— Og Mandino: Author, The Greatest Salesman in the World

Want a great way to start the new year?

Here is an amazing tool to create your personal mission statement for 2009 in less than five minutes.

Happy New Year!

 “ A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that “stick” and explain sure-fire methods for making ideas stickier, such as violating schemas, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating “curiosity gaps.”

Watch this short video for an overview of what LinkedIn is and how it can help you.

What is LinkedIn? from LinkedIn Marketing on Vimeo.

Then the internet came along and we all thought, “Great! Now we can yell even more.” Have a website and you can yell all day, and night. Except, the internet would prove to be the worst medium for yelling at people. People can ignore you much easier. “You can yell all you want, but unless I give you permission I won’t hear you.”  

What’s more is that if people like what they hear or see, they will go and tell all their friends about it, too. Do a search for “iPod” and see the number of pages talking about the iPod that were mostly created by people other than Apple. Isn’t that great?

But like all things, with this opportunity comes a threat as well. When customers are looking for you, how can you make sure that what they find is what you want them to find? This brings us to Search Engine Reputation Management. In my next post I will offer some insights on how to improve your results in search engines.

1) Talk to the right person

This seems like its so common sense that I shouldn’t even mention it. It feels good to make a whole bunch of calls sometimes; but if they’re to non-decision makers just realize you’re just doing it for your own entertainment and self delusional reasons. It only looks good on your call sheet in month one. Instead, spend your time researching and finding real decision makers. Spend the time networking with people that connect you with, or at least, inform you about decision makers. Spend it servicing existing clients. Or just go and read a book. Non-decision makers drain our energy, and time. So stop calling non-decision makers!

2) Ask Permission

When your prospect answers the phone, introduce yourself briefly and then ask them if you’ve caught them in the middle of something. More often then not they’ll make the time for you right away or give you a time to talk to them later. The alternative is to launch immediately into a sales monologue where your prospect says hello. This usually results in them checking their e-mail and their watch until you stop to take a breath. When you stop to breath they politely interject and request that you send something by post or e-mail or more directly tell you they’re not interested. The reason? You forgot to ask permission.

3) Delete in advance

Prospects have a tendency to delete cliché’s when we call them. I once had a senior executive for a fortune 500 company tell me “If I have one more person call me and tell me they’re going to save me time and money I’m going to lose it.” Sales people, especially those selling in the same industry or region tend to use the same jargon and value proposition, often laden with useless terms and acronyms that prospects don’t care for anyway. We say we provide a “value-added”- “end to end” -“scalable” telecommunications solution, and that we have a “customer centric philosophy.” And all they hear is that we’re in “Telecommunications.” Get rid of the jargon, resist the temptation to pull buzz words off competitors web-sites or from the latest flavor of the month business book. Simplify, differentiate, hire a writer to help you expand your corporate vocabulary if need be.

4) Get into the long-term mind-set

In reference to point number 2, when we ask for permission to chat with them our real goal is not to close them in most cases. Our goal is to set the stage and begin the development of the relationship. Cold-calling is planting seeds, not harvesting a database. Close them, but not on the deal, on the next step and then get off the phone sooner than later.

5) Use a rifle not a shotgun

Simply put; know who wants and uses your stuff. Break down a set of criteria that can define your ideal client industries, regions, and behaviors. Know their core pains, history, needs, names, details, trends etc. before picking up the phone. Become an authority on your ideal customer. Use that information to find more ideal candidates and spend 80% of your time, energy, money, ability, and reputation calling those types of clients.

6) Know why

Before picking up the phone figure out why you are calling, from the clients perspective. Ask the question what benefit, insight, or value can I legitimately bring to this prospect today? If it’s just to flog products or services; don’t pick up the phone. Know why it’s important to them and what it can do for them. It can be anything from solving a critical business problem to just making them laugh. Remember, the more value you add today to the relationship the more receptive they will be to answering our call tomorrow. Again great information Shane! It may seem pretty basic to most seasoned sales professionals, but so is ‘Do-Re-Mi’ - still a daily practice for those seasoned opera singers.  

Shane Gibson is President of Knowledge Brokers International Systems Ltd, and can be reached at shane@kbitraining.com or 604-331-4471.

Top 10 Factors for Getting Salespeople to Overachieve

There isn’t a single key to over achieving so I’ll list my top 10 factors for helping salespeople overachieve. I’m sure I’ve written about each of these topics at some point in the past but I’ll put them all together here: 

#1: Goals - I’m talking “raise the bar, stretch, out of the comfort zone, more than the typical 15% increase in sales” type goals here. You must raise expectations in order to celebrate superior performance. Don’t forget two things: (1) that a forecast and plan come from the goals; not the other way around; and (2) goals are derived, not from the company, but from the individual’s income requirements, based on the bills that accompany life’s obligations and desires. 

#2: Incentives - including compensation, contests, commissions, awards and prizes. Incentives bridge the gap between corporate carrots and the personal goals we just discussed. If an individual has the goals but the company’s compensation isn’t designed to reward superior achievement, the incentive to perform can not be maintained. If the company has a rock-solid compensation plan but the goals are wouldn’t excite Dr Phil, the personal incentive to perform will be AWOL. 

#3: Managing the Pipeline - a Visual Pipeline makes it significantly easier to manage the pipeline but the key to managing the pipeline effectively is working with your critical ratios. Think monthly goal, closing percentage, average sale and length of the sell cycle. Let’s say that your salesperson has a six month sell cycle, a $100,000 monthly goal, a $20,000 average sale and a 25% closing percentage. Effectively managing the pipeline requires that your salesperson places 20 (5 $20,000 sales x 4 at 25% closing) new opportunities worth of total of $400,000 (25% of $100,000) into the pipeline 6 months in advance of the monthly goal (if the goal is for July then the opportunities must enter the pipeline in February). Get that to work and the outcomes are all but guaranteed. 

#4: Accountability - This is such an important factor in over achievement. You must hold each salesperson accountable to something measurable (like the number of conversations required to book the number of sales calls required to identify those 20 new opportunities) every day. Even more importantly, you must have consequences for failure to meet those requirements and consistently follow through whenever necessary. Develop the nerve for full accountability and you’re nearly there! 

#5: Motivation - This is the combination of Goals and Incentives. In essence, does the salesperson have a strong enough Desire and Commitment to do whatever it takes - every day - to reach the goals? When they don’t, it’s your job to motivate them by knowing what each salesperson’s goals are. I’m not talking income requirements or gross sales here, I’m talking planes, boats and cars; big houses, vacation homes, golf trips, world travel, home theaters, fantasy camps, exclusive events, etc. 

#6: Self Starter – In earlier posts we discussed what it takes for salespeople to succeed in a remote location. Those factors, whether salespeople are more effective when working independently or as part of a team; and whether they require supervision or can work without it; help to determine whether they are self-starters. If not, you must start them up every day, twice daily or as often as it takes. If you have self-starters, you are one lucky manager.

#7: Skills - The more the better, but let’s focus on the most important skill sets for overachieving. Your salespeople must be able to hunt for new opportunities, identify the most qualified and be able to close them. Anything else they can do is a bonus! 

#8: Urgency - I wrote about Closing Urgency in January. Your salespeople must have enough urgency to get their opportunities closed, when they become closable, even when their prospects are trying to put them off. 

#9: Weaknesses - Unfortunately, there are weaknesses that will neutralize all of the previous 8 factors. There can be dozens of weaknesses that could impact performance but none are so powerful as these five: Non Supportive Buy Cycle, Need for Approval, Tendency to Become Emotionally Involved, Money Issues, Self-Limiting Record Collection. 

#10: Coaching and Training - Your coaching must support any training initiative and help salespeople overcome their weaknesses, develop skills and master the selling process. While most training will be conducted by sales development experts from outside your firm, the coaching absolutely takes place from within. Pre-call strategizing and post-call debriefing, with every salesperson, every day. This list of factors is not all inclusive but it’s a good start. You can build a salesforce of over achievers if you incorporate not some, but all of these factors. 

Let us know what gets you going the extra mile. 

Recently an interesting article about best practices in sales was brought to my attention.It starts by defining a best practice is “a technique or methodology which, through experience and research, has proven to reliably lead to a desired result in a specific context.” The author Steve Gielda, partner at Advantage Performance Group (www.advantageperformance.com), adds that a best practice must be: 1) Observable (something top performers actually do as opposed to something they say they do); 2) Measurable (a behavior, not an attitude); 3) Repeatable (something that can be replicated across the sales force); 4) Closely linked with success (if performed regularly, it leads to winning more often than not).

Here are five that truly are best practices:

#1: Understand and develop customer needs. The ability of a sales person to identify a customer’s problem areas. The ability to ask good questions and listen to what the customer says naturally follow this practice.

#2: Gain mutual trust. Top performing sales people work hard at building and maintaining trust. They do it by always telling the truth, even when it might cost them business; by responding quickly to complaints, problems and customers’ expressed needs; by returning calls in a timely manner; and by doing what they say they are going to do, when they say they are going to do it.

#3: Know your customer. This goes beyond uncovering their needs to knowing what they and their organization can do. The best practice is to penetrate deeper to understand the customer’s business. Who are their customers? What are the trends impacting their customers’ market or industry? How do these trends impact the strategic direction of the customer? Who are the customer’s competitors and how do they threaten the customer? Top-performers do not solely rely on asking their customer about these issues, but invest the time to research it themselves.

#4: Access and power to leverage internal resources in creating customer value. Top-performing sales people are expert resource brokers. They not only know what the customer needs to drive better results, but they know the person or people who can best demonstrate that solution. They know when to draw on internal resources and when to partner with other vendors to serve the customer’s interests.

#5: Know who else is talking with your prospect during the sales cycle. You may find yourself in a complex sales process and therefore view one good sales call as one link in a long chain of successful interactions. The goal in each customer interaction is to move the sale forward, sometimes inch by inch. You want to know if and when your prospect is speaking to the competition. 

Now judge for yourself and give us your feedback. Do you agree with any or  most of these? Let me know what has helped you close your best deal yet.  

So, what is the value of your solution? A solution has no inherent value, really. Your solution derives its value from the problem it solves. If there is no problem you can’t fix it. So, is there a problem that your solution is tackling? Does your solution fill a need or help to achieve a goal? That is the question we should ask ourselves in qualifying our prospect. Once we have qualified, we need to quantify it – in terms of money. How big is the problem we are seeking to address?

Let’s say, your annual sales revenue is $1,000,000 produced by 100 orders at an average of $10,000 per sale. The current cost of sales is 40% making it $4,000 per sale. And the length of your average sales cycle is 40 days bringing the calculated cost of outstanding sales to $100 per day. So each day an opportunity is not closing will cost your company $100 per potential sale. That is the problem! If your solution reduces the average sales cycle by 15% from 40 days to 34 days, you are saving the company $60,000 per year. That is the value of your solution.

 If we present our value proposition in this way, do you think the customer will have the same reaction when coming up with a figure, say $10,000 when asked “How much?” Is there a problem?