Sales and Sales Management Blog

January 18, 2012

October 24, 2011

How to Make Word of Mouth Marketing Really Work

Filed under: business,marketing,sales,selling,small business,Word of Mouth Marketing — Paul McCord @ 12:51 pm
Tags: , , , ,

Last week while I was teaching a group of CPA’s in Newark how to work with their clients to generate a large number of direct introductions to high quality prospects, one participant mentioned that he would often hear from a client that they had given his name and number to another business owner but he would seldom hear from that prospect.  His question was how he could use the introduction generation process I was teaching to capture that word of mouth prospect.

Great question—and one that most sellers are faced with.

Everyone would love to have their clients out talking about them.  They encourage their clients to tell their friends and acquaintances about them; they hope and pray that people are talking about them; they try to use social media as a springboard to get even more word of mouth marketing.

Unfortunately, even though you want word of mouth marketing and do whatever you can to encourage it, it has one primary disadvantage that is hard to overcome—you have no control over whether the person your client spoke to will take the initiative to pick up the phone and give you a call.

How much business are you losing because you never hear from the people your clients mention you to?

Right, you don’t know because you have no idea how often your clients mention you.

That’s the intrinsic problem with a passive marketing method—no control means no accountability, no way of knowing how effective or ineffective it is.  If you get prospects calling because clients mentioned you, you think that word of mouth is working.  If you don’t get calls you think your clients aren’t talking about you.  The problem is that those calls you get might be just a fraction of the people who are hearing about you from your client, and those no calls might not be an indication that your clients aren’t talking about you but instead might be an indication that their message isn’t resonating with those they are speaking to.

So is there a way to turn word of mouth encouragements into real connections?

Although you’ll never be able to track and connect with every word of mouth mention your clients give you, you can significantly increase the number of connections you have with those your clients have mentioned you to by simply becoming more proactive in the way you work with your clients regarding their word of mouth mentions.

In the case of the CPA above, he mentioned that he often received emails or verbal statements from clients saying something to the effect, “Just wanted to let you know that I mentioned you to Joe Blow the other day.”  Sometimes the client will mention the name of the person they spoke to, other times they won’t.  In both cases, however, the CPA knows that a client has spoken to someone about him and recommended they give him a call.

Like most sellers in that position, the gentleman at the presentation simply hopes that he’ll get a call.  Way too often the call doesn’t come—just another wasted mention by a client.

Fortunately this CPA and everyone else who has a client or anyone else mention that they’ve spoken to someone about them can easily turn that weak word of mouth mention into a direct introduction by simply ASKING for the introduction.  It’s really as simple as asking:

Client: “Hey, Joe, just wanted to give you a head’s up that I recommended you to Nancy Drew and encouraged her to give you a call.  I hope you hear from her.”

Seller: “Bill, that’s great; I really appreciate it.  I haven’t heard from her yet but I’d love to.  Come to think of it, would you be comfortable introducing me to her?”

Couldn’t be simpler. 

What are the chances your client will introduce you to the prospect?  Very high indeed since they obviously like your work and think that you can help the prospect—and they obviously have some type of relationship with the prospect. 

Before asking for the introduction find out what the relationship is between your client and the prospect and why they suggested the prospect call you. 

All the pieces are in place for a direct introduction.  And what happens if your client says no?  You’ve lost—nothing.

But what about all those suggestions they make to prospects to give you a call that you never know about?  How can you learn of them in order to try to turn them into an introduction?

These are certainly more difficult—but not completely impossible.

First, once you let your client know that you would love for them to mention you to anyone who might be in need of your expertise and services, let them know that you’d appreciate it if they’d let you know through a call or email when they mention you to someone.  Once they do, thank them and then ask for the direct introduction.  Don’t expect everyone to let you know when they speak to someone about you—but many will and that will give you the opportunity to ask for the introduction.

Knowing that many won’t inform you when they mention you, you can also take the initiative and ask your clients if they have mentioned you to anyone.  When speaking with a client simply ask in passing if they’ve had an opportunity to mention to anyone lately.  Asking will let you uncover any unmentioned recommendations they’ve made to prospects to call you and will also remind them that you seek word of mouth recommendations.  Again, you won’t uncover a mountain of unknown mentions, but you’ll uncover some which will give you the opportunity to convert them into introductions and it will allow you to gently remind your client to mention you whenever they have a chance.

Word of Mouth Marketing is hardly a marketing format to hang your business on.  That being said, by all means encourage your clients to mention you to those they come into contact with that might be able to use your products or services.  But at the same time seek to move those word of mouth recommendations into something far more concrete—a direct introduction. 

Don’t settle for being passive.  You can turn word of mouth into far more effective introductions without being obnoxious or overly aggressive—all you have to do is ask your client for an introduction once you know they’ve recommended you.  The key is learning how to uncover the recommendation.

October 18, 2011

Why Should You Ask Yourself Why?

Filed under: business,sales,selling,small business — Paul McCord @ 9:24 am
Tags: , ,

As I was preparing to post this article I discovered an article by my friend Anthony Iannarino that deals with similar issues from an organizational standpoint.  Sometimes serendipity kicks in and you discover you’re on the same wavelength as someone else.  I encourage you to read Anthony’s take on asking why.

Why did you lose that sale?

Why did that prospect insist on such a deep discount?

Why weren’t you prepared to answer that objection even though you’ve heard it before?

Why did your best client decide to “try” your competitor for his current order?

Why can’t you get to that great prospect even though you’ve tried for almost two months?

Why is one of the most important and powerful questions we can possibly ask ourselves.  It is also one that we so often seek to avoid because the answers can make us really, really uncomfortable.

No matter our experience or success level, we never reach perfection.  All of us make mistakes; we all fail in big and little ways; we all need to improve; we all have weaknesses that cost us business.

Overcoming these issues and weaknesses isn’t pleasant for any of us. 

It’s much easier to chalk up our losses to a bad day and move on.

Certainly it’s easier to simply move on, but that’s a sure way to fail again in the future.

The most powerful question you ask is why.  That simple question is more important than any sales training you can get.  It is more important than any sales “secret” you can learn.  It is more important than any sales tips anyone can give you.

If you consistently ask “why” and then diligently dig to discover the answer, your sales will dramatically improve.  This isn’t a quick fix, but it is the single most effective change strategy you can employ.

October 13, 2011

Finish 2011 Strong While Laying the Groundwork for a Great 2012

Filed under: business,sales,selling,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 10:22 am
Tags: , , ,

Although somewhat hard to believe, we’re now at the end of another year.  With only two and a half months to go, your year is virtually over.  That doesn’t mean your production has to be over, it means that more than any other time during the year, you must have a laser focus in order to finish the year strong and lay the foundation for 2012.

Unfortunately the last quarter and the first quarter of the year are the least productive for a great many sellers. 

A great many sellers slack off during the last quarter thinking that there really isn’t much business to be had since “everyone” is consumed with the holidays and spending little time attending to business—especially when it comes to making purchasing decisions.

Likewise, the first quarter is written off by many with the excuse that people really aren’t back to concentrating on work until the middle of February—and then they’re really just beginning to look at potential purchases, meaning that the actual production won’t close until the second quarter.

While the majority is assuring themselves that their low production isn’t their fault but is simply a reflection of the reality of the calendar, there is a much smaller group of sellers who are busting sales goals.

Are those sellers who are making record sales during the “dead” time of the year just lucky?  Maybe they sandbagged business to make their last quarter look great?  Possibly they are out giving radical discounts in order generate the business most other sellers can’t seem to come up with?

The fact of the matter is that none of the above reasons are accurate as they are nothing but the excuses the majority of sellers use to justify their low sales.

The last and first quarters don’t have to be the valley of death for sales.  With just a few simple activities you can bust your sales goal in both quarters.  What you do right now will determine what your end of year and beginning of year are like—and whether you enjoy great paychecks over the next few months or go on your annual starvation diet until next April.

Take control of your sales business and income by:

  1.  Clean out your dead prospecting wood.  Refuse to waste more time on dead end prospects.  Take a critical look at your pipeline and get rid of all the prospects who aren’t worthy of your time and effort.  Yes, seeing those names on your pipeline can be comforting because they pad the numbers, buy in your heart you know they’re nothing more than wishful thinking.  Get real, get rid of them and see where you’re really at.
  2. Double down on prospecting.  Shortly most sellers will begin slacking off on prospecting figuring that no one will take their call anyway.  Don’t allow yourself to fall into that trap.  In fact, take advantage of your competition’s laziness and INCREASE your prospecting activity.  Not only will it pay off in the fourth quarter, you’ll have a breakout first quarter of 2012.
  3. Stay in touch.  Again, while your competition takes the next two to three months off, increase your activity.  Don’t allow your prospects and clients to forget you.  While your competition may send a Christmas card, you should be working.  Most of your prospects and clients will be working just as hard this quarter as they did last.  Most will still be making purchasing decisions.  While your competition writes off the quarter, you can write business. 
  4. Solve problems.  Your prospect’s problems don’t go away because Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other holidays roll around.  Business problems don’t take holidays or vacations.  Neither should you.  Concentrate on solving prospect problems and you’ll magically find that your production problems go away too.

Turning the fourth and first quarters into high production quarters doesn’t take luck or magic, it simply takes focusing on business.  Treat the end and beginning of the year like any other quarter and your production will be just as strong as the second and third quarters. 

The reality is that production declines in the fourth and first quarters because our activity declines, not because the business isn’t there. 

Make this year and next banner years by doing what your competition won’t—continuing to prospect and solve issues.  You’ll find your bank account will really appreciate your effort.

September 26, 2011

4 Signs You’ve Lost Your Team’s Respect–And What To Do About It

Filed under: business,management,Sales Management,small business,team development — Paul McCord @ 11:03 am
Tags: ,

Everyday there are tens of thousands of sales leaders who are trying to manage a sales team that has lost respect for them—and many don’t even realize that they’ve lost control of their team.

Are you faced with any of these issues?

1. Team members are seldom on time and come and go as they please.  Are your sellers straggling into the office and scheduled meetings because of a lax office atmosphere—or because they simply have no respect for you and your ability to control them?

2. Your interactions with team members are usually monologues.  Are team members listening to you intently and respectfully and giving their opinion freely—or are they simply waiting for you to shut up so you’ll go away and they can go back to ignoring you?

3. Your team members try to talk over you.  Are they excited and want to get their ideas out—or do they think you have nothing worth listening to and don’t respect your opinion?

4. Your requests are ignored or assignments are completed in a half-hearted fashion.  Are they so busy with selling and taking care of their customers that they just didn’t have time to get to the assignment—or do they think the assignment was a joke not worth their time and effort, and besides, you’re not going to do anything about it anyway?

It’s easy for managers to ignore the above symptoms of disrespect.  In fact, it is far easier and a lot more comfortable to ignore them than to acknowledge them.

But if you’re in a position where you have a team that does not respect you, either you or they are short timers.  A manager—and the company they work for—cannot last long once they’ve lost the respect of their team.

But once the team’s respect has been lost, is it possible to regain it?

I’ve spoken to many management experts who have argued that once lost, respect is impossible to regain and the only solution is new management.

And for the most part I agree.  However, I have seen several situations where management redemption did occur.  In virtually every case, the manager took the following five steps:

  1. Personal acknowledgement.  The manager recognized the loss of respect and committed themselves to aggressively addressing and correcting the issue.
  2. Confessing to the team.  The manager confessed to each member of the team (either in a group meeting or during individual meetings with team members) that they had lost their commitment and had failed the team and have recommitted themselves to serving the team without reservation.
  3. Establishing new ground rules—and adhering to them.  The manager sets out a new set of rules that govern both the team’s and the manager’s actions along with the consequences for breaking those rules.  Discipline is not only needed, it must be demonstrated.  Consequently, it is necessary that the team know what is expected from them and from the manager and that both have objective rules and guidelines that all parties are aware of and can measure one another by.
  4. Encourage discussion–and dissent.  It is imperative that an open dialogue between the manager and the team members be created and it is the manager’s obligation to set the tone and get the ball rolling.  If the manager can’t break through the ice and begin a real conversation with the team, no amount of confession and fair rules will do any good.
  5. Treat team members with respect.  Very often the team begins losing respect for their manager not simply because they view the manager as weak, but because they feel that he or she isn’t treating them with respect.  A manager cannot expect respect from the team if they aren’t showing the team members respect.  Respect, more than any other aspect of relationships, is a two-way street.  Part of earning respect is showing respect and the manager must begin the process by making sure the team members know they are respected.

The above five step process isn’t an overnight fix.  In fact, regaining respect takes time—a lot of time, weeks and months worth of time.

Yes, once the team has lost respect for their manager the most expeditious solution is replacing the manger.  But that isn’t the only solution.  If you find yourself in a situation where you’ve lost your team’s respect—or if you have a manager that for whatever reason you cannot replace and they’ve lost their team’s respect, apply the steps above and you will, given time, repair the damage and once again have the team’s respect.

July 14, 2011

Is “Managing” Killing Your Team’s Sales Productivity?

Filed under: business,management,Sales Management,team development — Paul McCord @ 5:39 pm
Tags: , , ,

“Yeah, my folks may think I’m a bit of a hard-ass,” Bill said, “but they know they better get things done and done on time.  We have deadlines around here—when reports are due, how long they have before a phone or email message from a customer or from within the company has to be responded to, how long it should take to resolve customer service issues, and by all means, any special assignments I give them.  They know my expectations and what the consequences will be if they don’t meet them.”

Bill was a new client.  He’s the manager of a team of salespeople who sell into the building materials market.  His salespeople tend to be relatively inexperienced (most have less than 3 years experience) and who have fairly large territories where they addresses several different sectors of the market.  They deal with residential and commercial builders, building materials suppliers, and industrial customers. Each salesperson has lots of potential prospects spread out over a large area.

Bill tries to control their activity by demanding they adhere to very tight time guidelines.  For instance, calls or emails from customers must be returned with 2 hours—no excuses.  Calls or emails from within the company must be answered the same day—even if the call or email comes in one minute before they leave the office and isn’t critical.  Because of this, the salespeople are constantly checking their office voice mail and their email.

Customer service issues are to be addressed and resolved within 24 hours.  The only exception is an issue that arises on Saturday—it can linger until Monday.

Call reports are due every Friday by 4PM.  Monthly sales and the next month’s sales projection report are due by 4PM on the last working day of the month.

Special projects—of which they are always a couple that have been assigned—have their due dates.

Bill has a conference call sales meeting every Monday morning which all are required to attend.  Then each salesperson will have a 30 to 45 minute personal sales review session with Bill sometime on Monday or Tuesday.

If you add up all the time spent monitoring voice mail and email, doing reports, making sure all customer and internal issues are dealt with immediately, throw in the conference call and personal phone meeting with Bill, and a reasonable amount of time for travel, one wonders where there’s any time for prospecting and selling.

Certainly Bill’s team gets stuff done—they’re a highly disciplined group.  They pump out reports, are on time for meetings, know exactly when they get voice mails and emails, and stamp out customer service and internal company needs and issues quickly.  But not surprisingly, they’re not meeting their sales quota.

They’re “disciplined” to death—with all the wrong actions.

One can debate the value of the meetings and the reports.  Certainly returning customer and company emails and phone calls in a timely manner is necessary.  Addressing customer issues—and internal company issues—is also important.

But Bill—and a great many other sales leaders and companies—are focusing on the stuff that isn’t their primary reason for existence but are easy to monitor and to micromanage.

When I asked Bill why he hired salespeople his answer was an incredulous, “what do you mean why did I hire them?  To sell, of course, why do you think I hired them?”

When I asked how they were performing against quota, he told me that well over half were off quota for the year and the team as a whole was almost 15% off quota for the year.

I then asked him how his salespeople spent their time.  He told me that “they’re salespeople, they spend their time selling.”

But, of course, they weren’t spending their time selling.  They were spending their time meeting his deadlines and attending meetings, doing things that were easy for him to track and thus to keep his thumb on them.

How accurate, I asked, was the information contained in the call and sales reports?  How accurate were his salespeople’s projections?  As expected, he answered that there seemed to be a lot of wishful thinking and hope packed into all the reports.  The only items in the reports that he could take at face value were the closed sales.

I asked him if he thought the inaccurate information in the reports was wishful thinking as he said or just plain padding to try to keep him off their backs.  He wanted to know if I really wanted an answer or if it were a rhetorical question.  (The guy did have a sense of humor after all.)
We eventually got down to the root of the problem—Bill had his people spending so much time meeting his deadlines on busy work that they really didn’t have all that much time to do the hard work of selling.

Over the next few months Bill and I worked to change both how his salespeople spent their time and how he worked with them to make sure they—and he—were focusing on the right activities.

His team members weren’t too thrilled with the changes at first.  Although they didn’t like the ever present deadlines and butt chewing if they missed them, many of them enjoyed the busy work—it kept them off the phones and away from potential rejection.

It took some time to get everyone working on the same page—and get everyone working on generating business instead of doing easy busy work.
However, by the end of the first quarter of working with his team, Bill saw marked improvement in both the numbers that were coming in and the morale of his team members.  Sales were coming in the door.  People were making money.  Butts were getting chewed out less and less.  People were happy.

Reports—well, there were fewer of them and some even came straggling in a bit late.  Meetings—fewer of them also.  Special projects?  Hardly any.  None of these changes has thrown the world off its axis.

Bill is still hyper sensitive about dealing with customer service issues, and phone calls and emails must be addressed in a timely manner but no one is checking their voice mail and email every few minutes for fear they will miss something.  Salespeople now check their voice mail and email four times a day—when they come into the office in the morning, once prior to lunch, once mid-afternoon, and prior to leaving in the evening.
Are you burdening your team with so much busy work and so many demands that it prevents them from accomplishing their primary purpose?  Are you, like Bill, concentrating on things that you can control while sacrificing production and revenue?

Don’t answer too quickly—it is way too easy to fall into the trap of flooding your team members with activities you and they can easily control–and then blaming them for non-production.   Bill isn’t a horrid person or incompetent manager–he just fell into the habit of trying to control his people and did it by trying to control actions.  That’s far too easy a trap to fall into without even noticing.

What are you having your team do that is wasting their time—and draining your team’s production?

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
Tags: , ,

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 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
Tags: , , , , , ,

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.

May 22, 2011

How to Turn Referral Partnerships from Wishful Thinking into Business Producing Machines

Filed under: business,marketing,prospecting,sales,selling,small business — Paul McCord @ 9:07 am
Tags: , , ,

Are you like most sellers finding it more and more difficult to break through the noise and connect with quality prospects?  Are you finding prospects putting up more and more obsticles to keep you and your message out?  When you do finally get through to a prospect are you finding that you have less and less time to gain their attention and interest?

Whether you’re facing the above issues or not, aligning yourself with others who can expose you to new prospects, help set up the sale for you, and help make life more enjoyable is one of the most effective marketing methods you can employ.

Enlisting other sellers or companies who sell to the same prospects as you to help you find and connect with quality prospects has been a staple of marketing for top producers for decades—and unsuccessfully imitated by countless others.

Why have top producers found working with other professionals for referrals to work so well while so many others have failed to capitalize on them?

I often hear sellers and managers–and even some sales trainers–talk about seeking out ‘referral sources’ to help them find and connect with prospects.  These referral sources tend to be sellers or companies who are likely to deal with people or companies that would be great prospects for the seller and who might need or want their product or service.

These ‘referral sources’ discussions always interest me, so I’ll engage the seller in a conversation about their experience with them.  Typically my first question will be how much business they’ve closed through these referral sources.  A few will indicate they’ve done well, most indicate they’ve seen very little to no real business from their sources.

When I ask the seller I’m speaking with what the other seller gets out of making the referral, they mention that they are giving the referrer the assurance that they’ll take exceptional care of the client, allowing that seller to become more valuable to the client by becoming a trusted source of additional advice and services; or they’ll give the seller’s client a discount of some sort that only that seller’s clients get, or they’ll give the seller a cash incentive–in other words, nothing of value to the referrer.

When I assert that the other person is getting nothing of value, I often get a scornful look and verbal resistance.  Some of the responses I’ve received are:

•    From a mortgage loan officer: “Their client has to have a loan and I’ll make sure their client is well taken care of and gets a great deal—and that the loan will close on time.  That’s real value to that Realtor and their client.”
•    From an insurance agent: “She doesn’t offer insurance, just securities.  Her clients need insurance and she can be assured that I won’t try to steal her clients or infringe on her business in any way and if she doesn’t help her client through me, her client is likely to see an agent that will try to steal her business.”
•    From a seller for an IT service company: “I often find additional needs the client has and when I do, if he (the person who referred him to the client) sells that product, I’ll send the business to him.  I’ll be a source for additional sales for him to his client.”
•    From a specialized printing seller: “My referral sources are also in the printing business.  Their clients will on occasion need some things done that they can’t do and that I can.  My appeal to them is that by referring the business to me, they are assured that I’ll talk up just how good they are and it keeps their client from going to another company that might be able to not only do what I do but might be able to replace them as well.”
•    From a management consultant: “I focus exclusively on helping companies evaluate and hire more effective employees.  I look for other consultants who work in other areas who can recommend me to their clients who are having employee selection and retention issues.  By recommending me, they prevent the client from seeking help elsewhere which just might be from a company who could replace them in addition to helping with their hiring and retention issues.”

In each of these cases (and these responses are the norm, not the exception), the reason given for the referral source to send them referrals is that they are doing the referral source a favor.   “I’ll talk them up,” or “I’ll close the loan on time,” or “I won’t try to steal her business,” or “I’ll help them protect their relationship with their client.”  The worst part is these sellers are serious when they make these statements.

Lazy, delusional thinking at it’s finest.

Why do these “referral sources” need these sellers?  A promise of making them look good, or not trying to steal their business, or closing the loan on time is a dime a dozen.  Actually, they’re more like a penny a hundred.  There isn’t a mortgage loan officer, IT salesperson, consultant, or printing salesperson alive that isn’t likely to make the same promise.  If you think you’re doing your referral source a favor and that is going to earn you their business, you’re living in fantasyland with Unicorns and Hobbits.

The first rule in developing referral business from others is that they don’t need you.  They don’t need your promises, they don’t need you to make them look good, they don’t need you messin’ with their clients.

The second rule in developing referral business from others is they need business just like you.  They need referrals to quality prospects, just like you do.

The ‘secret’ the top producers have discovered when getting referrals from other sellers and companies is to forget about ‘referral sources’ and develop referral partnerships—real partnerships where the referrals go in both directions, not jut one.

Sellers and companies need the same thing you need—business.  If they need someone to make them look good or to help one of their clients, they have no problem finding dozens of sellers willing to help.  What they need are reciprocal relationships where the people they refer clients to also refer prospects back to them.  They need partners, not moochers.  And if you’re not giving back in kind, that’s exactly what you are—a moocher.

Setting up Referral Partnerships

1.  Identify Your Potential Partners: Look for other sellers or companies who deal with the same prospects as you.  Define your ideal prospect—you may have more than one ideal—and then look for others who target the same prospect.  You want to find sellers who are already established in the market; who have the reach and reputation you wish for yourself; and whose quality of products and services match yours.

There is no need to waste time and energy on low producing sellers as they won’t be able to feed you many prospects.  In addition, the quality and cost of your products and/or services should closely match your potential partner’s since you will be looking for the same prospect.  If your product is top of the line and expensive, don’t partner with a salesperson whose products are on the bargain end of the spectrum.  Likewise, if you are selling modestly priced products, don’t think you can partner with a premium priced company to enhance your image—their clients are more than likely not going to be interested in your company’s products.

2.  Know What You’re After: Once you’ve identified a number of potential partners, develop a plan of approach for each.  What are you looking for with each partner—joint marketing?  Maybe joint sales calls?  Simply referring clients back and forth?

Take a close look at the activities of each seller or company you’ve identified to get an idea of how they operate.  Do they do a lot of advertising?  Are they constantly running specials?  Are their sales materials high dollar—or maybe they don’t really use collateral material?  Are there gaps in their offerings that you can help fill?  Do they tend to sell mostly to existing customers or to new prospects?

How your proposed partner works will lead you to know what to propose to them.  If they do a great deal of advertising or direct mail, maybe a joint advertising campaign would be of interest to them.  If they work primarily with their existing client base, referring back and forth might be most appealing.  If they use a lot of high dollar collateral material, you better have material that is equally impressive.

3.  Set an Appointment with the Partner Prospect: Invite your partner prospect to lunch.  Your partnership discussion is important and shouldn’t be a viewed as a casual phone conversation.

Many of your potential partners will be men and women you either don’t know or have only met once or twice very casually.  Many will not know who you are.  Since the men and women you’ve identified as potential partners are the best in their industry in their local market, a very effective way to gain a lunch meeting is to acknowledge their success and superior reputation.  Just call them, introduce yourself, and then tell them that you know them via their reputation and the quality of their work and that you’d like to take them to lunch as you have found that it is always good practice to know top people in the business.  Most will accept—people like to be recognized for their work.  Seldom have I been turned down with this approach.  And best of all, it’s true.  I do want to know the best people in the business and they are among the best in the business in their area.

4.  Make Your Proposal: During your meeting, present your proposal.  Your proposal must focus on what the partnership will do for your potential partner, not what it will do for you.  Sellers are people, meaning their natural interest is ‘what’s in it for me.’  If you approach the conversation from a self-centered point of view, your proposal is dead before you even begin.

If you’ve done your homework well, you should be able to relate exactly why your potential partner would be interested in working with you, what type of working relationship it would be, and what the potential results for them will be.

Since there is a very good chance your potential partner doesn’t know who you are—and possibly they know little or nothing about your company—you’ll have to be able to quickly create a relationship with them and to provide credibility for yourself and your company.  Hopefully you have mutual clients or testimonials from individuals or companies your potential partner will recognize and respect.

Don’t expect a commitment during your initial meeting.  Most often if the person is interested, they’ll need time to do some due diligence, as well as additional discussions to develop the model for the partnership.

5.  The Monkey is on Your Back: The partnership was your idea, not theirs.  That means you’ll have to do the work to get the partnership going.  Even if you gain agreement from your potential partner, they won’t be committed until they see results.  You’ll have to take the lead in getting the partnership moving—and most importantly, you’ll have to provide them with real leads, referrals, and potential business before you can expect them to begin feeding you leads and referrals.

If you’re just looking for free, easy business, don’t bother with a partnership because it won’t do you any good.  However, if you’re willing to invest the time and effort, focusing on creating partnerships with the top sellers and companies in your area that work with your prime prospects can bring in business you would have had a very difficult if not impossible time reaching.

Partnerships are great door openers and business builders.  But they aren’t magical.  They take work.  They take time and effort.  And most of all, they require you to do what you say you’re going to do—be a source of new business for your partner, just as they are expected to be a source of new business for you.

April 15, 2011

2011 Sales and Marketing Success Conference—Improve Your Skills and Help Japan at the Same time

Filed under: business,marketing,sales,Sales 2.0,sales training,selling,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 8:48 am
Tags: , , , ,

Get out your calendar and start making plans for the week of Monday, May 9 through Friday, the 13th.  During those five days you’ll have the opportunity to attend up to 35 incredible webinar sessions—7 every single day—presented by 35 of the top sales minds in the world. 

Each session will be a quick but highly targeted 30 minutes.

Who are some of these presenters?  Well, there’s Dave Kurlan, Jill Konrath, Kelley Robertson, Colleen Francis, Linda Richardson, John Doerr, myself, and many others.  Topics covered will range from Sales 101 Isn’t Enough: Advanced Selling Capabilities For Outselling Your Competition to 7 Habits of Highly Effective (Social) Salespeople to Successfully Profiting from the New Buying Cycle to my session on Build a Successful Business on Referrals by Knowing Who Your Client Knows and, of course, many, many more.

You can see the whole list of sessions HERE

And here’s even better news—when you attend any given session you’ll be helping the Red Cross in their mission in Japan.

Jonathan Farrington, the host of the conference says,

Just four weeks after the Magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake and a tsunami which delivered 46ft waves, we learn that the death toll is likely to top 25.000, and recovery is going to take not years, but possibly decades, maybe even a generation, at a cost of at least $250 billion.

This is our opportunity to show that the sales community – so often derided for being shallow and materialistic, amongst other things – actually has a very big heart.

We plan to charge just $5 registration fee per presentation, and we are limited to 1000 guests per session, so places will be allocated on a “first come – first served” basis.

Can I count on your support? Together we can make a worthwhile *contribution to the people of Japan.

That’s right, it only costs $5 to attend any one session and 100% of those dollars will be donated to the Red Cross specifically for Japan.  At the end of each session you’ll be given an opportunity to donate an additional $1, $5, or $10 if you so wish.

Here is a tremendous opportunity to contribute to the efforts in Japan and get great training at the same time. 

What a great deal!!!

I encourage you to seriously consider attending my session Friday, May 13 at noon Eastern time as I’ll be giving you the tools you’ll need to do the detective work to figure out exactly who your client knows that you know you want to be referred to—and knowing that will allow you to both greatly increase the number of referrals you get and, more importantly, get referrals to prospects that you know are great prospects for you.

Here is the registration page for my session.

Don’t miss this fantastic opportunity to help yourself improve your sales while helping those who are in desperate need of help.

Next Page »

Theme: Rubric. Blog at WordPress.com. Fonts on this blog.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 3,814 other followers