Jeffrey Gitomer - Better Closer

April 22, 2010 By Bill Rice

Bettercloser.com - Social Selling Works

Social selling seems like a silly label to put on any sales concept. Any sales person’s natural reaction would be, “no kidding.” Many of your “fluff” meters just sounded the alarm. And my battle hardened sales folks reading this are about ready to move onto the next thing on their task list.

I ask you to stay with me two more minutes. I’ll be brief.

Social selling is a label I am increasingly fond of using. It’s growing on me. Here’s why…

Reminds Us What Really Lands Deals

I’m not sure where I heard it first (I think it was Jeffrey Gitomer), but it is so important to remember: “People don’t buy from companies they buy from people” and ultimately they buy from people they like.

Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t have too many friends on my Christmas card list that started our relationship with a cold call. However, I do have several friends on my list that I have bought things from.

The big point here is that most deals happen because there was some social aspect in the deal.

You’re coach Bob’s daughter in soccer, why wouldn’t he buy insurance from you. You met Sue at a conference and you are both passionate about the same charity, why wouldn’t she come to you for a new design on her blog. You sold David a network security software solution from your previous company (It protected them from a huge denial of service attack), why wouldn’t he come to you for network performance monitoring solution (even though you’re at a new company).

Is this making sense? Isn’t this how the best deals happen?

Makes Getting Started So Much Easier

Now granted, these kinds of scenarios aren’t enough to meet your monthly sales quota. They may not scale. But, maybe we can get close.

Today’s Web makes most people’s life more open. We’re sharing, collaborating, and asking questions all in a very free and trusting way. Sort of the same way that we do at a baseball game, a conference, a Rotary meeting, or when we have already been a customer.

This makes it a lot easier to get started on a sale. You can easily observe people you want to sell to: Learn what they like to do for fun, who they hang out with, how they like to communicate, what makes them upset, what makes them enthusiastic, and what you might be able to help them with now or in the future.

Do you see how you might be able to do this with most of your target accounts? Much more scale to this kind of online social selling, right? Don’t you think this will make the first contact much easier?

Dramatically Increases Our Referrals

Here’s the big deal. Some people on your target account list are just not going to be ready to buy, but they all have friends. If you do social selling right, not only will you be getting referrals from past and current clients–you will be getting referrals from prospects that fall out.

Try it. It’s amazing.

Here is a presentation I just gave on this topic. See if anything clicks.

Do you have any social selling success stories?

5 Tips for Sales Improvement This Week

October 19, 2009 By Bill Rice

Often we are looking for silver bullet systems or recipes for success, while ignoring the basics. In my experience 90% of big sales improvement comes from getting back to the basics. These basics will have an immediate, measurable impact on your sales numbers.

Let’s put it to the test. Here are five fundamentals of sales. If you focus on them they will increase your sales this week.

Breakthrough the Fear of Failure

Jeffrey Gitomer, a sales guru and best-selling author, is famous for saying “fail faster.” This is a critical concept for a sales person to grasp early in their career. Like any professional athlete or best-selling author will testify to, you will swing and miss, shoot and miss, write and miss far more often than not. But, that’s okay because it’s the big ones that make them millions.

Sales has the same odds and the same big rewards. You have to kill the fear of rejection. You will hear “no” far more than “yes.” Embrace it. Know that it only means that you are that much closer to a sale.

Stop Getting Ready to Call, and Call

This is the top failure in sales performance–failure to call. Cold calling has become a pariah. However, the truth is that cold calling is the backbone of sales. Fundamentally you have to make contact and get your message out. That usually means calling a few people, setting up some appointments, and introducing yourself.

Sitting back and waiting for someone to find you and discover how you can help them is really making the buying process hard. And that, of course, is not good for your sales numbers.

Stop Picking Leads, Just Grab One

Here is another real sales quota killer–picking leads. Better known as cherry picking.

The thing about trying to constantly find the “best lead”–it doesn’t work and it wastes time. Ultimately, sales leads are often little more than a name, telephone number, and email. What are you going to make your, “this is a killer sale lead” decision based on?

Much like my advice to pick-up the phone and call, just grabbing a lead is about forward motion. Creating momentum has a far greater impact than getting the right lead.

Start Doing a Little Lead Nurturing

Regardless of how effective your sales pitch and charm might be, most buyers don’t immediately pull the trigger. That’s okay. Assuming you have a good lead nurturing program. In fact, studies show that lead nurturing not only keeps that sales lead active and viable, but may also creates a trust relationship that will actually increase the size of the transaction.

Think about it. You can build a strong feeling of reciprocity with lead nurturing. If you have a good system of touch points and you are giving away valuable content you are building buying pressure on that prospect.

Start Measuring Your Sales Process

One big mantra at a high performance sales organization I used to work at was: “What gets measured gets improved.”

If you’re not breaking down your sales process into measurable elements you might as well be “shooting BBs at the moon”–you’re never going to hit your target. Measuring helps you observe and make timely adjustments, before it’s too late. Do you need to make more calls? Is a certain objection eating you up? Are you losing deals in the proposal phase? If you aren’t measuring you won’t know.

Most importantly, do something with those improvement prompts. Work on increasing your leads and call volume. Tweak that sales script. Improve the value in that proposal.

Hopefully you are seeing a theme. So often, whether it is sales, sports, or any other competitive endeavor improvement is often best achieved by getting back to the basics. Try these back to basics tips and tell me how they go.

Effectively Following Up On Sales Leads (bettercloser.com)
“Sales-Ready” Lead…What? (bettercloser.com)

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