Sales and Sales Management Blog

May 30, 2012

Four Hours a Day Guaranteed to Make You a Successful Seller

Filed under: career development,prospecting,sales,selling,success — Paul McCord @ 10:17 am
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 There have been hundreds of millions—billions and billions if not trillions and trillions—of words written about how to become a successful seller.  Who knows how many tens of thousands of books and millions of articles have been written in the sales area? In my 30 plus years of selling I’ve read hundreds of the books and thousands of the articles.  I’ve even written three books myself and written hundreds of articles.  All of it designed to deal with one simply action—making a sale.

Some of these books and articles are quite profound with wonderful charts and diagrams designed to show the flow of a sale or the relationship between different parts of the sale or to expound and clarify how buyers and sellers interact.  Others are less complex and more immediately applicable, usually dealing with specific segments of selling.

Whether the work is simple or complex, a short article or a tome rivaling War and Peace, the supposed goal is the same—help the reader sell more.

We’ve broken the sales process into miniscule pieces and then put back together again.  We’ve developed numerous theories of the sales process.  We’ve analyzed how buyers buy, how sellers sell, and how sellers shouldn’t sell but instead help buyer’s buy.

We’ve done so much talking and writing that at this point 99% that is said and written is nothing more than a rehash of what has already been said and written.  I honestly don’t know if I’ve read an original thought in any book or article I’ve ever read.  In fact, it is highly likely I haven’t.

All of this is not to condemn the thousands of books and millions of articles.  I personally think they are needed as they not only appeal to different men and women, the same message in one book or article may not resonate with a reader whereas the same message in a bit different format in another book might really communicate.

But in the end, as much as we sometimes like to intellectualize our profession, we’re not dealing with rocket science.

And in the end, there are still a few actions that if done and done religiously will virtually guarantee success.

Let me suggest a four hour daily routine that if carried out will produce a pipeline bursting with top prospects—and sales.

In fact, if you implement this four hour daily routine you’ll soon find yourself trying to figure out how to maintain it as you’ll be so busy with the business of selling that you’ll struggle to keep feeding the pipeline.

Hour One: Research
Spend one hour a day researching prospects.  Most sellers know little to nothing about the prospects they contact.  They don’t know much about the prospect company or its niche, much less much about the prospect himself or herself.  Most of the time, they don’t even know if the targeted prospect is really the individual they need to be speaking with.

The more you know about your prospect, the better chance you have of making a meaningful contact.  When connecting with a prospect you have only a few seconds to make an impression and to capture their interest.  If you can’t do that within a few seconds, your chances of moving them along to an eventual sale are cut by more than half.

Know your prospect.  Know who they are, what they do, what’s important to them, what their successes have been—and their failures.  Know where they are going and where they’ve been.  Know what kinds of companies they work with.  Know who they are and who they want to be.

To do this takes research.  Fortunately there are wonderful research tools on the internet and a great many of them are free starting with Google and Bing and then moving on to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and many other sites that can provide a massive amount of pertinent information.

Hours Two and Three: Make Calls
Two hours a day of speaking to new prospects is far more than most sellers spend—but in reality still barely enough.

Let’s clarify the word “calls.”  By calls I don’t necessarily mean cold calls or even phone calls.  Calls can be calls to referred prospects or could be cold walking or could be warm calls to people you’ve met in a social setting.  Calls are simply contacts with prospects, no matter how you find those prospects or how you connect with them.

Even though the how of connecting isn’t important, how the two hours are spent is extremely important.  Sitting at your desk and dialing the phone every 7 to 10 minutes with lots of shuffling of prospect cards or flipping through CRM records in-between doesn’t qualify as two hours of making calls.

Two hours is exactly that—a solid two hours of making contact.  You make a call and don’t get anyone, don’t put the phone down but instead make the next dial.  You walk into an office and there’s no one to talk to, walk out the door and right into the next door.

Many of us fool ourselves into thinking we spent time prospecting because we were at the desk for two or three hours when in fact we only made a few dials and only spoke to two people. 

That’s not prospecting, that’s wasting a morning or an afternoon.

Hour Four: Follow-up
What do you do with all those people you’ve spoken to but who aren’t really moving along the pipeline?  You don’t do what most sellers do—you don’t drop them and let them die from inactivity.  You follow up.

During your initial conversation with a prospect, try to find an area or reason for follow-up.  Maybe you need to supply more information, find an answer to a question, or research a competitor.  Maybe there has been a recent trigger event that provides for a follow-up call.  Maybe your research uncovers new information that your prospect should know about.

Spend at least one hour a day following up with those prospects in your database that are good prospects that you haven’t been able to move along.  Every prospect should be contacted at least quarterly if possible.

Spending four hours a day prospecting will fill your pipeline.  Yes, for many it isn’t the most pleasant four hours of the day–but it is the most important four hours.  You cannot make a sale without prospects and since they aren’t beating your door down to talk to you they won’t become clients unless you take the initiative and contact them and then make the follow-up contacts to eventually bring them into the fold.

I encourage you to buy and read all the great books on selling (and, of course, in particular my books), as well as the many tremendous articles that are published daily.  But in the end, remember that your success is really based on finding and connecting with great prospects—and you have to invest daily in doing exactly that. 

Take four hours a day to build your business and you’ll find that magically you’ll be successful.

November 28, 2011

How to Work the Room at a Networking Event

Filed under: marketing,Networking,prospecting,sales,selling,small business — Paul McCord @ 12:00 pm
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I hear complaints from sellers and business owners all the time about how much time and effort they’ve wasted attending networking events.  The conclusion for a huge number is that networking events are no longer part of their prospecting activity.

That’s unfortunate because networking events really can be great places to find and connect with prospects.  The problems most have encountered with networking events is they’ve never been taught a systematic, disciplined format for managing and working these events and without having a way to manage the event, they become frustrated as they realize all they’ve done to date is waste their time.

Typically, the frustrations and wasted time arise from three fundamental issues:

  • Investing time at the wrong networking events
  • overblown expectations
  • not having a plan of attack

Networking events, especially those of a general nature organized by the chamber or a general business organization, will not provide you with a plate full of potential prospects.  If you can walk out of a networking event with three or four good potential contacts, you have done well.

Unfortunately, many, especially those who are not networking junkies, attend these functions with the hope of leaving the event with a whole stack of business cards of great prospects.  When their expectations are not met, they conclude that networking isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and decide their time is better spent elsewhere.

Besides unrealistic expectations about the number of prospects they’ll meet, a great many attend networking events without thinking through what their real goal is.  Unless you are selling a relatively common consumer or business commodity, you’re not going to sell at these events.  And since you can’t sell, what should be your primary goal?  Mine, when I attend these events, is not to talk about myself and what I do but to listen and ask questions, to learn as much as I can about the other person in order to qualify them, to begin building a relationship with them, and to have them tell me what issues and problems of theirs I’m going to address when we do get around to discussing who I am and what I do (which, by the way, won’t be at the event).

In addition, most attendees waste the majority of their networking time.  Rather than an organized plan to maximize their benefit from the event, they simply attend hoping to “run into” prospects.

Yet, if you attend regularly and with realistic expectations, networking can eventually pay great dividends.  There are three “secrets” to making networking pay:

1.  Know Where You’re Going

Knowing who is likely to attend the event you are considering is as important as attending the event.  If you are considering going to an event you have never attended before, try to get a copy of the host organization’s member roster.  By examining the membership directory, you can get a fairly good idea of the type of people you can expect to meet.  If it appears there are a reasonable number of people and businesses of interest, plan on attending.  If you can’t get a copy of their member directory, call the organization and ask—most won’t mind the inquiry and will be happy to give you as much information as they can.

2.  Know Why You’re Going

Go with a definite number of contacts you want to make.  Determine how many good contacts you will need in order to make the investment of time worthwhile.  Depending on your particular product or service, that number may be only one or two—or may be much higher at five or six.  By establishing realistic, objective criteria, you can easily determine whether or not your time was well spent and whether or not you want to attend the event again in the future.

3.  Have a System for Working the Event

For most business owners and salespeople, the real networking event killer isn’t so much who is in attendance or even their own unrealistic expectations, but rather the time they waste during the event.

Working a networking room requires planning and a clear vision of how you will spend your time.  I and many of my clients that I’ve taught the following networking method have found it to be easy and very effective.  The goal of this process is to spend the time identifying quality prospects, learning as much about them as possible in a short amount of time, and once you believe you have a viable prospect, setting a phone or lunch meeting with them.

Arrive about 15 minutes before the official event start time.  Wear a large, easy to read, high quality, permanent nametag that features your first and last name, not just your first name (your company name is the least important part of the name tag as you want them to remember you, not your company),  Of course, have lots of business cards.  Business cards should be blank on the back.  Wear clothing with two easy to reach pockets.

Station yourself close to the entry door—close enough that people might mistake you for one of the hosts.  Greet each person as he or she enters.  Nothing more than a greeting—and, hopefully, noticing their company name.  All you want is to hear a name, put a name to a face and to make a quick judgment as to whether they might be a prospect.

When arrivals begin to slow, begin your progression around the room.  Move in one direction—left or right.  Greet the first person or group of people you meet.  This round of conversations should be short—two to three minutes at most.  Your goal is to introduce yourself and learn as much as you can in a very short span of time about the person or persons you’ve just met.  Don’t clutter the conversation with information about yourself—keep everything focused on the person or the persons you are speaking with.  Your goal at this event isn’t to sell, it’s to qualify prospects.  This will be your second meeting with many of these people, although you will not remember their names.  Two meetings=two opportunities to put a name with a face.

Since many, if not most, will offer you a business card, you will begin to segregate cards into an interest stack and a non-interest stack.  When you meet someone you believe you’d like to get to know better—i.e., a potential prospect put their business card in your right-hand pocket.  Those you don’t believe are prospects, put in your left-hand pocket.  This system allows you to immediately find the cards of those you want to reconnect with during the event without having to try to remember their name.  Simple: Right pocket card=reconnect; left pocket=don’t reconnect with today.

If you meet someone you believe might be a real prospect for you, before moving on to another group let them know of your interest in learning more about their business and ask their permission to contact them via a phone call at a later date.  Once they agree, take one of your business cards and on the blank reverse side, write the day and an hour span of time during which you will call:  “Thursday, March 12 between 10:30-11:30.”  This day and time will be the same for everyone you meet that you want to call.  It keeps you from having to remember when you will call, but because it is an hour span, you’ll have time to make several calls without concern that you won’t keep your appointment.

Now, move to the next group and continue in this manner for the majority of the event.  About 30 to 45 minutes prior to the end of the event, go into your last phase.  The last phase is taking the few cards in your right-hand pocket and seeking to reconnect with those people.  This will be your third chance to meet them and to put a name and face together.  In addition, since it will be your third meeting, they’ll begin to feel like they know you and they will probably greet you as a friend rather than as new acquaintance.  Just as you are implanting their name and face in your mind through multiple meetings with them during the event, you’re planting your name and face in their mind.

This conversation will be a little more in-depth, but, again, keep the focus on the other person.  During this conversation move the conversation to the point that instead of a phone call on Thursday, you can invite them to lunch or to a coffee meeting.  If you can’t set a meeting, prior to moving to the next person, again reiterate the phone call on Thursday and give them another business card with the same information written on the back.

On Thursday, make your phone calls and close for a get to know one another meeting.

This structure allows you to “meet” a prospect three times during the course of the event, set up a definite telephone conversation—and very possibly a lunch meeting–and help both you and the prospect move from the “just met” stage to acquaintance stage very quickly, and all without having to remember any details during the course of the event.

The goal of the conversations is to learn as much as you can about the person you are meeting, not to talk about yourself.  You’re there to learn and to qualify.  You can’t sell at a short networking event unless you’re selling a commodity, but you can sure learn a great deal and identify new prospects.  But to do that you have to listen a great deal more than talk.

Since people love to talk about themselves and if you get them talking about themselves and their company you can learn how to laser focus the conversation when it does get around to what you do, give them the freedom to open up as much as possible. In addition, never finish a conversation with a real prospect.  Intentionally leave the conversation hanging—and then invite a further phone or lunch conversation.  I never really talk about what I do until the lunch meeting.  By that time I’ve learned a great deal about the other person and I can tailor my discussion of what I do to the exact issues they’ve disclosed.  Instead of some weak, general elevator speech, I give a pointed response to their needs.

If you keep your expectations reasonable and focus you time during the event on the few true prospects you meet, you’ll find your time at networking events to be both more enjoyable and profitable.

August 29, 2011

Guest Article: “Using Social Media for Sales Prospecting,” by Anita Campbell

Filed under: prospecting,sales,selling,Uncategorized — Paul McCord @ 12:25 pm
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Using Social Media for Sales Prospecting
by Anita Campbell

One of the hardest things for a sales professional is getting the right people to listen to you. Cold-calling is difficult, especially if you end up pitching someone who is not interested in spending money, or doesn’t have the authority to make decisions. That rejection is unpleasant, unhealthy, and it’s now unnecessary.

Social media offers the ability to reach out to people who are already talking about what you’re selling. All you have to do is find them, and that’s easier than you think once you’re using the right platforms, and using them in the right way. Imagine how your leads could grow if you placed your product in front of people who are already looking for it, and are in the mindset to spend. Not only would it be easier to turn prospects into leads, but you’d be saving everyone’s time and energy by reaching out to people already in the market for your product. That’s what social media can do for you, and your potential customers.

Twitter
Searching for conversations on Twitter that are pertinent to your field is fairly easy because the majority of Twitter’s content is public. It’s made even easier by using the Advanced Search feature of Twitter. Before diving in, though, the first thing to do is brainstorm all the related topics of conversation you could insert yourself into that could potentially yield sales. You may find that multiple topics are relatable to your products or services. For example, if you’re a wedding planner, you may want to search conversations about photographers, bakeries, and invitations. Giving a soon-to-be bride advice may help her realize the number of decisions she must make, and that she needs your help.

Once you have a list of topics to search, use conversational wording in your searches to get better results. If you sell cars, search for “what car should I buy” or “buy a car” (don’t forget to specify a location!) as it will reveal a larger number of people asking for advice about what car they should buy. As a car sales professional, you’re an expert in the current market and what products are available, so why not offer advice? Be helpful in addressing their questions and needs, and create a conversation around what they’re looking for, and they may seek you out when they’re ready to buy.

LinkedIn
If your business offers services, or your sales are B2B oriented, a good choice for social networking is LinkedIn. Not familiar with the site? It’s a social network aimed at companies and professionals, and gives them a place to connect with one another. While another great option for professionals is a business networking site, LinkedIn offers several features not found in other places.

One of these features is the Answers section, which is a way for professionals and business experts to give and receive business advice. Using the Advanced Answers Search feature, you can find questions that contain keywords related to your services. Answering these questions will give you the opportunity to share your expertise and knowledge, as well as information about the products or services you provide. By showing other members you have superior knowledge and great products or services, you may be able to foster connections with those asking questions, and explain how your business can help their own.

Quora
Just like LinkedIn Answers, Quora offers great opportunities for using questions and answers to reach prospects and encourage sales. While answering questions on LinkedIn offers the chance to connect directly with businesses asking questions about specific products or services, Quora allows you to position yourself as an expert in your field.

Quora is also similar to Twitter in that it’s designed for users to follow people who are thought leaders in their industry. The site organizes all the questions you answer under your profile so anyone who visits it can get a comprehensive view of your expertise. Because of this, answering questions regularly and on-topic with your products is important if you’re looking to attract certain prospects to your profile.

By using Twitter to get involved in current conversations, LinkedIn to answer direct questions from businesses, and Quora to showcase and promote your expertise, you’ll be on your way to developing the most strategic sales prospects for your business.

Anita Campbell is the Founder of the Small Business Trends website and CEO of BizSugar, an online community of small business owners.

July 26, 2011

Managing the Crisis of Time in Sales

Filed under: lead generation,management,marketing,prospecting,sales,selling,small business,time management — Paul McCord @ 4:04 pm
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Time is one of the most critical factors in sales and it is one of the most difficult to manage.  As I discussed a few days ago, salespeople often are saddled with conflicting demands by management—to sell while still dedicating a tremendous number of hours involved in non-sales activities such as meetings, filling out reports, taking care of internal company matters that could well be handled by someone else, and, of course, customer service issues.

In many organizations there is a virtual time management crisis with their sales teams as they try to figure out how to get their salespeople out into the field selling.

Whether you manage a giant sales force that covers multiple countries or a modest sales team that covers a city or small region, figuring out how to effectively keep your salespeople selling instead of engaged in non-income producing activities is—or certainly should be—a major concern.

For decades managers have tried to find ways to help their sales team members increase sales.  Unfortunately, so often instead of encouraging sales, management ends up hindering their team’s ability to sell by loading them up with non-income producing activities such as attending useless meetings, completing reports, and performing customer service and even collection duties that should be being dealt with by others.

One of the most common activities managers expect their sales team members to perform is that of lead generator.  Almost every company, no matter the size or industry, relies on its sales team members to find and connect with quality prospects on their own.  Many of these companies ask their sellers to simply supplement market’s efforts in terms of lead generation, while others—a great many others—leave lead generation entirely to their salespeople.

In those companies where lead generation is completely the responsibility of the individual salesperson, sellers are required to come up with potential prospect names, research them to determine if they are really suspects or not, contact them, qualify them, set up an appointment, and then, finally, make some kind of presentation.

How much time and effort is spent on generating, contacting, and qualifying the lead?  Depending upon the product or service a salesperson can invest not just hours on a single potential prospect but literally days of time invested in a single lead.

That single lead—that very often results in not only a no sale but turns out to be not even a qualified prospect—can cost hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars.

And we haven’t even begun to talk about all the time these same salespeople invest in developing their own marketing and sales materials, writing and sending prospecting letters, and spending huge amounts of time researching names that never make it to the “prospect” list..

The question then becomes are there realistic and cost effective strategies to significantly alleviate these costly activities? 

Fortunately there are some solutions that can make a great deal of sense no matter the size of the company.

Depending upon company size, hiring a small inside sales group whose function is to set appointments for the sales team can be very cost effective.  Having a staff that is paid on an hourly or percentage of closed sales basis can free up sellers to see more prospects and close more sales while decreasing the overall cost of the sale.  Many companies have very successfully created an inside sales team to supplement and support the outside team, significantly reducing the cost of each individual sale while increasing production.

For many companies who either don’t want to commitment to an inside sales team or who would like to ‘try out’ the concept before making the investment, outsourcing the lead generation and prospect qualification function to a call center outsourcing company is a perfect solution.  Outsourcing gives one the opportunity to free up the sales team without the long-term commitment an inside team would demand.

Another possibility would be to rely on marketing to more effectively qualify and nurture the leads they generate.  Often sellers reject leads generated by marketing because they believe them to be either of inferior quality or to be so far from sales ready that following up is a waste of time.  This isn’t to ignore that many times salespeople simply don’t follow-up on leads or they make a call and when they don’t connect they simply move on to another prospect.  But in many instances the quality of the leads are so poor that eventually sales rejects them out of hand.  Creating a more effective lead qualification and nurturing program can not only change sale’s view of company leads but can greatly reduce the cost of sales.

Whether you look to creating an inside team, outsourcing the function, or developing a more effective lead generation and nurturing program, finding a realistic solution to having salespeople act as lead generators, marketers, and salespeople will help to both increase production and reduce the cost of the individual sale.

July 16, 2011

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Secret to Sales Success

Filed under: career development,lead generation,prospecting,sales,Sales Failure,selling,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 10:49 am
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A little over one hundred years ago the father of a young 8 year old girl named Virginia O’Hanlon encouraged her to write to a then leading New York newspaper, The Sun, and ask the question she’d just asked him—if there were in fact a Santa Claus, for all of her friends were telling her that he really didn’t exist and she wanted to know if they were correct.

The Sun answered Virginia in one of the most famous editorials ever published—Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus.  The reply was a resounding YES, there is a Santa Claus and the writer of the editorial laid out his proof.

Unfortunately, today all too many deny there is a real secret to sales success also.  Like Virginia’s friends, the claim is made that there really isn’t one single thing that if done can guarantee success in sales.  No, they say, you must become a master of every aspect of selling and then you’ll be prepared to become successful.  Oh, sure, they’ll admit, a few here and there appear to succeed by blind luck, but they’re the exception, not the rule.  Forget your silly search for the magic bullet of selling and resign yourself to learning the minutia of sales before seriously turning your eye to becoming truly successful.

Many, many others are all too eager to promote the idea of the sales secret—and to let you know that they are the sole keepers of the great secret that so few have known.  Better yet, they tell you, they’ll be happy to share the secret with you, but since it is such a valuable thing and should only be shared with those who are truly deserving of knowing, they must make sure you are worthy.  But since they really don’t have any other way of discerning who is and who isn’t worthy, they must charge an exorbitant fee to keep the riff-raff and undeserving from attaining it–and since you have the money to acquire it, you must be worthy and deserving of being given the great secret (as soon as your check clears, of course)..

Lucky for you I know this great secret and I’ll give it to you—and it won’t cost you $1,995.  Won’t even cost $995.  Heck, I’m not even going to charge you $9.95.  I’m simply going to give it to you—no charge.

Why in the world would I give such a tremendous secret away for nothing?  Because I know that once learned, the vast majority won’t put it into practice.  You see, the secret is simple, but it is far from easy.

Anyone can take this secret and become a successful seller—just how successful will depend on their commitment to implementing it.

So what is this secret?

Is it a super-duper sales process?  No.

Maybe a super special leads list?  Nope, not that.

How about some special words that will immediately connect with prospects?  Not that either.

Could it be a special super power like a super hero has?   Now we’re getting warm.

The secret is a super power of sorts–one that few are capable of acquiring.

This super power is tough-mindedness.  It’s the ability to out work and out prospect your competitors.  It’s the ability to take the rejection, the ‘no’s’, the frustration of making calls and not reaching anyone, of being stopped dead by a gatekeeper, by having the phone slammed down in your ear, of networking until you feel like you can’t network anymore–and to then do it again and again and again until you’ve reached your goals.

The secret is simple—if you have the determination and commitment to prospect longer and harder than anyone else, you will become successful.

I’ve seen this truth worked out time after time as new sellers enter the field and out work and outperform even the top sellers in their office. They know nothing–but work their tails off and sell like crazy. Unfortunately, many times after they “learn” that they’re not supposed to be having the success that they’re having their production craters. They’ve “learned” how to be average. Sometimes we simply learn the wrong things–such as there isn’t a secret to sales success.

This isn’t to say that all the other things in sales aren’t important.  They are.  You need a great sales process; you need to know how to probe and discover needs and wants; you need to know how to solve issues.  There is a great deal that every professional seller must learn.

But there is still one key to being successful in sales above all others—prospecting.

The better you become at qualifying suspects; the better you become at finding and solving real needs; the better you become at finding and connecting with your quality prospects; the easier success will be and the less time you’ll have to spend prospecting.

That being said, even if you know nothing about sales, have the world’s worst close ratio, have no discretion in who you spend time talking to. and haven’t the slightest idea of the difference between a closed-end and open-end question, if you outwork your competition in prospecting, you will reach a measure of success.

Don’t let anyone tell you there isn’t a simple secret to success in selling that alone can make you successful because there is.  It certainly isn’t complicated—but it is hard.  And it can be claimed and implemented by anyone. 

By all means, acquire a great sales process, learn the most sophisticated and effective prospecting strategies you can, learn to become great at identifying and solving prospect issues, learn all you can to make selling easier, but if you aren’t having the success you want, take heart—you now have the secret.

Take it, claim it as yours, implement it, and enjoy the rewards.

And know that even if your competitors know it too, few, if any, will claim it as their own because it simply costs too much for most.

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 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.

May 23, 2011

Hoovers and LinkedIn Team Up to Make Prospect Research Easier

Filed under: prospecting — Paul McCord @ 4:02 pm
Tags:

 I suspect that you are like most sellers in that you have to find and connect with high quality prospects. 

I also suspect like more sellers you find that difficult and very time consuming.

I have yet to see a purchased leads list—no matter the price or the promises–that didn’t require a good deal of additional research of the names provided.  The list, no matter how good, needs additional substance and correction. 

And certainly if you create your own lists you have to have a quality, affordable place to begin.

Hoovers is seeking to give an answer to both of the above situations—a research tool to help fill out the names and phone numbers on a leads list and the search ability to construct a list from scratch.

Hoovers has integrated LinkedIn profiles with their search and lead generation service.  In the past when searching a particular company on Hoovers you had access to the names and titles of all of the employees of that company that were in the Hoovers database.  Depending upon the company you were dealing with, that could range from one or two employees to hundreds.  The information available was that which Hoovers could discover.

 Now, with the integration of LinkedIn, you can get more information in one spot about the decision makers and influencers than you ever could in the past—and in many cases that’s a ton of information such as (obviously there is a great deal more information available for the executives of public companies than for non-executive employees of the company or for executives and employees of privately held companies):

  • Their name and nickname
  • Title
  • Previous positions within the company
  • Length of tenure
  • Previous employer(s)
  • Their LinkedIn profile if they have one
  • In many cases (at an additional cost) their direct phone number and/or email address
  • In many cases their current and past annual salary and total compensation

The typical information available for a company includes:

  • Address/phone number for the company’s headquarters
  • Branch office address and phone numbers
  • Names and titles of employees (see above)
  • Annual sales in dollar volume (accuracy varies between public and private companies)
  • For many companies their Net Income or Loss  for the previous year;  their net income growth over the year before; and net income in dollars
  • An overview of what the company does including their target markets and how they sell their products/services
  • A risk assessment that gives you an idea of how long it might take to get paid by a company

OK, so you can do a lot of research of those companies on that expensive list you bought or you can create a list of your own. 

The big question is how accurate is the information?

Let me give you my experience as Hoovers was nice enough to let me play with the system so that I could have a better feel for it when writing a review of it. 

The List
I created a list of 217 prospects based on a number of criteria:

  • The companies had to be in business-to-business sectors (no, that’s not an option; you have to select by industry.  I used high-tech, consulting, printing, and financial services)
  • Companies had to have sales between $100 million and 1 billion per year
  • Companies had to have at least 200 employees
  • Company information had to include a target decision maker for us: the chief sales officer
  • They had to be US companies

 Once the list had been pulled I had someone start cold calling the list.  Call goals were to:

  • Assess how accurate the company information was
  • How accurate the information was about the individual identified by Hoovers as the head of sales
  • Make a sale if at all possible (selling wasn’t the primary goal but if we’re investing the time to make the call, by all means I want us to make the sale)

 How accurate was the info?  Well a list of 200 is pretty small to make big claims about, but that being said, we did find the following:

  • Of the 217 companies, the company contact information was accurate for 214 (98.6%)
  • Since about 48% were private companies that don’t have to report their sales and profits, I cannot say how accurate overall the financial information was
  • Of the 217 heads of sales, we confirmed that 144 were in fact employed at the company and did head up sales.  That means 73 (33.6%) search identified heads of sales were no longer at the company or in the head of sales position.

I was pleased with the accuracy of the company information—I think a 98% rate is excellent.

The accuracy of the financial information couldn’t be verified for almost half of the companies on the list, but in only 4 instances did we discover that a company was significantly smaller than expected (a 1.8% rate), meaning that the information was accurate enough that virtually all of the companies were of the appropriate size for our needs.

So we get to the big one—the accuracy of the identified contact.  Does 66.4% accuracy rate merit subscribing to the service?

I believe the answer is yes BECAUSE according to recent studies the typical sales leader‘s tenure is now only 18 months—and that’s who we were calling.  We were calling one of the highest turnover positions in the company leadership and expected to find a large number of contacts—up to 50%–to be incorrect.  Can you imagine trying to keep 65 million chiefs of sales updated when the bulk of them will turn over every year and a half?  Hoovers would have to be updating over 3 million companies every month just to keep up with the changes in sales leadership.

Subscriptions to Hoovers start at $89 per month—and that’s without a contract so you can stop your subscription at any time; or if you wish, instead of purchasing a subscription you can have Hoovers create a leads list for you based on your criteria.

Is the Hoovers and LinkedIn combination product the be all and end all of prospect research?  No, not at all.  However, if you want to really maximize your prospecting research time and make sure you’re calling targeted companies, being able to acquire a large amount of information about your prospect quickly and in one location are important.

Since Hoovers offers a free trail, I suggest you give them a shot.  I certainly can’t guarantee they’ll be your answer, but if your experience is like mine, you’ll find they have a lot to offer at a very reasonable cost.

.

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
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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.

May 21, 2011

Are You BS’ing Yourself with Your “Prospecting” Activity?

Filed under: career development,prospecting,sales,selling — Paul McCord @ 10:32 am
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 Over the years I’ve spoken to salesperson after salesperson who is frustrated, angry, and depressed because although they’ve invested heavily in trying to make their sales career a success, all they have to show for their efforts are little to nothing—and often a pink slip from their employer.

It usually doesn’t take long for these conversations to get around to the particulars of their activities, in particular their prospecting activities.  They are baffled by their lack of sales success because they insist that they are ‘always prospecting.’

Almost all of them can produce lists of prospects , some of which they’ve called; they can show where they’ve sent out a ton of letters and emails; they can give receipts for advertising they’ve bought; they can produce filers that they’ve plastered all over town.

Most have been busy; there is little doubt about that.  The problem is that although they have been busy, they haven’t been prospecting.  Instead of prospecting, they’ve been doing ‘things’—creating filers, writing letters and emails, attending non-qualified networking events, constructing call lists–and on occasion actually making a few phone calls.  Like many salespeople, they’ve confused doing preparatory and busy work getting ready to prospect with the activity of prospecting.

Although they have spent a great deal of time doing busy work, they have spent very little time actually prospecting.  They think they are always prospecting, but in reality they find ways not to prospect.  They engage in a great deal of activity, but the activity engaged in isn’t the activity that would produce business; instead, it is the activity that made them feel good, that made them feel productive, allowed them to convince themselves that they were being extremely active.

We salespeople tend to focus on activity—after all, activity is what gets us in the door, gets us the business we must have in order to succeed.  But activity alone is fruitless.  Activity for activity’s sake is just as sure a way to failure as inactivity.

The salespeople above believed they were highly productive because they felt productive.

Prospecting isn’t preparation to prospect; it isn’t finding easy ways to feel like you’re getting your message out; and it isn’t simply being busy all of the time.  Nor is it easy but very low return lead generation such as plastering the Wal-Mart parking lot with fliers or sending out thousands of SPAM emails.  Those may be easy, non-threatening activities, but they are also career killers.

Prospecting is a very specific activity—connecting with decision makers who you can help in one way or another and that requires a physical connection.

If you cold call, that means being on the phone, not getting ready to get on the phone.  If you network, it means actually being in front of and meeting prospects or garnering introductions to prospects from referral partners, not researching events or even spending time at non-qualified events where you’ll meet few, if any, prospects.  It means connecting with quality prospects through highly targeted and personal letter and email communications, not sending out thousands of pieces of SPAM hoping that someone will read and respond.  It means creating a highly targeted and well researched direct mail campaign, not just sending letters to a purchased list.

Yet even in the above prospecting activities, the prep and research time is NOT prospecting time and should be done only during non productive prospecting hours.

Investing time and energy in the wrong activities has killed as many sales careers as inactivity has.  As salespeople we have three very basic duties—finding and connecting with quality prospects, working with those prospects to help them satisfy needs or wants and to solve real issues, and insuring that they are taken care of during and after the sale.  Everything else is busy work and busy work doesn’t make a sale, doesn’t generate income, and doesn’t move us toward our sales or income goals.

Before you engage in any activity consider whether that activity is income producing or not.  If it isn’t directly producing income, does it really need to be done?  If not, move on to an activity that will directly lead to a sale.

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