Do you use email for your prospecting?

When used correctly email can be a great way to open up new business. Unfortunately, very few salespeople can use email effectively to open up new business opportunities. I was reminded of this when I  received a typical badly structured sales prospecting email yesterday. Here it is:

Hi

Please forgive the direct approach, but my name is xxxxxxxx  and I work for The xxxxxxxx Group and I am an online marketing consultant in your market sector.

I really like your site, but you may be curious as to how your site could rank much better for a wider range of relevant search phrases, and with that in mind I wondered if you would like a free SEO audit looking at the meta-data, the keyword density and a detailed analysis of the back-link profile.

That should give you an excellent insight into how your site is performing, and allow us to develop a plan for getting your site some much better search positions.

The audit is free and with no obligation. So do please get in touch.

Thanks and kind regards,

xxxx,

This came from a UK company and not one of those Indian SEO companies that sends out thousands of emails a day. It also came via my website enquiry form so I know the person had visited my website.

So what’s wrong with it?

Where is the personalisation, the relevance, the promise of a better future and business outcomes for me?

So what could they have done differently?

Here are a few ideas from me and I would love you to leave a comment below with your own ideas.

• Include my company name! They visited my site so they knew what my company name was.

• Include my name. There is an about me section on my website and they could easily have got my name as a contact.

• Don’t apologise for making contact (first line) – You immediately come across as unconfident and almost subservient in a potential business relationship.

• Use very specific and impactful language. “may be curious” – Are they or aren’t they?

• Make reference to the key search phrases that my site is geared to rank for in Google. Anyone with a tiny bit of knowledge could find out my desired search phrases within 30 seconds.

• Make reference to where I  currently rank for my key search phrases.

• Reference something about me or my company – Even a simple search on google would show anyone that I am active in social media and have written extensively about SEO and the role of social media in modern selling.

• If they really wanted me as a client they could use ‘trigger event’ selling., This is a process of identifying the key things that cause a prospect to want to seek out your services. An example could be a drop in search engine rankings which actually happened to me last week. For an SEO company this is easily achieved by a rank tracking software which would notify them immediately of any changes in my rankings for my key search phrases. A timely call or email based on that would make a huge impression on me.

• Reference a client or result they have achieved to peak my interest and to let me see what might happen in my business.

A very quickly drafted new version of their email could go like this:

FAO: Peter O’Donoghue

Hi Peter,

We recently noticed you dropped from number 1 to number 2 in Google for your websites main search phrase xxxxxxxxxxx. We appreciate this can have a major impact on the number of inbound leads coming into your business as recent research has shown that the number 1 spot get around 60% of the search click throughs whilst the number 2 spot only gets around 25%.

We specialise in working with companies that are already on page 1 for their main search phrases and want to consolidate their position as number 1 without worrying about losing rankings and business by dropping out of the search.

We recently worked with ABC Training company and consolidated their position from 4 to 1 within 2 weeks which has seen their inbound enquiries double.

We have a system we have designed to allow us to do this quickly and effectively and would like to demonstrate it to you in an online demonstration. Just click this link here xxxxxxxxxxxxx  to register and we can show you how  we do what we do. It’s a very structured online demonstration that will take no more than 8 minutes of your time plus whatever time for questions you have of us?

Warm Regards

XXXXXXXX

Which one would you respond too?

I won’t deconstruct my email yet as I would love to hear from you to see why you think I have included specific elements. Trust me they are all their for a reason! In a couple of weeks I will revisit the blog and deconstruct exactly why i have included certain sales triggers here.

Show me you are alive and join the commentary!!

Selling the value of what you do in business is one of the most challenging areas for most people. There is so much to consider:

• Who is my target market?
• What is the proposition that I am offering?
• How do I get meetings with busy business people?
• I’m an Account Manager and I’m looking for ways to sell higher and deeper into organisations
• How do I break through the ‘SMADD’ disease that clients and prospects have – that’s Sales Message Attention Defecit Disorder!
• How do I get more referrals?
• How do prove our worth to an organisation so we don’t have to compete on price?
• How do I get clients to value what we have done for them and stop switching suppliers?

The good news is that I am about to share with you 3 core components of value that you can use in your business to help you with these business challenges and more. The best news is that very few sales people and businesses operate successfully proving 1 level of value, let alone 3.

Let me introduce you to the ‘Sales Bullseye’:

Value Hypothesis –

The value hypothesis is the outer ring of value. This is when you are on the outside of an organisation trying to get in or are breaking in to new divisions, or trying to create a new project within an existing client. Here you must use research to determine whether you can probably derive some benefit for them. You don’t know for sure yet because you do not know enough about the organisation or the particular business initiative or business pain that the company is facing. This is not to be confused with an ‘elevator pitch’ which can come across as a trite generalisation of what you do. This is a very specific hypothesis of what value you can specifically add  to that organisation. An example could go like this:

“John, you should be capable of reducing your stock holding of your entire widget range  by 60% through the ability to use our demand forecasting software to know precisely what inventory is required to within a 10% tolerance rate. This will require an investment of £320,000. Which could  be returned within 11 months. We recently implemented a similar solution at Major Corp PLC  who achieved  a 70% reduction and payback within 9 months.”

A t the very early stages of a discussion this is only a hypothesis because you do not know enough about their business and without the right kind of conversation, at the right level, and therefore validation it is only a value hypothesis. You  will rarely  win business selling on a value hypothesis! It is only the start of the process and without the questioning and investigating skills needed to get validation from the client and prospect then it will never be a true value proposition.

Value proposition –

This is where your Client or prospect, is describing  how their business operates, where the dysfunction and costs reside and what their vision is for an alternative way of doing things.  This is what you use to map your capabilities against with your value proposition.

Executives in large organisations give  feedback  that few, if any proposals, make them sit up and go “Wow, I really love what these guys are proposing” and very few if any actually propose anything. More they are no more than page after page of price lists and capability statements. Rarely is there a personalised story that tells the names of stakeholders, the challenges they face, the goals they own and an overview of how those tasks and goals will be affected by a new solution. They want  specifics of the value hypothesis turned into the reality of what can and will happen specific to their business.  Asked why they feel they rarely see this type of value proposition executives answered that salespeople are too intent on getting their message across without asking the questions needed to identify the core basis of a value proposition.

Value Statement –

The value statement is the single most important part of the whole process and yet very few people do it. An opportunity in your marketplace?

One of the core principles of sales has always been trust.  People don’t buy from people they like, they buy from people they trust. One of the greatest ways to build long lasting trust and credibility is to show you have delivered on what you have said you would. This is even more important when selling to large organisations because research shows that senior executives generally get involved at the project scope phase (value hypothesis) and post project review (value statement). The value statement is simply proving the value of what you said you would achieve:

“John, we said we might be able to  reduce your stock holding of your entire widget range  by 60%  and infact now the system has been live 3 months we have seen a reduction of 75% with a prediction  tolerance of 7% . Your  investment of £320,000 is on track for full payback in 9 months and not the  11 months we originally planned.”

If you can continually prove the value of what you have done then your credibility will go through the roof. In effect, you are closing the sales loop.

So my challenge to you then is “How well do you rate on the three stages of the value bullseye?”

Let me know you are alive and have a point of view by leaving a comment below, and share your experiences here too

“I’m a salesperson!”

It’s a sad fact, but true, that the very thing that sales people fear is the initial gut reaction that the other person will have on finding out that they are a salesperson. And so they should because the vast majority of people have been put off by old, tired out and sometimes dubious sales tactics and now recoil at the very mention of that name.

This is not  a new phenomenon by any stretch of the inagination. Monty Python were bang on the money way back in their hayday with this:

Would your sales prospects rather see you as a burglar?

In the modern selling world, it is by your actions and not your title that you can differentiate yourself from the instant recoil that many have when hearing the term salesman. Quite simply put – don’t do what the rest of the pack do!

• Do your market research and know your Industry backwards
• Develop an Information and educational approach to selling
• Never, ever, use the old cliched opening lines that poorly trained, underskilled and pushy salespeople use
• Understand current research into buying psychology and why people make the choices they do
• Develop a long term focus rather than a short term gain perspective to sales relationships

Above all – be a good human being!

Next time you are sales prospecting ask yourself  “Am I an Encyclopedia Salesman?”

I am a huge believer that one of the main contributing factors to your success in sales is your ability to manage your time, energy and focus. This does not come easy to most people as we humans are inherently hard wired to seek out the path of least resistance, or the easy way!  Time management for salespeople is an increasingly pressing challenge for many organisations due to the pressures of living in an information overload society that can very quickly becoming overwhelming.

As part of our time management for salespeople training we are always on the look out for technology and applications that can save a salesperson  time, energy and resources and ultimately help you become more efficient.

One of our top picks of products and services available to propel you to hyper activity today are:

The Action Machine – Activity Tracking Software for time management for sales people

One of the things we show salespeople on our time management for salespeople courses is the importance of focused activity on one particular activity at a time. All of the modern research demonstrates that multi tasking is actually detrimental to your ability to achieve high productivity status. We train sales people how to use focused time blocks to enable them to increase their productivity by as much as two times. One of the old fashioned  tools we recommended to manage this was a good old fashioned egg timer. The reason why this works is that setting time blocks creates a sense of urgency and keeps you on track for the day. I have just come across a nifty little application that sits on your desktop that allows you manage focused timeblocks with an activity tracker. Its called time management for salespeople software.

It keeps a standard list of activities that you can use down the left hand side, which you can add to as necessary. As you go through your day you choose your activities and set the required time allocation from 5 minutes upwards.  This starts the countdown clock that tracks your time on each activity. Once your time is up you are notified by an audible and visual alert. What is great about it is you can get a great feeling of achievement from looking at those big green ticks on your screen at the end of the day!

I strongly recommend this software which is available for the low, low price of $49 from: time management for salespeople software – it also comes with some great flow chart and process chart style aids. Highly recommended. What could you earn in sales if you could reclaim just 5 more hours per week by increased focus and action!

This is going to be the first of a series of blog posts on time management for sales people and specifically how to use  software and technology accelerate your efficiency. Let me know you are alive by commenting what you think about this blog post – good or bad!

I was just reading the book ’10 steps to sales success’ which you can check out here .

In it I was reminded of an old Zig Ziglar sales objections handling line that has stood the test of time well and still stands strong today as a great way of getting some one to think when they throw an unwarranted price objection at you. Remember, value, value, value…………

“Our company made the decision to explain a higher price once rather than justify poor service and quality several times.”  “You only cry once when you pay a higher price.”

Stuck with sales objections?

We invite you to gain instant access to the most comprehensive Sales Objections Home Study Course Here: SALES OBJECTIONS Or click the image below

Have a look at the home study course and never get stuck with sales objections again.

Below is my latest article on sales prospecting from the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management’s – Winning Edge Magazine.

Hope you like it!

Sales Prospecting with blogging

See more about sales training on my other posts. Let me know what you think about

Sales Prospecting on the comments below!

Very often when i run sales training courses and in particular telesales training courses, there is always a big debate about the ‘P’ word. That’s right price.

Teach your staff how to deal with prospects haggling on price

It is sometimes challenging to get staff members to see that not only do they have a huge influence on their  companies ability to charge higher prices and that it is very often their own words that encourages people to haggle with them.

Let me give you an example:

You walk into a car dealership and ask the salesperson for the price of the shiny new car in the corner. Their response is:

“The list price of that car sir, is £17,250″

What would be your reaction and your next question?

I would wager money that your next question would be something like:

“Well if that’s the list price, what’s my price?”

Am i right?

You see, all too often, salespeople encourage the very thing that they fear – prospects haggling on price. A few minor errors in the words that you use to deliver the price of your product or service will almost certainly indicate to the other person that they should haggle with you. Whether they read it this way consciously or subconsciously, that is the end result.

It is not just the prospects haggling on price. Not yet a believer that you can cause the price haggling you fear the most?

Next time you deliver the price of your product or service try dropping in one of these fatal haggling inducers:

• Suggested
• Regular
• List
• Asking
• Basic
• Usual
• Lowest
• Quoted
• Best
• Normal

All of these when used in a price delivery statement will indicate that you are unsure of your price and that the other person is free to start haggling on price with you. Try them out on a few customers to test my theory or realise that what I am saying is the truth. Use adverbs  at your peril becase they will cause the very thing you fear the most. The price haggling customer!!

Look out for my blog post tomorrow where we demonstrate some phrases that tell a customer you think your pricing is too high and the worst phrases of all in sales. The ones that scream – ~”Beat me up on price because I will drop to anything you want”

Finally, you now know how to deal with those prospects haggling on price!

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?

The ending – well you just need to check out the post yourself here : http://www.salesitch.com/2009/07/sales-bloopers-no-2.html

It must be because I have just come across the first sales related Christmas poem.

http://blog.meetingtowin.com/2009/11/17/twas-the-recession-before-christmas/

Have a read – its light hearted  style hides a great message to all sales people and sales managers in the run up to the end of the year.