his replacement. He then gave me the replacement's email address, I wrote him an email and was successful in getting an appointment. This lead to an initial project of $35,000 with more to come. I've done this before with similar results at other companies.

Research & Relationships
Rennie Filler, an account exec from Austin shares: I use LinkedIn to research the background and career experience of my customer. LinkedIn tells me where they went to college and their major. It details their past career experience and positions held, and it reveals their specific personal interests and unique expertise.

Through LinkedIn, I've discovered that my customers and I share the same interests or know the same people. I leverage those interests and connections in my rapport/trust building phase of the relationship. Even better, I'm now aware of how they got to their current position, how long they've been in that position, and what their job responsibilities are at their current company. I leverage that knowledge to help me understand my customer's role in the organization and his/her role in the final decision-making process.

Most importantly, after the deal is won, I invite my new customer to join my LinkedIn network. This helps me keep in touch with them for up-selling opportunities and to keep an eye on their network for referral selling. And, if my customer leaves the company I am able to find out where they are going. This enables me to continue to engage with them and sell to them throughout the rest of their career. My success comes from building lasting friendships with my customers. LinkedIn provides an excellent platform that assists me in this success.

In Summary
Savvy sellers are using LinkedIn to research their prospects, find decision makers, assess interest and build relationships. They're leveraging this information and their connections to crack into corporate accounts and win big contracts.

LinkedIn is a tool that augments your business development efforts. It also can shorten the time it takes to get your foot in the door. Finally, it's a great way to keep in touch with your customers when they move on. Hopefully you're starting to see the potential in this online network - because it's there, waiting for us to embrace it.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 06:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here’s a marketing formula that’s created solid leads for large, medium and small companies, regardless of their business focus. Finding, nurturing and qualifying sales leads using marketing will increase your bottom line when you’ve got the right process.

Build a clean database
Not every business can or will buy from your company. Gather all the miscellaneous lists of suspects, prospects and customers at your company and have a third-party list service to help you merge them, purge duplicates, update postal addresses and append information such as industry and company size. The list service can add companies and contacts similar to your best customers and those in the specific vertical or niche markets you’ve identified as targets. Your goal is to determine which companies appear to have a need for what you’re selling, are receptive to working with your kind and size of company, and have the ability to buy when the time’s right. Then aim your marketing at them.

Keep in touch on a regular basis
You should use the database to drive regular direct marketing campaigns via direct mail, e-mail and telemarketing. Aim to use direct marketing to touch prospects at least once a quarter, but monthly is better. Even if you don’t make it every month you’re still ahead.

This approach also works well for nurturing longer-term prospects. And they are worth it! My research shows that the short-term buyers — those who buy within six months — represent only a quarter of the sales that will happen. The other three out of four sales occur between six months and two years later.

Optimize your website to lead prospects through the sales cycle
Instead of scaring prospective customers away with confusing or out-of-date information on your website, consider re-focusing its content to help your prospects determine that your company is their best choice. Provide clear choices of navigation to help visitors self-identify where on the path they are and what step is next.

Involve the sales team when creating sales tools
If your salespeople turn more of your marketing-generated leads into sales, you won’t have to generate as many leads and you will get a higher return on both your marketing and sales investments. So what tools do they need? Start by asking them, or ride along on sales call and see for yourself.

Yes, this is a pretty basic formula. But I’m always surprised how many marketers go off the deep end on fancy or expensive marketing tactics that don’t get results. Instead, I recommend you start with this basic, but proven, formula. Add fancier and more expensive marketing ingredients to the mix later, when you can afford to experiment.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 06:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week I coached about a dozen inside sales reps and provided a live demo for the group on navigating techniques. I like to call it the ”Josiane unplugged” session because they get to see me in action and it’s a great way to model the skill.

Navigating is the 3rd skill in the TeleSmart 10 training methodology. It falls in the early part of the sale cycle as it follows the Time Management and Introducing skill. This skill is all about building org charts and leveraging contacts by calling deeper and wider and aiming for 2×2. In org chart terms, that means calling two people deep, two people wide, two people up the chain and two people down the chain. This totals 8 potential contacts you can have for an account instead of one.

Now that you have names of 8 contacts, you must try to reach them live. You do not leave voice mail messages but instead press the O and # key to get yourself back out and reconnected. You keep going down the list of contacts you have until you reach a live one. When you finally get someone live, you immediately leverage the names you have in your opening to capture credibility and earn more time. Here’s how it works:

In building the org chart, you learn the following with 5 contacts:

Bob Smith, Director of IT

Tom Jones, IT Manager

Eric Day, Systems Engineer

Donna Stuart, Project Manager

Mark Toll, Network Administrator

Let’s say you get Eric on the line, you want to say, “Hi Eric, I’m with ABC Company and I understand you work closely with Bob, Tom, Donna and Mark and the reason for my call is to introduce our product.”

Easy to do and yet very powerful.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 06:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This post continues my efforts to bring you the content that we present in our live "mini sales training" events.

In Part 1 I discussed how a Sales 2.0 sales process puts most of the emphasis on the early parts of the sales process. In Part 2 I described that preparation in the sales process is key and that preparation for prospecting breaks down into "what are you going to say?" and "who are you going to say it to?" In Part 3 I discussed "The What" element you need to prepare: the answer to the question "what do you do?"

This post discuss "The Who" element of prospecting preparation: who are you going to call?

If you've nailed the answer to "what do you do?" and you happen to have a great product or service, you're still only a fraction of the way to prospecting success (sorry about that!) The next big factor is who you approach. You can have the best product in the world with a fabulous value proposition statement but if you spend your time communicating that statement to hundreds (or thousands) of the wrong people, you won't sell anything.

That's a pretty obvious statement. But it's something many, many sales people and organizations fall down on. The "devil is in the details" in sales and in this area in particular. If you don't exactly figure out which firms and which people will be involved in buying your product, you are pretty much guaranteed no sales.

Getting through to people is getting harder all the time. In fact, it's really the biggest bottleneck in the sales process. So generating lists of appropriate targets is becoming more critical all the time. In our telesales operation we prospect every day for a number of clients with different products and services. Increasingly we are finding that our lists need to be "trigger event-driven".

Trigger-events are changes that have occurred in a company, including: new executives, mergers, growth, downsizing, cost-cutting and new product launches. This kind of change creates disruption and disruption creates needs, aka opportunity for sales people. You can research many of these "high level" trigger-events by monitoring company press releases. Our favorite tool for doing that right now is InsideView.

Once you've got a good list of target companies you should develop a list of target people in those companies. If you are targeting larger companies, consider that recent research by MarketingSherpa showed that IT products (for example) over $25,000 in value have twenty-one (21) people involved in purchasing them! So you may identify the right ultimate purchaser for your product, often a "C-level" executive: CEO, CFO or CIO but your best way in to the account initially can be someone else lower down the org chart.

"Calling Low" is a great way to find out what specific projects or change initiatives are going on in that account. This gives you information you can use to go back to the C-level executives with something more compelling to say because you can now customize your message to their specific company situation. So your target person list should include not only C-level titles but titles of all the people in a target company that might be able to help you get started in that account (the toughest "nut to crack" in the whole sales process).

Building great lists of sales targets is now, more than ever, a critical part of the sales process. It seems tedious and time-consuming to many sales people but the time spent here is a fraction of the time you will waste prospecting to the wrong people.

Get "The Who" right and you may be a "sales rock star" who is around as long as Pete Townsend and Roger Daltry.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

All businesses share the challenge of finding new business. We recently conducted a survey of 700 small businesses. 43 % of them needed to add over 10 new clients a year. It should come as no surprise that $90 billion is being spent by businesses in the U.S. to grow (American Marketing Association). $20 billion is being spent in online marketing alone.

The common marketing portfolio for a company includes advertising (online and offline), public relations, event marketing (tradeshows), client marketing (referrals) and telemarketing (cold calling). An effective marketing strategy will employ multiple initiatives under these areas targeting their customer/prospect segments. Each of these items is important (in different varying levels) to achieve marketing results. But, is there a way to achieve consistent marketing results without having the budget of a Cisco or a Microsoft?

Having been in technology marketing for nearly 20 years, I have seen various marketing methods emerge and some fall to the wayside. The Internet has also provided alternative marketing methods by establishing new channels to targeted customers. Our survey pointed out that most small businesses are not only concerned with getting good results from their marketing campaigns, but are also concerned with the high the upfront costs of these campaigns.

With this in mind, here are ten low-cost and low-risk ways to drive new clients for your business. By the way, it goes without saying that you must have a clean website that provides enough of a user experience regarding your service and easy links to the appropriate calls-to-action.

My Top Ten

1. Client Referrals. Your path of least resistance to new customers is often from your existing client base. Assuming you are delivering quality work, getting a client to refer another client often happens without even asking. So why not ask? Put together a campaign to drive new client referrals offering incentives to your existing clients. Perhaps make a donation to their favorite charity, or discount on your service or even cash! Be prudent in tracking client referrals as it is likely that your best referrals will originate from the same set of clients. Always send thank you note, although I recommend David’s Cookies or Dale and Thomas Popcorn (a real office pleaser).

2. Blog yourself. While I know I am merely inviting you to join the myriad of people out there who are sharing their views, opinions and thoughts via the web, it really is a good way to get the word out there. Blogger and Wordpress are two free Blog sites that make it really easy to set up and publish your blogs. Blog regularly and more importantly make sure you publish your blog on your social network pages. Blogs are often tapped right into the search engines so even by doing nothing you are getting the word out there. (Check out Fastpitch Networking Blog promotion tools)

3. Inverse Public Relations. Have you ever read an article online and seen a trail of comments and responses to the article? Well, why not do that yourself (assuming you have something interesting to add)? If you are a subject matter expert (and even if you are not) why not add your two cents to topical articles. Include a link to your Blog or your web site in the response. Of course it is self promotion but it is promotion nonetheless (think about what this piece is for my company).

4. Socialize yourself online. Word of mouth is always a great way to drive new business. Working ones Rolodex was often the terminology for the art of taking out ones Rolodex and “dialing for dollars” – reaching out to your contacts to see who might be able to refer some business. Social networking and moreover professional networking has added a whole new dimension to managing ones Rolodex. Networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook as well as niche professional networks such as BizNik and Fastpitch make it easy to establish an online profile and provide good tools for reaching out to your network. Join a group on Facebook or set up a live event on Biznik.

5. Face-to-face networking. Although there is a fee for the more popular networking groups, they are a great way to meet other professionals all of whom are not interested in sharing photos or videos but in growing their businesses. There are online versions of these groups such as Network for Professionals and a number of Meetup groups. Start a Meet up or join one inviting everyone to happy hour (on you of course). You’ll be certain to draw a nice crowd of like-minded professionals.

Ways 6-10 in Part 2.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 06:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Imagine this scenario: The CEO of one of the companies you've targeted gets on an elevator with you. She recognizes you from a networking meeting you both attended and says, "Nice to see you. Tell me what you do again?"

Ah, you've lucked out. She's not getting off until the 10th floor.

Ah, but maybe you're not so lucky. One of my clients recently lamented, "Our elevator pitch requires a building with 700 floors." Not uncommon for IT companies that easily get sidetracked into their deep technology stories, at the expense of their lead business story when faced with an elevator pitch opportunity.

If you're leading with a long story about your underlying technology, you could be losing the business buyer (the one with the checkbook).

Why you should lead with your business story
I'm not saying your technology story isn't important. It is, for the right type of buyer. But your lead story should always be centered around the business problem you solve, even when you pitch the technology buyer. Why? Because it's the IT buyer's job to sell the business.

Once you've told the business story, you should have your technology story ready to go, if it's appropriate -- or if the buyer asks you to tell it.

How many floors does your elevator pitch require?
Designing an elevator pitch that will get you to the 10th floor is optimistic. You should assume your prospect is getting off at the fifth floor.

How do you write an elevator pitch?
Simple. Use the SIR method (situation, impact, resolution). Cite the common situation faced by your prospects, the impact it has on their business and how you resolve it.

For example:

Acquisition is a common strategy for achieving aggressive growth. But the time and costs of integrating a new acquisition are huge. Our services consistently cut integration time in half, in many cases up to 70 percent.

Or

Southern California's water problem isn't going away anytime soon. Lawns and gardens are getting brown and unattractive as municipalities limit water consumption. Our landscapes require 90 percent less water than traditional approaches - and they don't compromise beauty.

Use your elevator pitch to tell a story
Notice that these pitches tell a story, by framing your solution within the impact your prospect's situation is having on them. A story is more compelling than one liners, for example, "We are landscape architects" or "We do post-merger integration."

For a variation, switch things around. Start with your "seven word blurb" then support it with situation and impact.

For example:

We help companies avoid employee lawsuits. Over the past 10 years, such law suits have risen 500 percent as companies merge, get acquired or downsize - costing business over $80 billion last year.

With the S.I.R. technique, you'll get your elevator pitch to three sentences. You'll easily get it out by the time your prospect reaches the fifth floor - or even the mezzanine.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 06:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was recently asked what the top five things businesses and salespeople can do to attract more business and find more qualified prospects. Certanily something top of mind for every company. “Where do we mine for new business?”

One option is to outsource your lead generation or new business development efforts to an outbound marketing company. I have some clients who rely on this option with great success. They have found companies located both in the states as well as overseas, particularly in the Philippines where the hourly wage is certanily more competitive. Of course, outsourcing overseas comes with its on inherent risks and trade offs.

Another common option for salespeople is to mine through company websites and develop their own custom targeted call list of prospects. As you can imagine, while highly effective, it’s also very time consuming.

As such, many companies and sales professionals turn to third party solutions that provide lists of companies you can call on. These companies vary in both how they charge as well as the type of targeted data and information they provide. Some of these list providers offer very targeted and relevant data on the companies you’re looking to call on where the lists they provide can be broken down by industry, profession, size, years in business, position (i.e. CEO, sales manager, VP, HR, as well as their contact information) location even by number of employees. Here’s a short list of companies who provide this type of service.

www.idexec.com
www.goleads.com
www.salesgenie.com
www.netprospex.com
www.jigsaw.com
www.hoovers.com
www.dnb.com
www.listengage.com/emarketing.asp
www.maxprodata.com

Please note, I am not endorsing any of these sites in particular, just offering you several options that are available for business owners and salespeople who are looking to mine for specific prospects. I share these sites with my clients, as each site has their own advantages and disadvantages, and provide different levels and depth of data. It’s a pretty comprehensive effort to research the solution that works for each individual, as everyone needs different data points on each prospect.

Yet, at the end of the day, I’m always shocked and amazed as to why companies don’t leverage the selling opportunities that are right in front of them, without having to spend time and money on leads, call lists or outbound telemarketers.

Here are seven additional and highly effective ways to generate new prospects without having to spend a penny.

1. Become an expert voice.
2. Prospect your prospects.
3. Mine within existing accounts for upselling opportunities.
4. Mine within existing accounts for opportunities to be introduced to other people within the organization, possibly in a different division of the company.
5. Set up referral agreements with existing clients.
6. Networking
7. Partnering and collaborating with other companies to cross-sell products and services.

So, before you hire some outbound calling company or purchase your next prospect list to use for your cold calling efforts, I most certainly suggest that business owners leverage the first seven strategies I suggest above. If you find that your efforts are not resulting in enough new business nor brings in the volume of prospects you need to hit your goals, or if you simply find that time constraints and additional responsibilities are preventing you from generating new prospects on your own, then it would make sense to explore these additional lead/list providers as an additional complementary vehicle that will assist you in developing a targeted list where you can generate new prospects (or have someone do the calling for you).

Keep in mind, the positioning of each of these seven strategies is different and each requires a mapped out process and approach to achieve success and the results you want. Most salespeople unfortunately don’t spend the time creating their step by step approach nor do they fully leverage these seven strategies that are immediately available to them consistently, thus leaving new business on the table for their competition to take. (I cover this in my prior book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cold Calling, just fyi.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Customer loyalty is important to a business because of the predictable and stable revenue associated with it - loyal customers spend money and refer more new sales than non-loyal customers.  And repeat revenue is generally higher margin than new customer revenue.  An added benefit for many businesses in the fact greater repeat revenue lessens the pressure to acquire new customers.

It's hard to disagree customer loyalty isn't a strategic success factor for most businesses.  

So, what makes a customer loyal?  

I believe the foundation of customer loyalty is trust, predictability, and dependable quality:

Trust: Trust comes from holding one's interest in the same or higher regard than your own.  Honesty is a huge part of trust, but it's not enough.  Trust has a proactive quality - bringing ideas, solutions, and even bad news forward when necessary for someone other than yourself to be aware of to be protected or succeed.  

Predictability: Showing up on time, reporting on schedule, updating routinely, delivering on time, and consistently relevant - all are critical elements of predictability.  Customers want, appreciate, and depend upon timely updates on progress, plans, and efforts related to their interest.

Dependable Quality: Consistent and reliable performance is critical to business relationships because of its enabling power for work produced by disparate teams to integrate well to meet business objectives. In broader terms, predictable quality is related to expectations.  We expect quality of goods and services to be consistent.  One business supplying another with goods and services of dependable quality is necessary for business relationships to continue.  

It's impossible to be loyal without trust, predictability, and dependable quality. And without loyalty, repeat revenue is questionable at best.

That said, I have three questions for you:

1. Do you agree with me that trust, predictability, and dependable quality are the foundation of customer loyalty?
2. What would you add or subtract as a foundation element?
3. Lastly, do you disagree with me that customer loyalty is most valuable to a business as it relates to future revenue generation?  Why?

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 03:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The sales team isn’t achieving what you want it to. It’s time to get organized and put plans in place to ensure you hit your targets. But, where do you start? In the first of a three post series, I will take you through the basics of upgrading your sales function. The first step is implementing a sales methodology.

A sales methodology is a set of clearly defined processes and tools designed to help the individual or team emulate the best practice of others. A good sales methodology is built on research and observations of the actions of top salespeople. It should answer three important questions:

1. What should I do now?
A sales methodology provides a clear sales process through which all your deals or ‘opportunities’ will pass, ensuring appropriately rigorous attention is given to each opportunity. The process is divided into stages running from discovering a new ‘lead’ to the eventual signing of contracts. Most importantly, at each stage the methodology should provide tools to help you analyse and understand the opportunity and develop and execute a plan of action.

For example, after an initially exciting first conversation with a prospective customer, a manager uses a checklist to assess just how valuable and likely an opportunity it potentially is. Answers to the checklist reveal a number of weaknesses in the opportunity. Consulting the methodology the manager identifies the appropriate next steps and is provided with support in the form of scripts, tools and sales techniques.

2. Why do it this way?
A strong sales methodology provides managers with an understanding of why, and under what circumstances, people buy. No methodology can provide instructions on what to do in every situation, so managers who are equipped with an understanding of the fundamentals of selling are better able to improvise in situations where help is not immediately at hand.

3. How much business will we ‘close’?
Of particular interest to most managers is probability rating. This is the practice of giving a percentage rating to the opportunity, representing the likelihood of that opportunity concluding in a sale.

The percentage is related to the stage that the opportunity has reached in the sales process. By multiplying the financial value of the opportunity by the percentage rating a value can be attributed to the opportunity at that time. By aggregating this number for all the opportunities currently in progress, a manager can predict how much revenue will result from their activities.

Coming up soon :
Part 2 : My personal experience in applying sales methodology, “Solution Selling”
Part 3 : Getting organized by implementing a CRM system

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I went on a sales call a couple of weeks ago where the rep arrived and spread out about 15 products all across the prospect's desk. Then she just started talking (and talking) about the products.

All the poor prospect could say was "ah ha"..."ah ha" as the sales person kept talking and talking about the features of these products for about 20 minutes. I sat there and listened and had a very clear sense that the prospect was totally bored. (Heck, I was bored!)

Now I think back on this experience, one tip off was that the sales person was carrying a backpack full of product to the sales call. I was carrying one piece of paper, a pen and a Blackberry - all in my jacket pocket. Nothing in my hands at all.

Now I admit you can have a "wheely bag" full of products and still hold an excellent sales meeting. If you remember the products are only there to be used when appropriate. And appropriate is only to support a solution you have jointly developed with the prospect after plenty of questions to uncover their needs.

But as a practical tip to sales people who currently give product pitches and want to improve their sales meetings. Do this. Check your hands before you go to a sales meeting. If you have bags full of product or brochures in them, think twice. Try leaving all that stuff behind (or at least in your car).

Your job at a sales meeting is to ask questions and to listen. You don't need arms full of products or brochures to do that. Try going to your next sales meeting without this stuff. Try going naked!

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

You want more business. But your prospecting is not getting you the results you hope for.

- You’re “staying in touch” for months and years with letters, articles, and telephone calls without closing the sale.
- You’re hearing, “We’re happy with our current vendor,” over and over.
- You lose business to a competitor whom you didn’t even know was vying for the business
- You can’t get through gatekeepers to the decision makers – or you can’t find the right ones.

Most products are similar, so attempting to differentiate yourself with ‘features/functions’ will not close your sale. Once your buyer recognizes what, how, and when to seek a new solution – one that encompasses all of their internal problems, all of their future initiatives, and manages their current relationships - they’ll be ready to choose a product.

What’s stopping your prospects from choosing you? And how would they know to choose you over the competition?

Your prospects must make several decisions:

1. The decision to consider a fix at this time;
2. Agreement from the appropriate stakeholders of what they want to end up with different from what they now have;
3. The decision to take on a new vendor and get rid of the old one;
4. The choice of product/solution, including the decisions involved in the team agreeing to the criteria that would direct them to one solution over another.

The choice is not about your product

The very last decision that buyers make is the choice of product. And you giving them product data does as a reason to get them engaged with you does NOT help them manage that supervisor who doesn’t think it’s time to change, or the group that love the original vendor.

We’ve spent so many decades attempting to push our product data into our prospects laps that we forget that there are several decisions they need to make before they choose us – decisions that result in the length of the sales cycle:

The time it takes buyers to come up with their own (internal) answers is the length of the sales cycle.

The sales cycle is the time it takes buyers to understand the full range of issues – people, politics, initiatives, relationships – that they’ll need to manage if they make a change. Until they recognize and see how to manage those unique issues internally, they won’t change – even if your product would seem to solve their problem. If they haven’t resolved their problem until now, there is something going on that is keeping it in place that must be resolved prior to doing anything new.

Buyers don’t want to buy a product, they want to resolve a (business)problem.

Questions to support a buyer’s decision to choose you:

• What has stopped you from fixing your problem until now?
• How would you and your decision team know when it was time to bring in a new vendor or a new solution?
• What new problems will arise in your situation that might need additional support once you decide to add a new solution or vendor?
• How would you know when/if it was time to shift vendors when what they are doing now seems to work? and before your team decides to add a new vendor relationship, what internal issues would need to be contended with before they would be able to act on it?

Until your buyers know the answers to these – and other - questions, they will not add a new banking relationship to the one they’re already using.

Stop selling product. Start helping buyers decide how to solve their true problems. That way you can teach your buyers how to close quickly, find the most appropriate prospects to target, and stop wasting 11 months running after prospects.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)