Sales and Sales Management Blog

June 27, 2011

Is LinkedIn Producing the Results Sellers Want? Help Us Find Out

Filed under: Sales 2.0 — Paul McCord @ 2:36 pm
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While we had an enthusiastic response to the Twitter survey, I’ve received a ton of email from folks asking me to get the survey on LinkedIn up as there seems to be a great deal of interest in seeing how other sellers are using LinkedIn and what their experience with it has been. So rather than waiting a couple of weeks before posting it as I had planned, we’re putting it up now while interest is high.

Take our Online Survey

As with the Twitter survey, the LinkedIn survey is relatively short—only 20 questions and should only take 4 or 5 minutes to complete.

I encourage you to head over and let us know what your experience with LinkedIn has been—good, bad, or indifferent.

As with the Twitter survey, results will be posted after a couple of weeks.

Not to get too far ahead, but after LinkedIn we’ll deal with Facebook and see how that’s worked out so far for sellers.

Take our Online Survey

June 25, 2011

So That’s How Sellers Are Using Twitter!

Filed under: Sales 2.0 — Paul McCord @ 11:23 am

Although the survey is still up and accepting responses, there has been great consistency in percentages on all of the questions since virtually the first day the survey opened.  Based on that consistency, I’ve decided to go ahead and present the results.

Question 1:  How long have they been using Twitter?
45% of respondents indicate they’ve been on Twitter for one to two years
30% have only been using it for six months or less
Only 25% have been on Twitter more than two years

Question 2: Why do they use Twitter?
31% indicate they use Twitter primarily for prospecting
25% use it to promote their business
16% to keep in touch with people within their company and their clients
15% use it just for the fun of it

Question 3:  How active are they?
51% Tweet at least once per day
77% Tweet at least once per week
16% Tweet once per month or less

Question 4:  How many followers do they have?
35% have 100 or fewer followers
The average is 1,384 followers

Question 5:  How many people do they follow?
35% follow fewer than 100 people
The average is 1.345

Question 6:  How many of the people they follow do they actually read their tweets?
21% read the tweets of 10 to 25 of the people they follow
The average was the tweets of 141 people (or 10.5% of the people the average respondent follows)
1 person indicated they regularly read the tweets of between 500 and 1.000 people

Question 7:  How many of the people they follow do they retweet their tweets?
29% retweet the tweets of 10-25 of the people they follow
The average respondent retweets the tweets of 46 people they follow (3.4% of the people the average respondent follows)

Question 8:  How many of the people they follow have they had personal contact with?
29% of respondents have had personal contact with 1-5 of the people they follow
29% of respondents have had personal contact with 10-25 of the people they follow
The average is personal contact with 60 (4.4% of the people the average respondent follows)

Question 9:  Twitter has:
34% say Twitter has exceeded their expectations
21% say they don’t know because they didn’t know what to expect
21% say Twitter has met their expectations
Not one person said Twitter has been a disappointment

So what does this mean for sellers?  Well, based on the averages, it means that you are probably really only reaching about 10% of your followers–and it’s really tough getting your tweets retweeted.

On the other hand, even the 16% of respondents who indicate they seldom if ever post a tweet think Twitter has had some value for them

 

Up next we’ll be looking at how sellers use LinkedIn.

 

June 22, 2011

Get Rid of Your Seagulls Before They Devour You

Filed under: business,Client Relationships,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 10:34 am
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My wife Debbie and I have an 18 month old grandson, Colton.  Knowing that we’ll soon be watching animated movies with him, we’ve been catching up on them every chance we get.  Not having watched them much in the last twenty years or so, I’m amazed at how many there are—and how good some of them are.

In Finding Nemo, as the action progresses toward Sydney Harbor, we witness a large group of Seagulls fighting for food.  The Seagulls know only one word which they repeat incessantly—“mine.”  Their dialog is a constant stream of “Mine, mine, mine, mine,” as they try to grab and fight for whatever food there might be.  And they’re not the least bit inhibited in how they go about getting it; nor are they concerned about how their actions might be impacting those around them.  Their only concern is for themselves and what’s in it for them.

Do they remind you of anyone?

If you said some salespeople, you’d be right, of course. 

But those aren’t the ones I’m thinking of.

Instead, I’m thinking of a group—hopefully a small group—that virtually every seller in the world knows all too well—some of their prospects, customers, and clients.

We all have them in our pipeline and in our client database.  They bleed us dry with their constant cry of “mine, mine, mine,’ with unreasonable demands and never-ending attempts to get lower and still lower prices.

This small set of prospects and clients take up far more time and energy than they are worth.  Yet most of us dutifully take care of them, even when we know it is to the determent of our other prospects and clients.

What should we be doing with this flock of self-centered Seagulls?

Get rid of them.  Turn them loose and let them suck the blood out of your competition.

There is no rule that says you can’t get rid of prospects and clients.  It’s your sales business; you can keep or get rid of anyone you like, and you must do some culling in order to maintain a healthy business.

If you have Seagulls as clients, get rid of them.  If when you prospect you come across a Seagull, eliminate them from your prospecting list

We all want and need sales, but prospects and clients who only know the word “mine” aren’t going to do anything for you except ultimately cost you business and money.  Shoo them away before they devour you.

June 16, 2011

How Do People Really Use Twitter? Please Take a Short Survey

Filed under: Sales 2.0 — Paul McCord @ 12:41 pm
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A few weeks ago I, in conjunction with Richardson Sales, produced a general survey on how salespeople are using social media. 

Although the results were most interesting, we didn’t have the opportunity to get very deep in our questions about any one social media platform.  Over the next weeks I am going to be doing several short surveys that get a bit deeper into how various social media platforms are being use.

The first short survey is about Twitter.

You can access the survey here:

Take our Online Survey

It’s short—probably take less than two minutes to complete as it only has 9 questions.

Take the survey and then check back in a couple of weeks to see how others are using Twitter—and what the overall view of it is.

June 11, 2011

Understand the Four Pillars of a Referral and You’ll Get More and Better Referrals

Filed under: business,lead generation,marketing,Personal Marketing,prospecting,Referral Selling,sales,selling,small business — Paul McCord @ 12:56 pm
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At first glance, a referral is a pretty simple thing.  For most salespeople, managers, and trainers, a referral is just a name and phone number that a client has given the salesperson once the salesperson has completed the sale and has done a good job for the client.

Once a salesperson has received a referral, contacting the referred party is just as simple.  The salesperson either will call the referred party mentioning to him or her that the client, which they know, referred the salesperson to them, or will ask the client to write a referral letter to the prospect and then the salesperson will call the prospect after they have received the letter.  A very simple, straightforward process.

Unfortunately, this process is totally and completely wrong, and has been proven by millions of salespeople to not work worth a darn. Nevertheless, this is what is taught in almost every sales course in the world.  And not only is it a waste of time and effort, it deceives the salespeople who don’t succeed with it into believing that the fault lies with them, not with a “system” that doesn’t work.

Generating a large number of high quality referrals requires far more than “doing a good job and asking for referrals.”  It requires a systematic process of planting referral seeds, watering them at every chance, weeding out problems and issues, and then reaping the rewards. 

If you want to generate a large number of high quality referrals from your clients, you must understand what a referral is based on.

A Referral is Based on a Foundation with Four Pillars-and you can control 3 of them:

The relationship between you and your client:  you can control this pillar of the foundation.  By instituting the full client relationship building process in detailed in Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income: Sales Success through Client Referrals (John Wiley and Sons, 2007), you can create a strong relationship with your client built on mutual trust.  Clients don’t give referrals because they like you or even because you did a good job.  Clients hate to give referrals and unless they have a deep trust that you will not embarrass them and that you’ll deal honestly with the prospect they refer, they won’t be willing to give quality referrals.

Your client’s purchasing experience: you can control this pillar of the foundation.  You must discover exactly what your client’s expectations and priorities are, then meet-, and hopefully exceed them.  You cannot afford to guess or “think” you know what these are-you must know exactly and you can only do that by discussing them with your client and then making sure you meet them or exceed them-nothing less will do.

The relationship between your client and the prospect: you have no control over this pillar.  Clients will refer you to people they have very strong, positive relationships with and people they have very negative relationships with.  If the prospect trusts and respects our client, some that trust and respect will be automatically imbued to you.  On the other hand, if the prospect distrusts or doesn’t respect your client, some of that distrust or disrespect will also be imbued to you.  Your job is to find out exactly what the relationship between client and prospect is and then plan you approach accordingly.

Your initial contact with the prospect: you control this pillar also.  If you have built your relationship with the client properly, your client will be happy to contact the prospect in whatever method you desire.  As outlined in Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income, there are a number of methods of contacting clients, each with their own pros and cons, depending on the strength or weakness of the client/prospect relationship.

As seen above, you have control of the majority of the pillars upon which a referral is based.  If any of the above is weak, your likelihood of generating quality referrals will decline and the weakness must be made up elsewhere.  In actuality, if one of the first two segments is weak, you will not be getting quality referrals-period.  However, you can mitigate the affects of the last two.

If the relationship between client and prospect is weak, use a stronger contact method.  Moreover, if the contact method is weak, convert the method into a stronger one.  For example, if your contact method is a phone call to a prospect who has a weak relationship with your client, try to bring in one or two other clients the prospect may know by reputation to build additional credibility.  Better yet, try to arrange a conference call between the prospect and your client.

Generating a large number of quality sales isn’t done by chance or luck, and neither is generating a large number of high quality referrals. Just as you need a well thought out process to consistently sell, you need a well thought out process to generate quality referrals.   You can significantly increase the volume and the success of your referrals if you understand the dynamics that generate quality referrals and then control those dynamics.

June 6, 2011

Guest Article: “Let the Customer Define Value,” by Michael Boyette

Filed under: Client Relationships — Paul McCord @ 7:42 am
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Let the Customer Define Value
by Micheal Boyette

The idea that salespeople must add value for their customers seems obvious. But what does added value really mean? Free technical support? Extra bells and whistles? Playoff tickets? Does it mean spending more time with customers, troubleshooting problems and acting as a consultant?

Or do those efforts detract from the value you provide?

Tech support may be a liability if it’s delivered poorly. Bells and whistles may make customers feel they’re paying for stuff they don’t want. Those playoff tickets may feel like a cheap bribe. And all that extra TLC? The customer may be thinking, “I wish they’d leave me alone so I can get some work done.”

The reality: There’s no single best way to add value. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

The value definition
It’s tempting to think that you can lavish so much extra value on customers that you’ll automatically win more of their business and make competitors wither away.

But many who have pursued this path discover they’ve added costs (in time, if not money),and that the “added value” isn’t valued or rewarded by the market. Instead of becoming more competitive, they become less so.

The problem with this approach: It assumes that customers see value the same way you do.

Value is defined by a simple equation:  Value = Benefits – Cost

The salesperson who delivers the most benefits at the least cost wins every time. But it is the customer who defines each part of that equation. And different customers, even in the same industry, have different notions of value.

Key to value
The key to adding value is to understand what the customer considers a benefit, what the customer considers a cost, and how he or she calculates the relative value of each.

Some buyers, for example, will think the greatest benefit you can offer is not to waste their time. They don’t want to meet with you to talk about their business problems. They won’t read the news clips you diligently mail to them every month.

What they want – and will gladly pay for – is for you to make problems quietly go away. Others customers do the calculation differently. They may define value in terms of the attention they get from you. If things run too smoothly, they may wonder why they need you.

Accept thy customers
Like anyone else, salespeople have their own value equations. And when a customer doesn’t see value the same way, many assume the customer just needs to be educated more.

Yes, sometimes buyers truly don’t understand what you’re offering. But more often, they just value it differently. You won’t make headway trying to persuade the buyer to accept your definition of value. It’s more effective to align your values with theirs.

A flexible approach
For each individual customer, understand how they calculate the value equation. Ask yourself:

 

  • What does this customer consider a benefit? How much value does he or she place on these benefits?
  • What does this customer consider a cost? How big are those costs?
  • Using the customer’s value equation, how can I add benefits without increasing costs?
  • How can I reduce costs without cutting benefits?

Michael Boyette is the managing editor of Selling Essentials newsletter, executive editor of the Rapid Learning Institute’s Selling Essentials e-learning site, and editor of the Top Sales Dog blog. He’s also managed marketing/PR programs for DuPont, Tyco Electronics, and US Healthcare, among others. In addition, he’s authored ten books on a variety of subjects for such publishers as Simon & Schuster, Dutton and Holt. Contact Michael via email at topsalesdog@rapidlearninginstitute.com.

 

June 3, 2011

Hey, Now, Just Who’s Qualifying Whom Here?

Filed under: Client Relationships,Handling Prospect,prospecting,sales,selling,trust — Paul McCord @ 10:09 am
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Recently I wrote an article titled “How to Take the Sting Out of the Price Question Early in the Sale.”  In the course of the article I argued that it is natural for a prospect to ask about price–and often to do so too early in the sale, before the seller has had an opportunity to create real value for the prospect—because price is one of the factors prospects use as they seek to qualify the seller and the purchasing opportunity.

In response to that article I received numerous emails and comments from salespeople and sales leaders that they had never thought about the idea that the prospect is qualifying them and their offering at the same time they are trying to qualify the prospect.

Yet the prospect’s qualifying the seller and the seller’s value/solution is the crux of the whole sales process.

We are all familiar with the concepts of qualifying the prospect, investigating needs, developing a solution and creating real value for the prospect, overcoming objections, and the other aspects of making a sale.  All of these concepts are views of the sales process from the seller’s perspective.  These are the constructs that we as sellers tend to concentrate on.

We then view the prospect’s questions as either worrisome objections that are nothing but a smokescreen or are out-n-out buying signals.  For many of us, the questions and actions of the prospect are either those of an enemy or those of someone telling us they are ready to buy.

What if neither of those choices is true?

What if all of those questions and the statements by the prospect, instead of being obstacles to our sale or indications of their desire to consummate the purchase, are simply questions and statements to help them qualify us and our offering? 

What if they are doing the same to us as we are doing to them?

If that is the case, then that means we’re neither dealing with an enemy to be overcome nor are we dealing with someone asking us to close them.  Instead we’re dealing with a human being who wants to know whether or not we’re trustworthy, whether or not our offering is appropriate for them, whether or not we’re wasting their time.

In other words, they are in the process of qualifying us just as much as we’re qualifying them.  When we qualify a prospect we ask questions and probe to discover who we’re dealing with and what we might be able to do for them.  When we’re asking questions we’re not trying to play the ‘gotcha’ game.  Most of us aren’t trying to trap them into a sale.  We’re honestly seeking information that allows us to know whether or not we are in front of a real prospect with a real need that we can help solve in a way that produces real value for them.

The prospect is going through the same process with us.  Whether they are conscious of it or not, they’re trying to determine whether or not we are someone they want to do business with and then, whether or not our product/service/company presents any real solid worthwhile value for them.

The traditional terms sellers think in—overcoming objections, closing the sale, etc.—tend to set up an adversarial relationship where we are on the lookout for the dreaded objection and the opportunity to pounce with the closing question.

However, if we recognize that the sales process involves both parties qualifying one another and that the qualifying process involves the investigation and questioning of each party, we can relax and begin to address the prospect’s questions for what they really are—a legitimate desire to find out who we are and whether or not we are someone they want to work with.

Go forth and qualify—and let yourself be qualified.  It’s a whole lot more fun to sell when you’re working with a prospect to mutually qualify one another than it is to try to out fox and overcome an adversary.

June 1, 2011

Guest Article: “Change Your Words, Improve Your Results to Increase Sales,” by Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Filed under: Communication,Handling Prospect,sales,selling — Paul McCord @ 7:49 am
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Change Your Words, Improve Your Results to Increase Sales
 by Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Change or die writes Alan Deutschman. Yet many small business owners including crazy busy sales people continue to do what they have always done and then complain about not being able to increase sales.  This seems to be a continual whine especially from those engaged in coaching, consulting or those who provided other types of professional business services.

During the last couple of years as the market contracted due to global economic forces, more and more executives have faced early retirement to reduction in force. Many of these individuals have started their own consulting or coaching businesses, some by buying franchises and others starting from scratch.

With an even more crowded marketplace filled with hungry new small business owners, sometimes finding new clients willing to let loose of their profits to stuff into someone else’s pockets becomes a greater challenge.  So what is the eager entrepreneur supposed to do to avoid starving?

Maybe it is time to take a walk through a grocery store, some other retail store or even an automobile dealership to find that answer. What do you see?   Shelves, aisles and car lots filled with products. These products range from good, better or best. 

In grocery stores, you can purchase hamburger at 80% lean, 88% lean or 95% lean. Then you can hop over to your favorite retail store and find similar pricing.

Car manufacturers have this good, better or best product selection honed to a razor sharp edge. Even the most economical cars can quickly go from good to best with the additional equipment from automatic transmissions to sun-roof or is it moon roof?

What would happen if you or your organization embraced this good, better best approach with your pricing? And then instead of offering a multi thousand dollar project covering 4 months, provide monthly pricing for a six to 12 months. Given that execution is still a problem for many small business owners, by becoming a more long term supportive buying partner you have potentially demonstrated not only your value, but your understanding of your client’s cash flow.  You’re your trust and emotional connections have been even more firmly established. Sales Training Coaching Tip:  Trust and emotions are Sales Buying Rules One and Two.

If a potential client wants to improve his or her situation, why should that want have a negative impact on his or her cash flow?  Of course, the ego driven, I need sales quota now individual sales person or sales manager may respond with “We don’t do that!” or “This is our firm and non-negotiable pricing!”  At this juncture, the salesperson or sales manager’s wants are going before the potential customer’s wants.  This desire is not a good way to earn a sale or better yet repeat business.

Case Study on Good, Better, Best

The Problem

A business coach required a quick infusion of new sales as cash flow was becoming a serious challenge.  He looked to using an assessment that had worked as a marketing freebie to build the relationship as a quick solution to securing additional quick revenue.

The Solution

By reconfiguring or repositioning the deliverables for this assessment into 3 tiers of good, better, best, he was able to provide additional value for each offering.  This reconfiguration allowed him to even increase his price for the best offering.  Sales Training Coaching Tip:  Reconfiguration or repositioning is one of the three factors in providing sustainable business solutions.

The Results

Within 3 days of this new good, better, best approach, he met with a potential client who had been referred to him. During the meeting, she asked if he had any information about this assessment. My client pulled out a one page marketing flyer that briefly explained the good, better, best solutions. His potential client read the information, then pulled out her checkbook and wrote a check for the best solution.

Beyond having a check in hand, the good, better, best solution reduced his sales cycle time by three quarters to two thirds.  Another result is the potential client had the perception the sales decision was all in her control.

Why Good, Better, Best Works

There are several reasons why the good, better, best approach works. First is the inherent preexisting value within each of the words.  Since people buy on value unique to them (the Third Sales Buying Rule), they have already predetermined the value associated with each of these three words.

Another reason are the words good, better, best elicit a far stronger emotional reaction than words such as option or alternative.  Since the Second Sales Buying Rule is people buy first on emotion, then justify that decision with logic, emotions are key.

Finally, this approach helps to overcome one if not more of the Five Sales Objections of you, your company, your solutions, your price and your delivery.

For the last several years, I have lived by this motto:  Change your words; Improve your results.  By understanding the impact of words and aligning my practice to those new words, I have been able to increase sales. Maybe it is time for you to consider a similar change in your pricing and business model?

Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Author of Be the Red Jacket  http://bit.ly/1Q9mnV219.508.2859– CT (nearChicago,IL)
www.increase-sales-coach.com

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