SOLD March'2012

March 2012

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Digging for Prospecting That Produces Results Kelley Robertson demystifies prospecting p. 18

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LEVERAGE! Client

Everyone Wants to Move Forward Now, you can learn HOW YOU CAN is a book of HOW . . . specifically how to improve your personal performance and achievement.

In this groundbreaking new book, renown peak performance expert John Von Achen walks you through a proven methodology guaranteed to help you reach your maximum potential.

There is no hype in this book, no filler and no excuses. Only solutions for how YOU CAN produce better results in everything you are doing.

Meet the Author One word describes John Von Achen, RESULTS! John Von Achen is one of the most respected thought leaders and peak performance experts in the world today. He has become a legend when it comes to helping individuals and organizations achieve their maximum growth, performance and profitability.

Known as an inspiring, forward thinking business leader, John Von Achen has consistently provided his clients “real world” solutions they can transfer into immediate results.

Learn more at www.youcan2012.com/

There is gold out there . . . you just have to find it!

Most salespeople cringe at the thought of finding new customers, since it seems to be one of the most challenging aspects of professional selling. Nevertheless, all sales professionals know if they are not finding new potential customers regularly, their commissions will decrease and their career future could even be in question.

So how do you find new customers, especially in a tough market?

To address this challenging issue, the focus of SOLD for March is how you can find the “golden customers” that all sales professionals dream about. To help with this task, our contributors have shared their latest and most practical ideas connected to networking, prospecting and finding the customers that you really want to work with. And, included in this issue of SOLD is a special article from Kelly Robertson that all salespeople will find helpful in “demystifying” prospecting.

And don’t forget SOLDLAB.COM Since we began www.soldlab.com, the response from sales professionals has just been remarkable. Sales professionals from almost 100 countries look to SOLDLAB.com as a resource to help them move forward and close more sales. Just a reminder, each week, we post new articles, videos, podcasts and audio programs on the SOLDLAB.com site that are not included in SOLD Magazine. And, you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter to make sure you don’t miss anything.

Keep on Closing!

March 2012

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18 7 Steps to Prospecting SUCCESS 23 Digging For Your Gold-Prospecting NETWORKING 24 LeadETWORKING Generation and Appointment Setting –

Know When to Pull the Trigger and Outsource 26 What I Learned From A French-Speaking

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Corporate Sales Presentation PRESENTATION 43 Why Your Dream Client Doesn’t Want a Pitch – RESENTATION

and How to Make Them Want It 44 Are They Snoring in the Back Row? 47 Sales Research.

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— Phoenix Training and Development Making people better at what they do. This is what we strive for at Phoenix. It’s a simple vision and at its heart is a belief that learning & development in business should be interactive, enjoyable and relevant at all times, so that as an experience it’s practical, memorable and, most importantly, useful; it’s what people do differently after working with us that counts. You’ll find more information about The Phoenix Way and how we improve clients’ business performance at www.phoenix-training.co.uk.

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Rebounding Your Business from the Brink of Extinction

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Happily, our children may never know that the bald eagle, the proud symbol of our country, was once nearly extinct. In the 1960s, there were fewer than 500 pairs in the US, because of shootings, pesticides, habitat destruction, and pollution. Thanks to endangered species and environmental protection laws and other conservation efforts, the bald eagle, though still considered “threatened,” has been brought back from the edge of extinction. This magnificent bird – an icon of rugged strength, incisive action, and tenacious care giving – once again soars through our nation’s skies. www.soldlab.com

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s a business leader, what can you learn from the eagles about coming back from setbacks, big or small? If you find yourself facing down the total “extinction” of your organization, or you want to head that possibility off before it gets any closer, consider what the eagles can teach you about regaining or maintaining your company’s status from your perch high atop the cliffs overlooking your vast corner of the world!

Develop an Eagle’s Eye Eagles are renowned for their excellent eyesight.

They can scan thousands of acres, as they soar up to 10,000 feet above the ground. Eagles actually have two centers of focus, which allows them to simultaneously see forward and to the side. Unlike human fishers, who may have trouble seeing fish only a few feet below the surface, eagles can spot a single fish while flying several hundred feet up in the air.

Such keen vision could come in handy, even if you never make it out to a lake. Honestly assess how observant you are: Are you able to look below the surface of an issue to see the source of a conflict? What is your level of insight into the people and problems in your organization? If you have difficulty in one area, are you willing to hire the professional resources you may need so that you can accurately visualize the situation?

To recover from business difficulties, you must develop the eagle’s dual vision. First, seek to see clearly in the present, observing honestly the current realities of your situation. Then simultaneously develop a positive vision of the organization’s future. In other words, to get through setbacks, you must be in the present moment but also able to look beyond the moment, and definitely not allow yourself to get caught up in anxiety and self-pity about the obstacles you face.

To pull yourself out of a crisis, you must make a realistic assessment of where you stand, determining how you got there as honestly as possible. :

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Get as much information as you can from others, seeking to determine both how you got off course and what strengths your organization has that may allow you to compete again. Gather those around you whom you believe can offer fresh insights and ideas for recovery and listen closely to what they have to say.

Adapt by Adopting an Action Plan Eagles’ nests are between five and ten feet in diameter – some can weigh up to a ton! – and are built in trees or cliffs near coasts for easy access to fishing. If a natural disaster destroys the nest, the pair will not spend time arguing about who or what is to blame for their nestlessness. Instead, they work together diligently to rebuild the nest in time for breeding season.

Once you and your team have assessed what brought you to your current state of crisis, you need to form a united vision for your future and get to work on building your nest – making your vision happen. Many organizations have vision statements that serve little purpose other than to adorn a plaque in the lobby. Others may have once lived by their stated vision and mission, but got caught up in daily crises and have lost sight of their original goals and have no action plan to attain them.

Revisit your organization’s existing vision and determine if it is applicable to the current realities. Can

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Your key people must be fully invested in your efforts

it be adapted? Or must you create a new vision of the future altogether, given the current state of affairs and the prospects for the future? Always keep in mind the necessity to move forward. Action is strength.

Sharpen Your Talons of Determination When an eagle hunts, it swoops down to seize its prey with powerful, sharp talons that produce approximately 1,000 pounds of pressure per square inch in each foot. Do you have the same degree of strength within yourself? You need that sort of determination to succeed even when you’re not in a struggle to avoid extinction, and when you are threatened, you need it all the more. When you can say with certainty that you have the desire to lead your organization to success, you then need to look at top managers and see whether they, too, have this strength and desire to do the work that needs to be done. Your key people must be fully invested in your efforts in order for the team and the organization as a whole to succeed.

Negative naysayers among your key players aren’t likely to ever buy into your vision, but you can still use your own strength to try to convey the message to them once you’ve determined how long you can wait for their buy-in. If your naysayers aren’t on board within an amount of time you determine to be reasonable (which may only be a few days, :

March 2012

depending on the seriousness of the situation), you may have to use those talons to lift them up and deposit them on the farthest shore so you and your team can fly on to success.

Protect Your Fledglings and Your Nest Eagles are very progressive by human standards in terms of their sex roles. They mate for life and both parents share all hunting, egg incubation, nest watch, and eaglet feeding and brooding duties until their young can fly at about 12 weeks. In spite of their fierce protectiveness and tender attention to the eaglets’ needs, only about 50% of eaglets hatched survive their first year.

That figure is reminiscent of often-quoted statistics about business failure, isn’t it? Consider the fledglings as analogous to your “new” organization, that which is emerging from your new attention to the vision, goals, and action plan to attain them. Just as the care, feeding, and training of eaglets is not a solo sport, nurturing and growing the organization after crisis will require everybody to make it work.

Your protection must be diligent, guarding the organization fiercely from predators, which, in the form of your competition, will be looking to pick off a newly reorganized institution. You may find other businesses trying to recrui t your top talent, for example, while your organization struggles to.

So tend to your talent with a careful eye on operations and resources.

Throughout this process, you must remain constantly vigilant in order to know everything – good

and bad – that’s happening so you can avoid being blindsided by a sudden storm or marauders bent on destroying your work.

Survive, and Thrive, the Eagle’s Way From the beginning of our nation’s history, the bald eagle has faced struggles. Ben Franklin originally proposed the wild turkey our nation’s living symbol of Freedom, Spirit & Democracy.

Fortunately, he didn’t get his way and the rest of our founding fathers prevailed in naming the bald eagle as our national icon. After all, a “Nation of Eagles” has such a better ring to it than a “Nation of Turkeys”!

Then, after nearly wiping eagles from the face of the earth, mankind turned its efforts to saving the noble birds, and after four decades, this attention has paid off in a revived eagle population. Such patience and determination are yet another metaphor you need to follow when faced with the prospect of your own organization’s “extinction.”

You shouldn’t expect a complete, overnight change in the circumstances that caused your quandary, and you must have a strong sense of purpose, even when prospects seem grim.

You must also rely on a trusted team to help you accomplish the goals that support your vision for the revitalized organization. Although it may take a while, you can soar in the thermals once again! | — by Dan Stockdale

Dan Stockdale is an author, business advisor, spokesman and exotic animal trainer.

He has served as an expert guest on Fox News, Hannity & Colmes; Fox News, The Big Story with John Gibson; and Fox News Live. He has also served as an expert source for the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, VOW Magazine, and AOL (America Online) and many other media outlets. In addition, his articles have been published by scores of organizations including Microsoft, American Management Association, Golf Business, Lowes Home Improvement, Monster. com and many others. He has also served as a consultant to numerous national corporations and government entities. Dan also serves as President of Adventures in Leadership, Inc., a consulting and educational firm that specializes in applying his Taming Tigers Techniques to improve organizational effectiveness, enhance sales performance and increase revenue. Dan’s principles allow his clients to achieve extraordinary results while maintaining a positive, energetic environment. Dan also accepts keynotes where he demonstrates his philosophy of management using live animals. You can find out more about Dan Stockdale by calling 877.3.JUNGLE or by visiting his website at: www.AdventuresInLeadership.com

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Setting Sales Goals

A common thread for sales people that burn out or experience high levels of stress is having too generic goals, or no goals at all.

Almost paradoxically, setting concise activity goals has proven to reduce stress levels in sales.

Have you ever had that feeling at the end of the day that you are not sure what kind of day you just had? I mean the days that end with the nagging feeling this wasn’t a productive one despite being busy the whole day. The days when you say “I had some really promising conversations today” to yourself and your manager at the end of the day. If you work in sales and you usually get a high on closing a sale this feeling might be a regular companion to you on days when you did not close.

Some scientists might say this is the power of your Western-minded subconciousness. You subconciously need to earn your worthyness in your own eyes. My significantly less scientific opinion is that your brain doesn’t have enough data to give you a license to feel good. It simply can’t “allow” you to feel good if it doesn’t have the data points for whether your day was a success or not. As if your brain was not on your side!

Salespeople who burn out tend not to know how successful each one of their days was because they don’t have specific goals set (as this would put themselves at risk of not achieving them). They tend to have more stress as there is less to measure at the end of the day.

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It is almost always that a salesperson close to burnout has just a few quite general goals or even none at all. Example: a goal to sell $20,000 worth of goods a month is too general because it doesn’t create a feeling of achievement on day one or five or 15. But if you translate this into making two meetings and 15 phone calls per day it’s possible to have a feeling of success even if you didn’t close any sales that day.

There are at least two great activity metrics that work well as sales goals: How many prospects do you add to you sales pipeline? If your sales process includes having a sales meeting this could be how many new appointments do you schedule per day.

How many prospects do you move forward along the sales pipeline? This could be how many qualified proposals do you send out per day.

Selling is a game of numbers. Working smart is just as important as working hard.

Make sales easier for yourself by pre-determining what kind of day you are going to have.

Set goals that are activity specific and which leave your ego intact or feeling good. Sales is hard enough as is. | — by Urmas Purde

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Urmas Purde is co-founder of pipeline management software called Pipedrive. Urmas has more than a decade’s worth of experience in helping companies sell more, as a sales trainer and entrepreneur.

March 2012

Finding the Right Home for Your Sales Skills

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t’s that time of year again when salespeople lift their heads up from their cubicles to see if there is a better opportunity out there. So, what do I mean by “that time of the year?” Actually, it’s most every day. The way most salespeople are wired, they have an insatiable urge for more. More money!

More responsibility! More, more, more! Recruiters will often tell you that it is easy to get salespeople to consider a new opportunity regardless of their satisfaction level with their current job. As one recruiter shared with me, “The mere mention of the possibility of more money gets the engines going with salespeople.”

This is where many salespeople are to be held responsible for sales marriages gone wrong.

They are too easily blinded by the hopes of more dollars in their wallets. They fail to look at all of the criteria that affect success. Don’t get me wrong.

Money is important, very important. However, focusing on money as a primary decision point makes the dollars a mirage. I remember those old Indiana Jones movies where Indiana would

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be thirty feet away from the treasure. A few quick steps and the treasure would be his. Or would it? Lining the thirty feet of cavern were the dead bodies of those who attempted to merely grab the treasure. Indiana strategically approached the treasure to ensure he got it, and equally important, survived the venture.

The treasure for salespeople (also known as commissions) can be wrought with the same peril. If the employer presents a $250,000 opportunity, but the skills or activities required are not your strengths of, will you ever see those dollars?

Highly unlikely. When I lived in the Washington D.C. Metro area during the dot-com craze, I saw many of my friends leave solid sales positions with Microsoft, Oracle, and Cisco for the chance at millions of dollars in stock options. For most, it was truly a mirage. Why? Imagine, for a moment, you are calling on an IT manager representing Cisco. Just say the name, “Cisco,” and poof, you have an appointment. The same is true for Microsoft, Oracle and other :

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bigO Nname technology brands. Changing gears, FID E N C D I E N now selling for ABC IT Services. You place you N F are C O a call to the IT manager and it is not received with a welcoming reception, but rather skepticism and disinterest. The successful salesperson needs the skills to get in the door with this IT manager before any buyer facilitation can begin. If your background has been selling household brands and you haven’t had to do this before, how likely are you to be successful at doing it unless the company is willing to teach you that skill?

For salespeople to put together a healthy, successful sales marriage with an employer, they need to formulate a profile just like employers do when hiring salespeople. For salespeople, it is the profile of the ideal sales opportunity. To formulate the profile, a historical and futuristic perspective is needed. The convergence of the two yields the profile.

To begin the exercise for formulating your profile, answer the following questions for each sales position you have held. Be totally honest with yourself in performing this exercise.

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Historical Strengths

a) What are the attributes of the products that you sold? (tangible, intangible, product, service, etc.) b) What is the nature of the buying relationship?

Is it a one-time, transaction sale or a repetitive, complex one? c) Is the product a component of something broader (niche) or is it a comprehensive solution? d) How recognizable is the product and company in the marketplace?

Does the market know the brand? e) In contrast to the competition, where is the product priced? f) How are leads generated? (selfgenerated, company-generated (warm), mailing lists, etc.) g) What is the average length of the buying process? h) Is the product “off the shelf” or does it require you to creatively build a solution? i) At what level is the purchasing decision made? Who are the other buying players that influence the purchasing decision? j) What sales support is provided by your company? Are you expected to go from end to end or are you only expected to handle certain parts of the process? :

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Once you have completed this question series for each of your sales roles, the next step is to review your responses to those questions in search of commonalities in your background. This will allow you to complete the statement below which specifies your historical strengths.

Historical Success I have extensive experience in selling a ____, _____, ____ (1a, 1b, 1c, and 1d) product that is _____ (1e) positioned in the marketplace.

My role in the buying process included: _____, ____, ____ (1f, 1h, and 1j) which included working with ____(1i) -level executives in a buying cycle that averages ____ (1g).

Moving to the second part of formulating your ideal sales opportunity profile, you will identify the criteria for your next sales role. What is important to you in your next home? Answering the series of questions below sheds light on that direction.

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Future Desires

a) Company Size. Quantify in terms of revenue, employees, growth, or other metric(s). b) Market Position. (market leader, new provider, high value/price, etc.) c) Breadth of Offering. (comprehensive solution or niche provider) d) Buying Process Support. What sales support do you need to be successful (marketing, lead generation, subject matter experts, etc) e) Sales Management Support. It is important to be truly honest here. Salespeople are quick to respond that they dislike micro-management. Be specific to the support you need to be successful. f) Stability (what is your tolerance for change?) g) Personal Development (what do you desire to learn from this company?

With part 2 complete, you are able to provide a laser-focus direction to your search. This is extremely important when communicating with recruiters or searching for jobs online. This allows you to say:

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Future Role The type of role that is best for me is with a company that is ___ (2a), that is a ___(2b) offering a ___ (2c) solution. I operate best in environment that offers ___ in terms of buying process support and (2d) ___ (2e) for sales management support. An environment that is ___ (2f) and offers me the opportunity to learn ___(2g) is best for me.

Putting these two components together, rounds out your ideal sales opportunity profile. You now have clear direction on your historical strengths and future desires. What do you do with this information? * Make sure your resume and cover letter communicate a consistent message regarding your historical strengths and future desires. * Contact recruiters and share this with them. * Use key words from the profile to search online job boards.

One final thought on the exercise of finding a new sales home. When you are interviewing with the company, keep in mind that you are also interviewing them to see if they meet your profile. It’s all about putting together a mutually-beneficial sales marriage founded on synergies between your needs and desires with those of the employer. | —by Lee B. Salz

Lee B. Salz is a leading sales management strategist specializing in helping companies build scalable, highperformance sales organizations through hiring the right sales people, effectively onboarding them, and aligning their sales activities with business objectives through process, metrics and compensation. He is the Founder and CEO of Sales Architects, Business Expert Webinars and The Revenue Accelerator. Lee has authored several books including the award-winning book Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager and is the host of the Sales Management Minute.

He is a results-driven sales management consultant and a passionate, dynamic speaker. Lee can be reached at lsalz@SalesArchitects.net or 763.416.4321..

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We give-away leverage far too often. Leverage is the victim of instant gratification and the here and now. When we make decisions based on what we need now, it is often at the cost of leverage. Leverage is the asset of the strong and successful.

From business, to sales, to life, leverage quietly sits at the foundation of success or failure. Leverage let’s us say no. Leverage let’s us wait. Leverage gives us more choices. Leverage puts us in control.

The problem is leverage is like other assets, it needs time to grow and far too often we make decisions undermining our ability to get leverage.

Have you ever cut a deal to make quota because you needed that one last contract to make your numbers? That’s what happens without leverage. Where was leverage? It was absent because months before decisions were made NOT to make more cold calls, NOT to make more appointments, NOT to do more research, not to do more demo’s. The deal had to be cut because there was no choice. The pipeline wasn’t big enough. There were no alternatives. There was only one decision, cut a deal and make quota, or don’t and miss quota. This is exactly what happens when we don’t have leverage. There are fewer choices, and less control.

We are stuck in jobs we don’t like because we spend so much on STUFF that doesn’t matter that we can’t quit.

We spend our leverage every day, trickle by trickle.

We have no leverage to do what we want, to start a new company, or to try something new. Our leverage was spent on the partying instead of going to college. Our leverage is being spent in that 65k car instead of a used 10k car. Our leverage is being spent in a house bigger than we need. We need leverage to grow, yet we spend it everyday.

It’s no different in business. Companies can’t expand or grow because | — by Jim Keenan

Leverage is the victim of instant gratification and the here and now

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Jim Keenan is founder and partner of A Sales Guy Consulting, and a PSIA Level 2 Certified Ski Instructor for Vail Resorts. Husband to the Big E and three beautiful girls, Kenna, Elle and Ava. Learn more at: www.asalesguy.com

March 2012

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Prospecting is a critical skill if you want to enjoy a long and prosperous career in sales. Unfortunately, very few companies actually teach their sales people how to prospect effectively. That means most sales people are left to figure things out on their own.

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hat’s okay if you are a hunter by nature.

Hunters thrive on the thrill of the chase and enjoy searching for, and capturing, new business.

However, not everyone enjoys hunting for new business. In fact, I know very few sales people who love prospecting. But, it is necessary to know how to effectively prospect. Here are a few strategies you can use to improve your prospecting efforts.

Schedule it A friend of mine often says, “No one defaults to prospecting” and I completely agree with this statement. I don’t know many people who would rather prospect than take care of other tasks; it’s usually the other way around.

However, top sales people know the importance of keeping a steady stream of new leads in their pipeline. As a result, they schedule time into their calendar every day and/or week to look for new business.

When you block prospecting activities into your daily/weekly calendar you begin to get into a routine and develop a habit. And sales people who habitually and regularly prospect, consistently outperform their colleagues and coworkers.

It’s been suggested that your pipeline should contain triple the number of prospects you need to achieve your sales targets. However, the pipeline of many sales people contains much less than this which means they often scramble to reach their quotas. An added bonus of keeping a full pipeline is that you will be less inclined to succumb to price pressure from aggressive prospects.

Clearly identify your ideal client In most cases, you can’t pick up the telephone and start dialing for dollars (unless you sell a massmerchandised product or service).

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You need to know exactly who will most benefit from your offering.

The best place to start with your existing customers. Evaluate your best customers using criteria such as revenue, profit margin on those sales, their industry and size as well as the length of the average sales cycle. Also include factors such as; geographic location and the title or position of the key decision maker.

Use these criteria to draw up a profile of your ideal client then use this profile to identify other companies you can approach. This work will not only help you when you are prospecting, it will also be useful when you network and ask for referrals.

Do your homework A lot has been written in recent years about the importance of doing adequate research before you contact a new prospect. And I agree with this premise.

However, I also think that too many sales people use this as an excuse not to call on new prospects.

A sales person who works for one of my clients once spent the better part of forty hours preparing for a single call. Spending this amount of time researching is unproductive and a waste of your valuable time.

Research and homework should be conducted with the intent of revealing enough necessary information so when you connect with your prospect, you can speak intelligently about their business and potential problems they may be encountering. Over the years I have received countless calls from people asking for my purchasing department or the person in charge of my call center. It’s obvious they have purchased a mailing list and are simply dialing for dollars.

Make a better impression with your prospects by doing some pre-call research or homework.

Here is a rule of thumb to follow: the more valuable the potential lead, the more time you should :

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N ETWORKING Some sales people use this as their primary source of lead generation. However, if you want to make networking actually work, you need to schedule your time wisely.

When I first started my sales training business I attended as many local networking events as I could fit into my schedule. However, I quickly noticed that I encountered the same people at these events—other small business owners out looking for business. These people were not my target market and very few of them interacted with the type of decision maker I needed to connect with. It took a while but I finally figured out that I was going to the wrong events.

The key is to attend the type of events that your prospects will attend.

For some people this could include local and community networking groups or events. For others it may require attending larger national events.

Conferences, trade shows and fund raising dinners also fall into this category. A friend of mine finds his best leads when he attends black-tie, fund raiser dinners because many of the people in attendance are business leaders and executives who are actively involved in the community.

One of the most fatal mistakes sales people make at networking functions is to dominate the conversation. If you truly want to make a great impression, limit the amount you talk to no more than forty percent of the airtime. Remember, networking events are not the appropriate setting to sell your solution. However, they are perfect situations to uncover potential sales opportunities and to arrange a follow-up meeting or call.

Finally, post-event follow-up is critical. Don’t make the mistake of calling someone three months after a networking meeting and saying something like, “We met a few months ago and I thought I’d touch base with you.” This approach simply does not add any value to the relationship. Look for ways to help them with their business or connect them with other people or add some other type of the value to the relationship.

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Leverage your network

I’m not suggesting that you start calling all of your friends and family to ask them for a referral. However, most sales people have people in their network who could refer others or make introductions.

You can’t wait for people to offer a referral; you need to be assertive and ask for it. One of the best places to start is with your existing customers; providing, of course, they are completely satisfied with your product and/or service.

A simple way to approach them is to call or email and say, “I’m looking to expand my client base. Who do you know in a non-competing business similar to yours that might benefit from my product/service?”

You can also ask your customers for introductions.

For example, I wanted to connect with a particular company and I knew that one of my customers was on the board so I asked if he knew who would be the best person to contact. When he sent me an email with the contact details of the person to call, he also copied the other person and introduced us.

This gesture opened the door and helped ensure that my email was read and my call answered.

When asking for referrals or introductions, you also need to help people understand who to refer you to. That’s where your ideal client profile comes into play.

This profile will help you explain or outline what type of referral would be most appropriate. When I meet people for the first time, I often ask them, “How would I recognize a potential customer for you?” You essentially answer this question when you present them with a profile of your ideal customer.

Vary your approach In today’s fiercely competitive world, you need to use a wide range of strategies and approaches.

The more types of media you use, the more visible you become. Unfortunately, many sales people tend to rely on a few strategies that they have become comfortable with rather than using a wide range of approaches. But, it is important to recognize that people respond to different forms of contact and communication which :

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Your pipeline should contain triple the number of prospects you need to achieve your sales targets means you need to become comfortable with using a range of approaches and methods of contact.

Cold calling (telephone and door-to-door), direct mail, email, networking, trade shows, asking for referrals, drive-by calls, social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter can all be effective methods of unearthing new sales opportunities.

You can also gain exposure and generate new leads by speaking at conferences, writing articles for trade publications, and creating webinars and podcasts.

These activities are effective because they position you as an expert in your industry or field and business leaders look to experts to help them solve a problem or current business issue. The key is to

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provide genuine value and avoid the mistake of delivering a blatant commercial.

Identify a problem that your prospects are likely facing and create a presentation that outlines how they can solve this issue. Don’t pitch your product or service during your speech, webinar or article.

Instead, reference a case study of a customer who had a similar problem and what they did to solve it.

Create a compelling value proposition In order to be effective at prospecting you must be able to clearly articulate exactly what you do or sell and how you help companies (or people). I once attended a networking function and after a fifteen conversation with a small business owner, I still had no idea of what she actually did.

You have less than thirty seconds to capture someone’s attention which means you need to have a compelling opening statement ready when someone asks you what you do or sell. Saying something like, “I sell customer designed valves and gears” or “I create websites for small businesses” is not :

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The more types of media you use, the more visible you become going to motivate someone to continue the conversation.

You need an opening that grabs their attention and causes them to ask, “How do you do that?” or “That sounds interesting.”

That gives you the opening to further discuss what you do, how you do it, and with whom. However, before you launch into a lengthy impromptu

sales presentation, invest a few minutes asking the other person a few questions about their business so you can present your offering in terms that resonate with them or that clearly demonstrate how you might be able to help them solve an existing problem.

The key to prospecting is consistency. Regular prospecting will develop your skill and confidence and help you become more proficient.

Commitment to daily and weekly prospecting will yield great results and ensure that you avoid the peaks and valleys that many sales people experience from month-to-month. | — Kelley Robertson

© MMXII Kelley Robertson, All rights reserved. Do you know what sales blunders are costing you money? Increase your sales with a FREE audio program, Sales Blunders That Cost You Money and two other sales-boosting resources here: www.Fearless-Selling.ca.

Kelley helps people master their sales conversations so they can win more business and increase their sales. He does this by conducting sales training workshops and delivering keynote speeches at conferences, sales meetings and other events. Book Kelley to speak at your event: 905-633-7750 or Kelley@RobertsonTrainingGroup.com.

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Digging For Your Gold-Prospecting Anyone who prospects for gold hopes to be rewarded by the glitter of colors in the fine material collected in the bottom of the pan. When prospecting in sales, the same hope to be rewarded is by receiving business. However, digging for gold is not as easy when pertinent facts apply to prospecting.

Today’s sales prospectors, experience that 99.1% of people are not as easily engaged, which can make the prospecting process frustrating and exhausting. A typical prospecting funnel generates something like this:

you send 1,000 emails most likely 150 open them (15%) 30 click through the email (20%) and 9 people take your call (25%) Certainly, these are small return on investment numbers that waste a lot of selling time. So, before chasing every person or company on earth, let’s explore some successful steps to find those prospects who are interested in doing business with you.

determine how the features will benefit them. To keep your presentation fresh and easy, talk about different features each time. This process will help eliminate rejection that is caused by traditional prospecting. To be kept in mind, contact each prospect every 4-5 weeks. Most prospects will not be ready to talk with you until you have presented at least 3 times. To improve and increase your confidence, tape yourself with a video or voice recorder in order to critique your presentation skills.

Keep accurate records.The act of keeping records will cause your subconscious mind to constantly improve your results. This step also helps to monitor the relationship, remember something that has to be done with or for the prospect, to reflect on dealings with the prospect, creates follow up action steps and many other advantages. There are several methods and systems to make this process easy to manage.

Digging for gold is a numbers game. The most important numbers rely on who is on your high probability prospect list, how you present your products and/or services while being organized. | — by Deborah Gardner

3 Golden Prospecting Steps: Start with high probability prospects.

Determine a list of people or companies that are most likely to buy your type of products and services. Ask yourself the question, “If I were in their shoes, how could I use this product and/or service.” Create a small list at first because the more contacts on your list don’t necessarily mean it’s a targeted list.

Write a script. Whether presenting by e-mail, telephone or face-to-face, use no more than 50 words that clearly states who you are, what you are selling, and the features of your product or service. Do your homework on your prospects to :

www.soldlab.com

©2012 DG INTERNATIONAL! LLC Deborah Gardner is an authority/expert on competitive performance. She is the Principal and Founder of DG INTERNATIONAL LLC and a speaker/ trainer for COMPETE BETTER NOW! LLC. Deborah is a 27 year veteran in the hospitality sales industry and a member of National Speakers Association. To know more about Deborah, go to www.DeborahGardner.com or Google her. You will find her there.

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f I may be so bold as to paraphrase a line from MasterCard, here is what I have to say about outsourcing in general: “Building your own internal campaigns for lead gen and doing a decent job without losing focus on your core business – fair enough. Pulling the trigger and letting the big dogs run while you focus on your core competencies and winning the day on both sides of the ball – priceless.”

Quite often, I am asked about outsourcing lead generation and appointment setting to professional service firms. As a lead management software provider, we sit uniquely in the middle because we provide the software that drives the activities of both the end-user as well as professional lead gen and appointment setting companies. Additionally, for the better part of 19 years, we owned and operated a professional service organization that generated leads, appointments and sales by phone for a wide variety of organizations. In our final few years of owning the business, we were managing 275 inside sales reps and they were collectively moving 150,000+ products into the market, booking tons of appointments for sales teams and keeping plenty of sales funnels full. All of those years, all of those calls and all of those clients taught us a thing or two about why outsourcing lead generation or appointment setting is perfect for some companies and a disaster for others.

To make a point, I will share a brief story about my all-time favorite client. The company was in the

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manufacturing space and they were brilliant at what they did. However, they struggled to sell their product on a national scale because it was simply out of their wheelhouse. They hired us, and we took over their sales from soup to nuts. It was a big win for both groups. They focused on making, shipping and invoicing the product. We focused on selling more of it. Sales skyrocketed. Like all companies, they looked at us less as a partner and more like a line item expense. After a few years, they assumed they could easily replace us and do it in house. After all, there really is little or no magic in making sales calls. Or, at least that is what they thought. We got the boot and they got into the sales business. Less than six months later they had lost 50% of their customers and most of their profits. They came back.

They left. Back, and gone again. You get the picture. Their final departure included a special request to hire our sales team that was running their project. We said sure. Six months later, they lost the people, lost the sales, and were back at the beginning again.

The point to the story is that not only were they perfectly suited for outsourcing; it was the only way they could survive. Why? Because all of their core competencies were built around being great manufacturers and creative product people. To be blunt, they simply sucked at selling.

Even when they went to the market and recruited outstanding expertise to bring in-house, they still failed. Why? Because their corporate culture was perfectly suited to being a great manufacturer and poorly suited to house a sales environment. :

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Through the years I saw this same example many times through many different companies.

My example was a bit long, but I really hope the point sticks. Sometimes, the decision to outsource simply stares you in the face. Other times, it is going to be more nuanced and a deeper dive and more due diligence will be requited.

As you think about your own challenges as they relate to building your sales pipeline, and whether or not outsourcing can benefit your organization, here are some top of mind things that I would consider and a few questions worth asking:

Are you satisfied with your current status quo?

If it is working, don’t change it. If you are satisfied with where you are and what you have, then stay the course.

Can you afford to outsource your lead generation and your appointment setting?

I suggest you reverse the question and ask, “If I am failing to meet my sales goals, can I afford not to make a change?” We could spend quite a bit of time on comparing the cost of internal efforts vs. outsourced cost. The best advice is to talk with a few companies, understand their cost and, equally as important, understand your real cost. Real cost has to include not only the hard line cost such as labor, admin and overhead. It also has to include lost opportunity cost because your sales pipeline is not where you need it to be. My friends over at PointClear have a good comparison guide titled, “We Can Do It Cheaper.” I suggest you check it and others out.

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industry knowledge. They need enough knowledge to be able to execute their goal: filling the funnel.

You mentioned disasters for some that outsource. What do you mean?

I have seen companies outsource the whole enchilada. The entire sales process from soup to nuts is placed in the hands of an outsource partner. The results may be perfect but if something happens such as a budgetary change, the firm that that is providing the service goes through a change and results suffer. Then your options become very limited. That is why I encourage companies to “partner” (I know I over-use the word) vs. simply outsourcing.

In summary, if you elect to outsource some portion of your sales efforts such as lead generation and cultivation, select a firm that works as an extension of your existing efforts. Learn and know everything you can about their processes.

Understand the messaging they are using to drive results. In a perfect world, they should be an extension of your organization and all efforts should be integrated together and complement one another. If they are simply a firm you chose because they are cheap and willing to do the dirty work, then I would reconsider that decision. With all of the technology we have today, outsource partners can be a profitable extension to your own efforts; they can help mitigate risk and allow for more rapid expansion. For those of you that read and follow my posts, you already know that you may have to kiss a few frogs to find the prince of a partner you are looking for. | — Ken Murray

Outside firms can’t know what we know, so how can they help us?

We are the experts.

Ken Murray is a 30 year

Fair enough. However, you have to keep in mind that they are the experts at filling sales funnels.

They have the power of scale and metrics on their side and the good ones understand and deploy the absolute best practices available for the industry they are targeting. If they are successful, then they are successful for a reason. Remember, lots of sales people fail with massive product and

built inside sales campaigns for

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veteran of the Inside Sales space. He has designed and numerous Fortune 500 companies. His sales teams have sold over 168,000 products annually and produced north of 700 million dollars in annual sales. In 2005 Ken commercialized the product that was driving his inside sales team and founded VanillaSoft.

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without Understanding a Word I love sales calls. I love making them, going along with others, observing, reflecting and writing about sales calls. If I was to take a swag at the number, I’ve probably observed (as either a sales exec. or a coach/consultant) 170 salespeople on approximately 1000 sales calls. That’s a lot of data and even more fodder for developing coaching content. I’ve seen it all – from the boardrooms of Fortune 100 companies to the break rooms of rural manufacturing operations and everything in between. The 5-minute stand up in the corner of a lobby to the 3-hour marathon in an auditorium.

The good. The bad. And the ugly.

A couple of weeks ago I spent a few days in Montreal. What a great city and what a wonderful experience. My preconceived notion of French Canadians was way off. Everyone with whom I met was gracious and friendly. I had the opportunity to work in the field with several salespeople and a great young sales manager. It was a fantastic few days highlighted by an enlightening full day with a French-speaking sales rock star. Patrick is actually French, as in France-French, but he’s lived in Montreal for many years. He sells super-premium exclusive food items to chefs in fine restaurants.

The title of this post is slightly misleading.

Patrick did speak English, quite well. But we spent the day calling on French chefs and every sales call was

conducted completely in French. It was a surreal experience for me. I didn’t understand a word, but learned a ton. And unequivocally, I can tell you why this guy conducts some of the very best sales calls I’ve ever seen.

Happy. Positive.

Likable. Patrick was a joy to be around. He was charming. He smiled at every receptionist/hostess, and chefs always smiled when they greeted him. He was excited about his business and loved what he was doing. People buy from people they like.

Gravitas. Executive Presence.

While still demonstrating a great deal of respect for his customers, Patrick approached and spoke with them as peers. He had excellent physical and voice presence. His posture was comfortable and confident. I’ve learned that chefs can be a bit like doctors. They tend to have big egos. They expect to be addressed as “Chef.” They demand or command respect.

Patrick had a perfect balance – showing deference, yet not coming off as subservient or intimidated in any way.

God gave you two ears and one mouth, and that’s a great percentage to use them in sales!

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Same Side of the Table. Seen as an Advisor.

Not Contrived. No Sales Voice. On almost every call, Patrick :

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positioned himself next to the chef, on the same side of the table. It never once felt like he was “presenting” at them. He was there as an advisor to see how he could help the chef achieve his goals, improve his product. There was a completely different dynamic on these calls than I see with most salespeople. Nothing seemed contrived or salesy. He didn’t use some “sales voice” and speak with a completely different tone and cadence than he did when not on sales calls (why do salespeople do that?). I didn’t observe the typical buyer auto-reflex resistance to being sold because Patrick didn’t create that tension with his approach.

A Dialogue. Talk-Listen Ratio.

Call Structure.

I witnessed textbook structuring of sales calls. It was clear from the outset of each meeting that Patrick’s idea of sales call looked a lot more like a conversation than a product or catalogue presentation. Most calls started with banter and then evolved into a Q&A dialogue with Patrick transitioning into suggestions for products that might benefit the chef. Even more impressive was the fact that on no call did Patrick ever speak more than 50% of the words. In many cases, he conducted the call so that the chef was speaking two-thirds of the time. God gave you two ears and one mouth, and that’s a great percentage to use them in sales!

Superb Use of Sales Materials and iPad. Most salespeople fumble when it comes to elegantly using materials, handouts, electronic aids.

The most common thing I see is over-dependence

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on materials where the aids end up becoming the “main thing” as opposed to the “assistant” to help drive home a point or paint a visual picture.

Patrick masterfully and naturally brought printed product sheets into the conversation. And while I’ve seen an iPad deployed on calls a few times recently, unfortunately, salespeople used it more like a book to flip through pages (and present).

Patrick found a way to quickly grab the iPad when appropriate, and used it to highlight a certain item or show a beautiful image of a product for which he didn’t have a live sample. It was smooth and I was impressed.

Mustang Convertible.

Fashionable.

Patrick wasn’t wearing worn out khakis and a company logo’d golf shirt. He was quite fashionable in his trendy jeans, cool shoes and lightweight black blazer. He dressed to fit the role. He was selling high-end goods and he looked like it.

He was driving a bright blue almost new Mustang convertible and having a blast doing it.

Exhausted after a full day of running (yes, running at times) around downtown Montreal, he dropped the top for our ride back to the hotel. Not five seconds later he calls over to an attractive young woman getting on a bicycle. “Katie, great to see you.” She comes over to say hi and rides away. He puts the car in first gear and smiles at me, “that’s the pastry chef at one of my accounts.” It really did feel like I spent the day with a sales rock star.

Je ne parle pas Francais. But for a guy who’s been on a thousand sales calls, I sure learned a lot that day. | — Mike Weinberg

Mike Weinberg’s specialty is new business development. He coaches sales teams and sales leaders and consults CEOs of mid-size companies on issues related to sales success. Mike was named a Top 25 Sales Influencer for 2012 by OpenView Labs, and his first book, published by AMACOM, will be released this September. He was the topperforming salesperson is three different organizations and currently leads The NewSales Coach consultancy. Mike is a transplanted New Yorker who lives in St. Louis with his wife and three children. Learn more at: www.newsalescoach.com

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Maura Schreier-Fleming, sales strategist and consultant answers your sales questions. What sales issue are you facing that you want some direction? Ask Maura.

Question 1: In your opinion, how much time should a sales person devote to social networking in comparison to making sales calls? How much social networking is “too much”?

Answer: It’s not a question of either or. Selling today means using all the tools you have at your disposal. Social networking is just another tool. Like any tool it can be used effectively or not. The simple answer to how much social networking is “too much” is the time you’re spending on line without getting a return on your time. What is your objective for using social networking? Is it to learn about prospects? Then how many prospects have you found? Is it to grow a list to make sales? Then how many sales have you made? After a certain amount of time you have to evaluate your results.

If you’re not getting results, either the way you’re using the social networking tool isn’t working or the social networking tool just isn’t the best tool for your selling.

Question 2: Does the role of a successful sales person imply the qualities of a leader? How do you understand leadership in sales?

Answer: No, just because someone is a great salesperson doesn’t mean they would also be a successful sales leader. Why? Because sales leadership requires additional skills than just selling. The truly talented sales leader gets obstacles out of his salespeople’s way. He helps with sales and business strategy. He inspires and motivates salespeople to believe in themselves and helps them develop into better communicators. They become better listeners, negotiators and strategists. They become better at sales. These sales leaders make sure they develop their people, not take over the sales function. So just because you can sell doesn’t mean you can develop salespeople. Often, you have a great salesperson promoted to management who now takes over selling for everyone. That’s not a great sales leader. Great sales leaders are motivated by the results they get from developing their people who close the sale.

Great salespeople are motivated by closing the sale. | — by Maura Schreier-Fleming

Maura Schreier-Fleming, is an international speaker and sales consultant.

She works with business and sales professionals on their persuasion and communication skills. Her books include Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results and Monday Morning Sales Tips. She writes the women in business blog for Allbusiness.com and is a sales coach for them. She’s been quoted in the New York Times, Selling Power and Entrepreneur. Clients include UPS, Fujitsu, Capital One, Ebby, the Houston Texans, and Conoco. She was Mobil Oil’s first female lubrication engineer in the U.S. and sold $9 million of industrial lubricants when hydraulic oil was under $2.50/gallon. www.bestatselling.com

info@sellingtozebras.com

http://www.sellingtozebras.com/

http://www.sellingtozebras.com/

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There was a lively conversation with a client of mine recently. During our session the VP of Sales for this particular company made the following comment: “I don’t know why we even send quotes. Our quotes make us look like everybody else. Remember back in the day we used to send proposals”?

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propose you STOP sending quotes. The word “Quote” has become so mainstream in nearly every sales cycle we can’t seem to help ourselves. It’s really just a bigger word for this one: Bid. A different word for this one: Price. It’s also a word used in place of this conversation: Buyer: “What’s your price”?

You: “My price is X”.

A meeting with a potential buyer too often ends with the following weak close... “Thank you for your time today Mr. Customer, I’ll get you a quote in the next (insert timeline here).” Many sales people feel a sense of accomplishment having gotten that far in the sales cycle. They feel they have done their job!

It really doesn’t matter if your quote is cleverly disguised in an email attachment. A PDF, PowerPoint, Word or Excel document. If it looks like, reads like or seems like a quote, it’s just a price. The word quote is so transaction based it’s a waste for a true sales professional to even have it in their personal lexicon. A quote. Another word for price. As in “Here’s my price”. No value, no extras, no subtle nuance. Nothing more – just a price. Another quote from another ordinary, garden variety, sales person. So vanilla that all things being equal the buyer is left to make their decision based on the lowest price. Is it yours? Are you going to quote your way to success, or become the low price leader?

Proposal. Now there’s a word with some GUTS. Guts as in: “I proposed to my wife. I didn’t quote her”.

Guts as in: “Mr. Customer, based on my understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish, here is what I propose. Here are the benefits of ownership and the return on your investment”. A statement like that, a winning statement, is going to show some commitment, some guts, and has a far better chance of being taken seriously – a better chance of being given some real consideration. So, we have two totally different words with different meanings yet we’ve allowed them to become interchangeable.

Dollarize as many points as you can. Far too often proposals get treated like quotes and bids because the buyer jumps to the end. Eager to get to the “Bottom line” a buyer will go to the price page

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and just compare it to all the other quotes and bids without the benefit of considering the return on investment. You have to assign a dollar value to as many of the main points of your proposal as you can. If the total return is greater than the total investment you have a shot.

In today’s new “Re-set economy” you can’t afford to be like everyone else. You can’t look, act, talk, walk, speak or even smell like the other guys.

Does your proposal have an executive summary, a recap of the benefits of ownership and a projected return on the buyer’s investment? Does your proposal look like the other guys quote? Do you know what your competitor’s quotes look like?

If not, you’d better find out.

Ideas to Increase Your Odds:

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Present it in person

This can be tough, but nothing beats a live meeting to present your proposal and value proposition. If your client is anywhere near your local geography you should hand deliver your proposal. Position yourself to make the presentation at the close of the last meeting you have. A statement like “Mr. Customer, I’ll have a proposal ready for your consideration by (insert date or time line), when would be the best time to present it to you”? Yes – many purchasing agents insist on :

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“Mr. Customer, are you near your computer? I‘m ready to send the proposal and I would like to go over three very important points with you”. This is your opportunity to reinforce the value. Review the points and dollarize them before you get to the price.

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Have FedEx help you

If you can’t hand deliver and getting them on the phone for a real time review doesn’t work, have FedEx give you a hand. Have a hard copy of your proposal delivered to your prospect and use their tracking system to know when it’s arrived. Once you know it’s been delivered make your call. “Mr. Customer, I see our proposal has been delivered I would like to spend just a few minutes reviewing a couple of very important points”.

You can’t look, act, talk, walk, speak or even smell like the other guys an email and you can send it electronically AFTER you hand deliver a hard copy.

As a side note, if you can deliver and review your proposal in person don’t give them the entire proposal at once. If you do there will be no stopping them from jumping to the end. Instead give it to them a page at a time.

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Bonus idea

So none of the tactics above is working? What if in addition to your emailed proposal you included a short video link, via YouTube, along with your proposal.

A video of you recapping your proposal, dollarizing the main points, showing the product, or a testimonial from one of your valued customers who’s used the same product or service. One thing’s for sure, if done well, the buyer will probably talk about it. I guess they would talk about it if it were done poorly too. What do you think they will say if you just send them another quote?

I’m just sayin’…. feel free to QUOTE me! | — Les Lent

If you can’t present in person get the buyer to open your proposal while you have them on the phone.

As a Sales Coach, Les has over 15 years experience in sales and sales leadership. Les has built and coached multiple sales teams to successful results – including several of the “Fortune 100”. Implementing SCI’s real world, battle tested sales process Les’ sales teams have been repeatedly recognized for outstanding performance in both sales and profit growth.

Les works with sales professionals and leadership across a wide variety of industries throughout North America. Les delivers both value and insight to his clients. His ability to provide candid real time feedback has made him an invaluable asset to many organizations. Les can be reached at (916) 474-0163 or Les@LesLent.com

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How to S e l l when you’re the cheapest A couple of weeks ago, I read a blog post entitled “How To Sell When You’re Not The Cheapest”, which I found a little odd, as it was implying that selling is easiest when you’re the cheapest option in the market. However, that’s not usually the case. Cheap generally means poor quality, because if the product were good, it wouldn’t be necessary to trade it like a commodity. A good product can be priced at a premium because people pay for results and people pay for things which they expect to do the job. In fact, selling is harder when the product or service is cheap, because you have all sorts of preconceptions about quality to overcome. So in light of this, here is my little guide to how to sell when you’re the cheapest, because if that’s what you are, you’ll need all the help you can get.

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Deal with the quality issue early on

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Accept that they’re likely to buy from someone else

Unfortunately, being the cheapest on the market will mean that people will have preconceived ideas about how good (or bad) your product might be. This will color their view of what you’re offering, so you’ll need to work hard to elevate the customer’s perception of your quality early on in the sale before it becomes ingrained in their heads.

Another problem with being the cheapest on the market, is that some customers will be using you to negotiate with the product they really want (you know – the more expensive one which they think will work and give the results they need). Probably, your customer has decided on the competitor’s product, searched the web to find something similar (yours) and is now using

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you to push the price down of the product which they’ll eventually buy anyway, whatever the price.

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Be ready for the fall-out

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Be ready for more cold calling

If the prospect you’re speaking to does in fact become a client, be ready to deal with problems further down the line.

If they’re buying the cheapest on the market, they’re probably the sort of customer who wants things for free, so be ready for that call when they tell you you’re product’s not working (even if it is) and fishing for a refund/freebie.

Who recommends products to their friends, colleagues or business partners because that product is cheap? Not many people – they’ don’t want to be seen as someone who buys the cheapest on the market, and they know that colleagues, friends and business partners will be looking for something of higher quality, so you can pretty much forget about referrals, unless you want referrals to more of the same type of awkward client. This means more hard graft for you as you cold-call your way through the phone book looking for new business. :

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never great to be the cheapest option in the market, so if you find yourself in this position, you need to take action. The rewards to salespeople come when the product is priced at a premium. Not just because you sell your product for a higher price, but because a premium product attracts customers with premium needs who will become long-term business partners rather than customers looking to save some money. Buy pricing your product higher, and ensuring it’s worthy of such a price tag, you’ll be delivering a quality product to quality customers with whom you’ll be able to forge mutually-beneficial relationships.

It’s not an easy sale, however, because a premium product with a premium price tag requires a premium salesperson, because the quality of the product needs to be demonstrated through the quality of the seller, so you’ll need to sharpen your skills, treat every customer as an individual, and begin the live and breathe the quality you can offer. Only then can you be credible and successful. | — by Neil Shorney

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Neil Shorney divides his time between helping businesses to achieve their full potential through his company, Naturally Sales Ltd (www.nsales.co.uk), and leading his European sales team at the world’s largest project management training company, where he spends his time selling, leading and training in areas as diverse as sales, communication skills, ownership & accountability, and Microsoft Excel. He has over 12 years of international sales, management, and strategic experience in diverse industries including hospitality, energy, IT & telecommunications, project management, and business analysis. Neil is a firm believer in success through business partnerships, and the value of long-term business relationships.

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Stop Selling – Start Relating

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o you think selling in these uncertain economic times is a daunting task? Maybe you think, “If only my product or service were bigger, smaller, cheaper, broader in scope, more narrowly defined, etc., etc.” that your success rate would be higher. As long as you keep focusing on what you’re not, you’ll soon convince yourself your competition is better than you are and far more likely to close more deals.

As you and I well know, no elaborate marketing campaign or advertising strategy will ever close a deal. The best your marketing efforts can do is to get a prospect to call you or to awaken interest in a potential buyer. While you may have won half the battle with a good marketing plan, the real challenge comes when you’re face to face with a prospect. It’s during this meeting that the salesperson often pulls out a seemingly genuine bag of tricks in an attempt to make a sale.

The best advice I can ever give you is to STOP SELLING! Stop trying to convince anybody of anything. In fact, maybe what you’re offering isn’t what the prospect wants at all. Maybe, just maybe, you’re not the answer to every question asked. If you’re not, you can still connect your prospect up to the right answer and ask for a referral in the process.

Personally, I’d rather be remembered for helping a prospect out than for trying to cram a round peg into a square hole just to make a buck. Now I’m not telling you to pack it up and enter another line of work. Sales is a noble profession. You know it.

I know it. What happens sometimes in the sales process, however, is that we lose sight of the goal: :

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To build a relationship. Once the relationship is solid, the sale will come. Unfortunately, what I’ve seen happen time and again is that the salesperson truly believes the real goal is the sale and that all this relationship stuff has to be tolerated in order to get the deal done. This is clueless thinking.

Don’t you think your customer knows whose agenda you have in mind? Let’s be honest: It’s yours! If you were really thinking of your customer, you’d be taking the time to see the buyer as a person first and as a customer second. You’d be tapping into ideas that could help your customer feel more secure in an insecure economic climate.

You’d be empathizing and establishing a comfortable business relationship. If you see the customer only as a dollar sign, you’re doing your competitors an immense favor: You’re making every salesperson out there, excluding yourself, look worthy of the Salesperson of the Year award.

In other words, you’re coming across as completely self serving.

The truth of the matter is this: People buy from people they like. The question then is, “Are you likeable?” Do your customers think of you as reliable, trustworthy, and loyal, or do they think of you as someone who’s only available when the potential for business is good? Do you give equal treatment to all of your customers, regardless of account size or revenue generated? If I’m your client I want to feel spe-

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cial, even if I give you a miniscule amount of business.

It’s your job to make me feel that you care about me.

Let’s face it: When you meet a potential customer for the first time, you’re asking for something from a complete stranger – either for an order, an opportunity to return, or for consideration. You’re largely at the mercy of someone else. If your interest in your prospect isn’t readily apparent by the time you ask for the business, you might as well pack up and leave. You don’t have a leg to stand on.

It’s important to remember that people can sometimes be reluctant to self disclose or reveal proprietary information. Real rapport begins only when customers feel secure that the information they share won’t be used against them. Be careful to nurture your relationships. Take the time to take the time.

View every meeting as time well spent, as an investment in your professional future.

Of course we sell. Try putting “Professional Relationship Builder” as a title on your next business card and see how that goes over. I guarantee you’d never get your foot in a prospect’s door. Then again, try being only a salesperson, and you’ll also never see the light of day. The trick is to give to others what they feel uncomfortable asking for but what they desperately want: A salesperson with a heart. | — by Kathy Maixner

Give to others what they feel uncomfortable asking for but what they desperately want: A salesperson with a heart

©Selling Smart, 2011 Kathy

Maixner is Chief Outcome Strategist for The Maixner

Group, a nationally-recognized sales consulting company that helps its clients identify their best business growth strategies AND align them successfully with powerful sales tactics. Kathy has the ability to bridge the gaps between theory and application, resulting from her longstanding work in the field of interpersonal communication. A successful entrepreneur for 16 years with a Master’s Degree in Communication Studies, Kathy works with clients to integrate their big-picture thinking with practical, results-driven behaviors. She has helped her clients to achieve multi-millions of dollars in annual contracts, while remaining focused on long-term, sustainable growth.

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Why Facebook and Twitter Icons Can Decrease Online Sales by 25 Percent According to a new study, adding Facebook and Twitter icons next to your product online affects whether consumers buy it in the first place. That’s because people are worried about what others might say about their purchases.

For this study, nearly 200 consumers explored products in an online shopping context – some were products people were happy to display in public (sportswear for women, cool fragrance for men) and others were products they might not want publically displayed (compression underwear for women, acne products for men).

•Happy to display •Don’t want to display

“Does a social icon influence your buying decision?”

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yes

yes

The study conducted by the School of Business, Empirica Research, and StyleCaster Media Group as part of the State of Style Report found out consumers who saw a social media icon near a product that might embarrass them were 25 percent less likely to buy it.

On the other hand, if the product was one someone would be proud to “show off”, the presence of the Facebook button and the Twitter button made people 25 percent more likely to buy it.

Source: School of Business Study Finds that Facebook and Twitter Symbols Subconsciously Influence Online Buying Decisions

IEG. Summits

Sales & Operations Planning for the High-Tech Industry April 18 & 19, 2012, San Francisco Innovative S&OP: Create True Collaboration

Confirmed Speakers Include:

This summit will gather senior executives from the world’s most dynamic and powerful companies currently utilizing S&OP

Vice President, Supply Chain, Sony Electronics

Bringing forward-thinking business leaders together to shape revolutionary ideas

Director, Search Quality Evaluation, Google Senior Vice President, Global Operations, SunEdison Director, Sales & Operations Planning, Applied Materials

Over 20 hours of networking opportunities included

Vice President, Global Operations, Hewlett Packard

200+ S&OP professionals attending

Transformational Initiative Leader, Tyco Electronics

Director, Sales & Operations Planning, D & M Holdings

operations.theiegroup.com/sop-hightech http://operations.theiegroup.com/sop-hightech Contact Lin Duan to request an invitation: +415 692 5404 | lduan@theiegroup.com

Gain Insight. Optimize Results.

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How Ronald Reagan Would Change Your Corporate Sales Presentation 38 |

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Whether you’re trying to win the big multi-million dollar account or sway industry analysts, your corporate sales presentation is a key event in most every deal. It is the pivotal moment where you can communicate your advantages, gain momentum, and develop the personal relationships necessary to achieve your goal.

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fter reviewing hundreds of corporation presentations over the past four years, I can honestly say that they all are basically the same. You could almost take slides from one company’s presentation and insert them in another, and no one would even notice. They are all fact-based infomercials that approach customers with the same message--We’re the industry leader with a stateof-the-art solution who partners with our customers. The problem is all the competitors are making the exact same claims. As a result, nothing unique is communicated. Therefore, the real question to ask is, “How can you differentiate your corporate sales presentation?”

The answer to this question may be found by studying “The Great Communicator,” former President Ronald Reagan. In 2000, Ronald Reagan was ranked as the eighth-best President in U.S. history according to a survey of seventy-eight historians.

It’s not surprising that he was ranked behind national heroes like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. However, the most surprising part of the survey is that he was ranked as the most underrated president of all time. Ultimately, what made this president so unique was his ability to communicate and persuade.

President Reagan had a natural ability to create rapport with a wide spectrum of people. He was able to obtain support from both major political parties and from people from all walks of life. Although his political enemies may have heartily disagreed with his agenda, they found it hard, if not impossible, to

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hate him personally. So, how would Ronald Reagan change your sales presentation?

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Reagan would add a great “cowcatcher.”

Most people associate the term “cowcatcher” with the metal grill on the front of a locomotive. However, “cowcatcher” has an entirely different meaning in the entertainment industry. It’s a show’s opening moments in which the performers try to grab your attention and cause you to stop and look.

Ronald Reagan, the Hollywood star, knew the importance of a cowcatcher. Before and during his presidency, he wrote over six hundred radio addresses by himself, in his own handwriting. They were not the work of a team of speechwriters. Perhaps the most impressive part of every radio address was the opening cowcatcher, the first sentences of every program.

“It has been said a baby sitter is a teenager acting like a parent while the parent is out acting like a teenager.”

“How much do you miss Dinosaurs? Would your life be richer if those giant pre-historic flying lizards occasionally settled on your front lawn?”

“It sometimes seems that we can get more emotionally aroused over mistreatment of animals than we can if the victims are human.”

The best corporate sales presentations start with a great cowcatcher.

A great cowcatcher engages the mind, appeals to the imagination, and helps the presenter gain :

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For example, a company I worked for was the top-rated NASDAQ stock for a period of PRESENTATION five years. In fact, during one two-year time frame, $32,000 worth of this company’s stock grew to be worth $1,000,000. I always opened my presentations with a chart of the stock price and some facts about the stock’s appreciation. The customers would be more than intrigued; they were downright fascinated and eager to learn more. Many would buy my company’s stock that very day!

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Reagan would use a captivating “hook.”

Following the cowcatcher, you need a “hook.” Now that the listeners’ interest is piqued, you need to hook them on why they should use your product. Your best hook is to tell them stories. For example, let’s take a look at how Reagan opened with a provocative cowcatcher and then hooked the audience with a story about baby seal hunts.

“It sometimes seems that we can get more emotionally aroused over mistreatment of animals than we can if the victims are human.

A few weeks ago a writer in the Los Angeles Times did an article on the 1978 Canadian baby seal hunt. One line in the article was very thought provoking; ‘If seal pups were as ugly as lobsters, their harvest would go unnoticed. Accompanying his article was a photo that proved his point. It was a snow white baby seal with its black nose & round eyes looking like something you’d put in the nursery for children to cuddle.’”

The stories we should use in the corporate sales presentation are about how customers are successfully using our products. Most corporate presentations include an obligatory slide that shows twenty or so logos of the major companies that use the salesperson’s products. That’s not what I am referring to here.

The sales presentation should include six to eight slides of how specific customers are using the products, the operational results that have been improved, and the financial impact on the bottom line. In addition, it should include a quote from a customer whose name and title the audience can identify with psychologically. For example, include a quote from your customer’s CFO when presenting to a financial department. Finally, this section

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should have some eye-catching graphics that tie the whole story together. These could be pictures of your product at work, the person who provided the quote, or an example of the end result.

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Reagan would incorporate mental imagery.

It’s not enough to say that to stand out you have to be different. Rather, you need a more sophisticated, indirect approach that differentiates your solution in the minds of customers. You can’t tell customers you’re unique, different, and one of a kind. You must demonstrate it to them, starting with the imagery of the corporate presentation. Reagan naturally employed mental imagery to psychologically engage his audience.

“It’s nightfall in a strange town a long way from home. I’m watching the lights come on from my hotel room window on the 35th floor.

I’m afraid you are in for a little bit of philosophizing if you don’t mind. Some of these broadcasts have to be put together while I’m out on the road traveling what I call the mashed potato circuit. In a little while I’ll be speaking to a group of very nice people in a banquet hall.”

These two paragraphs from one of his radio addresses help create a personal receptive state where the audience is open to his thoughts. The words, “nightfall,” “strange town,” “long way from home,” provide the mental imagery that enable the listeners to be quickly transported to Reagan’s place and mood (in an unfamiliar place a long way from home).

The second sentence is an “operator” on the first sentence. It (“watching the lights from my hotel room”) further defines where he is physically and forces the listeners to adjust their viewpoint to the thirty-fifth floor of a hotel room. Both of these sentences are “verifiable statements.” Most everyone has experienced being a long way from home and feeling homesick. Most everyone has been in a high-rise building. As listeners receive information, they check with their past experiences to verify the statement’s accuracy. Assuming the listeners have been homesick before, this statement is agreed to and considered truthful. The honesty of the statement is also passed on to the presenter. These types of verifiable statements enable the presenter to quickly gain credibility and rapport. :

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The creators of almost all of the hundreds of presentations I have reviewed over the past couple of years come not from sales but from marketing departments. Unfortunately, these people usually have had little interaction with customers and no direct sales experience. They assume that customers think like they do and that the selection process is completely unbiased. Therefore, their presentation is a point-by-point list of reasons why a customer should select their product. As a result, the corporate sales presentation provides little mental imagery. The presentations are slide after slide of boring bullet points of information, with very few graphics to break up the monotony. This is the true definition of “death by PowerPoint.”

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Reagan would employ “softeners.”

The best corporate sales presentations start with a great cowcatcher

Preapologizing is one technique for developing a receptive state with an audience. This is one form of a “softener.” A softener eases listeners into the next thought or can be used to set expectations.

Usually, Reagan’s radio addresses discussed the economy or issues of foreign and domestic interest. When Reagan said, “I’m afraid you are in for a little bit of philosophizing if you don’t mind,” he is signaling that the intent of this week’s message is different. He’s adjusting the listeners’ frame of mind from being issue based to being more reflective and introspective. Basically, he’s telling them to relax a little.

He’s on the road, about to give a speech on what he calls “the mashed potato circuit.” How do you interpret that statement? Speaking to a group of

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people in the heartland of America is quite different from speaking to people from the East or West Coast. What would you have inferred if he had called it the “steak and wine circuit”? Perhaps that he considers these dinner speeches less than important and feels he should be performing his “real” job of leading the land. There’s an underlying meaning that he is trying to communicate. However, the interpretation of the statement is dependent upon each listener’s viewpoint, and there is no right or wrong answer.

Regardless of the answer, listeners empathize with the position he is in.

Too many sales presentations are built upon black or white, all or nothing statements.

These statements force the customer to either completely accept or reject the premise or argument being made.

In reality, customers reject far more statements than they accept and this lessens rapport. Therefore, the best sales presentations incorporate softeners to lessen the likelihood of rejection.

For example, instead of listing “We provide the most state-of-the-art technology” on a bullet point, you should use “Our technology offers these advantages.”

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Reagan would be sure to include some humor.

When people laugh, at some level they agree with you. Humor helps relieve the stress that is inherent to all sales calls. Like a seasoned salesperson, Reagan had a knack for making pithy comebacks that rendered his opponents’ political body blows ineffective, thus allowing him to escape his position on the :

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Too many sales presentations are built upon black or white, all or nothing statements ropes. In the 1984 presidential debate, age figured to be a big issue since challenger Walter Mondale was seventeen years younger than Reagan. To counteract potential criticism that the oldest man to ever serve as president was too old for the job, Reagan said, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

Every salesperson should follow Reagan’s lead and use humor during the corporate sales presentation. It shows you don’t take yourself too seriously.

If you tell jokes, the punch line should always be selfdeprecating and at your expense. Observational humor about common experiences such as children, traffic, or taxes is a safe area too. Humor helps build rapport and lower the defenses between buyers and sellers. Remember, everyone is somewhat nervous during a sales call and humor lightens the mood and helps everyone relax.

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Closing Thoughts Like every salesman, President Reagan had a product to sell. As a politician, his product was not only his policies but, equally important, himself. While each of his radio addresses had a political purpose, he also wanted to deliver a very powerful message that was camouflaged beneath the content of the story.

Similar to the typical corporate sales presentation, he wanted to use this special moment to motivate his customer to buy. | — Steve Martin

Steve Martin recognized as the foremost expert on “Sales Linguistics,” the study of how customers use language during the complex decision-making process. He is the founder of the Heavy Hitter sales training program and the author of critically acclaimed “Heavy Hitter” series of sales books for senior salespeople. His latest book is titled Heavy Hitter Sales Psychology: How to Penetrate the C-Level Suite and Persuade Company Leaders to Buy. The Heavy Hitter sales training program has helped over 100,000 salespeople become top revenue producers at leading companies including IBM, AT&T, Allstate Insurance, and Prudential.

Visit www.stevewmartin.com to learn more.

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Why Your Dream Client Doesn’t Want a Pitch – and How to Make Them Want It You desperately want to show and tell your dream client about all of the wonderful capabilities and solutions you can use to help them achieve better results. They’re not nearly as excited about having to sit through a pitch as you would have hoped they would be. It’s probably not your fault that your dream client isn’t thrilled at the prospect of sitting through an hour and a half of boardroom drivel. The blame mostly lies with all of the salespeople who have come before you.

There are some reasons that your dream client doesn’t want to sit through your presentation that you can do something about.

Focus Too often, sales presentations are focused on your capabilities and solutions. You need to demonstrate how you create value for you clients and how what you do produces results. But when the capabilities and solutions aren’t directly tied to your dream clients problems, challenges, and opportunities, they are normally boring and irrelevant.

To make the presentation more meaningful and more enjoyable for your dream client, your solutions and capabilities need to be tied directly to the problems and the challenges that you uncovered with your dream client as you worked through your diagnosis.

As a young salesperson, I was guilty of presenting every solution we possessed and all of our capabilities. I was fortunate enough to have a mentor and sales coach who showed me that my dream clients really only wanted to discuss the two or three ideas that were important to solving their problems. Everything else was just the fast track to losing their attention.

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Writers Too often, our presentations are something we alone develop. We choose what we will present, the stories that we will share, and our ideas. The problem is that by writing the presentation alone, we leave our dream client out; they aren’t helping us write what should be our shared vision.

To make your presentation more persuasive and more desirable to your dream client, it has to include their stories and their vision. How did they get here? Where are they trying to go and why?

How are we going to get there together?

When you tell a story that puts your dream client at the center of the action and you in the role of the supporting cast, your story is much more interesting. When your story demonstrates how you will be there to help them make the journey from their present state to their desired state, your story is far more persuasive. Your dream client can follow this story.

Entertainment I have never written this before, but I more and more recognize that much of what we do in sales is to entertain.

It helps immensely to have a little entertainer in you. Stories, jokes, humorous anecdotes, and especially self-deprecating humor go a long way to lowering the resistance to your message and make you human.

A presentation that is built on the dry, banal, boring recitation of facts and descriptions of solutions is a certain form of torture. Most pitches aren’t interesting or entertaining. We have been conditioned to expect and respond to things that are entertaining, not professorial lecturing. :

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To bring your presentation to life, it needs stories.

It needs anecdotes that entertain your dream client and help to get them deeply engaged with your message. It needs humor (if you don’t have a dozen funny stories and anecdotes, get them!).

The more your presentation keeps your dream client engaged, the better it will be received.

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Questions

How have your dream clients been conditioned to hate most presenta-

tions?

What makes presentations more interesting and engaging to you?

How can you engage your dream client in helping you decide what and how you will present to their team?

Have you captured their stories and visions so that you can weave them into your presentation?

What will make your presentation more entertaining? | — by S. Anthony Iannarino

S. Anthony Iannarino is the Chief Sales Officer for SOLUTIONS Staffing, a best-in-class staffing firm with offices across the United States; the principal of B2B Sales Coach & Consultancy, a sales coaching and consulting firm with international clients; and an adjunct faculty member of Capital University’s School of Management and Leadership where he teaches MBA courses on Persuasive Marketing and Personal Selling. Anthony’s focus is helping individuals and organizations to make the strategic behavioral changes that allow them to massively improve their sales performance and their financial results. Anthony writes about sales effectiveness, competitiveness, marketing and strategy at The Sales Blog.

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op 5 tips for an engaging and dynamic presentation that gets and keeps your audiences’ attention.

Imagine that you have spent the better part of two weeks working on an important speech you plan to give to your company. You think you have done everything right. You have created a PowerPoint presentation with tons of information and flash animation. You have created handouts of the slides for your audience, so they can follow along. Although you haven’t had time to rehearse the presentation you are not worried, because you have the entire speech typed out. You plan to read it while you blow their socks off with the dynamic PowerPoint slides. Everything should be perfect, right? WRONG!!!

If you were to look at your audience (which you cannot, because you are reading your script) you would see them either riveted to the screen or to the handout in front of them, but not at you. The audience members who are eye weary from all the information you have packed into the slides are closing their eyes just to rest them. What went wrong?

Experienced speakers know that to engage their audience, they must build rapport. Reading from a script makes this difficult, if not impossible, because connecting with an audience requires direct eye contact. No matter how well written your speech, if you read your presentation to an audience, you will lose them.

Reading to your audience can also make you seem less authoritative. The audience wonders, “If you know so much about the topic, why can’t you just talk about it? Why are you reading?” :

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Here are 5 tips for getting and keeping your audience’s attention: Make Eye Contact Free yourself from the written page and demonstrate your expertise by using one of these ideas:

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Memorization If you want to memorize your speech, it is helpful to rehearse it out loud just before you go to sleep and right when you get up.

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Outline If you use the outline method to create your script, you can simply go back and clean it up and use that for the presentation. If you don’t have an outline prepared you can create one using the major points of your presentation.

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Key word method This technique calls for you to select key words from your script that represent a paragraph or two of information. These key words should jog your memory so that you can speak extemporaneously. You can use a single page of key words, or place them on 3×5 cards (always number the cards). If you are a visually oriented person you can find an image that represents the key word and create a pictogram.

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Teleprompter Nothing helps you maintain good eye contact without memorization like the teleprompter.

When speaking to an audience, you want to make everyone in the audience feel that the message is being directed to them personally. If you find that actually looking into the eyes of your audience is difficult and distracting, look at the tops of their heads which will create the illusion that you are speaking directly to them.

In order to include the whole audience, use a “Z” pattern. Start by looking at the front left section of the audience. After finishing your thought, turn your gaze to the front right section. Again, finish your thought and direct your gaze to the center section.

Then look at the rear left section and after completing your thought look to the rear right section.

Know your audience The more you know about your audience’s wants, needs and level of understanding, the better able :

You need to make sure that you are using words and ideas that are easily grasped by your audience

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You need to make sure that you are using words and ideas that are easily grasped by your audience.

This doesn’t mean you have to “dumb down” your speech, but it does mean checking to make sure that you are not using jargon or acronyms that are only known by a few.

Your audience is always thinking, “What’s in this for me?” Keep this question in mind when you craft your speech.

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Throw away your PowerPoint I think that there is no other element of a presentation that can bore an audience more quickly than PowerPoint slides. Okay, I know you are starting to curse at me now. Get rid of PowerPoint? Well, maybe I need to restate that. You can keep PowerPoint, if you use it properly and effectively and not as an eye sight test. Follow these simple rules: Choose an easy font to read, such as Arial or Times Roman.

Font size should be at least 28 pt (bulleted items should be at least 22 pt).

Use colors carefully (reds and oranges are hard to focus on).

Don’t crowd too many words on the screen (3 lines of type is more than enough).

Keep the slides simple, clean and easy to read.

View the PowerPoint presentation on the screen after you have created the slides and prior to your presentation. Check for ease of readability. The slides really do look different on the screen.

Don’t read the slides verbatim. Quite frankly, most of your audience will be able to read the slide, so why repeat it?

I think the most powerful PowerPoints are those that use only pictures, a key word or phrase or graphics. There is no reason to simply use a slide to repeat what you have said. Instead, use a visual aid to reinforce your point. It is true that a picture is worth a thousand words.

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You should direct your audience’s attention to the screen and back to you. Simply turn your gaze to the screen for a moment or two and then look back to your audience. These subtle cues allow your audience’s attention to move from the screen then back to you.

Give hand-outs after your presentation.

If you are making a presentation that has a lot of important and/or technical information, you can provide a hand-out, but only AFTER the presentation. If people have your slides while you are speaking they tend to read ahead or stay glued to the hand-out and not to you. If you give them the hand out after your presentation, it will reinforce all of your material without stealing attention from you.

Rehearse I know people hate to rehearse. It is hard not to feel silly when practicing your speech. However, there is nothing that helps a speaker more than the familiarity and ease you get from saying the words out loud.

(Yes, it does make a difference to say the words out loud.) I practice when I am in my car driving alone or while on the treadmill at home. The shower can also be a great place to practice.

Try these ideas with your next presentation.

Even if you only use one or two of these tips, you will have taken a huge step toward being the speaker that your audience will be compelled to stay awake and listen to. No one will be snoring in the back row. | — by Laurie Brown

Laurie Brown is an international speaker, trainer and consultant who works

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to help people improve their sales, service and presentation skills. She is the author of The Teleprompter Manual, for Executives, Politicians, Broadcasters and Speakers. Laurie can be contacted through www.thedifference.net, or 1-877.999.3433, or at lauriebrown@thedifference.net

March 2012

Sales Research A 10% Solution to Commoditization Read the first part of the article in the previous issue So what is the 10% solution? Put simply, it’s this: vendors working with a prospect should provide them with no more than 10% of the services/support/intellectual property they offer without a commitment in writing during the sales process.

One respondent (part of the 47% with a conscience), stated that he understood that it costs money to support a prospect, and as a result, felt it fair that to could ask for a commitment if the prospect asked for support that would require a substantial investment on their part. And he’s right. What’s more, approximately 53% of his fellow purchasing agents agreed with him.

So what conclusions can we draw from our research? Simply this- that there is a way for valueadded sales teams to beat the commoditization trap. By proving the vendor’s value and offering insight into a successful project/purchase, but also by limiting that support to no more than 10% of the IP needed to fulfill the project, companies can prove they are the best fit to assist the project.

In human terms, when asked to provide more by a prospect before a firm commitment is in place, the answer needs to be this: “There’s no doubt we can help you deploy this solution. We’ve helped other companies in the past and have a proven track record of success we can reference for you. We’ve even been willing to share some of the direction we’ll take if we’re awarded the project, but there’s a cost for us of doing this business, and we simply can’t give away what we do for free. That said, if we guarantee to successfully deploy this project/purchase for you- under your current projected budget and on time- can we get a commitment to move forward?

Once that’s in place, we’ll open our best practices and plans that will ensure a successful rollout with you and your team.”

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

We call this the 10% Commoditization Solution™. It’s fair, it makes sense, and it may just help your company reduce the money spent on customers that aren’t a fit and break out of the commoditization trap that so many businesses are fighting these days.

by Errol Greene, President, Verity Insight Partners

Errol Greene is President of Verity Insight Partners, a sales and marketing research firm based in John’s Creek, Ga. Verity helps companies uncover prospects who have a propensity to buy what they sell, via market research. Verity also assists in research for new product launches, win-loss analysis, and market needs/mapping studies. For more information, call 1-800-599-8740, or visit us at www.verityinsightpartners.com

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People negotiate differently – and behave differently – during the negotiation process. We can observe different styles of negotiation and how different types of behavior can affect the outcome of negotiations.

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n commercial negotiations, some people negotiate quickly and take risks; others take their time and try to avoid risk. Some buyers are very loyal, others will automatically shop around. Some negotiators can be quite intimidating – to the point of being rude; others are quite passive and easily manipulated.

This makes selling and negotiating a real challenge. To negotiate with all these different buyer types, we need to be able to adapt our behavior and be flexible in our approach.

To begin this process, we can look at two aspects of buyer behavior – assertiveness and responsiveness.

People who are assertive are confident and know what they want. They are not afraid to put forward opinions and are willing to listen to the opinions of others. They are not afraid of conflict and will be more than happy to argue their case.

People who are highly assertive can be seen as being aggressive, while people who lack assertiveness are often passive and get taken advantage of.

There are times when it is appropriate to be more or less assertive and we need to recognize when these times are.

Responsiveness means the extent to which people are willing to respond to us and our questions.

Some people are highly responsive and will give lots of information about themselves, their problems and needs. Others are unwilling or unable to respond in this way and we see these people often as being negative or difficult.

We are all different – some of us are naturally assertive and some of us are not. Salespeople tend to be quite responsive, but sometimes we lack assertion. An example of this is during negotiations.

When customers put us under pressure to re-

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duce prices or give discounts, we find it difficult and uncomfortable and worry about damaging the relationship with the buyer.

There are four basic styles of behavior and these are determined by the way in which people relate to one another.

How can you ensure that you approach people in the correct way?

“Knowing About Social Styles” developed by Merrill and Reid, is a theory which I have discussed in several of my articles and it is very useful to have a thorough understanding of it when negotiating. In the Social Styles Model there are four basic “styles”, or preferred ways of interacting with others.

Merrill and Reid believe that a person’s social style is a way of coping with others. People become most comfortable with that style, in themselves and others.

In fact, I discuss this in further detail in “How To Identify And Communicate With The Four Personality Types Resident In Every Boardroom.”

The Four Social Styles And How You Should Negotiate With Them :

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Assertive and responsive Reactive, impulsive, decisions spontaneous, intuitive Placing more importance on relationships than tasks Emotionally expressive, sometimes dramatic Flexible agenda, short attention span, easily loved Enthusiastic Strong persuasive skills, talkative and gregarious Optimistic, takes risks Creative N

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To Negotiate With Expressives: Seek opinions in an area you wish to develop to achieve mutual understanding Discussion should be people, as well as fact oriented Keep summarizing, work out specifics on points of agreement Try short, fast moving experience stories Make sure to pin them down in a friendly way Remember ъ to discuss the future, as well as the present Look out for the impulse buy

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Analytical: The Clinician Not assertive, not responsive Precise, orderly and business-like Rational and co-operative Self-controlled and serious Motivated by logic and facts Not quick to make decisions Distrusts persuasive people Like things in writing and detail Security conscious Critical, aloof, skeptical Excellent problem solver Likes rigid timetables

To Negotiate With Analyticals: Take action rather than words to demonstrate helpfulness and willingness Stick to specifics. Analyticals expect salesmen to overstate Their decisions are based on facts and logic and they avoid risk They can often be very co-operative, but established relationships take time Consider telling them what the product won’t do. they will respect you for it and they will have spotted the deficiencies anyway Discuss reasons and ask ‘why’ questions Become less responsive and less assertive yourself. :

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Driver: The Director  Assertive, but not responsive Task, rather than people oriented Decisive and determined Controlled emotions Set on efficiency and effectiveness Likes control, often in a hurry Firm, stable relationships Stubborn, tough Impatient Inflexible, poor listener

To Negotiate With Drivers:

Amiable: The Supporter

Plan to ask questions about and discuss specifics, actions and results Use facts and logic When necessary, disagree with facts rather than opinions, be assertive Keep it businesslike, efficient and to the point Personal guarantees and testimonials are least effective – better to provide options and facts Do not invade personal space

Not assertive but responsive Dependent on others Respectful, willing and agreeable Emotionally expressive Everyone’s friend, supportive, soft-hearted Low risk taker, likes security Group builder Over-sensitive Not goal orientated

To Negotiate With Amiables: Work, jointly, seek common ground Find out about personal interests and family Be patient and avoid going for what looks like an easy pushover Use personal assurance and specific guarantees and avoid options and probabilities Take time to be agreeable Focus discussion on how Demonstrate low risk solutions Don’t take advantage of their good nature

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— by Jonathan Farrington

Jonathan Farrington is a globally recognized business coach, mentor, author, consultant, and sales strategist, who has guided hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals around the world towards optimum performance levels. He is the CEO of Top Sales Associates, Chairman of The JF Corporation and the creator of Top Sales World.

Jonathan is based in London and Paris.

Visit his blog at: www.thejfblogit.co.uk

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A couple

I learnt

the hard way …

I remember one of my largest ever sales with mixed emotions. The deal, for a mixture of hardware, software and design services, was a whopper and had been in the pipeline for months. Likewise it had been in my forecast for months and all eyes were on me. I went in on my own for the final session to actually get the order and knew there would be some negotiating to be done. However, we were in a very strong position technically and I suspected that, as far as the engineers were concerned, it was a one-horse race.

For a one-horse race I sure got beat up. I was in my mid-twenties and meeting up with Reg, their procurement VP, who must have been around sixty and knew every low-down trick in the book.

What I had expected would be a final, quick haggle on price turned into a mammoth session going over the price, technology, deliverables and Ts & Cs with a fine-tooth comb. By the time I left I’d given away half of the farm, my head was spinning and I still wasn’t sure if I’d got the order. It wasn’t so much a negotiation as a very long, painful series of concessions.

I remember two of his tactics particularly vividly…

The salami technique. He took me through our Ts and Cs line by line with him questioning each one, telling me why they couldn’t accept it and

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asking me what we could do about it. So during the course of the meeting I made more than one call back to base to find out if we could move… and mostly we could.

The power of legitimacy. I’m sure you’ve probably heard about this concept… it’s the un-thinking respect for standard terms and conditions, operating procedures and in general anything documented. Reg used this to full effect with his terms; they were written in stone… absolutely couldn’t be changed… never in the history of the company had they been modified… he’d be fired for even thinking about it. Of course, when it came to our Ts & Cs he had zero (0) respect for them and expected each one to be individually re-drafted for him!

So what did I learn from this exercise?

Don’t let them get you “on a roll” with the salami technique. If you do have to go over a lot of items just ask what they want on each one to begin with, don’t comment on any of them and move to the next. Make absolutely sure you have the complete, full list of requests before you comment. Then at least you are in a position to trade e.g. “I can do something on warranty if you can…” I actually wised-up to this half way through the negotiation with Reg, but by that point I was “on a roll”. :

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When someone wants concessions from you make sure that you have the power of legitimacy on your side.

“The (written) quotation is fixed and firm”.

“Our system doesn’t allow that”.

“We put a lot of work into it to make sure it’s the absolute best deal”.

“Maintenance is not negotiable”. (When I sold software I can’t recall any customer questioning this!)

When you want concessions from someone else… don’t be awed by the power of legitimacy. Feel free to question their standards terms, their company policies… especially if they are directly at odds with yours. Something has to give.

Prepare! If it’s a big deal don’t expect the customer to cough-up the order without some hefty negotiating, especially if procurement are involved.

As it happened I did get the order, had my moment of glory and big bonus cheque. What I’d negotiated didn’t really effect the value of the deal, just the terms… and my bonus wasn’t paid on the terms. There’s probably a lesson for companies there as well… don’t send out young sales guys to negotiate on their own when they have their b**** on the table and a big sales bonus at stake! | —by Mark Goodson

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Mark Goodson has spent over 25 years in sales, sales management and marketing. Most of that time has been within the semiconductor and related industries. He has founded and co-founded a number of companies and is now focussed on working with start-up and fast-growing companies to help them achieve their sales goals and open up new markets. The Real Life Selling website is owned

utting prices can lose business “If you can do it for $12, you can have the business.”

With his next three words, Bill lost thousands of dollars of business. He said, “I’ll take it!”

Too many sales people focus on price and forget about value. Price is simply what you charge. Value is the sum total of all of the positive effects that the product or service has on the buyer’s business. In most cases, your offering has many benefits for the customer. Each of those has a corresponding value that adds to the equation. Business customers buy because they believe that they will get value that is significantly larger than the cost. In fact, most buyers are unaware of many of the benefits of their purchases and therefore underestimate the value they receive.

Every price is too high without an appreciation of value.

If that is true, so is this: Every price the customer offers, before they understand the value, is too low!

Could that be why you lose proposals that simply respond to RFP’s? Maybe the customer can’t find your value in that sterilized document?

Could that be why you lose when you respond to the caller who says, “I just need a price?” Maybe they think you are just like everyone else. After all, you did not bother to tell them any differently.

Hey, we all reject stuff we don’t understand.

How many times have you seen someone handing out free stuff on the street or in the mall and simply passed them buy. It’s FREE and you won’t take it! You don’t see the value.

To increase our chances of making the sale, we must do three things to ensure that we have maximized value in the customer’s mind:

and operated by Mark Goodson Associates Ltd www.mark-goodson.com. Visit Mark’s blog on

1. Understand their business

sales and selling skills Real Life Selling.

You must understand your customer’s business well enough to explain to them how your offering will :

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improve O T I AT I O their bottom line. This means asking more EG questions and doing more research before making O T I AT I O EG your proposal. The good news is that once you understand one company in a given industry, most of the others will have similar circumstances.

Example: A distributor of Swiss watches was trying to get a container load to their US jewelers in time for the critical pre-Christmas buying season. She was shopping for shippers and two responded. One offered a price that was $9,000 and assured the shipper that they could get them there on time. They had years of experience and many testimonials that showed that they had done it before. The second shipper cut the price in half and guaranteed that if the shipment was late, they would rebate 100% of the fee.

Which shipper won the business?

The first one.

They knew that a container of Swiss watches holds 5,000 watches with a retail price of $3,000 each or 15 million dollars. If the container arrives late, the watches will have to be sold at an after Christmas discount. That’s a loss of $1.5 million! Clearly the distributor would care more about the reliability of company A than the potential $4,500 rebate from company B. N

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2. Maximize your value Iе is often true that different people in the buying organization will see different value in your offering. In the example above, the person on the loading dock might like the lower price. But the product manager, the CEO and others will appreciate the value of reliable service.

Identify all those departments in the buying company who might see value in your offering.

Make sure they know what you are proposing and get them to be internal advocates for your solution.

When you get a large enough cheering section, it’s like having a “home team” advantage.

Every price is too high without an appreciation of value influencer that was not disclosed earlier. When that person sees the numbers with no sense of the value, they may reject the proposal as over priced. Head this off by adding to the proposal, a summary of the value that you and the buyer agreed on.

So what about Bill and that $12 deal?

The customer had called Bill because he wanted a supplier who was open longer hours than his current supplier. Bill’s company is open 24-7-365. He told Bill why he wanted to switch and that he was currently paying $13 and bought thousands each year.

That’s when he offered Bill the business at $12.

Bill’s mistake?

He failed to see that the customer was currently paying $13 for less service and wanted more. The customer saw value in Bill’s hours of operation.

If Bill had asked why the extended hours were so important, he would have learned that the customer was paying overtime to work with the other company’s shorter hours. This move would save them many times the cost of the service. Bill could easily have justified an increase to $15 and still won the contract! His failure to see his value cost his company thousands of dollars and cost him some nice commissions.

Remember: Think Value and Win More Sales | — by Steve Waterhouse

3. Include your value in your proposal and quote.

Steve Waterhouse

Too often, we make our value propositions in a face to face discussion with the buyer. Then, when we believe the sale has been made, we formalize the number in a quotation or proposal. In many cases, one or more people may review this before it is signed off. Even the best sales people get blindsided by a last-minute

Waterhouse Group, a sales

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is Principal and Founder of training company that helps companies increase their sales and profits. He can be reached at 1-800-57-LEARN or by email.

March 2012

Will you close more this year?

Maybe SOLD TV can help?

Straightforward, practical and positive, SOLD TV is a web television show for sales professionals, sales executives and anyone interested in mastering the art and science of selling.

Hosted by John Von Achen, each week SOLD TV delivers original ideas, relevant strategies and invaluable inspiration to add power and results to your sales career.

And, most probably, you will start closing more sales more often (even in the tough times)

Watch SOLD TV today! www.soldlab.com/tv

Meet John Von Achen Known as one of the most respected sales experts in the emerging markets of Europe, Asia, Russia and the C.I.S., John Von Achen has become a legend when it comes to helping individuals and organizations achieve their maximum performance.

Through his thought provoking seminars and exceedingly popular books, John Von Achen reaches an audience of tens of thousands from around the world every month.

Because of his record for enhancing corporate and personal achievement, small progressive companies, medium sized enterprises, Fortune 500 companies and multinational organizations regularly turn to John Von Achen for their sales training, coaching and consulting needs.

www.johnva.com

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In recent years, emotion has been the subject of much discussion in the field of customer experience.

Every company wants to create “emotionally engaging” experiences.

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f all interactions between a company and customers throughout the Customer Experience Lifecycle, those that have the most emotional impact, whether positive or negative, will stand out from the others. And those will be more easily remembered and ultimately shape the overall perception of the company.

While companies wish this most memorable experience would be a positive one, the fact is that the majority of relationships with companies are rather uneventful. Rare are the interactions that truly create a “wow factor”. Many companies focus if not to create a consistently acceptable customer experience across all channels, at least to eliminate as many negative interactions as possible.

Even with companies who have a fairly good grasp on their customer experience across channels, there are bound to be unforeseeable service or product failures, or “breaking points”, which cause customers to seek resolution from the company.

Because so many customer experiences are neutral or merely satisfactory, service failure often represents the start of the most prominent interaction in the entire customer experience. The process from breaking point to resolution or lack thereof is a buildup of emotions, the outcome of which is a “moment of truth” that can make or break the customer relationship.

Successful resolution of a problem can not only prevent a customer from defecting but it is an opportunity to create a stronger relationship with the customer through the “service recovery paradox”, a theory which states that customer satisfaction is greater after a highly effective service recovery

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than if the service failure had never occurred in the first place.

While this may seem obvious, studies suggest that the service recovery paradox is a rare event.

But this could be partly attributed to the fact that few companies have any service recovery strategy beyond the most basic resolution. And while perceived quality of the service recovery depends on a number of factors, including the number of previous service failures, the severity and whether it is perceived as being unintentional or out of the company’s control, anecdotal evidence suggests that when it does happen, a highly satisfying service recovery will enhance the overall perception of the company. On the other hand, there is no question that negative service recovery will intensify customer dissatisfaction and more likely lead to customer attrition.

Either way the service recovery experience will be for most companies the experience by which customers remember a company until a more emotionally-charged experience occurs.

Think of the most notable customer experience you had with a few companies and your attitude toward those companies. You may have had uneventful experiences at multiple channels, but chances are most of the experiences you remember are the result of a service failure. If it resulted in a successful service recovery, you may have completely forgotten, or at least come to accept, the negative experience that made you contact the company in the first place. If the resolution was unsatisfactory, it is probably the last memory you have of the company because you likely never gave them your business again. You will probably even have a more :

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LOYALTY vivid memory of the event if the interaction made LOYALTY you angry.

Now try to remember a very positive interaction unrelated to service recovery that truly impressed you. For most people this doesn’t come easily, if at all.

To understand why the service failure has such an important role in shaping the overall perception of a company, we can look at emotions involved and how they affect our memory of events.

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The Emotional Breaking Point: Setting the Stage The breaking point in psychology refers to a “moment of stress in which a person breaks down or a situation becomes critical”. Likewise in Customer Experience Management, the breaking point is the moment of service breakdown, when the company fails to meet a customer’s expectations. And this is not limited to a malfunctioning product or service.

Any negatively perceived interaction with a company constitutes a breaking point; from viewing a piece of offending communications or an upsetting policy customers suddenly discover to an interaction with a business partner.

Whether it leads to a service recovery opportunity depends on whether the customer takes it up with the company or whether the company notices the breaking point and tries to proactively correct the issue.

The breaking point is a critical moment in the customer relationship and leads to a series of further emotional engagements that can have a snowball effect on dissatisfaction.

Customers will have already invested in the company. If they haven’t paid already for the product or service, they have at least spent time giving consideration to the brand. Because time is money, and people have an emotional relationship with money, the breaking point invariably involves a negative emotion. How much time or money they have invested in the brand will affect the intensity of the emotion. Whether it is through the phone, by email, in a support forum, in social media or in person, the extra effort required by the customer to contact the company increases dissatisfaction and biases the customer into perceiving the service more negatively.

But the service failure can also encompass an evolving mix of other deeper emotions unrelated

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to the cost, making the matter infinitely more complex. For example, it may threaten the security or well-being of loved ones; the new glucose meter you purchased for your diabetic mother is defective, you prepare months in advance to bring your pet on a flight only to be refused boarding once at the check-in counter, or you discover a limiting clause on your car brakes warranty. These can evoke different emotions such as surprise, fear, disappointment, distress and anger. Understanding these deeper relationships customers have with a product or service is an essential part of managing the customer experience.

Listening for Service Recovery Opportunities Consumers are increasingly taking their questions or complaints online in support forums or in social media. They are also posting critical reviews about their experiences on industry-specific sites such as TripAdvisor for restaurants and hotels or community sites such as Yelp. While customer feedback at any channel provides valuable information to companies, online channels also present the added opportunity for companies to display good will by resolving issues publicly. But left unattended, they become a platform for customers to vent their anger. As more participants with the same issue add to the discussion, group think starts to form and participants only inflame each other further. And ignoring complaints in social media can have devastating effect on purchase intent by other consumers as well, as one study suggests.

What is most surprising from a customer experience management perspective is that this happens often directly on the companies’ own support forums. The company remains silent as customers trash it. Apple Support Communities, Google Help Centers and EA Games Forums are a few examples.

Regardless of the channel, by the time the customer receives a response, the level of emotional engagement will have increased beyond that of the breaking point. The more effort it took to contact the company and longer the time to respond, the more dissatisfied the customer. And with increased dissatisfaction comes increased expectations and needs on positive resolution. :

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Customer satisfaction is greater after a highly effective service recovery than if the service failure had never occurred in the first place

Emotion and Memory in the Service Recovery Experience The service recovery experience can be calculated by the intensity of the positive emotions from the resolution compared to the sum of negative emotions accumulated thus far.

Simply resolving the issue will not necessarily leave the customer with a positive impression of the entire service recovery experience. For it to be positive, the service recovery must create a level of positive emotions greater than the proportionate level of negative ones created by the service failure. And when it does so significantly, the service recovery paradox can happen.

And while the recovery experience affects the immediate satisfaction level, it also has long-term effects on the overall perception of the company.

First, as humans, we tend to organize information in chronological order, making stories or narratives. What happened last will be more easily remembered. In the entire relationship with a company, if the last interaction a customer had was a failed service recovery, than it will likely be the one the customer will remember the company by as he or she terminates the relationship.

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But even if the service recovery was successful and the customer relationship continued, the service failure may still be the most memorable event.

The emotion involved in an experience and its intensity will also affect our ability to remember it. We tend to have a better memory of emotional events; experiences that are more emotionally-charged will create a deeper imprint than those that are neutral (neither highly negative nor highly positive). Since most interactions with companies fall in the latter category, the inherent emotional nature of service failure often makes it the interaction customers will remember most.

Even if the overall customer experience was dotted with positive experiences, there is the fact that negative emotions are remembered more easily than positive ones and in greater detail, which further makes the point for doubling the efforts in making highly positive service recovery experiences.

Implementing a Service Recovery Strategy The breaking point and service recovery represent both challenges and opportunities. While the value of each recovery depends on numerous factors including the cost of customer acquisition and :

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Ignoring complaints in social media can have devastating effect on purchase intent by other consumers servicing, customer profitability and so on, it is clear that investing in creating excellent service recovery experiences has long-term customer loyalty benefits.

With a better understanding of the emotions involved and their weight in defining the service recovery experience, companies can achieve the service recovery paradox more frequently and turn negative service failures into positive, memorable experiences. While we don’t suggest strategically inducing mild service failures only to create highly positive service recovery experiences, we do advise making it an integrant part of the customer experience management framework.

Facilitating positive service recovery experiences first requires organizational-wide policies and procedures specifically addressing when and how to respond to service failures. Service recovery is not only a customer service concern; the breaking point and recovery interaction can happen at any channel or touch-point from the sales person to the service technician, billing or shipping personnel.

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And while policies at the service recovery level are important, the same service failures will continue to occur if the issues are not fed back into the organization. Ensuring that breaking points are avoided in the first place requires a systematic cross-departmental process to gather feedback and communicate it to relevant departments for actions that will eliminate or reduce the chance for repeated errors.

Creating positive emotions is important at any touch-point with a company. But until companies are able to create highly emotional positive experiences throughout the Customer Experience Lifecycle, the service recovery experience may very well be the only interaction that customers remember them by. | — by David Jacques

David Jacques is Founder and Principal Consultant of Customer input Ltd and a pioneer in the field of Customer Experience Management. He is passionate about understanding the drivers of customer behavior and creating innovative solutions to enhance the customer experience.

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Ways to Out SERVICE Your Competitors

Are other companies stealing your service philosophy? Why not? Isn’t it cool enough?

People steal the Ritz-Carlton’s Service Philosophy DAILY. That says something.

Are you a master of the welcome? The first words out of your mouth. In person. On the phone. Via email. Friendly always wins. . Are you clueless about how customers feel when they walk in your doors? Maybe try BEING one of your own customers for once. See what it’s like to be on the other side. Or, when all else fails, just ask them. Wear their shoes.

Are your customers satisfied, loyal or insistent? The difference is: satisfied customers tell no people, loyal customers tell (some) people and insistent customers not only TELL people; but they return WITH those people.

Do you make it easy for customers to complain? You need to find out where you suck.

Hearing how great you are inflates your ego, but hearing where you suck fills your wallet. Complaints are gifts.

How do you want your customers to describe their experience with you? Good?

Great? Awesome? Unforgettable? Wow. That would be nice. On the other hand, some customers aren’t telling anyone about you at ALL. That’s not good.

Is it important to the customer, or does it just make you feel better? Ahem, policy. Ahem, rules. Ahem, mission statement. Ahem, company history. It’s about THEM. Is what you’re doing today going to bring this customer back tomorrow? Measure ever service action, every touch point and every brand moment against this philosophy and you’ll be a rockstar. Think repeat customers.

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Is your company’s service environment forgettable? Most of them are. Because they’re normal. Or boring. Too bad nobody notices normal.

And nobody buys boring. Be more unforgettable.

What are you doing to earn your customers’ loyalty? Key word here: EARN. Because when they walk in the door, you’ve already got a negative balance with them. Based on the culture, based on their stereotypes, you’ve got to work extra hard. Bolster customer confidence.

What interaction with your business would your customers value enough to create exceptional loyalty? Maybe it’s your return policy.

Or your follow up phone calls. Or your tune-up service. Some interaction that makes the mundane memorable. Satisfied isn’t retention.

Why are your clients actively telling their friends about you? Find out. Ask them point blank. And if they tell you why, great. Find out where the rock created the ripple and then throw more rocks. And, if they tell you why NOT, even better. Find out what WOULD cause the rock to create the ripple and then throw more rocks.

WOM makes money. | — By Scott Ginsberg

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© 2011 All Rights Reserved, HELLO, my name is Scott, LLC.

Scott Ginsberg is an author, speaker, performer, consultant, mentor, publisher, award-winning blogger & one smoking hot piece of brain candy. He also wears a nametag 24-7. Even to bed. Read about how scared he is every day of his life at www.hellomynameisscott.com.

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Fishing for

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eferrals are an excellent source of new business but most salespeople don’t deserve to get them! Yes, you heard me right. Why do I feel they don’t deserve them? Because they do nothing to earn them.

Too many salespeople are like waiters. You know the ones. They show up at your table to take your order, deliver it and then appear once during the meal (when your mouth is full) to ask how you’re enjoying it. They reappear again to clear off the table, and then one last time to deliver the bad news (the bill). For this they expect a 15 percent tip! Simply because they did their job, no more, no less.

Some salespeople simply do their job, no more, no less, and then expect the customer to be eager

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to provide them with the names of hot prospects.

Dreamers!

If you’re going fishing for referrals, you’d better bait your hook with exceptional service to your existing customers and clients.

The Law of Reciprocity states the more you give someone, the more he or she wants to reciprocate. And the best way for a satisfied customer to reciprocate, apart from giving you even more business, is to give you referrals.

The Law of Reciprocity is alive and well in many areas. Very few people haven’t received a set :

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of personalized mailing labels from a charitable organization. They hope you’ll “reciprocate” by sending them a donation and many people do.

vice to even more people. If you could give me the names of two people, like yourself, who could benefit from my service, I’d really appreciate it.”

So the first step in earning referrals is to make sure you provide service that is above and beyond your customer’s expectations.

Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of this concept.

It takes a real effort to develop a personal customer service plan that makes you stand out over others in your field.

Once you have developed a plan, expect to spend the rest of your sales career making it work for you. The referrals will quit coming when you quit being better than your competition.

Help your customers exercise the Law of Reciprocity by asking them to reciprocate. Ask for referrals.

Just like with fishing, be careful you don’t jiggle the hook too soon. No need to be pushy. Don’t expect the names right then.

You might say to Bill, “If any names pop into your mind over the next few days, would you jot them down and I’ll give you a call next week. I’d really appreciate it.”

Now when you call back, all you have to ask is, “Did any names pop into mind?”

If you’ve earned the referrals, you’ll get them.

The reason that 95 percent of salespeople don’t ask for referrals is the same reason they don’t ask for the order.

They’re afraid of rejection, afraid of getting a “no.”

A “no” doesn’t kill, it just hurts.

You can minimize the chances of getting a “no” by asking at the right time. Two right times are after your customer has acknowledged that you have been going out of your way to be of value to them, and after you have just provided another aboveand-beyond-the-call-of-duty service to your client.

Let’s assume your client has just thanked you for something you’ve done for them. You can say something like this, “Thanks, Bill, I appreciate the fact that you notice the things I do for good clients such as yourself. There is one thing that you can do for me in return. If you could provide me with the names of two people, like yourself, who could benefit from my service, I’d really appreciate it.”

Or perhaps you’ve just done another extra service for your client. You can say something like this, “Bill, I hope that this service is of value to you. (Wait for a response.) If it is, there is one thing that you can do for me in return. I’d like to provide this type of ser-

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You’ll notice that I only asked for two names, not ten. Why? Because, if every person to whom you gave exceptional service gave you the names of two people to whom you also gave exceptional service, by the time you repeated the process twelve times, you’d have over 4000 clients. Remember the TV commercial for shampoo where two people told two people who told two people, etc. Like compound interest, the power of two can give you more prospects than you can reasonably handle. :

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in referrals by fishing in the right spot — in a school of satisfied customers

Select two, five, ten, or however many customers you want to cultivate. Decide on what you can do to stand out over other salespeople in your field and then put your exceptional service program into action. When your clients recognize that you are truly better than the others, exercise the Law of Reciprocity by asking for two referrals.

Your objective is to get two good referrals from each of your key clients. Service these new prospects the way you serviced your current clients and you will build a solid business on nothing but referrals.

So reel in referrals by fishing in the right spot — in a school of satisfied customers who are so delighted with your service that they want others to get “hooked” as well.

Good luck and good fishing! | — by Brian Jeffrey

Brian Jeffrey Make sure you provide a follow-up report to the person who provided you with a referral. Tell how the referral turned out and say “thank you” whether or not a sale was made. This reinforces your relationship with your contact and increases the chance of getting more referrals.

Failure to report back may make your contact decide that you didn’t appreciate the referral. That may kill any further incentive to provide additional leads. In fact, it might even cost you further business with your contact.

A simple thank-you card can go a long way towards getting more referrals and building your image as a sales professional.

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is a sales management consultant and former sales trainer with over 40 year’s experience. He’s the author of The Sales Wizard’s Secrets of Sales Management, The 5-Minute Sales Trainer, 18 ebooks, and over 100 articles on selling and sales management. Brian provides sales management consulting, coaching, and mentoring to business owners and sales managers. He has had many sales successes (as well as a few spectacular failures) and has learned what works, what doesn’t, and why — information he readily shares with others. Find out how Brian helps companies manage their sales at www.Quintarra.com.

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Customer Experience Driving SalesBusiness Psychology “What is this a PF Chang’s?”  Ok, so this line is from the new “Hangover” movie. The guys walk into a monk monastery outside of Bangkok and Zach Galifianakis says, “what is this, a PF Chang’s”. A crack at the PF Chang’s customer experience: the extravagant décor, pillars and horses, origami takeout bags. If you haven’t eaten at the restaurant, in other words, it’s an experience. You can go get takeout at a Chinese restaurant, but if you want to experience Chinese food, you go to PF Chang’s.

Chinese Food Cost: $15 Chinese Food “Experience” Cost: $40 The Old Birthday Experience At the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs conference on Wednesday, I had the chance to meet Mark Schmitz from Zebradog (no affiliation). He reenergized the idea of driving sales through an extraordinary customer experience. A brief historical walkthrough on the evolution of the consumer and cake offered great insights into the intimate relationship between customer experience and your bottom line.

I don’t want to wreck a great story, but it all started before the industrial revolution.

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Cake has been around a long time! To make a cake pre-industrial era there was a lot of toil in the kitchen, but even more work was required just to obtain the simple ingredients. I imagine birthday cake was quite an experience for everyone.

Birthday Experience Cost: .39 cents The Social Experience of Cooking As a result of industrialization, Betty Crocker capitalized on the means of assembling the cake ingredients into a readily available box in 1952. Everything was perfect, just add water, or was it? Surprisingly the product floundered.

A market research team, featuring business psychologists was brought in with surprising results: From Finding Betty Cocker by Susan Marks: “‘The problem, according to psychologists, was eggs. Dichter, in particular, believed that powdered eggs, often used in cake mixes, should be left out, so women could add a few fresh eggs into the batter, giving them a sense of creative contribution.’

“As a result, General Mills (who own Betty Crocker) altered their product, abandoning the powdered egg in their mixes. The requirement to add eggs at home was marketed as a benefit, conferring the quality of ‘home-made’ authenticity upon the box cake mix. (Whether using fresh eggs instead of powdered eggs actually enhanced taste was beside the point.)” :

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Birthday Experience Cost: $500

Personalizing The Experience

Birthday Experience Cost: $2.99

Of course as women flocked to the workplace in the following years, the next phase of the cake experience was shaped. With dual incomes and maximized sched- ules, consumers turned to bakeries. Spending five minutes picking up a cake for Suzie surely didn’t lend itself to “creative contribution” so they splashed “Happy Birthday Susie” on the top and called themselves the greatest parents in the world.

Birthday Experience Cost:$20.00 The New Birthday Experience It should be rather obvious by now, it’s not really the evolution of cake at all, it’s the evolution of the experience! And for the grand finale Mark gives us the sticker shock of the modern birthday experience today: A catered pow-wow with a couple of inflatable bounce houses, and pony rides, but don’t worry they throw in a cake.

Selling an experience is nothing new, but surprisingly people aren’t doing it. Mark and his company Zebradog have founded a business on that principal. They have revamped the visual experience for corporations, professional sports venues as well as universities, including American Family Insurance(click for example), Duke Basketball, the Green Bay Packers and my alma mater: Marquette University. My mouth is watering, thinking about analyzing the value added to the bottom line of these institutions with a relatively simple focus on customer experience. It’s a great business model: Increased recruitment and retention of athletes is directly correlated with higher ticket sales and pricing. Corporations are starting to catch-up with what used to only be theater and entertainment.

It is without doubt that changes to the customer experience can also indirectly benefit an organization internally with employee satisfaction and loyalty. The compounding nature of investments in customer experience are sure to have a quick and sustainable effect on your business. Make sure you are selling an experience! When you sell the experience price is often only an afterthought.

Vivisimo, A Zebra client, is also leading discussion on the topic of Customer Experience Optimization. You can follow their discussion about customer experience on twitter with hash #cxo and Tracey Mustacchio’s blog. | — by Brent Nauer

Brent is a contributing author at the ZEBRAselling Blog, where he writes about complex sales, corporate strategy, and technology. He is a graduate of Marquette University with a bachelor’s degree in economics. You can follow him on @ZebraBrent for the latest. Selling To Zebras is the company behind the ZEBRAselling sales process, and provides the tools and training to realize sales growth. Brent serves a primary role in developing and automating the financial model used to start a value-based discussion.

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