Sales and Sales Management Blog

April 30, 2012

Book Review: The Social Media Strategist: Build a Successful Program from the Inside Out

Filed under: Book Reviews — Paul McCord @ 2:31 pm
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What are some of the most difficult challenges in social media in recent years that you can think of?  Would being put in charge of social media for a company in the middle of a death spiral like GM be one of them?  I’d sure think so—trying to help turn around the image of a company that everyone knew was headed for bankruptcy and that many, many people felt should be allowed to die and who received massive, unpopular government dollar, creating the new cynical name of Government Motors.

That sounds like a pretty tough gig to me.  And if one could even partially pull it off they’d be able to make a pretty good argument that they know a little something about how to successfully use social media.

The guy who successfully directed GM’s social media program during that dark and stressful time is Christopher Barger, author of The Social Media Strategist: Build a Successful Program from the Inside Out (McGraw Hill: 2012).  If you are in marketing or social media for a big company, consult with big companies about social media, or would like to do either, without a doubt The Social Media Strategist needs to be on your reading list.

And that’s the rub of the book.  Barger does a great job of laying out how to build a top of the line social media program within a large organization, but despite how good the advice is, an awful lot of it just doesn’t apply to smaller companies.  That doesn’t mean the book isn’t useful for smaller companies, it simply means you’ll have to really pick and choose what is appropriate for your situation.

Barger begins by looking at the need to get a champion for the social media effort in a senior position to clear the way for its success, to working with the company’s attorneys, to selecting the individual that will be the face of the social media program.

A good deal of time is devoted to finding and selecting the person who will be the key social media contact—what Barger calls the Social Media Evangelist.  Barger emphasizes the need for the focal person to be someone with real experience and not some young “kid” put in the place because they’re social media savvy.  According to Barger, the social media evangelist must not only be technically savvy, they must have the wisdom to go along with it—and that isn’t going to be some intern or someone with little business experience.

In addition, Barger discusses a number of “deal breakers” when it comes to finding the ideal evangelist.  Some deal breakers are:

  • ·         Overemphasizing their personal brand to the potential detriment of the company’s
  • ·         No formal marketing or PR background
  • ·         Professionally immature
  • ·         No proven previous results

Likewise, Barger advises those seeking a social media position to be aware of what should be their deal breakers such as the company not willing to allocate the necessary resources or viewing the position as a kiddy position or having no clear executive champion for social media.

For smaller companies, not to negate its importance to large companies, Barger’s discussion of the “how to” of social media will be most useful as he deals with how to work with bloggers, how to work conferences and events, and how to use working locally to have a much bigger impact.

And for all, his treatment of what to do when disaster strikes is excellent.  Of particular note are his six most likely causes of crisis in social media and how to deal with them, including when an individual in the company causes an issue, when someone decides to complain on the web, and even when the whole organization melts down.

Barger loads the book with real life examples that give a clear view of not only his point but what has created real crisis for companies in the real world.

If you’re in social media or want to be, pick up a copy of The Social Media Strategist—you can’t read it without learning and knowing you’re learning from someone who really knows what they’re talking about because they’ve been there themselves.

April 1, 2012

Book Review: Power Questions by Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas

Filed under: Book Reviews — Paul McCord @ 5:05 pm
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Despite what many think, selling isn’t about being the guy who “never met a stranger,” or the person who’s the life of the party, or even the person that makes friends easily.  Selling is about connecting with people, listening carefully to uncover needs and wants, and then solving those needs and wants.

In short, selling is about communication.

It’s really that simple.

It’s also that difficult.

What’s so hard about selling?  Most of us have been taught, whether overtly or not, that selling is about talking, about telling, about overpowering the prospect with verbiage.

In reality it is about talking little and listening a great deal.

The question how do you get the prospect talking so you have something to listen to?  One of the truisms in selling today is that you listen to the answers to the astute questions you ask the prospect that gets them to open up and give you the factual and emotional information you need.

That is, actually, great guidance.  The problem is then, what questions?

Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas in their just published book Power Questions: Build Relationships, Win New Business, and Influence Others (John Wiley & Sons: 2012) present the reader with 337 well thought out questions that will help you dig deep without offending and give you the information you need to really understand your prospect’s situation and goals.

What are some of these essential questions?  Here’s a small sample:

  • “How will this further your mission and goals?”
  • “Can you tell me about your plans?”
  • “Why do you want to do that?”
  • “What have we decided today?”
  • “What’s the most important thing we should be discussing today?”
  • “What prompted your interest in our meeting today?”
  • :”If an effective solution is found, how will affect your own job?”
  • “What does the company expect out of you this year?”

So, you say, there’s nothing new about any of these questions?  You’re right.  It isn’t the questions that make the book worth the investment; it is how Sobel and Panas address the core of the book.

Rather than simply tell you to ask a particular question, the authors give you guidance of when to ask, and for over 35 key questions they give you a number of follow-up questions to help you dig deeper and keep the prospect engaged.. 

Better yet, once you’ve worked your way through the first 30 odd questions and have learned how the authors follow up the initial question you should be well versed in where to go with the additional 293 questions in the back of the book.

The way NOT to read Power Questions is to simply skim through and pick out the questions themselves; if that’s your intent, save your money.

Instead take the time to learn how to ask quality questions and then listen to the answer.

Many, if not most, may think this too simplistic a book.  They’d be wrong.  Very wrong.

Get a copy of Power Questions, read it and then apply it and you will not only improve your sales, you’ll discover that questions can improve all relationships in your life.

Connect with me on Twitter: @paul_mccord
or on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/McCordTraining

February 14, 2012

Book Review: High-Profit Selling, by Mark Hunter

Filed under: Book Reviews — Paul McCord @ 11:48 am
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In the great big world of sales books there are two types of books—those that purport to take the “big picture” perspective of selling and those that are designed to have actual value in the real world by providing real, workable, effective strategies to help sellers and sales leaders improve their performance.

And within the group intended to deliver usable information there is a further breakdown into those that are simply fluff and filler and those that really deliver on their promise to help sellers become better sellers.

If you have spent any time scanning the sales books in Amazon or Barnes and Noble you know there’s no dearth of “big picture” books (books that although fun to read leave one wondering why they wasted their time reading it because ultimately it really didn’t have anything applicable in it).  You also know there are thousands of the “this is your key to sales success” strategy books that for the most part simply lay out a couple of time worn strategies and use stories as filler to put some pages to the book.

Thankfully you will find that there are a few books that deliver real value; that aren’t stuffed with fluff just to make the book thicker; and that provide a broad range of effective strategies all designed and coordinated to accomplish a specific goal.

One of those few books of real value is Mark Hunter’s new book, High-Profit Selling: Win The Sale Without Compromising On Price (AMACOM:  2012).

Hunter comes from the trenches of sales—he spent almost two decades selling for Fortune 100 companies.  His experience is that of a seller, not a theorist or seller wanna be.

Those years of real world selling, combined with his years as a sales trainer are at the heart of High-Profit Selling, and all designed to do one thing—help you acquire more business without compromising on price.

In today’s tough economy it is common for sellers and sales leaders to think in terms of capturing business by cutting price.  Hunter argues—and presents the tools necessary to do so—that you don’t have to cut price and profit in order to win business even in today’s troubled economy.

Instead of cutting price, learn how to create the value that justifies your price.

High-Profit Selling presents a comprehensive approach to creating value to support your price.  Hunter’s concentration is on value building and he thus spends a good deal of time on how to dig down to uncover prospect needs and issues, the fine points of communication, and leveraging knowledge, but he doesn’t neglect the equally critical issues of how to prospect, how to deal with price objections, and how to deal effectively—and profitably—with RFP’s, RFQ’s and professional buyers.

In addition to the standard one-on-one selling situation, Hunter addresses the need for an on-line presence, how to become a thought leader in your industry, and how to get your information out onto the internet in a manner that will inform and attract prospects.

It is common for many readers of sales books to skip around and read the parts that sound interesting and to ignore the rest.  In some cases, the reader skips the greater part of the book.

First, I’d advise readers not to approach High-Profit Selling as a magazine with each chapter being an article that can be read or skipped—read the entire book and read it in order.

Second, if you simply cannot control yourself and you must read the book as you would Reader’s Digest; by all means do not skip the “One Percent Continuous Improvement Process” section in the last chapter.  I suspect that a great many readers will skip this section and they’ll suffer because of it.  In the space of just about three pages Mark presents a very simple concept that can literally change your career in a matter of months.  By concentrating on improving a single aspect of your selling each week by just one percent you will improve your sales performance by almost 70% over the course of a year.  What would your pipeline—and bank account—look like if your performance was improved  by 60 or 70% by the end of the year?

If you’re looking for a well written, high value book to help you increase your sales, High-Profit Selling has just hit the streets and is in stock at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Books-a-Million.  I encourage you to pick up a copy and learn how to make your numbers without compromising on profit.

December 5, 2011

Book Review: Bottom-Line Selling by Jack Malcolm

Filed under: Book Reviews — Paul McCord @ 12:12 pm
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Over the past couple of decades sellers, in particular sellers who sell to buyers in the executive suite, have been encouraged to sell solutions and to convert the solution into financial terms—demonstrating what impact the proposed solution will have economically on the company.

Although excellent advice, most often sellers have been told what to do but not how to do it.  Addressing the financial concerns of executives means having to have done the proper research, having analyzed the proper data, and being able to recognize where and how the seller’s solution will impact that data.

Unfortunately, a great many sellers don’t have an MBA.  In fact, most have had little exposure to reading and analyzing sophisticated financial reports—and even many that have, really don’t know how to effectively use them to gain insight into how they might be able to impact the prospect company.

Jack Malcolm in Bottom-Line Selling: The Sales Professional’s Guide to Improving Customer Profits (Booktrope:  2011 Second Edition) not only provides an excellent course in how to read and interpret the information and numbers contained in a company’s annual report, but it shows the seller how to convert that basic information into a financial solution that communicates real value to the executive in terms that are meaningful to him or her.

Bottom-Line Selling goes well beyond the “how to” of research and analysis which are important but ultimately useless if you don’t know what to do with the information.  Simply knowing a prospect’s financial rations won’t get you anywhere.

Anyone with a calculator and sheet with the ratio formulas can work out a prospect company’s various financial ratios from the information on their financial statements.  In order to make that information useful, you have to understand not only what that information means to the prospect now, but how you can impact and change those numbers.  Only when you understand that can you begin to have a cogent conversation with the prospect that will address their core concerns—and unless you can do that, you stand little chance of breaking through and really engaging.

Malcolm breaks the book into three sections:

Understanding: details the “how” of analyzing and understanding a prospect’s financial statements—understanding what has happened in the prospect’s past.

Fixing:  discusses how to understand what the prospect does, that is how the prospect conducts business—and how your solution can help improve the prospect’s ability to conduct his or her business and, thus, improve their financial position.

Selling:  This is where, in my opinion, Malcolm really shines.  Selling is far more than understanding numbers or business processes or even how your product or service will change those—selling is about influencing people.  As Malcolm points out, if selling were only about numbers “the accountants would be earning all of the commission dollars.”  In this section Malcolm goes beyond the numbers to how to get to the right decision makers, how to make the emotional impact, and how to effectively construct a financial proposal.

Bottom-line Selling isn’t a book that you’ll sit down and read in a single sittingIt isn’t meant to be.  It is a serious book for serious sellers.  It is a book that is meant to be digested in bits as each individual bit is important to putting together the whole–and each bit must be digested fully in order to move on to the next bit.  But as the bits add up, your ability to discover issues that you can address and improve for your prospects—and to address them in ways that are both meaningful and moving to them—will not only improve, but your confidence in being able to find and connect with executive level decision makers and to influence them will improve—and with that your sales will improve.

Grab a copy of Bottom-line Selling—and plan to spend a good deal of time with it—you’ll be glad you did.

 

Follow Paul on Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/paul_mccord

October 27, 2011

Book Review: The Key to the C-Suite

Filed under: Book Reviews — Paul McCord @ 10:10 am
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At what level in the company do you sell?  Most sellers don’t sell at the C-level, much less directly to the CEO.  Those who do sell at the C-level face a daunting task of not only gaining the attention of the executive they are trying to reach, but once connected to the executive they must sell in a way that drives the executive to make a positive decision. 

Learning how to engage the C-suite in a way that produces the conversation and the decision the seller wants is difficult and a skill that many sellers just never master.  Michael Nick’s new book, The Key to the C-Suite: What You Need to Know To Sell Successfully To Top Executives (AMACOM: 2011), guides the reader through understanding what is key to the C-level executive and how to address their concerns and needs.

Right out of the box in chapter 1 Nick zeros in on what he considers the key to selling to the C-level executive—metrics.  Nick features 10 key metrics such as earnings, return on equity, sales per employee and others that are of critical importance to top executives. These metrics are going to be the featured topics throughout the book as using these to find the prospect’s pain and then to create a solution that will address those pain points.

From Nick’s point of view selling at the C-level is in essence determining one’s value to the executive as defined by how you can impact those problem metrics and then how to construct a case that will demonstrate how your solution will move the metrics in the direction the executive wants to see them move.

In a very real sense this is a numbers book because Nick’s argument is that the C-level buys on numbers.  Nick focuses on the numbers, on making sure the analysis is objective, that the data presented is accurate, that printed material is checked carefully to make sure the math is correct and there are no spelling or grammar mistakes, that all of the potential concrete questions about the needs and the solution are addressed.

From the perspective of the objective sale—the concrete numbers and factual questions—The Key to the C-Suite is a top notch book.  I highly recommend it. 

However . . .

There’s more to selling to the C-suite than numbers and objective questions and answers.

Nick ignores the emotional side of the sales equation.  Yes, selling to top executives demands a great deal of specific knowledge about the prospect’s industry, company, and needs.  And it demands a real, workable solution that addresses real problems.  But sales, even at the C-level, are more than simple logical decisions.  They are also emotional decisions.  The decision maker has a number of emotional questions that must be dealt with such as what happens if the solution doesn’t work.  If it does work what does it mean personally for the decision maker?  Who should the decision make get buy-in from and if they can’t, what should they do? 

Certainly The Key to the C-Suite is well worth the investment and as said above, I encourage you get it and seriously consider implementing the process Nick lays out.  But also recognize that there is a whole side of selling to top executives that isn’t addressed in the book.  This is, however, an excellent presentation of one half of selling to the C-suite.

September 7, 2011

Book Review: The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

Filed under: Book Reviews — Paul McCord @ 2:51 pm
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Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson in their new book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation (Portfolio/Penguin: 2011) challenge traditional sales theory at its very core.  According to their study, the generally accepted view that in complex selling the Relationship Sellers are the most effective and key for building a high performance sales team is 100% wrong.  In fact, they argue, that of the 5 types of salespeople they identified: The Hard Worker; The Relationship Builder, The Lone Wolf, The Problem Solver, and the Challenger, the Relationship Builder was the worst performer by far.

Not buying it?

Well, they have some pretty good support—Neil Rackham for one.  Now although  Rackham hasn’t reached the level of deity—yet anyway—having him write the Foreword to the book and endorse their conclusion has to make one sit up and take the book seriously.

The Challenger Sale is based on a study of over 6,000 sales reps from across the globe and “representing every major industry, geography, and go-to-market model.”  The study is based on a survey of forty-five rep attributes which include attitudes, skills and behaviors, activities, and knowledge.

The study broke the various sellers they found into five types:

The Hard Worker: the rep “that shows up early, stays late, and is always willing to put in the extra effort.” 

The Relationship Builder: “is all about building and nurturing strong personal and professional relationships and advocates across the customer organization.”

The Lone Wolf: are deeply self-confident and follow their instincts, not the company rules

The Problem Solver: is “highly reliable and very detail-oriented.”  They make sure all the promises have been kept and focus on follow-up.

The Challenger:  “They’ve got a deep understanding of the customer’s business and use that understanding to challenge the customer’s thinking and teach them something new about how their company operates.”

When the authors examined each of these groups in terms of production, they discovered no significant difference between the five groups when they looked at average sellers.  In other words, anyone can be an average seller.  However, when they examined the top sellers in organizations they discovered a huge difference—the Challenger model created by far the most top performers while the Relationship Builder model was left in the dust by the other four models.

In percentage terms, the authors discovered that the Challenger model made up 39% of all the top producers.  The Relationship Builder model stumbled in at only 7% of all top producers.  (The Lone Wolf model came in at 25%, The Hard Worker at 17%, and The Problem Solver at 12%)

What does a Challenger sales rep do that is so different than the Relationship Builder?  While the Relationship Builder wants to create deep, strong, and warm relationships that defuse any tension, the Challenger seeks to create and build what the authors call constructive tension

According to Dixon and Adamson, the Challenger is “defined by the ability to do three things—teach, tailor, and take control—and to do this in the context of creative tension.”

The Challenger:

Teaches: “The thing that really sets Challenger reps apart is their ability to teach customers something new and valuable about how to compete in their market.”  It is about giving the customer a new and unique perspective.

Tailor: “While teaching is the defining attribute of being a Challenger, the ability to tailor the teaching message to different types of customers—as well as to different individuals within the customer organization—is what makes the pitch resonate with the customer. . . . Tailoring relies on the rep’s knowledge of the specific business priorities of whomever he or she is talking to—the specific outcomes they value most, the results they’re on the hook to deliver for their company.”

Take Control: The ability to assert and maintain control over the sale.  “This is all about the rep’s ability and willingness to stand their ground when the customer begins to push back.”

The good news is the authors say that the Challenger isn’t born a Challenger; they learn the skills that make them Challengers, so any seller can learn to be a Challenger, at least to some extent.

This, for many sellers and sales leaders, is the exact opposite of what they’ve been taught.  That traditional warm, fuzzy, relationship building, give ‘em all the time in world selling style, the authors say, is dead, dead, and gone.

They do, however, have a consolation prize for the relationship lover—Challengers have strong relationship building skills as a supplement to their Challenger selling skills.

Have I bought the Challenger model hook, line, and sinker?  Nope, not yet anyway.  But I’d be foolish not to take a good, long hard look at it when Neil Rackham buys into it.  Might be a good idea for you take a good look too when the book is released.  The release date is November 11—but head on over to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and put your order in, you’ll find it not only interesting, but it will challenge a great deal of what you think you know about salespeople.

August 26, 2011

Book Review: Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed

Filed under: Book Reviews — Paul McCord @ 12:27 pm

Whether you own your own business or are a salesperson responsible for generating your own sales, marketing is a major part of your business life.  In a world flooded with marketing messages where each marketer is trying to scream louder than the next, finding effective ways to get the word out to your target market is becoming increasingly difficult.

Author Patrick Schwerdtfeger  offers some sound advice and gives some solid help to  those in need of finding strategies to compete in a highly competitive marketing world in Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed: Leverage Resources, Establish Online Credibility, and Crush Your Competition (Wiley & Sons:  2011).

As the title indicates, Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed focuses on utilizing online resources and social media to find and reach quality prospects.  Schwerdtfeger contends that by learning to effectively use online marketing you can successfully compete with your competition—even the largest competitors—on a shoestring.

The book is a quick, easy read as it is broken into 79 chapters, each just two or three pages long. 

Naturally, such short chapters means that there is far more breadth than depth to the book.  That, however, doesn’t mean the book has little value as a serious resource for those seeking to learn how to increase their marketing effectiveness.  And although perfect as a beginner’s guide to internet marketing, Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed is likely to have some very useful tips for even highly experienced social media marketers.

Schwerdtfeger’s book is laid out in logical order—starting with a section to help you define your business model.  Chapters cover the basics such as developing your value proposition and elevator pitch to creating an e-mail list and writing your business plan.

All of these basics are in preparation for getting into the real marketing meat of the book.  Within 30 pages Schwerdtfeger has you researching keywords and writing positioning statements, understanding the strategy and content development of a website, including how to create content to build trust, increase your mailing list, and even drive revenue.

From there the book goes into developing a blog, optimizing your blog and website to drive traffic, understanding analytic data, and using shopping carts.

Schwerdtfeger than covers a large number of web resources that will help get your word out and bring in traffic such as blog directories, blog carnivals, and interacting with other bloggers.

Using email and articles, as well as forums and groups to market are covered in a number of chapters leading up to a discussion of four of the most critical social media platforms for the online marketer such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.  Schwerdtfeger dedicates multiple chapters to each of these four platforms, giving even the novice a good foundation for making them work effectively in their marketing plan.

For the serious seller or business owner who wants to maximize the potential of the web, Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed will not be the only resource they’ll need.  But it is an extremely helpful place to start as it covers a great amount of territory in only slightly more than 200 pages—and it concentrates on providing actionable guidance, not just introducing concepts.

May 29, 2011

Book Review: Social Boom: How to Master Business Social Media

Filed under: Book Reviews — Paul McCord @ 10:12 am
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Jeffrey Gitomer’s newest book, Social Boom: How to Master Business Social Media (Pearson Education as FT Press: 2011), comes at a time when the debate about the value and uses of social media for salespeople is reaching a crescendo.  So far 2011 has been as much or more about debating the value of social media as it has been about using social media.

Gitomer refuses to participate in the debate—he flatly states that social media is a critical tool for all salespeople and that they must learn how to use it effectively.  No debate; no argument; just fact as far as Gitomer is concerned.

Alright, so the premise of the book is that you must participate in social media.  The question is then, what do you do and how do you do it?

As is typical with a Gitomer book which is short and has a great deal of white space making it quick and easy to read, he tells you what you need to do but doesn’t put a tremendous amount of flesh on the bones.

Social Boom covers most of the main social media platforms from LinkedIn to Facebook to Twitter to YouTube to what he considers the glue that holds the social media effort together—one’s blog.

Although the book is typically short and each subject is covered quickly and in brief, Social Boom is a really fine primer for anyone wondering about how to enter the social media world or how to finally make sense of what they’ve been trying to do with social media.  Gitomer’s guidance is both solid and spot on.

As valuable as Gitomer’s insights and guidance on social media is, his letting us see how he conducts his own social media campaign. 

No rational person who knows who Jeffrey Gitomer is will argue that he is an absolute master at promotion.  He knows not only how to promote himself and his material, he knows where to promote it.  If he, an absolute master of marketing and promotion, is taking social media seriously, doesn’t it make sense that you take a serious look at what social media might mean for you?

Throughout the book Gitomer relates how he uses social media and why he does what he does—and he wants you to follow his example in order for you to create and develop your reputation as an expert.  

How does he do this?  A couple of examples:

  • Go to twitter and you’ll find thousands of men and women posting quotes.  Almost all of these quotes are from well known figures such as Churchill, Ziglar, Gandhi, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, etc.  Gitomer’s quotes?  You won’t find him quoting Joan of Arc or Dante.  Gitomer quotes only Gitomer.  Why?  His object is to reinforce his position as the expert, not someone else’s.  His advice is that you do the same.
  • Gitomer discusses his Ace of Sales website several times in the book including a short chapter towards the end of the book.  Blatant advertising?  Yes.  Just blatant advertising?  Not at all—and it is another behavior of his to mimic. 

Certainly the chapter on Ace of Sales is marketing, but he can do it because it fits and adds value to the discussion.  He is taking sales (selling Ace of Sales), turning it into education (giving a platform that will help you learn the ropes and quickly establish a social media presence), and turning it back into selling (recommending you not only take a look at the site but that you subscribe). 

The lesson to be learned?  Just as it makes sense to pay attention and mimic what the top sellers do, it makes sense to mimic what one of the best promoters does.  Establish yourself as an expert, turn your selling into education and then turn it back to selling.  And there are certainly more lessons to be learned from the way Jeffrey works his own social media campaign as well.

If you’re thinking about whether to get involved with social media or if you’re just not sure how to use it, pick up a copy of Social Boom.  Even if you think you’ve got it figured out, you’d be well served to pick it up to learn more about how Gitomer became and is Gitomer—then do the same for yourself.

May 25, 2011

Book Review: How to Market to People Not Like You

Filed under: Book Reviews — Paul McCord @ 2:15 pm
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When I received How to Market to People Not Like You: ‘Know It or Blow It’ Rules for Reaching Diverse Customers (Wiley & Sons:  2011) in the mail I wasn’t sure what to expect based on the title.  Was this going to be a course in PC etiquette; a simple, common sense review of how to deal with people; or a serious attempt to deal with a serious marketing issue?

Although I found some of each of the first two above, what really dominates the book is very practical guidance on how to identify and connect with markets that you might not be reaching–or even comfortable with approaching at the moment.

In the first third of the book author Kelly McDonald strives to lay out a workable program to help you find and research new markets.  From learning how to get into the minds and discover the values of customers in a new market to learning how to communicate in their language, McDonald presents simple strategies that will help you change your marketing, customer service or other areas of your company to meet the wants and needs of the members of a new market.

The majority of the meat of the book is found in the remainder of the book where McDonald discusses specific market segments such as various age groups, women, various ethnic groups, gays and lesbians, rural markets vs. metropolitan markets, people with specific hobbies, interests or political views, and more and the specific quirks and values that you must be aware of if you want to successfully market to that group.

Each chapter is filled with short stories and examples of the ideas and principles she is trying to communicate.  For instance when discussing how a business might need to change in order to better serve the Hispanic market, McDonald relates a conversations she had with the sales manager of a car dealership who explained why it was important for the company to change its dress code for their salespeople during the heat of the summer from khaki shorts to khaki slacks (sorry, you gotta read the book to find out why), or what you must know about marketing to Boomers (I’m a Boomer, her observation is correct—and really painful for a Boomer to read).

The guidance in How to Market to People Not Like You is very straightforward, easy to understand, and for the most part easy to implement.  No matter what your product or service, there is probably at least one significant market you’re missing which means you’re missing sales—and very possibly big dollars.  More than likely you’re missing more than just one potential market.

Pick up a copy of How to Market to People Not Like You at any fine bookseller and find out where you can be adding more sales and thus more dollars to your bottom-line.

April 27, 2011

Book Review: Slow Down, Sell Faster

Filed under: Book Reviews — Paul McCord @ 9:21 am
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As a seller, do you want to slow down your sales process?  Making your sales cycle longer than it currently is sounds crazy doesn’t it? 

What can happen if you slow down your sales process?  Well, the prospect could change their mind if they’re thinking about buying; they could get a better offer from one of your competitors; their needs could change, leaving you out in the cold; the economy could change, leaving them without the ability to buy; in fact, all kinds of bad things could happen.

But on the other hand, according to Kevin Davis in Slow Down, Sell Faster! Understand Your Customer’s Buying Process and Maximize Your Sales (AMACOM: 2011), if you slow down your selling process you could actually end up selling faster than when you were trying to sell as fast as possible.

So, riddle me this: how can doing something slower actually be faster?

Davis argues that the secret to selling faster by selling slower is moving from a sales oriented process to a buyer oriented process, that is, from trying to sell based on your sales process to trying to help your prospect buy based on their buying process.

The crux of Slow Down, Sell Faster is understanding and developing the skills of the 8 roles of buying-focused selling.  The process of buying-focused selling involves working with the prospect to help lead them through their natural buying process, and to do so salespeople have to work through each of the 8 roles that come into play as the buyer works through their buying process.

The 8 roles of buying-focused selling:

  1. 1.     The Student: understanding the customer, their company, and how your products or services can fit.
  2. 2.    The Doctor: diagnosing the real needs of the customer
  3. 3.    The Architect: designing customer-focused solutions
  4. 4.    The Coach: analyze the competition and develop a game plan to win the sale
  5. 5.    The Therapist: understand and resolve the buyer’s fears
  6. 6.    The Negotiator: reaching mutual commitment
  7. 7.    The Teacher: teaching your customer how to maximize value from your solution
  8. 8.    The Farmer: cultivate customer satisfaction and loyalty

 By slowing down your sales process and engaging the prospect using a process that matches their buying process you can, according to Davis, end up closing sales much quicker.

And the argument makes sense.

Most of us have spent our sales careers trying to force our prospects to do what we want by demanding they conform to the way we sell—but when we buy for ourselves or our companies, we typically resist the efforts of the person trying to sell us until we are satisfied we’re making the right choice and have worked through our fears and concerns.  Most of us will ignore the entreaties of the salesperson and make our decisions our way and on our timeframe.

If that is the way we buy, why would we think others aren’t doing exactly the same thing?  If they are, doesn’t it make sense to help them work through their process instead of trying to force our process on them?

It’s time to move away from trying to force prospects to buy our way and to begin helping them buy their way.  Get a copy of Slow Down, Sell Faster and begin to speed up the flow in your pipeline.

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