In a volatile business environment, sales has to adapt. It is not just reaction to change that we need, it is anticipation of change. That means that a variety of thinking skills are needed:
The ability to analyse what is happening to customers and what it means for their suppliers,
The ability to create new scenarios and solutions for them,
The ability to reflect and learn from failure and consolidate on success.
Whenever do we get time to think?
When times are hard, the pressure is on to do, do, do. But if you are doing the wrong things, that only upsets customers more. Sales management in the 21st century is a great deal about leading and coaching the professional development in salespeople that customers admire.
Productivity is always important, but efficiency comes after effective courses of action have been identified.
Drip marketing software will revolutionise your sales and marketing process if you take the time to implement it.
Do you sometimes struggle to remember to follow up with important prospects and existing customers and clients because you just get too over whelmed?
It’s natural. We all do it no matter how well planned out our time is.
The reality is we all let sales and marketing activities go through the cracks because we are too busy, get distracted or just plain forget. There was research done (artributed to many organisations) in the 90’s, that showed most people will buy after 7 ‘touches’. More recent research has indicated that with the proliferation of marketing messages and marketing channels available today, that could be more like 12-20 touches.
An effective way to keep ahead of the pack and on top of your game is to leverage technology to work smarter and not harder. One of the best ways of doing this is by using what is referred to as ‘drip marketing’ software.
I have been using the phrase “don’t show up and throw up” for a long time in my training and have blogged about it previously. I use it to persuade sales people from launching into a canned spiel that is focused on them, their product and their company.
The people you call and meet really don’t care for the “show up and throw up” approach to sales. They want you to be focused on their business, their business goals and their Customer Value Proposition (CVP) -that is how you help them win more business and add value to their customers.
I have to be honest and say that I never really thought that I invented the phrase but I could not put my finger on where it came from. Until now that is!
I was just looking over some of my old sales books and low and behold came across my source of inspiration in a book called: Knock your socks off prospecting.
A great sales blog that has sadly shut it’s doors is sales itch which was run by Ed Mclean. I had chance to have a look at it again today and it made me smile. In particular, I love Ed’s sales bloopers series. In particular blooper number 2 – which starts off like this:
Me : “Good morning, may I speak to Mike Wright please?” Gatekeeper : “No, I am sorry, Mike doesn’t take calls” Me : “OK, no problem. Perhaps you can help, I saw that Mike recently made an announcement about the Hertford project. I have been working on a similar project and wanted to make contact. Is Mike in the office at the moment?
My personal favourites are: 1) Do an information dump and 2) show up and throw up. For me these two tend to work hand in hand. If anyone ever came to me and opened up the laptop and uttered that phrase:
Boost elearning has developed on online training solution to show knowledge workers how to use the new advanced features in Google search.
How targeted is that?
Just to re-iterate. The system they have developed is to show people how to use the advanced google search functions. I am sure they will do very well with this solution. In my sales training courses I have been showing sales people how to use the advanced search functions for some time now to qualify their target market, find the correct people and get direct contact details. This generally saves people from the dreaded ‘gatekeeper’ stalls.
I think this press release is a great example of where the modern business economy is going.
One of the things that most salespeople on our sales training want to know is
“how do we deal with gatekeepers?”
I am not a big believer in the old style tips and tricks for ‘fighting’ your way through gatekeepers and have used a more personal yet professional aproach in my training for a long time.
Recently a contact of mine (shaun gisbourne –
www.twitter.com/shaungisbourne ) showed me a really good blog post written by some sales pro’s and a gatekeeper. Have a read – it makes sense!
Now you have read that be careful what you get upto when trying to manipulate or use tactics to get around gatekeepers. Many of my clients have been both salespeople and gatekeepers and they devise some ingenious ways to find out if you lie to them.
One group of telesales salespeople we trained made up a ficticious Director to use on unprepared callers. Any time someone rang up asking: “Who is in charge of xxxxxxxxxxxxxx?”
They would tell them this Director and put them through to his voicemail. Yes, they went that far by creating a voicemail for that ficticious person. Anytime someone then rang up asking for Mr ficticious director they would just say: ”he is on another call – would you like to hold?”
They also told me that they would very often get unprofessional salespeople ringing in and trying to get away with old style tactics, such as:
“I spoke to mr ficticious director last week and he asked that i call him today”
This usually resulted in an extremely short phone call!
So the next time you are thinking of ‘playing the game’ with a gatekeeper, remember the tale of these two blog posts.
Oh, incidentally, if you want to know how to bypass the gatekeeper altogether and get direct access to your prospective client than come on one of our sales training courses because that is what we specialise in.
There is nothing worse than some one openly bending the truth in their first sales contact with you. It will blow your credibility and any chance that you ever had of some one taking you or your company seriously.
Why am i saying this?
Because it just happened to me. I just received this email:
Hello,
My name is xxxxx xxxxxx and I called earlier yesterday on behalf of Present.ly http://www.presently.com/ (An award-winning microblogging SaaS – Software as a Service platform that keeps your company connected in real-time). They are working with SalesConx to help them find more companies that could benefit from working with them.
Verry often when making a cold (or warm) calls, the other peson will say:
“No I’m not interested”
This usually comes just after you have made your introduction. There are a couple of ways you can deal with this effectively and we will look at these in a minute after we look at what not to do:
Never argue back or try to be clever. Saying something like “How do you know your not interested, you don’t know what I’m selling” will end up getting a response similar to “You are right and I never will – so pi** off!”
Never just carry on the pitch as if you haven’t heard them. This will wind them up and close any potentail doors you ever had.
What can you do:
Develop a better opening statement and Value staement that will significantly decrease resistance and the number of times you hear this. I covered this in a previous sales blog article – telesales opening lines
Try understanding their position and keeping the conversation going “I’m sure you have a very good reason for saying that. Do you mind me asking what that is?” This is a tried and tested way of dealing with Im not interested and seeks to understand the real reason why they are not interested. They might be in a rush to get to a meeting, they might have an existing supplier, they might not be the right person or they might just be rude. If you don’t ask you will never know, will never continue the sales dialogue and could close that door for ever.
I was running a sales training course last week where the attendees were making live cold/warm calls to prospective clients. One of the things that struck me is the influence that working in a team environment has because nearly every person had fallen into the same bad habit.
The habit was opening the call with a weak and meaningless statement that robbed them of their impact. This is not unusual within a company and I generally find that teams very often adopt one or more of the following week terms:
“Hi John, you don’t know me” — There is nothing worse than this for flagging up that this is a sales call and that you have not prepared. You might equally say something like “Hi John, Its raining outside”
“Im calling to introduce myself” — I once coached an IT sales person around using the telephone to set appointments. When we examined his last 10 calls it was clear he was upset about the apparent lack of success. after all 10 calls in and no appointments. I pointed out, however, that he was 100% successful. He had made 10 calls with the aim to introduce himself. He did and the other person thanked him and then left the call as quick as possible.
How are you? — Generally despised by everyone in every sales training I have ever given yet the most common offender. Unless you have an existing relationship with the person then do not use this line. You might be asking with complete sincerity but the other person is likely to think – “Here we go, another useless sales call” and then switch off.
In the 1950’s one of the greatest ad men of all time developed one of the greatest business to business adverts of all time – the classic “What was it you want to sell me?”. The ad shows a very dour and miserable looking bald man with the stripped bare copy of:
I don’t know who you are
I don’t know your company
I don’t know your company’s product
I don’t know what your company stands for
I don’t know your company’s customers
I don’t know your company’s record
I don’t know your company’s reputation
Now… What was it you wanted to sell me?
The purpose of the advert was to sell traditional advertising that raises awareness and answers these questions prior to ever making contact with the prospective client. The medium – traditional print advertising.
The times have changed significantly and the impact of traditional print has declined significantly. Buyers don’t have to wait for the trade magazines and periodicals to gradually find out more about you. They can check you out instantly and they will check you out instantly.
A fantastic video from the Business Marketing Association shows what really happens in todays modern, tech savvy world:
One of the greatest ways to differentiate yourself in the modern sales world is by developing your armory of stories. These stories should engage the audience, tell details about your past, your present and maybe even your future.
The stories should give insights into your culture, your values and what it is you stand for. The most effective stories will entertain, engage and draw your audience to you. In sales, they will make you stand head and shoulders above the rest of the pack. They will motivate your prospective customers and clients to desire to buy from you rather than you hard selling to them.
If you want to see the power of a brilliantly crafted story then pay full attention to this video. It is stunning in every way.
Oh, what it would be like to have the skills and craft to deliver a sales presentation with this sincerity and power:
Let me introduce you to Cold Call Collin. He is the very epitome of everything bad about telesales and cold calling.
Cold Call Collin is going to be a regular contributor to the blog and will help demonstrate some fantastic ways to fail in cold calling.
See how many old style techniques you can pick up in the video? Leave a post to see if you have got them all right! You never know, there might be a prize. Maybe a coaching session with cold call Collin.
I just had to post this after I found it on the web. The content is great and geoff is a great speaker. The main reason, however, is not for any of them.
I have a confession – I have elephants breath!!
When you watch the video you will know what I mean:
