I hope by know, we’re all painfully aware of the costly lesson this economy has taught us. The skills, the thinking and the strategies that got us here today will not take us where we want to be tomorrow. And these uncertain times have highlighted more than ever, how we have collapsed American Entitlement with the American Dream.

The simple truth is, in order to earn more we need to learn more, especially as it relates to selling, retaining your current customers and leveraging new selling opportunities.

Here’s what I’ve observed over the last six months, how the current marketplace has impacted the way we sell and connect with our prospects and clients. Granted, some of these trends have been going on for a while now. However, these last six months have put more and more companies at this crossroad, face to face with this critical decision: adapt, innovate and change or suffer from corporate inefficiency, rigidity and declining profits. Upgrade your sales and leadership strategy to respond to these times. Here’s how.

1. Yesterday, it was more of a transactional sale. You show up and take an order or worse, you wing your presentation.

Today, you need to redefine your selling strategy and become a consultative sales champion in order to survive and thrive.

2. Yesterday, you can sell features and benefits.

Today, you must reinvent your M.V. P. (Most Valuable Proposition) and develop core compelling reasons which will then move your product or service from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘need to have.’

3. Yesterday, managers were able to tolerate more mediocrity amongst their team.

Today, leaders must transform into coaches and be more fully accountable for their team.

4. Yesterday, you could get away with connecting with your key accounts on a less frequent basis.

Today, you must over-respond and over-communicate to the needs of your customers or risk losing them to your competition.

5. Yesterday, you could be more lax with your daily activity and do enough just to get buy.

Today, you must refine your daily habits and become a master of your day.

6. Yesterday, companies had a larger budget to invest in marketing to drive more leads and prospects to the sales team.

Today, more and more companies are shifting to cold calling to generate new prospects and new leads. These were also many of the same companies who used to be resistant to this concept! This is another learned skill set and strategy that needs to be developed and embraced by your sales team.

7. Yesterday, salespeople had larger travel and expense accounts to meet with and romance their prospects and clients.

Today, more sales are happening virtually, online and over the phone. This requires learning and adapting to a new way of selling via new communication channels.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 06:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Many years ago, I learned, painfully, that there is no such thing as a rubber stamp. Many sales people hear "rubber stamp" and feel confident that they are working with the right person. "The sale is mine!" If anything, the rubber stamp is simply the fuse on a stick of dynamite. Better get under your desk, your deal is about to implode!

Here is what happens behind the scenes as your administrator visits with his boss. "Mr Jones, I've found a new supplier for our widgets. The sales rep is terrific. We've worked together and developed an ideal solution that makes everyone's life easier and we'll save 10% on our spending." "Put it in my inbox," says, Mr. Jones. Days become weeks as the administrator pings Mr. Jones about his rubber stamp, but no signature is forthcoming.

Finally, Mr. Jones develops an interest in his widget purchasing and surfs the web for potential suppliers. He meets with three of them and finds one to his liking. "This supplier is going to save the company 10.25%". Guess who got the deal? However, the sales person never knows about this because the administrator is too embarrassed to call him. After all, the administrator said this was just a rubber stamp, you had been awarded the business. Communication with the administrator goes dark; he just stops responding to your emails and voice mails.

What sales people often forget is that as you go up the corporate ladder, business leaders maintain accountability for the lower rungs of their responsibility. Thus, they want to feel as if they are involved in the solution development phase, or at least be offered the opportunity to participate. When administrators fly into their office with what they feel is a great decision, they are rebuffed. And, for one core reason, EGO! While the administrator's plan may very well be a great one, it is met with resistance for the simple reason that his manager was not invited to participate in the process. When he finally becomes interested enough to look at this issue, his goal becomes proving that there is a better deal to be had. In essence, this approach creates a saboteur of your deal.

If you are the sales person dealing with the administrator, how do you have the conversation where you share the concern of their manager not being involved in the process without offending? It takes a tremendous amount of finesse and strategic planning. However, if you truly have your client's best interests at heart, it is easy. This is the ultimate key. If you are committed to ensuring that your clients achieve their goals, you can have this conversation. After all, you know that they won't get what they want if you continue down this path.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Some Background Information:

Did you know that:

• 40% of salespeople are failing in their sales careers?
• 45% of all salespeople earn the average income for their industry?
• A typical salesperson devotes only 10-20% of their time to actual selling because a large proportion of their available time is devoted to cold calling?
• 85% of all salespeople do not generate enough quality referrals?
• Salespeople who actively seek and exploit referrals earn 4 to 5 times more than salespeople who don’t?
•  Referral business closes and converts more than 70 percent of the time?

Why is referral based selling so powerful?

A referred customer is already pre-sold on the credibility of the salesperson, their company and the relevance of the products/services sold. These types of opportunities are much warmer than a cold-call based opportunity because it maximises the goodwill, inherent in the relationship between the referred customer and the referring person.

By association, salespeople are consequently perceived in a different light compared to those that have made contact ‘out of the blue’. The costs of selling to a referred customer are reduced because they are easier to see, and are likely to be reasonably well qualified so that the probability for converting the business is much higher. Generally speaking referred prospects will accelerate through the sales pipeline at a much faster rate than other types of opportunities, and they will also be more receptive towards providing future referrals.

What are the biggest barriers to getting referrals?

If asking for referrals has not been included and communicated in the sales process, this will deter salespeople’s focus as they will see asking for referrals as a ‘nice to do’ rather than a ‘must do’. This in turn usually means that there is no rigorous method for measuring and monitoring how many referrals are generated and what the conversion ratios are for closing referred customer business.

Energy goes where attention flows, so without specific attention to this salespeople are unlikely to invest their energy in this direction. (Even if they are firm believers in the positive impact that referrals can create!). For many salespeople asking for referrals is uncomfortable because they feel unsure about how to do this effectively, and they aren’t confident they will get their desired response.

If people don’t know how to do something and they believe that what they are doing will damage their existing relationships, then it’s better to avoid it all together. Additionally, if salespeople make the common mistake of asking for referrals too early on in the relationship this can result in more refusals that further erode salespeople’s confidence.

Therefore, to optimise the use of referral-based selling the following components are vital:

1. Asking for referrals and acting on them needs to be incorporated in the overall sales process.

2. Metrics around referrals should be sought and evaluated on a regular basis, because this contributes towards furthering the rationale for generating them.

3. Development and training needs to be delivered to the sales team so they can maximise the impact of referrals and feel confident with this skill.

When is the best time to ask for referrals?

People will freely give referrals when they have benefited from your product/service and have an established relationship with you. This rarely occurs during the initial meeting because whilst they may like you, they haven’t yet validated what you can do for them. That’s why asking for referrals should be when the relationship you have established is strong enough to ensure their trust and belief in you.

Assessing the strength of your existing customer relationships can be very subjective unless there is a meaningful set of relationship criteria in place.  Although these will vary from organisation to organisation, they may include factors like:

- Communication frequency with key influencers
- Satisfaction with product/service
- Speed of response to queries/problems
- Length of relationship

The customers with the highest scores (based on the relationship criteria) are those that should be approached for referrals.

What is the best way of generating referrals?

1. Prepare a description in the form of a criteria list that specifies the type of person or organisation that you are looking to approach. This should be based on the profile of your Ideal Customer.

2. Evaluate all your customers using a relationship criteria and identify a list of those with the highest scores. For every customer your aim is to generate a minimum of 5 referrals. Therefore, if you have 25 customers on your list your target number of referrals will be 125.

3. Contact each customer on your list and take the pressure of them by explaining that you don’t want to sell to them, you would like their help.

For example: “Do you know anyone who is (specify your criteria) that would be interested in learning about how our products/services can benefit them?” Preface your question with a softener such as: “I wonder if you can help me” or “I would really appreciate some advice.”

4. When customers give you referrals, ask their permission to use their name when making contact. Alternatively, where your relationship is ‘rock solid’ ask customers to make the initial introduction by letter or email. Often customers will give a glowing testimonial and create a relevant context when introducing people.

5. Thank customers for referrals and keep them appraised of your progress. This creates a positive association towards the giving of more referrals in the future.

So, there we go, my most recent thoughts on the importance of referral selling!

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 05:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The sky is falling.

Well, the stock market and many of the great behemoth financial firms that I have sold to over the last dozen years are. Let's say many of us are not in the most upbeat mood right now.

And how does this "macro economic tension" tend to show up in sales organizations? Concern over making our numbers. And that concern over making numbers makes tense sales people. Tense sales people that tend to put too much pressure on their prospects to sign on the dotted line.

People love to buy but they hate to be sold. Sales cycles don't really exist what really exists is a buying cycle. In our world of so many options for the buyer, we need to face facts that it's the buyer who controls the "sales process" not the seller.

The sales person's job (actually the whole company behind the sales person) is to be in-sync with buyer at whatever point the buyer is in the buying cycle. A typical buying cycle might look like this: (1)recognition of a need, (2) seek out options, (3) discuss/evaluate options and (4) buy.

A sales person who tries to close the buyer when they are not in phase 4 of the buying cycle will annoy the prospect/buyer and won't get a deal. But that's what "old school selling" tells us to do "always be closing". Watch out because as the pressure mounts on us sales executives to close more the opposite is happening for the buyer. As the market fear grows buyers will be thinking "should I really pull the trigger on this spend or should I hold off". The last thing that will help a cautious buyer commit is a pushy sales person!

What's a sales person to do?

Calm down. Don't try to close everything in sight. Stay in-sync with your prospects. Make sure you know where they are in the buying cycle. Act accordingly. If they are just starting to look at options, get them the information they need to understand and evaluate your offering.

And...prospect. Yes, whenever things get tougher in the economy sales people need to be able to put more leads into their sales funnel. You will need more prospects because either some deals will drop out due to budgets being cut etc. or some of the deals that survive will move more slowly to close than you originally thought.

You will need to "diversify" your sales pipeline as the market gets more volatile just as an investor diversifies their stock portfolio. You will want more prospects in your sales pipeline than when times were "easy". Preferably prospects from lots of different companies and industries so your risks of being clobbered by any one company's or any one industry's budget cuts are reduced.

So as things get tougher don't become a closer. Become an opener.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I love getting and answering questions, as it helps shape my thoughts into useful forms to share. Here's a recent answer I posted on ExpertCEO (a private online community for CEOs), to a question that was along the lines of...

"Do you have any advice for a company with a strong services practice that has sold mostly through partners in the past, but who is now looking to build their own Sales Machine? Any advice would much appreciated."

That's a pretty broad question, so here's a broad answer. principles I feel would help anyone get going in the right direction:

1) Be PATIENT. Developing a sales engine that predictably generates revenue can take 12-24+ months, depending on the state of your company. Even any one new program in b2b sales can take 3-6 months to be defined, show measured progress, and become integrated & habitual (i.e. machine-like).

2) Experiment. With everything. Constantly.

3) No one-offs! (Unless it's an experiment to learn something for the future). It's not worth doing if it's not repeatable. One-off efforts, even for a quick payoff, are a distraction from focusing your energy on sustainable efforts.

4) If it doesn't exist in your CRM system, it doesn't exist. (Sales)people must be comp'd only off data in the CRM system. Reports must be run totally in salesforce.com/CRM, whenever possible. Etc. [Update: thank you Ken Rudin of for the comment below, I agree the data just needs to be in a system and accessible. I should have said here that reports must not be in Excel whenever possible!]

5) Can you sketch out how things work on a flow chart? Even simply, on paper or a whiteboard? If not, that's a problem. What's the desired outcome, and process that leads to that outcome? Is it being done ad-hoc today? Sketching it out is the first step to bringing some order to the process...and thus outcome.

6) Focus on results rather than activity (ex: number of qualified opportunities created per month is much more meaningful than number of sales calls made)

7) Track fewer, more important metrics. It's easy to go way overboard in building reports and dashboards. Work with your team to prioritize metrics. Think in handfuls, not dozens.

8) Special attention on batons that cross functions. Whenever a process crosses teams (marketing to sales, or sales to professional services, or...), a baton is passed, and you have all the ripest conditions for problems.

9) Babysteps! Consistently try lots of little improvements. If you keep at them, they'll add up to big changes over time. (Remember the patience part?)

Additional posts
A few other blog posts that help illustrate the kind of thinking it takes to build a sales machine:

• The Joy of Weekly Pipeline Metrics
• Waterfall Metrics
• Stop Measuring Calls Per Day
• The Problems with "Lumping"; Separate the Four Core Sales Functions

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” -- Mark Twain

Hit, Smashed, Collided
A group of people were shown a picture of an automobile accident and were asked, “How fast were the cars going when they …..?” The blank word used was variously “bumped,” “contacted,” “hit,” “collided,” or ‘smashed.” Groups that were asked the question with the word ‘smashed” gave the highest estimates of speed. The difference in a single word led to the different reactions.

Words matter.

Words Can Make You Money
Everyone is scrambling to find new ways to help them sell more effectively. Products are updated. Materials are redesigned. Sales processes are changed. Any or all of these strategies may in fact increase business. However, there is one very inexpensive area for improvement that is overlooked by most salespeople: language. Improve your word power and you will increase your selling power.

Language and Business
In this culture, the concept of words as serious sales tools (or weapons, depending on your metaphor of choice) may seem silly. However, I would argue that it is precisely because of our cultural trends that the people who use language with precision, creativity, and thoughtfulness will have a distinct competitive advantage and triumph at the end of the sales day, with or without pretty new support materials.

There is a golden opportunity awaiting the articulate salesperson in a culture where the art of language has deteriorated so. (We could discuss our President, but we won’t go there).

Think of the many times you have heard versions of “We provide unparalleled customer service, innovative solutions and strong follow-up to help you grow your business.” (Just once I’d love to hear someone say, “We provide lousy customer service, vanilla solutions, and haphazard follow-up.” just to see how the client will react.)

Are Words Really That Important?
What words do you use to describe what you do, how you do it, and what the benefits are to your clients?

1. What words do you use to earn an appointment or a callback? For example, do you say you want to discuss “X” (advertising, software, or whatever it is you sell) OR do you say you want to discuss some “ideas” to help this prospect “solve a particular problem,” “increase sales,” or another benefit relevant to his business? When was the last time you taped yourself to rate the effectiveness of the individual words you typically choose to use?

2. When you open a business discussion, is every word designed to engage?

3. Do you articulate presentations in the most appealing way or are they filled with cliches and bland language? For example, do you say you have “very effective tools that are easy to use” or that you have “proven powerful tools that unleash the selling power of a team?”

4. Are your questions crafted to elicit the best information while at the same time creating a comfortable, conversational environment for your client?

5. Are your responses to objections strategically phrased so that your client isn’t put on the defensive?

6. When you move to the next step, do you use non-pressuring language?

"He who speaks well fights well.”-- Proverb

Words matter. Put some thought and care into them. It won’t cost you anything except a little thinking time. The result can mean the difference between a “yes” and a “no".

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The traditional customer call once seemed indispensable to the selling process; the time and expense involved were just a basic cost of doing business. In recent years, however, the business community has come to regard the sales call as an expenditure for which there are substitutes. For many companies telemarketing and direct mail have made the sales call a choice not an inevitability. This is not surprising when various studies suggest that getting one sales person in front of one customer now costs $1000 - this cost has trebled since 1983. As a consequence professional salespeople have to be more effective than ever to justify the investment in a face to face effort.

In essence, we can draw several conclusions and when taken together, these findings paint a picture of the current state of the sales environment.

Businesses need to re-define selling and what constitutes basic selling skills:
In to-day’s world of selling, there is less and less room for apprenticeship. Selling has become an exclusive club of highly skilled professionals where product knowledge and time management skills, for instance, are the cost of membership not leadership.

Ongoing research demonstrates that to-day’s ‘average’ salesperson is just as effective as the high performer in explaining features and benefits effectively, relating a service or product to customer needs and closing a sale. But, above this Level 1 plateau of competence, the exceptional salesperson is busy defining the “basic skills of tomorrow”.

Building an up-to-date foundation in sales competence does mean sacrificing some old notions of what it takes to succeed in a competitive marketplace. For example, a salesperson can no longer just “win by knowing”.

Every company needs to test their assumptions about what skills really contribute to sales success. Too often operating on old sales theories means training and rewarding people to do the wrong things.

When the buyer and seller act as partners, they are building a bridge to profitability:
Successful selling is definitely not about the “hit and run” sale. Sales achievers regard their relationships with key customers as a partnership and cultivate it as such. When customers face tough business challenges and complex technological choice, they rely on sales people who can assist them in making the right decisions.

The primary objective of a sales partnership has to be, to create and sustain a mutually productive relationship, which serves the needs of both parties, now and in the future. The key word here is symbiotic.

Partnership does not mean eliminating the tension between buyer and seller; it means that top-performing salespeople know how to strike a balance between achieving immediate results and developing the relationship fully.

In Summary: Why Do We Need A Fresh Approach To Selling?
Many organisations have developed without objective analysis of their purpose and structure. The buying power in many industries is no longer evenly distributed - in a large number of markets a few big firms control the majority of purchases.

The development of new marketing techniques has meant that some tasks traditionally performed by the sales team can be more effectively handled by other methods. The prime objective of all sales staff is to gain business. From an organisational point of view, however, how they all achieve their goals must be defined in order to identify what kind and the quality of skills that are required.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The traditional customer call once seemed indispensable to the selling process; the time and expense involved were just a basic cost of doing business. In recent years, however, the business community has come to regard the sales call as an expenditure for which there are substitutes. For many companies telemarketing and direct mail have made the sales call a choice not an inevitability. This is not surprising when various studies suggest that getting one sales person in front of one customer now costs $1000 - this cost has trebled since 1983. As a consequence professional salespeople have to be more effective than ever to justify the investment in a face to face effort.

In essence, we can draw several conclusions and when taken together, these findings paint a picture of the current state of the sales environment.

Customer Focus Creates Competitive Advantage

• The one term that sets top performers apart - customer focus

• Outstanding sales results depend on:
- The ability to think from the customer’s point of view
- Understanding the customer’s agenda, buying cycle and best interests

• Beyond a superficial reading of immediate customer needs, salespeople must gain a deeper understanding of both the buyer’s long-term goals and the overall business climate

• At the heart of customer focus is the art of listening constructively - the best salespeople are masters at capturing information

• Customer focus means taking the customer seriously - to-day the salesperson who clings to the product orientation of a decade ago is losing ground

• As client companies branch into new markets and unfamiliar territories, they are demanding unique, flexible solutions from their vendors - customised to support specific goals

• Another myth which can be exploded is that whilst customers value flexibility, being too flexible can undermine the sales relationship. On the whole salespeople imagine that customers value a vendor’s responsiveness above all. However recent research shows that their primary concern is reliability.

In summary, in order to maintain customer focus the best salespeople become facilitators, creating a partnership that extends the selling relationship within the customer’s company. The motivation to achieve this should be strong - it costs five times as much to attract and sell to a new customer as it does to an existing one!

The right to do business has to be earned and never assumed
Rather than doggedly asking for the business, the very best sales people work to keep the relationship moving towards a sale. They realise the need to identify how to turn their company’s products into real solutions, which must meet specific needs.

Unfortunately, our surveys confirm that the average salesperson drags the customer over old ground as much as 52% of the time - they are unable to provide continuous stimulation and never know when to treat an existing customer like a new one.

Conversely, exceptional salespeople only make such ‘return’ calls for 10% of the time. Above all, earning the right to proceed requires gaining the customer’s trust and top salespeople work diligently to establish a climate in which the customer is willing to share information and feels comfortable doing so. The key here is integrity.

Customers are persuaded when they are part of the process and not part of the audience
Sales success to-day demands a radical shift from the ‘peddler’ mentality of merely demonstrating products and expanding on their features. It requires treating the customer as a participant. More often than not, a ‘flashy’ sales presentation alone alienates rather than persuades.

The best salespeople regard the sales call as a two-way conversation - not a one sided pitch. They have developed active listening skills. Average salespeople score fairly well in their ability to provide customers with facts and figures, but top performers dramatically outscore the rest when it comes to gathering information. In addition, how a salesperson collects information still distinguishes exceptional achievers from the rest of the pack. I.e. top performers ask better questions and as a result gain much better information. Essentially, they aim to engage customers in the buying process with questions that require thoughtful answers, that stimulate curiosity and that reveal the customers underlying needs.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have read a plethora of articles and commentary recently about Sales 2.0 and there is an air of inevitability that at some point in the not too distant future, many of the tasks now routinely handled by “salespeople” will become automated – in fact it is already happening.

But, and this is a really big but, in my view, there will always be a place for the professional business consultant – the “Top 5% Player” – these people never sell anything, but they do assist their clients in making sound buying decisions.

However, this is a wake-up call for the “order takers and marketers” because gone are the days in which a salesperson could simply walk into an office, establish a good rapport with the client, show he/she had thorough knowledge of their products and services and clinch the sale.

Nowadays, the emphasis is on establishing long-term, mutually beneficial relationships and in order to achieve this, the salesperson needs to earn the right to continue discussions with his/her client. Before they can proceed to sell their products or services, the salesperson needs to reassure the client of their integrity, reliability, and ability to understand and recommend the appropriate solution.

They can do this by demonstrating:
• Up-to-date knowledge of business news and current affairs.

Best practices include - reading newspapers, magazines, journals, trade publications and other sources of business information; maintaining membership of appropriate professional organisations; acknowledging gaps in knowledge and taking steps to fill them; locating or developing databases with information on customers, their industries and their own customers.

• An in-depth understanding of the customer’s industry, company and strategies as well as an appreciation of “the big picture.”

Best practices include - gaining an understanding of the issues at all levels of the customer’s organisation including strategic, departmental, and individual needs; seeking to understand the customer’s perceptions of market trends, company direction, plus potential product and service needs.

• A readiness to exchange information and ideas between the supplier and client organisation.

Best practices include - familiarising the customer with your own industry and companies; sharing useful business information even if it does not directly impact on the sales effort; demonstrating the cost-cutting or revenue producing benefits of your products and services.

• The ability to listen and absorb information.

Best practices include - refining the way you identify customer’s needs by asking the right questions and listening actively to customer comments; speaking at the listener’s level of knowledge; using stories and analogies effectively; asking for feedback on the clarity of your message. By demonstrating comprehensive knowledge, outstanding communication skills, and the proper attitude, the salesperson earns the right to move beyond the role of supplier to that of a valued business consultant

These are just a few pointers to those wanting to stay in the game – the clock is ticking and as the man said, the one constant that we can absolutely rely on in life is change.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 06:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Sales people should minimize the number of people they call. Yes, I said minimize. One of the biggest challenges for sales people is time management. As a sales person you should be calling people who you can convert into customers. You need to focus your efforts on a well-qualified list of people.

In our "real world lab", which is our own telesales team, we constantly track data to try to answer questions like "how many times should I call a prospect?" (questions with answers I always think should be common knowledge but just don't seem to be). Here's some of our latest observations from this "lab":

Six Calls
I've recently written about how sales people need to find a balance in their prospecting between calling too little and calling too much.

Research has shown that many sales people call once or twice but that contacts need to see your name at least 7-8 times before they start to "warm up" to your brand. On the other hand, we have noticed from our own prospecting data that calling over 10 times tends to leave sales people with a list of contacts who have been filtered out to be the ones who are hard to reach (the kind who put their phone constantly on "do not disturb").

So we've come up with our latest "rule of thumb" that six (6) calls is about the right number to make to a cold prospect (someone you have never spoken to). Once we've tried six phone calls we will put them back into the "nurturing process".

Ninety Days
What about people who have shown some interest?

I have also noted in the past that sales people tend to cling onto opportunities/people way too long. They also tend to assign way too high a probability to deals coming out of these prospects in their sales reports.

In our team our latest observation is that a lot of the higher-end products and services we sell have a 90-day sales cycle. What we mean by this is that by going through historical data we noticed that prospects that did turn into clients almost always did so within 90-days of our first conversation with them. Only prospects who never closed kept us coming back for longer than 90-days. So we learned from this that we could pretty much kill off anyone that had been lingering in our pipeline for much more than 90 days.

Put 'em Back in the Greenhouse
So what happens to all these prospects we give up on? We put them back into the "nurturing process".

And yes, there are a ton of people in the "nurturing process"...and not that many in our true sales process. But that allows our sales people to focus. That means we have a decent chance of calling people when we are supposed to and spending time handling issues that come up.

Meanwhile we use cheaper means like email and mail to stay-in-touch with everyone in the "nurturing process" (sales people are expensive!) We don't discard people who fit our prospect profile. But we don't burn sales people's time on them either. If you have a marketing department, these people become the responsibility of the marketing department. Research shows there's plenty of future business in this list of people so don't lose them. These people are your future hot prospects they are just not-ready-to-buy-yet.

Six calls. Ninety days. Or put 'em back in the greenhouse to grow into prospects who are ready-to-buy. What do you think?

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This post continues my efforts to bring you the content that we present in our live "mini sales training" events. This is Part 9 of the series (the preceding parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8)

In the first eight parts of this "mini sales training" I have covered preparation (hugely overlooked) and in prospecting so far I have covered: using a multimedia prospecting approach, how to keep yourself motivated, being organized and how to sound right on the phone. Now I'd like to talk about taking "an account approach" to your prospecting.

I have frequently seen sales people focusing all their prospecting energy on one person in a target company. This typically manifests itself in the CRM system as lots of calls to the same person without getting through. The sales person (usually correctly) starts to feel like they are wasting their time calling this person.

I am in favor of persistent prospecting. Too many sales people give up after one (or two) calls to a contact. But continually calling the same person over-and-over-and-over-again is a problem too. What you tend to find in this situation is (a) you manage to annoy your prospect, (b) they start to recognize your caller ID and don't pick up (even if you block your caller ID, they recognize "it's that blocked caller ID again") or (c) you are focusing your effort on a person who almost never picks up their telephone (their phone is always on "Do Not Disturb").

Some great research conducted by MarketingSherpa showed how many people are involved in buying a sophisticated product over $25,000 in price (in the case of this research the product was technology but I believe the research findings apply to all sophisticated business-to-business products):

- Firm Size, 100-500 employees: 7 decision-makers
- Firm Size, 501-1,000 employees: 14 decision-makers
- Firm Size, over 1,000 employees: 21 decision-makers

The fact that lots of people are involved in buying your product or service means that any one of these people may be a good point-of-entry into a company for you. After all, last time they bought this kind of product that person was involved in the decision-making process.

This means even if your target firms are small, 100-500 employees in size, there are roughly 7 people you can target to get that first elusive meeting or conversation. If the firms you call are 500-1,000 employees in size, there are roughly 14 people you can call. And if you are calling on Fortune 1000 firms, a whopping 21 targets.

So if you are not getting anywhere with the person you are calling, brainstorm a bit. Who else could be involved in buying your product or service? Ask anyone you can at the target company what kind of people get involved in looking at this kind of product (executive assistants are usually the ones to ask). Or try to partner up with a sales rep from another non-competitive firm and ask them what kind of people buy this product at your target firm or any firms that are similar to your target.

Think about how to grow your prospect list at your target accounts. Don't trap yourself by your prospecting approach.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Performance has many components, for example, our activities and abilities that are typically where many organisations focus on. Yet beneath the surface, our beliefs about ourselves, our customers, our job, can either help or hinder our performance. You may have heard the expression, “Whatever you believe you can do, you will and whatever you believe you can’t do, you won’t.” It’s as if our beliefs (which are unique to us all) become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our beliefs can act as huge barriers that stop us giving 100 percent to something.

Here are six beliefs that can have a positive impact on your performance.

1. Every Individual is unique and their perceptions are true to them. Because we each absorb 2 million pieces of information unconsciously and can only process around 7 chunks consciously we each have our own unique perception of the world around us. If everyone reading this was asked to explain beliefs, each individual would give a different explanation. So who’s right? Everyone is right because your perceptions are true for you. That’s why the more respect we have for every individual and the more we seek to understand the viewpoints of other, the richer our communication becomes. By respecting the opinions of others doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to agree with them, we just have to acknowledge that every individual’s reality is the one based on their own unique perceptions.

2. Communication is successful, only if it achieves your desired results. It doesn’t matter if you think you’ve communicated well or if you think you’ve been crystal clear, what matters is that your communication is received and acted upon in the manner you wanted. How many times have you said something to another person who has totally misinterpreted what you meant? Equally, sometimes we are on the receiving end of communication that makes us feel inadequate. If we can look beyond the communication and try to see a positive intention behind another person’s behaviour, then our relationships and interactions with people become more constructive and empowering.

When we communicate with people and if they are ‘not getting’ our point, then the responsibility is ours to adapt our approach until they do. For example; if we have communicated a price increase and the reasons for that price increase, and our customers have not understood those reasons, the responsibility for this mis-communication lies with us. Therefore we can only judge the success of what we have communicated based on the reactions we get from other people.

3. Resistance from another person usually signals a lack of rapport. Rapport is a vital ingredient when developing relationships because it builds trust and allows communication to flow. When that state of rapport is there, communication is a lot easier even if you don’t agree with the other person. When we don’t feel that rapport or connection we have a tendency to ‘nit-pick’ or find fault. Customers respond to people they perceive understand their position and are on the same wavelength. If we are encountering lots of resistance from a prospect or a customer, then it helps us to notice that we haven’t built sufficient rapport. Even if our prospect doesn’t agree with what we are saying, rapport enables us to have an open discussion where we can get an honest reason for their reaction rather than a ‘prickily’ brick wall.

4. Flexibility improves success. The greater your flexibility, the greater your chances for achieving what you want. If we accept that every person is a unique individual then we have to accept that each prospect and customer will require a different approach. Using the same approach with all prospects and customers is like playing the lottery, the chances of getting it right are extremely low. If we have high levels of flexibility that allows us to adapt to each prospect and customer’s style then we are able to build more rapport and reduce resistance.

Albert Einstein gave the definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over whilst expecting a different result. As an example, think about a fly…..have you watched how many times a fly bumps its head trying to fly out of a window? I guess that’s why it’s a fly.

The more we are able to adapt, the more opportunities we create. If what you are doing isn’t working, try something different and if that doesn’t work try something different again. Flexibility of thinking and behaviour creates awesome sales people. Your team are also unique individuals requiring a unique approach with how you manage them. The greater your behavioural flexibility the easier it is to connect and develop better working relationships.

5. There is no failure, only feedback. Of course there is failure. If you take a driving test or exam you either pass or fail. Your sales people will either succeed in achieving their monthly sales targets or fail to meet them. The key is how you perceive ‘failure’. Every failure can be looked at as a learning opportunity that is beautifully epitomised by Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb. Despite more than 10,000 failures, he stood by his dream until he made it a physical reality. He said that every discarded idea took him one step closer towards finding the idea that would work.

One of the most powerful self-coaching questions sales people can ask is, “What will I do differently next time?” or “What can I learn from this?” Sales people who make mistakes and learn from those mistakes have a tendency to do better than sales people who are scared to fail. Therefore if your team can be encouraged to see that when they don’t achieve their targets they have an opportunity to learn, because they have been given great feedback on what not to do next month.

6. Accepting 100% responsibility creates transformation. Every action you take creates a reaction that is based on the formula of cause and effect. Everything that happens is the effect of an underlying cause. Most people spend their lives operating at effect….”It’s not my fault I always end up in bad relationships.” “Life’s so unfair, things always happen to me.” “We’re in a recession, that’s why I haven’t achieved target.” “If I could only match our competitors prices, I’d win more deals.”

True personal power can be achieved when an individual accepts 100% responsibility for what they create in their lives. To put it another way, you get one of two things; the result or outcome you want or the reasons why you didn’t (you may recognise these as ‘excuses’!)

The more you focus on the reasons (excuses) and blame circumstances beyond your control you push away your personal power. Therefore, if you believe that you are in control of the situations that life ‘appears’ to throw at you, then you are in control of your thinking and emotions, and therefore in control of your own life. This belief has given thousands of sales people the determination to breakthrough so many barriers and overcome countless challenges when at times it was tempting to wallow in self-pity. If something good or bad happens, ask yourself, “How did I create that?” This question enables you to tap into your brain’s infinite potential and it will give you all the answers you need. If you’re prepared to commit 100% to taking responsibility for your own life, the results can be extraordinary. 

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 07:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Business people in the UK have devalued selling for far too long and some managers have convinced themselves that they would do better if they did not employ salespeople - after all good products sell themselves, don’t they?

As a consequence, until very recently, salespeople have done everything possible to avoid calling themselves “A Salesman or a Saleswoman.” They have developed a series of euphemisms such as: “Sales Engineer,” “Account Executive”, “Technical Sales Consultant” etc. But nowadays we accept that we all sell everyday - doctors, lawyers, estate agents, architects, and politicians.

The fact remains that anyone who is in business has to sell themselves and their products - and the so called “Captains of Industry” - Branson, Roddick, Marshall, Hanson, Gates, Dell and Co. are thought the best salespeople in the world.

It therefore follows that the quality and success of our salespeople will ultimately determine the success of our companies. Certainly the world has become more competitive and in order to survive and stay in business we need to continually expand and develop the skill sets of our sales team.

Sir John Harvey-Jones said “Most companies fail not in their attempts to be innovative or creative. In this country most of them fail because they undervalue the importance of professional selling”

Unfortunately, the task of selling never becomes any easier and as competition continues to intensify, sales people will face issues that can be extremely difficult to deal with e.g. decreased product uniqueness, increased competition within ‘safe’ markets, longer sales cycles, and shorter product life spans.

Every organisation that intends to survive in the re-engineered environment, which arrived with the new millennium, must, in my view, respond to those realities and recognise that there is not one critical sales related challenge, which must be addressed but five and I will discuss these in a follow up post.

In Summary:
Our commercial functions, particularly the sales team, represent our forward line, if they are not scoring regularly we cannot possibly achieve our overall commercial objectives – i.e. nothing happens until somebody sells something and all of that investment in costly accounting software, new office equipment, expensive IT systems etc. will count for nothing.

We can therefore say with complete confidence, that selling really is the key factor in the total marketing process

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 07:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

To what extent are features and functionality relevant to speak about when discussing and selling benefits?

Features and functionality are relevant to the extent they prove your ability to deliver the benefits and difference your customer wishes to purchase.

Whatever you sell – whether a product or service – you are sure to have a range of features, functionality, capacity, and capabilities. All of these are important and at some time need to be presented and discussed - after you’ve established your benefits and set buying criteria.

There’s a danger in discussing features and functionality before benefits. The danger is your customer will translate your features and functionality into benefits on their own. These translations will happen because customers don’t buy features and functionality, they buy the things they do (benefits). So, while you’re talking about the wonders on your datasheets, your customer is translating these things into something they can do with them. You can’t let something as import as these translations happen on their own, this is when purchase decisions are shaped.

Discussing features and functionality before benefits reduces your value and subjects your offering to a battle of commodities. This commonly results in sales people complaining they need more discount and enhanced features to win a deal.

Features and functionality are merely things that allow you to deliver benefits. You create opportunities, solve problems, make money, and save money for your customers as a result of employing one or more features and functionality of your offering. The features and functionality are meaningless until they’re employed to do something.

Do you agree or disagree? Why?

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 07:06 AM | 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)

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)

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)

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 this installment I want to say more about "what are you going to say?"

The first part to figuring out "what are you going to say?" is figuring out "what you do". Sounds easy right? Well not quite. Let's add some constraints:

1. Answer the question "what do you do?" in seven words or less (well maybe you can have ten but not more)
2. Say "what you do" in words your grandmother can understand
3. Focus on your clients. Say what you do for them

I've worked with a lot of technology companies over the years and most of them have sucked at saying what they do. Generally they violated all these rules and had long-winded statements full of technical features that no prospect cared about, had the time to listen to or could understand.

When you first contact someone they are not interested in investing their valuable time in figuring out what your product of service can do for them. The only way you will gain their interest is by telling them what you can do for them, quickly and in words they can instantly understand.

Here's some examples of good answers to the "what do you do?" question from Richard Fouts (who usually gives this portion of our live sales training):

> We help you comfortably retire. (Fidelity)
> We protect companies, lives and reputations. (GE Insurance)
> We help companies do business online. (IBM)

So the first part of figuring out "what you should say" when prospecting is figuring out "what you do"...in a way that a prospect can hear.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm trying to bring you some of the content that we present in our live "mini sales training" events.

As I said in my introductory post the Sales 2.0 process puts the emphasis on the front end of the sales process not the back end. The focus is on getting high quality leads that will close not on closing techniques supposed to turn poor prospects into clients (this does not work anyway!)

So let's start with the really important stuff: preparation (click on the diagram opposite to make it larger). Preparation is the "poor cousin" in so many sales people's skill sets. "Old school" sales managers get nervous if they feel their sales people are spending time on preparation. They just want sales people to dial as much as they can. But in the 21st century, calling busy executives with nothing to say is futile and depressing for sales people.

Companies and sales people need to spend time preparing. It's critical. Preparing (a) before they even get near a telephone and (b) preparing every time they make a call.

Upfront Preparation
Before a sales person ever gets near a telephone someone in their company, the CEO, marketing department or the sales person themselves needs to have really good answers to two very basic questions:

1. What are we going to say to prospects? (the "What")
2. Who exactly are those prospects? (the "Who")

Many companies, managers and ultimately sales people have really weak or fuzzy answers to these two questions. Well guess what? In 2008, you need to say something really good to exactly the right person to get any interest at all. If either of these points is badly defined, you're toast.

I've received a few email questions from readers that have been of the form "Prospects won't listen to me. What should I do?" The basic answer is to hammer out WHAT to say and WHO to say it to. It's much harder than you might initially think to get this right. But it's better (and more time efficient) than calling 500 people and getting zero interest.

I'll talk about the "WHAT" and the "WHO" in more detail in my next post.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The shotgun approach to selling does not provide you with the ability to become consistent in your performance. If you are constantly trying something different every time you’re in front of a customer, you are never allowing yourself the opportunity to become skilled in using a certain system. What needs to happen is you must systemize your approach. Think about the steps you take when engaging in an activity. It could be a sport or a hobby. How do you know what to expect as an end result? Because you consistently performed the same way over and over again.

The same goes for perfecting the art of selling. Salespeople who follow a system are not only successful in generating business, but exert a lot less effort because they know what results to expect every time they run an appointment. Salespeople who are disorganized in their presentation often leave a sales call confused and unsure of where they stand. This happens because they don’t know “where they have been” and what the next step should be or where they need to go. Following a specific sequence, and controlling the steps through the selling process, is vital to an organized, professional sales effort. A system is what takes you from point A to point B with the least amount of risk or error. A system spells out what you need to accomplish from the time you are first face to face with that customer until the time you leave the appointment. It is your strategy, which gives you the freedom in knowing what the outcome will be. When you have a system in place, there is no room for second-guessing.

There is a saying, “Begin with the end in mind.” Think about it. If you begin a sales presentation knowing where you want to wind up as an end result, and can even envision all the steps that it will take to get you there, you will have much more control over the outcome. It is like running a race. You know where you start and you know where you need to finish.

[Editor's Note: this article is part of a series by Keith Rosen Entitled "The Top 10 Most Common Mistakes in Selling"]

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A key difference between Sales 2.0 and Sales 1.0 (aka "old school selling") is where sales people should spend their time and energy in the sales process.

The graph opposite illustrates this point (click to enlarge). The graph shows the time and energy sales people need to put into the sales process graphed against the stages in the sales process. At a high level the four stages in the sales process are:

1. Prepare
2. Prospect
3. Progress (move opportunities towards closure)
4. Close

In Sales 1.0 (aka "old school selling") there is a lot of emphasis on closing techniques. In Sales 2.0 we find that closing is the easiest thing we do and requires almost no effort (often buyers actually ask us to sign a contract).

A the other end of the sales process "old school" sales books say almost nothing about preparation before prospecting. But we find in 2008 that it is hard to penetrate the noise in the market place and gaining a prospect's attention. As many authors on this website have pointed out busy executives have ZERO tolerance for generic cold calls. Prospecting efforts need to be highly customized. There's only one way to do that: preparation.

Prospecting in a Sales 2.0 world is not one cold call to a prospect then give up. It's a campaign to get in -- a campaign that uses multi-media to get through. The telephone is central to this campaign but it's not limited to this tool. Sales 2.0 prospecting uses telephone, email, ground mail, fax, Fedex, gifts, books and more, as appropriate to the importance of the prospect to you.

So like so many things in sales, we find what actually works today is "upside down" from the sales lore of "old school selling". Put your effort and time in upfront and closing deals will be easy.

Note: I will be saying more about each part of the sales process in future posts. The picture in this article is the slide I use to introduce our live Sales 2.0 talks. I want to bring our website readers the tools that we present in that talk over the next couple of months.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Did you know that almost one out every four professional sales people fail because they lack proper sales training? And that over 50% of sales managers do not have time to adequately train their sales people? Based on my observations, many more managers are not really sure how to teach selling skills to their sales staffs or exactly what type of skills they should be training them on - primarily because they did not receive much training either.

Selling is not difficult. We just make it seem that way.

I must admit, though, that there is not much out there to instruct sales managers on what to teach and, more importantly, how to teach it. Maybe I will write another book. But in lieu of that, let me share a few thoughts on how to make selling not that difficult.

I have conducted a number of selling technique workshops for companies using a "things to do" list as a basis for the workshops. Prior to the event, I would give each attendee a list of eight things to do in advance and ask them to come prepared with their responses. In each instance, what resulted was the realization from company executives that they and their sales organization had some work to do if they really wanted to acheive selling success. It gave them a plan that simply made selling less difficult.

Here is my things to do list with some observations as to how the attendees performed.

1. In a short paragraph, describe what your company does. (Some responded with one sentence that told very little about what their company actually did. Others wrote multiple paragraphs that confused rather than clarified. The ensuing exercise to collectively develop a 3-4 sentence paragraph that captured a differentiating perspective of the company proved to be quite enlightening to all.)
2. Name your most important p