Sales and Sales Management Blog

January 28, 2011

Trust on Decline Unless You’re Recognized as an Expert Study Finds

Filed under: marketing,Personal Marketing,Persuasion,sales,selling,small business,trust — Paul McCord @ 9:50 am
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Leanne Hoagland-Smith suggested I take a look at a very interesting post by Steve Rubel that draws attention to some recent research his company, Edelman, the largest PR firm in the world, has done in the area of trust.  His findings are most interesting for sellers and small business owners even though his real target is larger corporations engaged in constructing advertising and public relations campaigns.

One of the major findings is that there has been a decline in the number of people who trust in a person “just like myself.”  Rubel goes on to give his analysis: ”I believe the reason for this is that, as more of us join social networks, there’s been devaluation in the entire concept of ‘friendship.’”

Another finding was that trust of credentialed experts increased to 70%.  According to Rubel, “This is a trend that began last year. In addition, for the first time we looked at the credibility of technical specialists inside a company. Trust in this group is off the charts (64%). This hits home the need to identify those with expertise inside a company who can engage across different channels, many of which today are digital – or will be soon.”

Very important for us in sales, the study also found that in developed countries such as the US and the UK people need to hear a message as many as NINE times—and from multiple channels to effect behavior change.  Now this study was looking at media communication, but human nature doesn’t change—if it takes multiple hearings in multiple channels for marketers to change recipient behavior, it’s logical to assume the same is true when dealing directly with prospects and clients (one of the reasons historically we’ve had to we talk to them, give them collateral material, and make formal presentations to them—multiple hearings from multiple channels).  The key here is how many times the recipient had to hear the message before behavior changed.  Nine.  That’s a lot—and most of us probably give up on a prospect long before they’ve heard our message nine times.

You can get a mini-whitepaper of the study here.

January 25, 2011

Is It Really a 2.0 World for Sellers?

Filed under: branding,business,Client Relationships,developing expert reputation,marketing,prospecting,sales,Sales 2.0,selling,small business — Paul McCord @ 9:33 am
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The hype is everywhere: if you’re a salesperson or company without a blog, you’re totally out of today’s marketplace and are losing position to the competition hourly because unlike them, you’re not establishing your image as an expert; if you’re not active on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and/or Youtube, you may as well concede that you won’t be in sales 6 months from now; if your focus is anywhere besides online, you completely misunderstand 21st century buyers.

The message from so many is simple: we live in a 2.0 (going on 3.0) world, and anyone who doesn’t recognize that and realign their business to focus on the enormous and exponentially growing online business opportunities is a dinosaur and cannot possibly be successful in the future—and the future is defined as tomorrow, the next day at the latest.

Certainly this is a message that many businesses and salespeople want to hear.  No more having to cold call.  No more having to figure out where to advertise—yellow pages? Magazines? Newspapers?  Nope.  No more having to network through physical groups and events.  Focus on social media and the virtual world and grow your business without having to invest a dime or spend hour after hour prospecting and hearing ‘no’ after ‘no.’  Finally, a free–and rejection free–way to sell and make more than you ever dreamed possible.

What a crock.

It’s also a message that a great many people have a very vested interest in spreading.  Take a look at the incredible number of social media, internet marketing, and online business “gurus” and “coaches” trying to connect with folks on Twitter.  It appears that everyone who’s ever signed up on Twitter and successfully created a tweet considers themselves to be social media experts, ready and willing to charge the next sucker a buck to teach them how to create a tweet also—and promise them instant millions without having to work. 

Then there are the “futurists,” predicting how technology is going to change the world of selling, virtually destroying the sales profession while creating untold opportunities for companies to increase sales and profits.  These are the same futurists who upon the invention of the telephone predicted that salespeople would never again meet face to face with prospects; and who upon the arrival of the fax machine predicted that mail was no longer necessary; who upon being introduced to email declared that surely this time business mail really was dead.  Now, with the gazillions of social media options, they’re proclaiming that this time technology really is going to completely revolutionize the world of selling.

And, of course, there are thousands and thousands of companies joining the chorus of social media and internet hype who must sell their products and services to the businesses and salespeople who want to be in the vanguard of the new sales world order. 

Before I go any further let me say that despite the above, this isn’t a polemic against the internet or social media.  My Sales and Sales Management blog is entering its fifth year of publication; I am active on Twitter and Facebook; I participate on LinkedIn and Focus and many other social media sites.  I believe there is much of value and much to be gained from these technologies and you should be involved with them just as I am—but I don’t believe that they’re decreasing the need for massive traditional offline marketing and sales activities.  If anything, the hype surrounding social media has lured many competitors away from traditional prospecting and marketing, giving those who recognize the current limitations of social media a distinct advantage over those who have bought into social media as the ANSWER.

I’m also not by any means trying to say that all trainers, coaches or advocates of social media are hyperbolic in their views of the role of social media.  There are many great trainers and coaches who understand social media’s place in the marketplace and do a superb job in guiding and directing sellers and business owners in how to use and gain value from them. 

The Reality of the Internet and Social Media

That being said, there’s still far too much unfounded, wishful thinking about the power of social media.  A recent post by Brian Carroll demonstrates the lack of business generated by social media—Brian was quoting Sergio Balegno, Director of Research for MECLABS, the parent company of InTouch of which Brian is President.

MECLABS surveyed 2,300 marketers and discovered that by the end of 2010 only 6% were generating enough business leads to track ROI.  Only 25% of marketers even have clear objectives and practices for engaging social media.

Those surveyed were marketers of good size companies, not small businesses and individual sellers.  Sergio’s conclusions are very different from mine.  His conclusion is that 6% of companies realizing enough sales to track ROI with such a new medium is impressive.  That conclusion is all well and good–for a company that can afford to assign someone to managing an aggressive social media campaign.

My conclusion is that only 6% of sizable companies producing measurable ROI with a marketing department behind their activities indicate that a small business or individual seller is so far behind the 8 ball with social media that investing significant amounts of time trying to create business through it is a monumental mistake.

Further, if only 25% of the marketing departments of companies using social media have developed clear objectives and practices of how to use it, how many small businesses and individual sellers who don’t have the time or research resources of a fully fledged marketing department have developed such?  How many can spend the time and effort needed to develop such a plan and still maintain their sales volume, much less increase it?

In addition, Dave Stein of ES Research Group, Inc, the only independent source of intelligence and advice on sales training approaches, programs and the companies that provide them, forwarded to me the following graph that indicates that there is still a huge segment of society that relies little or not at all on the internet for information and decision making help.

 

Although this chart tracks only three items; how many in each age group go online for any reason; how many in each age group access a government website; and how many in each group access financial information, it does give us some idea of how many use the internet for non-government oriented research and information.

According to the above study 79% of the population above 12 years of age goes online, yet only 38% of the population above 18 uses it for financial research and information, which is one of the top research topics on the internet.  This correlates well with a study by Ruder Finn Internet Index which found that 80% of all internet users go online to socialize but less than half that number uses the internet for shopping and/or research.

If we assume there are about 235 million Americans 18 or older and 79% go online but only 50% of them use the internet for shopping and research, there’s only 93 million adults online shopping and using it for research (39.5% of the total adult population).  That means there are still 142 million Americans (60% of the adult population) not buying online or using the internet for research, i.e., 142 million Americans that you won’t be reaching online no matter what you do.

The question is simple: do you want the opportunity to reach 40% of your market (online), 60% of your market (offline), or 100% of your market (both segments)?  If you concentrate on those who are online, you’ll be eliminating 60% of your potential market (these numbers do not include businesses which would add many more millions to each category).

Now, take 60% of your potential market away and then realize that only 6% of companies with a marketing department that has the resources to aggressively work social media have generated enough business from it to be able to track results.  What are the realistic chances that social media is going to become a significant income stream producer for you or your small business?

I know, I hear the answers now—“I’m not online to sell, I’m looking to develop relationships; sales are secondary and hopefully will come someday.”  Really?  You’re spending two, three, four, five hours a day online to develop relationships with people or companies not to sell–but to maybe sell someday?  What would a sales manager say if when she asked you how you spent your week you said something like, “Well, I spent about 10 hours this week on the phone calling and meeting with prospects and clients, and I spent 20 hours online trying to develop relationships.” 

“I see,” your manager says, “what are your sales projections from spending so much time online?” 

“Oh, you misunderstand,” you answer, “I’m really not trying to sell, I’m developing relationships with lots of folks that maybe in the future might someday be prospects.  See, social media isn’t for selling, it’s for relationship development and to do it right I’ve got to spend a good deal of time interacting with them.”

“I’m sorry,” your manger responds, “I was under the impression your job was to sell.  How did I get such a wrong impression?”

“I know,” you respond, “it’s hard for you to grasp the new sales paradigm.  Things have changed, we now sell by not selling, we engage with people who might want to buy at some point in the future.  With social media I can engage hundreds of these companies.  One day, if I continue to spend half my time engaging this way I’ll be a big producer, I’m sure.  You’ll see.”

“Uh, huh,” your manager stammers.  “How much business have you gotten so far?”

“None, but don’t worry, it’s the wave of the future, everybody says so.”

“So is unemployment,” your manager responds, “it’s the wave of today.”

Sounds silly?  Yes.  Real?  Yep, there are lots of sellers spending huge amounts of time engaging in social media when they should be selling.  But, hey, social media’s easier and safer—and everybody’s doing it.

The Real Role of the Internet and Social Media in Sales and Marketing

What does this mean for sellers and small business owners?  It doesn’t mean ignore social media.  Not by any means.  Social media can play a real role in your marketing—and it will become more important over time; just take a look at the percentage of each age group that is plugged into the internet.  As you would expect, it gets bigger and bigger as the ages get younger, and, of course, those youngsters will become oldsters one day.  Likewise look at their activities.  Those in the 18 to 34 age group aren’t that far behind the older age groups in using the internet for financial research.  As they age, more and more members of this age group will engage the internet for reasons other than socializing.  By the time they reach the 65-73 age group, their financial research numbers could well be almost twice what that current age group’s numbers are.

But that’s a good ways away.

Unless you sell only to internet users—say you’re selling SEO services, website design, and such—your market is more offline than online (even if you only sell to net users you still have to spend a good deal of time selling offline—EBay and Esurance are good examples).

For most of us the internet is a viable marketing tool if used correctly.  (For an interesting current discussion of using blogs to establish credibility and expert status, see Dave Brock’s post and the comments here.)  Unfortunately, it can also be the ruination of us if we allow it to eat up too much of our time hoping for easy, faceless, no rejection sales.  There’s really no magic bullet to get around the fact that selling success has, as Tibor Shanto of Renbor points out, “always come down to planning, discipline and execution.”  Tibor goes on: in B2B sales “most buyers are not plugged in to the [internet] echo chamber to the degree 2.0 gurus would lead you to believe.  Speak to most office supply sales people, speak to buyers in the transport trade, or a vast majority of buyer and sellers, and they are not in the 2.0 lane, some are not in any lane at all.  Even many of the buyers who are ‘tuned in’ find themselves with information overload and contradictory input, as a result studies show that they still turn to direct interaction with trusted sales professionals.”

I think that in today’s world investing a few minutes a day in social media makes perfect sense and is a commitment almost every seller should make; making social media a major time and effort commitment doesn’t. 

Where you invest your time—and how much you spend–is the real question.  Most salespeople need to engage social media as a prospecting and marketing tool. More than that, they need to engage social media as a tool to develop and strengthen relationships with their prospects and clients who are tuned into technology.  Linda Richardson of Richardson, one of the leading sales training companies, put it well:

“Selling is about relationships and competency.  Sales 2.0 does not take the place of relationships, but it does give salespeople and customers a new platform for building relationships and increasing competency.  Sales 2.0 is more than technology. The tools enable collaboration, better preparation, and create a more effective and efficient way to sell. 2.0 is about reaching and connecting with the right people, getting a lot smarter and engaging in more meaningful conversations.   Of course not every company or buyer is leveraging 2.0 but by waiting on the sidelines sales organizations and salespeople are placing themselves at a serious disadvantage and risk.  Sales 2.0 is transforming sales and opening up possibilities never before seen.    It is a fast moving 2.0 Sales World and with the ever increasing number of tools there is a real need to help salespeople learn how to use them to reach their buyers.”

Where are buyers today?  Certainly there’s a large contingent that engage the internet, yet most are there not to buy or to do research or inquire about products, services, needs, or wants, but to connect with their circle of friends—to socialize with their group.

That recognition means we have to consider just how much are we willing to invest in the 2.0 world when we are not going to be able to engage with the majority of our prospects.  Can we connect with prospects?  Can we even make an occasional sale?  Yes.  Is it going to produce the business that could be otherwise produced in strategic offline prospecting and engaging of prospects?  Testimony and research to date seems to indicate the answer is a resounding no, not now.  Are the hoped for relationships that will result in future sales worth spending large numbers of hours on social media sites?  Not if your paycheck relies on sales.  Unfortunately you can’t cash a relationship, no matter the future potential. 

The internet and social media will continue to grow in importance.  You need to have a presence and grow that as the influence of the technology grows.  But if you want to be in business long enough to see significant business come from it, you have to be fully engaged in the business of selling—offline.  That hasn’t changed and it won’t change for many, many years to come.

The Major Role of the internet and Social Media for Most Sellers Today

That doesn’t, however, finish the discussion of the role of the internet and social media for us sellers.  Although the chart Dave sent me points out the limitations of social media and the internet for marketing, Dave emphasized the very real benefit of them for virtually every salesperson to significantly change and improve their prospecting research, for learning and sharpening sales and product knowledge, and for the fast and inexpensive (often free) opportunities for great training and skill development through blogs, article sites, webinars, forums and groups, and the other platforms available on the net.

Webinars offer unbelievable training and learning opportunities and should be a core resource for every company and seller.  You can get guidance and training from some of the best trainers and thinkers in business and sales without having to leave your office; whereas in the past you couldn’t get their training unless you were lucky enough to have your company bring them in or you lived in or were willing to travel to a place where they were presenting a public seminar—if they gave public seminars.  The internet has opened those opportunities to every seller in the world that has a computer and internet connection–and often at no cost.  (Webinars are also one of the best resources for sales and customer service as the uses for selling, customer and internal training, and servicing customer needs is endless.)

LinkedIn groups and sites such as Focus offer sellers the opportunity to ask questions and get answers from some of the top sales minds in the world, as well as from other sellers.  These forums and groups make it possible to get world class answers to virtually any question a seller could possibly have—free of charge.

For most of us the internet has opened tremendous new doors for researching our markets, for identifying quality prospects, for doing competitor research, for obtaining training and developing new skills.  As Linda indicated above, it can help us create a more effective and better way to sell—both online and offline.

The 2.0 world does have a tremendous impact on how we sell.  Its influence will continue to grow.  Right now it can open doors to opportunities in training and research that can change the very basic nature of how we do things.  The only thing it can’t do is help us reach that more than 60% of our market that doesn’t use the internet or social media outside of socializing with their group.  For that—for the lion’s share of our market—we have to hit the street in the same manner we’ve always done.  And that means it really isn’t quite a 2.0 sales world–yet.

January 6, 2011

Guest Article: “Brandwashing?,” by Roger Dooley

Filed under: branding,marketing — Paul McCord @ 10:41 am
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Brandwashing?
by Roger Dooley

I’ve been hearing the invented word “brandwashing” for years now, but this combination of “branding” and “brainwashing” received new exposure when the New York Times suggested it as a synonym for neuromarketing.

But should we worry that a technique that probes subconscious brain patterns might be used to unduly influence consumers, turning them into shopping robots without their knowledge and consent? Indeed, neuromarketing is setting off alarm bells among some consumer advocates, who call it “brandwashing” — an amalgam of branding and brainwashing. [Emphasis added. From The New York Times - Making Ads That Whisper to the Brain by Natasha Singer.]

The article also quotes Penn prof Joseph Turow as saying, “There has always been a holy grail in advertising to try to reach people in a hypodermic way,” he says. The neuromarketing techniques described in the article are the use of EEG and biometrics to analyze consumer reactions to ads, as performed by firms like Neurofocus, Sands Research, and others.

Sadly, this juxtaposition of describing passive market research (like EEG ad studies) while talking about “hypodermic” persuasion and “brandwashing” provides fuel to crackpot conspiracy theorists.

EEG Studies Do Not Equal Brainwashing

Neuroalarmists generally are clueless about the details of neuromarketing as practiced today; they just know that it sounds scary. Seeing how people react to ads, brands, and packaging is something that marketers have been doing for decades, albeit with mixed results.

This does NOT mean that ads found to be more engaging will turn consumers into mindless drones. For many decades, marketers have been doing their best to develop powerful and effective ads. Sometimes, they succeeded in establishing awareness of a brand or product, or causing an uptick in sales. Never, though, have they taken over the brains of consumers in the way some people think neuromarketing can. NEWS FLASH: If there was a way to make ads effective enough to take over the brains of consumers, that would have happened long before EEG and fMRI arrived on the market research scene.

Why Wouldn’t We Want Better Ads and Products?

Most new products fail, and many ad campaigns have so little effect on sales that they are a total waste of money. Ultimately, consumers pay for these failed marketing efforts in the form of higher prices. In addition, we all have to put up with watching ineffective, boring ads because some firm’s marketing team launched the campaign without adequate testing. Personally, I like ads that engage me. While I fast forward past the endless stream of repetitive dreck that populates most commercial TV, I watch the Super Bowl more for the ads than for the game. Not all Super Bowl ads are winners, but their originality and creativity make them a lot more engaging than the usual fare.

If one takes the position that using neuromarketing studies are wrong, what one is really saying, “We want more boring ads, more new products that fail in the marketplace, and fewer products that people really like!”

The truth is that people are often incapable of articulating what they really like. EEG, fMRI, and biometrics may provide a somewhat more accurate way of measuring their preferences when compared to focus groups or surveys. These technologies do NOT inject brand preferences into consumer brains, so let’s lose the “brandwashing” idea before it gains more currency.

Roger Dooley writes and speaks about marketing, and in particular the use of neuroscience and behavioral research to make advertising, marketing, and products better. He is the primary author at Neuromarketing, and founder of Dooley Direct LLC, a marketing consultancy.

January 2, 2011

Seller, Get Your SPAM Out of Your Prospect’s Email Box

Filed under: marketing,prospecting,sales,selling,small business — Paul McCord @ 11:51 am
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Do you use email to try to connect with new prospects?  If you do—or if you’re thinking about starting—you might want to take into consideration what one of my clients had to say about prospecting through email:

“I used to get an occasional email with a subject line such as “Meeting Request” once a week, maybe three or four times a month.  Although I thought it a bit cheeky since the salesperson and I hadn’t talked, it really didn’t bother me. 

“Now I’m getting those emails 15 or 20 times a week.  They’re all the same—‘my product is great, will save you (or make you) a ton of money, I’d like a few minutes to introduce you to my product/service.  Please let me know what would be a good time to connect with you.’

“Lately I’ve also noticed that the salespeople are getting more deceptive in their subject line with lines such as ‘RE: Meeting Request,’ like we’ve already exchanged emails about this; or, ‘Per Your Request,’ as though I had spoken with the salesperson and requested them email me to set up a time.

“I consider anything in my email box that comes to me unsolicited or from someone I don’t know to be SPAM.  Anyone who invades my email box will never get an appointment.  If they have no more professionalism than to SPAM me, they certainly won’t get my attention or my business.”

This from the CEO of a mid-size manufacturing company with offices in 12 states.  Robert’s company would be a great client for most any salesperson—they are making money and aren’t afraid to spend it on the right products and services.  My client is a fairly easy guy to connect with.  But if you invade his email box you won’t be connecting with him.  If you’re part of the 300 to 400 emails he gets a day, you better have made your connection through some other means or you’re just going to get deleted with prejudice. 

Like Robert, I—and probably most business owners and managers reading this—have been getting more and more of these meeting request emails.  I now get at least one every day, often two or more.

The question is: is using email to make an initial connection a legitimate way to connect or is it, as Robert believes, an invasion of privacy?  And whether or not it is a legitimate connection method, is it worth the potential ill will it can create?

I don’t have a definitive answer.  But I decided to ask just a few business owners and executives what their reaction to these emails is.  It was a very small poll—22 men and women from various parts of the country and from various industries.

The results:

10 never notice these types of emails because they automatically delete anything from those they don’t know or aren’t expecting

7 automatically delete any email that appears to be a solicitation of any kind, including a meeting

5 will open these types of emails.  3 of the five will read long enough to determine no interest—their estimate two to three seconds; 2 will read virtually the whole email.  One has actually responded to a meeting request.

To put these in numbers:

45% automatically delete any email from anyone they don’t know

Another 32% automatically delete any email that appears to be a solicitation

77% will delete the email without ever opening it

23% will open the meeting request email

     The sender has 2 to 3 seconds to capture the attention of 60% of these email openers

     40% of the openers will read the email (9% of the 22 surveyed)

     20% of the openers have actually responded to a meeting request email (5% of the 22)

Of the 17 who deleted the email without ever opening it, how many consider it SPAM and how many have a negative impression of the sender?

13 of the 17 consider the email to be SPAM (59% of the 22)

15 of the 17 have a negative impression of the sender (68% of the 22)

Is creating a negative impression in 68% of the people you try to connect with via email wise?  Maybe it is if your prospecting strategy is strictly based on a numbers game—blast the world with as many emails as possible and somebody will respond and to hell with those who don’t. 

But if your prospecting activity is based on a well thought out strategy of finding and connecting with high quality prospects you probably can’t afford to burn 68% of them.

Before you queue up that list of prospects to blast with your meeting request email, consider whether or not there is a better way to connect with them.  As more and more people get fed up with the hundreds of pieces of SPAM they get every day, your piece of email that is so important to you is more and more often considered unwelcome and rude SPAM.  Is that the impression you really want to make?

September 22, 2010

Need Sales NOW? Get Sales NOW!

Filed under: Book Recommendations,career development,prospecting,sales,selling,small business,success,Uncategorized — Paul McCord @ 7:43 am
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Are you or your sales team finding it difficult to bring in business?  If so, I suggest you take a look at my newest book, Bust Your Slump: A Dozen Slump Busting Strategies to Fill Your Pipeline in 30 Days, which has just been released.

Bust Your Slump isn’t another book that promises easy eternal success and delivers nothing but a bunch of fluff and hype with no substance. 

My only purpose in Bust Your Slump is to lay out in detail 12 proven, effective, real strategies that will generate business for you fast.  Each chapter not only gives you the concept, it gives you a step by step process for implementing it, and then demonstrates what it can do by relating how one of his clients used.

Whether you sell B2B or B2C, are involved in a one-time close process or a long sales cycle, sell a commodity or a sophisticated product or service, you’ll find strategies that will work for you. 

If you buy the book at Amazon during the next couple of days, you’ll get several hundred dollars of great bonus gifts from some of the top minds in sales such as Jill Konrath, Keith Rosen, Jonathan Farrington, Dave Kurlan, Wendy Weiss, Dave Brock and many others.  Head over to see all of the great bonuses you get for simply buying a book that will fill your pipeline.

There’s also a special bonus for 5 sales managers or executives offered by Dave Brock.  On Friday Dave will draw the names of 5 sales managers or executives who have bought the book and registered to win a sales process health check, a $1,500 product.  We’ve all seen the crappy fake $1,000 or 1,500 bonuses on book launches.  This isn’t a fake bonus value.  If you want you can head over to Dave’s company’s website and pay your $1,500 for the checkup right now.  Or you can buy the book and register to win one.  Dave can’t give away an unlimited number of them—but he will give away $7,500 of product on Friday.  Make sure you’re in the running for one.

Bust Your Slump is top notch.  The strategies are real and they work.  You’ll have to invest the time and effort to implement them.  These aren’t magic bullets.  But they are the real deal.

I encourage you to head over to Amazon  and pick up your copy then head over and grab your bonuses.  Would you rather have the Kindle version?  Get it here.   Maybe you’d like an autographed copy?  Go here.

Are you a sales leader who’d like multiple copies for your team?  Shoot me an email at pmccord@mccordandassociates.com and I can fill you in on the special multiple copy rates that can save you a ton of money when buying 25 or more copies.

July 29, 2010

Book Review: The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance: Earning What You’re Worth in Sales

Filed under: Book Reviews,business,career development,marketing,prospecting,sales,Sales Failure,selling,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 11:11 am
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Seldom do I review a book that has been on the market for years, much less decades.  But I ran across my old beat up copy of  The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance: Earning What You’re Worth in Sales
and decided since the book was in such poor condition I’d order the newest edition.  After reading it again, I thought I’d do my small part to encourage as many sellers and sales leaders as possible to pick up a copy and set aside some time for some serious—and potentially highly productive—reading.

Authors George W. Dudley and Shannon L. Goodson are psychologists who have spent decades researching one of the key barriers to sales success—call reluctance.  The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance: Earning What You’re Worth in Sales (Behavioral Sciences Research Press, Inc: 5th Edition 2007) is designed to help sellers and sales leaders recognize the issues that are keeping them from prospecting effectively and to overcome them. 

Dudley and Goodson argue that sales call reluctance isn’t as simple as the fear of rejection it is so often claimed to be, but instead can be any one or any combination of twelve different issues that prevent sellers from fully engaging in prospecting. 

After first dealing with the difference between true call reluctance and call reluctance impostors (things that may look like call reluctance but aren’t, such as low motivation or low goals), the authors get down to business by laying out in detail the twelve root causes of call reluctance. 

These prospecting killers are:

  1. Doomsayers those who over prepare for the worst case scenario
  2. Over-Preparer  spends time preparing to prospect, little time prospecting
  3. Hyper-Pro   in Texas we’d call them all hat, no cattle—spends all their time on the show of success, no time on becoming successful
  4. Stage Fright  avoid group presentations
  5. Role Rejection  buried guilt or shame about being a salesperson or self-promoter
  6. Yielder  hesitant to be seen as intrusive or forward
  7. Social Self-Consciousness  afraid to market to upscale prospects
  8. Separationist  resistant to selling and marketing to friends
  9. Emotionally Unemancipated  resistant to selling and marketing to family

10.  Referral Aversion  uncomfortable asking for referrals

11.  Telephobia fear of using the phone to connect with prospects

12.  Oppositional Reflex  a need for a great deal of approval but having very low self-esteem

Like a great many other sellers, I can spot myself in this list—my self-diagnosis is Over-Preparer and Role-Rejection (one of the role rejection issues the authors discuss is a seller’s discomfort with self-promotion as many sellers have been brought up to believe that self-promotion is unseemly and socially unacceptable).

Along with the description of the call reluctance issue, Dudley and Goodson include some self-diagnosis questions and typical work behaviors associated with the issue that will help you determine if you—or one of your sellers-is a victim of the particular prospecting killer.

The authors don’t leave you hanging.

Of course the book would be useless if it only diagnosed the illness without giving an appropriate and effective prescription to cure it. 

Dudley and Goodson lay out in detail six procedures (and a couple of minor ones) to counteract and correct the dozen call reluctance issues.   

Each discussion of a call reluctance issue is accompanied by a list of the countermeasures effective for treating it so you know what your illness is as well as the correct prescription to deal with it. 

A countermeasure is designed to change your thoughts, your feelings or your actions. Every call reluctance issue has multiple countermeasures–at least one countermeasure to deal with your thoughts and at least one to deal with your feelings, and almost all have a countermeasure to help change your actions.

Countermeasures are too complex to go into any detail here, but an idea of where the authors go with countermeasures can be gathered through some of the countermeasure’s names: Thought Realignment, Threat Desensitization, Thought Zapping, and Fear Inversion.

The Pros:

The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance:

  • Presents a research based assessment of the causes of sales call reluctance
  • Provides detailed tested and proven prescriptions for dealing with the identified call reluctance issues
  • Helps distinguish between true call reluctance and those actions that appear to be call reluctance but aren’t

Unlike most sales trainers and consultants who claim to know the cause of call reluctance, Dudley and Goodson have moved well beyond the “fear of rejection” assumption and have provided sellers with a well researched discussion of its causes and cures.  That alone is worth every penny of the book’s cost.

More importantly, the proposed cures really seem to work, which is far more than can be said for the old “just do it” formula so often prescribed by motivational speakers.  A real, workable, effective solution makes the book priceless.

The Cons:

Unfortunately there are cons—both in style and execution.

Let’s take the less important style cons first:

1) The authors skewer sales trainers, psychologists, and motivational speakers for claiming they have ‘the answer.”  Dudley and Goodson are just as guilty if not more so since they make such an issue of beating their straw man sales trainers, psychologists and motivation speakers about the head and shoulders unmercifully. 

2) The authors try too hard to turn a semi-academic work into something more akin to literature.  They get far too carried away trying to make their similes and metaphors cute and unique that they are almost laughable.  Yes, a minor point, but one that after awhile becomes weary. 

Now to the far more important execution issue: the diagnosis and prescriptions are going to be very difficult for a great many sellers to handle on their own (not to mention that an even greater number of sellers will never make it through the tedious detail of the book).  Many, if not most, sellers will have to have someone to both guide them through the book and to hold them accountable for executing the prescriptions.  I think far more sellers will be successful using Dudley and Goodson’s research if they work in conjunction with their manger, a coach, or mentor. 

If you’re a seller, I encourage you to get a copy of the book, work through it, and then find someone—a manager or coach probably—to work with you to diagnose your call reluctance issues (if you have any) and then work through the countermeasures.

If you’re a sales leader, even more this book should not only be on your bookshelf, but should be in your hands—you just might find it solves many a vexing problem your sellers have had.

The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance: Earning What You’re Worth in Sales

May 12, 2010

Where Is Your Sense of Urgency?

Filed under: Closing Sales,lead generation,marketing,prospecting,sales,selling,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 12:30 pm
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My wife and I are In the middle of purchasing a new home.  Since we had to arrange for insurance coverage on the house, I thought this would be a good time to re-evaluate our auto policy.  About three weeks ago I called four local agents, including our current agent, for quotes and completed an on-line questionnaire to see if quotes from agents who compete for business generated by an internet site would be more competitive.

I completed the on-line questionnaire on a Thursday and almost as soon as I submitted it I received calls from two agents—one local, the other out of Austin.  I didn’t receive any other calls from the on-line form until Tuesday of the following week when I received one.  I was contacted by another insurance agent on Wednesday and then two more on Thursday—fully a week after submitting the questionnaire.  They were way too late as I had decided by Tuesday to stay with my current insurance company.

But the calls from agents haven’t stopped.

I received calls from nine agents the following week and by seven more agents the third week.

To date, I’ve received calls from 22 agents–which should have given me every opportunity to acquire the best policy/rate combination possible.  Except only two agents responded to my inquiry in a timely manner.   Twenty agents or marketing departments had no sense of urgency in following up with my inquiry and consequently had no chance of acquiring my business.

Only two out of twenty-two agents had a strong enough desire to make a sale that they found a way to contact me quickly.  That’s pathetic.

But that’s hardly the only case of lethargy I’ve encountered lately.

We’re getting the carpets cleaned in our current residence when we move.  As with insurance, I called multiple carpet cleaning companies to get quotes.  I called six companies on a Tuesday and immediately spoke to one and had my voice mail returned the same day by another.  Another company called me Wednesday.  I heard from the fourth on Friday and the fifth the following Tuesday. I have yet to hear from the sixth company.   I had made my mind up by Wednesday afternoon on which company to hire.  Fully 50% of the companies I called never had a chance to get the business because they did not respond quickly enough to be in the running.

Should I give a third or even fourth example?  I experienced the same issues hiring a home inspector and trying to arrange for a paint contractor.  In both cases over 50% of the companies I contacted either have not responded or responded after I had hired one of their competitors.

In all four cases I believe I’ve acted as most consumers would—I made the inquiry and made my decision within two to five days.  Those who reacted promptly competed for my business; those who either because of a lack of a sense of urgency or because their marketing department or sales manager didn’t get them the lead in a timely manner lost the opportunity to make a sale and squandered their marketing dollars.

A quality lead has a very short shelf-life—whether we’re talking about the retail situations above or a long sales cycle, sophisticated product or service.  Someone–you or your company–has paid good money to get the phone to ring, to get a lead card mailed back, or get a form filled out on the internet.  Every minute you wait to contact a prospect is a minute you’re giving the competition to close the deal before you even get there.

If leads come to you directly, discipline yourself to respond to them immediately.  If they come through your sales manager or marketing department and you know that they are slow to distribute them, light a fire under their butts. 

There is simply no excuse to lose sales because a lead wasn’t contacted in a timely manner; nevertheless, there are a large number of sellers and companies who have no sense of urgency, giving those who are quick to respond a significant—and likely decisive–advantage.

What about you?  Where is your sense of urgency?

March 9, 2010

Book Review: Lemonade Stand Selling: Accelerate Your Small Business Growth, by Diane Helbig

Filed under: Book Reviews,business,marketing,sales,selling,small business — Paul McCord @ 2:58 pm
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Everyday across the globe thousands of men and women start a small business.  Whether a small consultancy out of their home, a retail store, a café, or even a lemonade stand, they all have a common goal—success.  They also have common problems and common needs—they have to find, sell, and retain customers. 

No customers=no sales.  No sales=no income.  No income=out of business.

Diane Helbig’s Lemonade Stand Selling: Accelerate Your Small Business Growth (Sales Gravy Press: 2010) gives small business owners the basic knowledge and direction they need to establish and grow their business successfully.  Unlike most books about selling, Lemonade Stand Selling is designed specifically for the small business owner.

In an easy to read 100 pages, Helbig addresses each of the major selling and marketing issues every business owner must overcome from market identification to identifying, finding and connecting with prospects to account management to planning your company’s growth. 

Each chapter is short, yet packed with content.  And Helbig doesn’t pad the size of the book with filler as so many authors do, but instead concentrates on delivering useable information with a strong focus on immediately applicable guidance. 

Matt, a print broker is the device Helbig uses to illustrate and apply each concept.  Each chapter has a section called “Case in Point” that chronicles Matt’s application of the chapter’s principles and the impact applying the principle has on his business.

You don’t have to wade through a boring marketing  text, learn the sales and marketing buzz words, or try to figure out how to take strategies designed for large companies and apply them to your small business.

If you’re a small business owner—whether you’re just starting your business or have been in business for years—Lemonade Stand Selling will give you the real world information you need to begin growing your business. 

Available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million, and all fine booksellers.

February 28, 2010

What Are You Teaching Your Prospects and Clients About Your Value to Them?

Filed under: Communication,marketing,Personal Marketing,small business — Paul McCord @ 6:50 pm
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At least once a week I have a conversation with a sales leader or seller who complains about how much time and money they’re wasting on efforts to keep in touch with their prospects and clients since prospects and clients “never seem to read the damn stuff anyway.”  If it weren’t for the need to keep their name in front of their prospects and clients, there’s no way they’d waste the kind of money they’re throwing away.

I can sympathize—I’ve done the same.  In fact, I suspect a great many of us in sales—whether entrepreneurs, service professionals, or sales reps—who must construct our own communication program without the benefit of a marketing department struggle with the same issue (by the way, the marketing department struggles with it also).

Why do we spend so much time, money and effort in communicating with our prospects and clients and walk away with the feeling—the knowledge–that they haven’t read a word of what we wrote or heard a word we said?

The answer is quite simple—but one we really don’t want to hear–we haven’t delivered anything of value to them. 

We’ve committed the most common and most grievous sin in sales—we’ve focused on our needs and what the client or prospect can do for us, not on their needs and how we can be of service to them.  We’ve fallen into the easiest trap in the world to fall into—making the communication about us, not about the prospect or client.

Think about some of the most common communications we have with our prospects and clients:

  • “just checking to see if you need anything”
  • “wanted to make sure you got the flier about the special we’re having”
  • “look at the award we won”
  • “get a 15% discount on your next order when you refer someone”
  • “just reminding you it’s time to reorder”
  • “wanted to follow-up and see if you needed anything else or had any questions about our proposal”
  • “here’s a commercial, canned newsletter that has my name printed on it, maybe there’s something in here worth reading–and I hope you don’t get the same newsletter from one of my competitors because, boy, that’d be embarrassing”

Notice anything about these communications?  These and most of the other follow-up communications we have with our prospects and clients are about us, not them.  Whether we’re calling them, emailing them, sending a newsletter, a postcard, or snail mail letter, most of our communications are designed to benefit us more than our prospect or client.

The problem with the above communications is that for the most part, our prospects and clients don’t care about this information.  They aren’t communications that interest and help them.  In fact, most of the time, these communications do nothing but waste their time, and if we waste their time often enough, they’ll simply ignore our efforts to communicate with them.

Am I saying then that you can’t inform your prospects and clients about specials, remind them it is time to reorder, or ask if there is additional information they need in regards to your proposal? Of course not (I am saying, however, that you can never, ever, ever make the “just checking to see if you need anything” phone call).  But in order to have earned the right to make these “me” communications, you have to demonstrate that your focus isn’t you, but them.

You want to keep your name in front of your prospects and clients and you want to be able to communicate with them about things that are important to you, but to do that, ironically, you can’t focus on yourself.  How do you do that?

The easiest and most disciplined way to maintain contact, keep your name in front of your prospects and clients, earn the right to communicate about things that are important to you, and to teach your prospects and clients to pay attention to you is by creating a formal “touch” program, a campaign where you “touch” each of your prospects and clients on a regular basis with information that benefits them far more than it may immediately and obviously benefit you. 

Your touch campaign should focus not on who you are or what you do, it shouldn’t be focused on selling or overtly marketing your products or services, but rather it should focus on delivering information that your prospects and clients will find beneficial or useful.

What will your clients and prospects find to be useful?  That, of course, depends on who your prospects and clients are.  Sending recipes to business executives probably isn’t going to earn you a great deal of attention, just as sending an article on six sigma management theory isn’t going to do a lot for you if your prospects and clients are interested in discovering and cooking exotic dishes.

The first step in knowing what is of interest to your prospects and clients is to know your prospects and clients.  Sounds silly, but a great many sellers know little to nothing about the makeup of the group or groups they sell to.

Identifying and developing content that will capture the attention of and benefit business prospects and clients is often easier than identifying content for consumers because of the obvious commonality of interests. 

But even if your market is made up of groups of men and women with multiple, diverse interests, you can customize content with relatively little trouble by dividing your prospect and client list into two, three, four or more interest groups. Using an email contact product such as Aweber or Constant Contact can make communicating with multiple lists manageable

Since our prospects and clients are not automatons but are flesh and blood humans, we have to recognize that they not only respond to different content, they respond to different ways of being touched.  Consequently, we have to employ a variety of ways of reaching out to them.  For most of us that means some combination of:

  • Phone calls
  • Personal and/or general emails
  • Monthly or quarterly newsletter
  • Postcards
  • Thank You cards
  • Birthday/holiday greeting cards
  • Snail mail letters

Although we may not employ every format from the list above, our communication program needs to employ a combination of the personal (phone call, birthday card) with the general (newsletter, postcard).

How often should you connect with your list?  Studies indicate that an effective communication campaign will touch each prospect and client 12 to 18 times a year–basically, once every 3 to 4 weeks.

Obviously, if you have more than just a very few prospects and clients on your list you can’t make a personal phone call or send a personal letter or email every 3 to 4 weeks, so you will have to include some forms of mass communication in your program mix.

That takes us back to what to communicate?

If you’re selling to businesses some things you might communicate are:

  • Industry studies or forecasts
  • General economic studies or forecasts
  • Information about a specific competitor, new industry trend, new or proposed local, state, or federal government rules, regulations, or laws
  • Articles or news that might reveal new opportunities
  • A particularly interesting sales, management, hr, or marketing article that could apply to the industry
  • Success stories or unique and creative ways the industry’s products or services have been employed
  • Stories or articles about a particular company or individual

Virtually any of the above could be used in a personal phone call, email or letter to a prospect or client on your list, and most could be used in a general communication.  For a mass communication the more general the piece (general economic forecast from the Wall Street Journal as opposed to an industry forecast from an industry journal) the better as most of your readers will probably be familiar with material that comes from their industry publications.  The same holds true for a highly specialized publication—an article from a very specialized and limited circulation industry newsletter makes for a much better communication than an article from a general industry publication since it is far less likely your readers will have seen the piece from the specialized publication prior to your communication.

If your list is made up of consumers with a common interest—skiing–your content can be pretty easy to acquire since things such as product reviews, skiing venue reviews, and other skiing content is readily available and there are so many publications that it wouldn’t be difficult to find content that would be new to most readers.

But what if your list is more general?  Look for some content that will appeal to the vast majority such as general financial news, financial guidance, consumer reports, consumer trends, general interest news, or find ways to divide your list into more specialized lists where you can focus in on specialized topics. 

For both business and consumer content, the key is knowing your prospects and clients.  The better you know your list, the more you can focus your content to their needs and interests.

What about all of those great offers and discounts and new products you want to tell your prospects and clients about?  Are they off the table?  No, not at all.  You can weave those into your campaign; they just can’t be the focus, the center of attention.  You can even include those offers in every letter, email or newsletter your send–if they are only a secondary part of the content.  Once they become the main focus, you will once again be teaching your list that you’re concerned about you, not them, and that they no longer need to pay attention to you.

Why go to this much trouble?  Why not just buy a boilerplate newsletter and be done with it?  Why not just do what you’ve always done and not worry about all this non-sense about teaching prospects and clients to pay attention since they’re not going to read the stuff anyway?

Well, frankly, that’s what most of your competitors will do.  They’ll go along as they’ve always done, sending self-serving drivel, teaching their prospects and clients that they have nothing of interest to offer them.   They’ll choose to continue focusing on their needs instead of their prospects and client’s because it is easier. 

You too can take the easy route, the route everyone else takes and end up with the same results as everyone else—finding it difficult to get your calls taken or returned, not having your emails, letters, and newsletter read, wondering why you’re wasting your time and money sending stuff to your list.  Or you can choose to invest the time and effort to create a communication campaign that really impacts your prospects and clients and that teaches them to pay attention to you because you really have something to offer them.  It’s your choice.  Easy it isn’t—but then doing the hard work is what sets the successful sales professional apart from the also ran.  Which are you?                                                                     

NOTE:  On Tuesday, March 23 you can attend a free webinar where we’ll be discussing how to create a powerful touch campaign for your prospects and clients that will teach them to pay attention to you.  You can find more information about the webinar and register for it HERE

February 24, 2010

Create a Powerful, Effective Follow-up Communication Campaign–A Free Webinar on March 23

Filed under: business,Communication,Customer Service,marketing,sales,selling,small business — Paul McCord @ 9:16 am
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Are you teaching your prospects and clients to pay attention to you–or to ignore you?

What do your follow-up communciations with your prospects and clients say about you and your value to them?

Every time you communicate with your prospects and clients, whether a phone call, a newsletter, an email, or direct mail piece, you’re teaching them to pay attention to you because you bring value to them or to ignore you because all you do is waste their time.

Join me on Tuesday, March 23 at 1PM Central for a FREE 1 hour webinar to learn how to make networking work.

You’ll Learn:
” Why your communications define who you are and what you’re worth
” Why you must have a formal, disciplined follow-up communication program
” Why you have to have several different ways to communicate
” Why you must NEVER send a canned, commercial newsletter
” How to create valuable communications that increase your value to your prospect or client

This isn’t a come-on to sell products or coaching. You’ll learn real strategies that produce results.

LIMITED SEATING

The webinar will be recorded, so if you miss it live, you won’t miss a thing.

Register HERE

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