• Why does any volunteer have to show up at the campaign headquarters? They have phones and computers at home. Use those resources to your advantage.
• Training? This should be done electronically. You should not have to do this for every new batch of volunteers, or, worse yet, every single volunteer. Whatever tool you use should have video instructions, written instructions, and even inserted scripts. Maximize your time by standardizing repetitive activities.
• Let technology determine who your staff contacts. Want them to only call one zip code, but need everyone in that zip code contacted? technology should drive that process. A tally sheet NEVER will.
• Incomplete comments? Not sure if that says contacted or committed? It makes a difference which one, though, so how do you correct it? Standardize the response codes and make comments optional.
• Don’t want to hand 50 names to a volunteer if they are only going to get through 15? your campaign management system should only be serving up one name and number at a time, so there is no excess of voters to cull from 40 different call sheets.

A campaign management system should give you the capability to allow volunteers access to the voter information from their home computer. It should allow them to use their own phone resource-thus reducing campaign costs. It should be self explanatory and fully contained–simplicity in its design and functional in its use.
It should ensure that the only voter names given to a volunteer are ones they are going to work. How is that solved? Through a pull method of distribution that gives the volunteer one voter at a time and ensures the activity and status are clearly marked online.
The system should give you up to the minute reports that don’t have to be analyzed with a microsope or interpeted into English. No more late nights. In fact, the reports hsould be accessed by your entire leadership team wherever they are located-down the street, at home, or 3 time zones away.
Your candidate is running for change and adapting to the 21st century. Your campaign management of phone banks should be doing the same.

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1. Build Daily Contact List: Query, by last contact date, your daily contact list. Some contact managers, like Kaleidico’s icoSales , allows you to automate call back periods for calls and emails allowing you to skip this step–making sales even lazier.
2. Segment Contact List: Logically split your list into email contacts and phone contacts based on your preferred process, but certainly use a combination throughout your prospect phase. Then slice again by prospect, proposal, customer.
   
3. Personal Brand Building: Post to your blog. I suggest posts about what you do and how you do it. Someone may want you to do it for them.
   
4. Learning and Sharing: Cruise your RSS reader (make sure you have your Twitter listener too) for opportunities to learn more about potential customers. Comment and add value to the conversation.
   
5. Follow-ups: Dive into your email. Certainly follow-up on any inquiries, but also send out status updates to any proposal phase customers and teasers updates to customers. This is a great way to activate a static sales pipeline.
   
6. New Outreach: Using the same daily email list concept, blast out sales letters or emails to new contacts and prospects.
   
7. Daily Call List: Now that you have email working for you in the background–make your calls and leave voicemails for call backs. Don’t forget to set expectations and schedule the next call back on every messages you leave.
   
8. Take Calls: Always take the call! If at all possible, live and directly answer every call. It is such a shocker these days to immediately connect to a real person–that alone will get you sales.
   

This sales plan is simple. Consisting really of only three concepts: list building, brand building, and making contact. By spending only a few minutes a day preparing a contact list, leaving a few comments, and leveraging email you will be building a steady flow of inbound inquiries.

Enjoy making your sales day lazier.

If you have any questions–contact me: http://twitter.com/billrice

photo credit: kirainet
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Bill Rice is the founder of Kaleidico, a leader in contact management sales software. He is a frequent writer, speaker, and consultant on marketing and sales. He is passionate about helping organizations execute more profitable sale management strategies.

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1. Trash it
2. Close it
3. Transfer it (hand it up or down)
4. Schedule it
5. Nurture it

There is nothing else.

Organizing

When you organize your sales pipeline manage it in the same way as GTD. Set-up the right buckets and make sure your processing system gets the right contacts into the right buckets.

Here are the buckets I use:

1. Attempted
2. Contacted
3. Proposal
4. Closed
5. Withdrawn
6. Scheduled
7. Bogus

The nice thing about creating buckets in your contact management software is you can use it to automate your contact flow, lead prioritization, and any lead nurturing campaigns you have. Manual or automated–organizing into predefined buckets makes sales happen faster.

Reviewing

No system is perfect. Review it. See what is working and what is not.

This is again where a good lead management database comes in handy. Look at your reports and do some quick analysis. Don’t get overwhelmed by the minutae–eyeball your reports for oddities.

I like to look for what I call–”slowing and heaping” in my reports.

What processes seem to be happening slower or less frequently than expected? Try something new to speed them up.

Where are leads piling up? Try something to process them out of the log jam.

Doing

Want to know the number one cause of most poor sales performance? Ssssssh, come close for the secret…NOT DOING ANYTHING!

That’s right. Just doing something even without a contact database, or a system, or a process, or organization will yield more than standing around organizing sheets of paper, counting your pencils, or labeling your folders.

As Nike says, “Just Do It!”

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Bill Rice is the founder of Kaleidico, a leader in contact management sales software. He is a frequent writer, speaker, and consultant on marketing and sales. He is passionate about helping organizations execute more profitable sale management strategies.

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• Gmail
• LinkedIN
• Twitter
• MyBlogLog
• StumbleUpon
• eZineArticles

I will tell you how to use each in a moment. All you need to do now is sign-up and have your Web URL in each pointed at your home base.

Day 3: Brainstorm Your Brand

This is a critical step and where most stumble. I am going to break it into small concepts.

You are building a personal brand for a reason. Let’s write them down:

• Defining who you are and what you are good at
• Defining who you want to meet
• Defining who you want to meet you
• Make connecting as frictionless as possible

Turn each of these headings into 4-5 core brand concepts. Here are some examples:

• Writer: copywriting, ghostwriting, speech writing, web content
• Affiliate Marketer: ppc, seo, article marketing, affiliate programs
• Mortgage Broker: mortgage rates, mortgage refinance, reverse mortgage, loan modification

From each of these personal brand concepts craft 10 long tail topics. More examples:

• Writer: Copywriting-10 Secrets to Make Your Copy Sell
• Affiliate Marketer: Article Marketing-Driving Niche Traffic to Your eBay Affiliate Store
• Mortgage Broker: Reverse Mortgages-Helping Your Retired Parents Get the Right Mortgage

Day 4: Write–A Lot

A good personal brand only works if it has depth.

This 5 day process is going to immediately drive people to you. Make sure you look like you are open for business and it is clear who you are and why you are valuable.

So now it is time to open up the word processor. Write each of your list of articles. The list should have between 40-50 article topics. Yes, this is going to be a long day. Here are a few tips:

• Each article should only be 300-450 words
• Each should be informative or how-to oriented
• Create a standard format that is easy to read: italicized introduction, sub-headings, and lists
• Use keyword(s) in sub-headings and body of article, but no more than 2-3 times
• Include a consistent “resource box” at the end of each–brief who you are, what you do, and website link

Look at this post as an example.

Day 5: Start Promoting

Okay. I know you are tired, but we are to the fun part–self-promotion!

Expect another long day. Do the following steps. Since we are compressing this into 5 days it is important to do this in order:

1. Post 10 articles to your blog (website): This should simply be a cut and paste exercise. One important trick to add a little apparent depth. Post date each but the final article when posting. I recommend spacing the post dating to reflect 3 posts per week, or whatever frequency you intend to post in the future. This isn’t intended to be a deceptive trick, but rather helps set expectations for your readers for the frequency of future posts.
2. Post 10 more articles to your blog (website): These are going to be posted with future dates. This will help make you ongoing personal brand maintenance less intimidating. You now have a good queue–keep it full.
3. Post 10 articles to eZineArticles: There are others, but this is the best. They have good rules, reputation, and traffic.
4. Hold on to remaining 10-20 articles: Chances are you didn’t write 40-50 anyway–I know you got lazy, didn’t you? I am your coach– I am going to push you harder than you think you can go. If you met my goal you have some extra juice in the tank to deploy or reserve your call. If you didn’t make it you need to work harder–this is important. It is your personal brand. It will make you more money!
5. Gmail: Add a signature block. Make it much like your article resource box, but add telephone number, LinkedIN profile and Twitter URLs. Announce your new website and expertise to 10 friends. Ask them to promote and link to you.
6. Twitter: Go to http://search.twitter.com. Search for your keywords. Reply–intelligently–to 10 tweets on things of interest and relevant to you brand. Follow 10 other people in your brand area that you did not reply to tweets from.
7. LinkedIN: Connect with 10 people you already know (load in address book). Ask them to endorse you.
8. MyBlogLog: Add widget to blog (website). Search for your keywords. Join 10 communities of people in your brand area.
9. Stumbleupon: Search for your keywords. Connect with 10 people in your brand area. Stumble each of the websites of the people you connected with on Twitter, LinkedIN, MyBlogLog. Stumble your most recent blog (website) post.
10. eZineArticles: Add widget to blog (website).

Take the weekend off. Rest. Then…

Repeat Weekly.

Good luck! Happy personal brand building.

If you have any questions–contact me: http://twitter.com/billrice

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Bill Rice is the founder of Kaleidico, a leader in contact management sales software. He is a frequent writer, speaker, and consultant on marketing and sales. He is passionate about helping organizations execute more profitable sale management strategies.

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Sales contact management is not about you looking into a dead database and trying to decide what to work on–it is about serving you the lead most likely to close at that point in time.

If Amazon wanted to be like big box retailers, they could present goods on shelves in groups for you to browse. This is the same as a dead contact database–it simply groups names together for you with no action attached.

But Amazon goes one step further–every time you enter Amazon.com, the first thing you see is your personal recommendations from Amazon. You shop, you click, you buy, you trust technology to make the decision.

Why wouldn’t you expect the same from your contact manager? Managing leads is a job for technology, not for you. You are a sales person. Just like Amazon–you’re not a librarian, you want the book, not the map of how to get to the book. Expect the same from your contact manager.

If not, then what is the technology application good for? Holding your leads? (Psst–Excel can do that) Find a better solution that makes your technology work FOR you. Need another hint? It’s icoSales by Kaleidico.

contact me: keith burwell

my company: Kaleidico

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Because of this, we can garner important lessons for how we should, or should not, portray ourselves to clients in our own industry. Here are five people that are selling themselves, either in a good way or…well, not so good.

• Barack Obama– Senator Obama is, as they say, selling the dream. Substance–unimportant. Experience–unimportant. When you sell the dream to your clients, you are taking the focus away from yourself, away from the reality, and asking them to see the castles in their mind…and then buy those castles. Whipping clients into a frothy furor can be extremely effective. You are selling on top of someone’s already lofty expectations and simply helping them to believe it. Effective? It can be. Dangerous? Probably. Here’s why- let’s take selling a home, for instance. No one would say no to the house that is twice as large as the one they are getting, in a better neighborhood, has more amenities. So when you sell the dream, you take the risk of putting them out of their price range because no longer is your client dealing in reality, but rather they are dealing on hope. At best, your client’s chances of improving their financial situation to afford the “hope” are 50/50–a risky bet for you as a sales person.
• John McCain– Senator McCain is selling experience. Diametrically opposed to the previous sales strategy, this focuses completely on YOU. The intent of showing a client your experience is to remove all necessity of worry, concern, or fear about your decision. It is to say, “I have seen this before…follow me, and I can show you the right road to travel.” This is effective when you have the ability to back up your experience with fact and example. Selling insurance? Show your client examples of past clients that were worried or had trepidation about choosing whole vs term life and how your expert guidance paid off. This is a sales strategy that is high in risk/reward. If you can show your experience and communicate it effectively, the reward will be great. If you can’t, then there is no differentiation strategy and the sale is probably lost.
• Hillary Clinton– Senator Clinton is selling fear. While the Senator from New York is no longer in the race (maybe…not sure–I guess we have to wait for the convention), her campaign was focused on besmirching the competition and in some cases, fear-mongering. The purpose of a technique such as this is to drive the client away from the competitor, not necessarily to drive the client to YOU. While this can be effective when legitimate (”look–our competitor is struggling financially–I don’t want you to end up without long term support”), it is a risky gamble because it makes you look bitter without the ability to stand on the merits of your product. Not a recommended method if it isn’t coupled with a solid product differentiated on your part.
• John Edwards– Senator Edwards is (was) selling the lie. By far the riskiest move outlined because, as we know, it is a complete career ender. You may sell one, two, even a lot of deals based on a lie, but all it takes is one slip, one misstep, and your credibility is gone. There is no repeat business, there is only massive amounts of vitriol, anger, and mistrust. Find another profession once this happens to you because it is quite doubtful anyone will put you in the same position again. Ask some recently unemployed hedge fund managers.
• Bob Barr– Congressman Barr is selling the outsider. As a Libertarian, Barr is using a position of “outside the norm” to drive his sales. This can be effective when your product is significantly different than the typical choices (think Coke vs Pepsi). however, selling a product from this vantage point usually means you are in an underdog position and can be very difficult to carve out a slice of the market. In place of this strategy, it may sometimes be better to just sell the dream! (see Obama)

How you represent your product needs to align with your strategy in the market. Make sure it’s the right strategy so you don’t end up on the outside looking in. Later this week we will look at 5 people in sports and what we can learn from the way they sell themselves.

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Let’s translate the real meaning of the phrase “employee discount pricing”. It actually means, “We aren’t selling as many cars as we would like to. Therefore, we are going to artificially and temporarily drop the price of our cars in the hopes that you feel somehow engendered to us, as if we are letting you in on something special. We hope that you don’t realize the only reason we are selling the car to you at such a price is because you didn’t buy the same one last week at a higher cost, and we also have to make room for vehicles coming out for next year that we will sell to other rubes at full price.” Is the crime that they do it, or is the crime that some people buy into it?

Pricing strategy is and always has been an important tool. However, there is, in my opinion, a right way and a wrong way. One right way is the model of Southwest Airlines–the famed B-school case study in delivering a no-frills service that has a singular mission of being the low-cost airline. (A Google of “Southwest Airlines case study” returns 193,000 results.) Another right way in the automotive industry is the newly-hyped Nano by Tata Motors. While, admittedly, they are struggling with profitability, Tata’s singular goal has been to build and sell a $2500 car in India. Both of these companies have built a strategy hinging on providing a low cost product–not a low quality product, but a low cost product.

General Motors, on the other hand, and I can’t leave out Ford or Chrysler in this since they will most likely follow suit, is using a tactic that not only belittles their clients, but illustrates a lack of marketing innovation. GM did not get where it is at by being a bad company nor does it have a bad marketing group. However, the idea of artificially lowering prices and making it somehow seem to be an exclusive club smacks of elitism and pandering, not to mention capitalizing on clients during a market downturn.

So–how can you avoid it in your sales strategy? One– if price is a tool, let it be an honest tool. You should be striving to lower your costs, which in turn, allow you to reduce your price. Don’t simply adjust your margin and slap a sticker on it. This is where you can affect repeat business-don’t sacrifice long term loyalty for the sake of one time purchasing. Two–grouping people (employee discount, frequent flyer, president’s club, etc) only works when you have ancillary value by being a part of the group. To illustrate– getting an employee discount is a great company perk and shows loyalty to the workforce. Passing that same discount to EVERY client not only takes the “additional value” away but now reduces your employee benefits, as they receive the same pricing as everyone else. Three–focus on right pricing. Market conditions do adjust and need to be factored in (especially in the auto industry), but if your product is of high quality, you are speaking with the right audience, and the pricing is set correctly, you should never have to worry about “deep discounts”.

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I would say that a good referral, by definition, is one that generates more energy (value) than what was put in. To coin a term, a good referral is a “Fission Referral”. Fission is the energy creation process whereby certain atoms are split into the various nuclei, eventually producing more photons, which, ultimately produce huge amounts of energy through a chain reaction, much more than was originally put into the process.

Stepping back from the The Science Guy’s lesson on nuclear physics, let’s talk about how this relates to a referral. A Fission Referral is one that has the potential to generate multiple deals and a long term supply of new business stemming from that one spark or connection. A Fission Referral is one that continues to send business your way for weeks, months, and years. It has a chain reaction and continues to generate added business from multiple sources.

It’s a good thing that fission reactions don’t take place in everyday life–those are called atom bombs! We should be very glad that it takes a controlled environment to create fission. However, we don’t always know when a Fission Referral comes along. We need to be looking for potential Fission Referrals and then nurture them. Fission only takes place when action or pressure is placed on something. So what’s the lesson? Fission Referrals will only start from the pressure you place on a situation to make it happen.

What is the type of pressure you need? Superior service, trusted consulting, placing value in the relationship, being a client’s advocate as you deliver your service. What are the results? You never know when the fruit of your effort will bring about a chain reaction of relatives, patients, clients, employees, or other relationships from that one initial deal.

Ultimately, a good referral is a Fission Referral, one that produces much more than you thought possible, but the only way it can happen is through being diligent in the basics every time.

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Since order taking is a different discipline than sales, we need to understand how best to capitalize on opportunities rather than waiting for orders to fill. One of the keys to this is effective listening. Making sure we hear what our prospect wants us to hear as opposed to hearing what we want to hear. Here are 5 keys to effective listening when it comes to sales–

1) Listen for the problem– Just because the prospect is talking to you does not necessarily mean you can fix the problem. You can permanently drive someone away from your product by trying to be the solution when it isn’t necessary. Be their advisor, steer them in the right direction, and know they will work with you when your solution fits because you built trust. (And you listened!)

2) Listen for other problems– Consultative relationships are built on hearing problems the client doesn’t understand they have. In order to do this, we have to be able to listen for clues that indicate larger issues. Put the puzzle pieces together for the prospect–make them aware of what you are hearing and that you recognize an outstanding issue.

3) Know your Product and your Pitch– If not, your listening time becomes your “prep” time. While the client is talking and explaining their issue or situation, you are rehearsing your pitch. What you don’t want is an ineffective one way discussion “telling” the customer a laundry list of things that don’t relate to the dialogue you should be engaged in.

4) Mirror behavior of your prospect– Is your prospect quick and to the point? Be the same way. Funny? Inject humor. Match confidence with confidence. Ultimately, hear how the prospect projects towards you and be a mirror. We can reasonably assume that if someone feels it is an attractive quality in themselves, it will be an attractive quality in someone they are talking to.

5) Ask the questions–Don’t wait to simply answer the prospect’s questions–the most important points may never come up! Be prepared to ask the questions that allow you to hear the answers you need to build your case. Creating the dialogue necessitates activity on both sides.

Active listening is needed to bridge the gap between consultative selling and order taking. Make sure that you are using the tool to drive relationship building and ultimately conversion.

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