Bill Rice Internet Marketing > Sales process

Warning: Too Many Friends Can Reduce Sales

July 12, 2010 By

Bettercloser.com - Too Many (Social Media) Friends

Bettercloser.com - Too Many (Social Media) Friends


Is it possible for a huge database of contacts or thousands of friends or followers to actually reduce your sales output? Yes!

This isn’t another rant on quality over quantity in lead generation. Or a diatribe on how critical lead management is to sales. It’s an important sales discussion about focus, discipline, and misplaced hope.

In sales we often pride ourselves in our ability to hunt. Collecting names, numbers, emails, business cards, and friends make us feel secure. We know it’s a numbers games with lots of No’s for the occasional Yes.

Although all true, it’s exactly this programming that can lead sales people into a dangerous rut.

Collecting without Sales Process

There are packrats and there are curators. You can clearly see the difference.

If you walk into the office or home of a packrat there are arbitrary stacks and piles of stuff–old newspapers, magazines, pieces and parts, trinkets and toys. All these things landing where they may and there they stay. There is little in the way of organization or movement.

Contrast that with a curator. Every item is carefully and quickly reviewed, characterized, and categorized. Put in its proper place for later use. Things flow in and things flow out. There is movement.

A carefully developed sales process is the difference between us being packrats of leads to carefully curating and nurturing leads to deals. A sales person without a disciplined process that moves leads forward is a graveyard for good leads.

The worst part…those without a good sales process often hoard like a packrat–collecting, taking, or requesting the most leads!

Collecting without Engaging Leads

The other danger with incessant collecting is focusing the easy and avoiding the scary.

Face it getting lots of arbitrary followers and filling a database with random names is simple. In some cases you can even automate or buy this gathering of prospects. However, engaging these folks in a conversation, connecting with them in a meaningful way, even taking the risk to introduce yourself makes even the most seasoned sales professional anxious.

It’s much more comfortable (and misleading) to measure success by collections of leads, avoiding the true measure of sales progress–how many scary, new conversations did you have this week?

Collecting without Cleaning House

Kicking a lead out of your sales pipeline is another scary, but necessary process.

Letting a lead go is like peeling your fingers off that soft childhood security blanket. You’re afraid you won’t get another lead to replace it or your letting go of future opportunity. But hanging on means you are wasting precious sales activity on something that’s not ready to close–there are other, more productive ways to manage that lead.

The secret to avoiding this bad sales habit is to carefully observe and define the characteristics of a good lead. This makes it much easier to sort the good for the bad and the hot from the cold. It also gives you the confidence to kick it lose, to another process, and the motivation to work harder on the ones you know are the best opportunities.

Keeping a clean sales pipeline is the best way to “narrow” your sales pipeline and squeeze out more sales.

Collecting without Closing Sales!

Are you on this dangerous path? Have you developed these avoidance behaviors? It’s easy to find out–look at your sales numbers. Up or down? Are you letting whole days go by without a good conversation?

Don’t get trapped in the collection trap–process and close!

Filed Under: Lead Management Tagged With: Advertising and Marketing, business, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Sales process, Salesmanship

10 Principles for B2B Sales

March 1, 2010 By

I’m continually amazed at how many B2B sales folks are not yet making social media a serious part of their sales process. Half of those people are apprehensive about trying something new and the other half believe it will be a big waste of time.

My hope is that following these 10 simple principles will get you over both of these hurdles. I can assure you that you will need to incorporate social media and networking into your sales process to stay competitive. Why not start now?

10 Principles for B2B Social Selling
View more presentations from Kaleidico.

Are you already using social media in your B2B sales process? Leave a comment on what is and isn’t working for you?

I’m looking for specific frustrations in using social media in your sales process to address in future blog posts…can you help me, help you?

Filed Under: Sales Training Tagged With: b2b sales, Sales process, Social Media

5 Tips for Sales Improvement This Week

October 19, 2009 By

100_3052 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.

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Filed Under: Sales Training Tagged With: cold calling, Jeffrey Gitomer, Sales lead, Sales process, Salesmanship, Social Selling

Why Listening More Will Grow Your Business

August 19, 2009 By

Listening is one of the secret weapons of top sales performers. Unfortunately, most sales training focuses on how to talk to clients.

Smart sales people figure out that consumers buy based on what they think, not what you tell them to think. The first step is to understand this opportunity and then work the customer psychology of it.

1. Inherently humans are self-interested. It’s true. Regardless of how much we might try to fight it we like to talk about ourselves. The trick is making sure that it is the prospect, not your that gives into this self-interested temptation.

It never hurts to give a little prompting: “What do you think about…?

2. High probability your sales pitch will trigger objections. The harder you sell, the faster you pitch, the more likely you are to strike a nerve in the prospect. These pet-peeves or irritating themes that may be embedded in your pitch will only challenge you with objections to overcome.

Listening can tune your ear into their objectives and preferences.

3. You never know what the customer wants. You can assume, but ultimately you are likely to lose this guessing game. The more you listen and ask good questions the better prepared you will be to pitch the right line.

Given the chance to talk, prospects will give you clues to what they really value.

4. Prospects will often tell you what it takes to close them. Kind of like the clues they leave you for what they want–they will often tell you how to close the deal. A few well placed questions will draw out what assurances they are looking for to make them comfortable saying, “yes.”

Many times there is only a single key concept (i.e., free trial, discount, testimonial, feature) that will close the deal–listen for it.

5. Customers that close based on “their idea” are happy customers. Another big advantage of putting more listening into your sales is the likelihood that prospect with feel the closing was their idea. Buyers remorse can be a big customer service and brand nightmare. The more you guide the customer based on their ideas, the happier they will be.

Everyone like to feel like they are in control. Give your prospect that opportunity.

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Filed Under: Social Selling Tagged With: Sales process, training

Power Dialing Results Attitude Not Technology

July 23, 2009 By

Cold Calling is the most difficult part of sales for most to find master and involves the most discipline to get through. At times, it may feel daunting. On the other hand, when telesales is done right, the experience is most rewarding.

As a sales person, there should be no question that making cold calls is or has been a part of your job. Many people don’t like it very much because it requires hard work, discipline and consistency. Let’s face it, closing the sale is a lot more fun. Here are some tips to make your power dialing experience more effective.

Time is Money, Schedule Cold Calling

Make each moment count after all your time is money.  Budget your time out wisely creating a schedule that includes cold calling time to build your prospect list. Great things happen when you manage your time effectively inside and outside of the workplace. We all know that we should do this, but we just plain don’t want to sometimes.

If you are calling head decision makers, you can typically reach these people in the mornings. Make a consistent effort to call for a set number of hours each morning. Once you get this completed, you will have time in the afternoon to visit clients and work on proposals.

Pre-plan your call to increase the likely hood of success. This means that you know what you want to say, and what direction you want the call to go in. The first step although obvious is often missed, “What is the purpose of your call?” Many times, the simple answer is, “I am calling to make sales”.

Do Your Research

Every call should be a unique experience for you and the potential sale. In reality, you need to know in advance details about your lead prior to the sale, so you can set the agenda for the call. By taking a few minutes to pre-plan your calls, you will make better use of time for the prospect and yourself.

Several methods are suitable reasons to call a prospect. For example;

  • Introduce you & your company – develop a business relationship
  • Qualify, analysis of the situation – identify prospects challenges
  • Set appointments
  • Follow through call – after introduction to move the sale ahead to the next step
  • Seminar/Workshop – inform leads of upcoming promotional events
  • Combination call – combination for any of the above includes products, services or information seminars

Customizing effective cold calling scripts is an art. Have you ever had to read from a script that was prepared for you to sell a product or service? Did it feel natural to you? Did you feel in control of the conversation? Were you prepared for all of the questions the prospect asked?

Build Solution-based Call Scripts

When designing your script, consider that decision makers do not necessarily buy products, they buy the solutions. Keys topics to address in designing your call script include;

  • How can my product/ service help the prospect?
  • Who am I selling it to?
  • What objections might the prospect have & how will I answer them?
  • What makes my product/service different?
  • Always set a follow up reason to call the lead back.
  • How will I effectively ask for the sale?

Avoid leaving a voice mail message, but rather tend to make personal contact with the decision maker directly.  If you must leave a message make it less than twenty seconds and/or begin building a relationship with a gate keeper such as personal secretaries that may be screening calls.  Building regular follow-up conversations with secretaries can give you an edge over the competition.

Power Dial with a Call to Action

When power dialing remember to have a call to action; you want to hook leads into the conversation quickly, get them involved. Find out right away if they’re a good prospect with qualifying questions designed to engage them and determine if they are a good prospect. Don’t be shy go in with your offer or close right away. Don’t keep them too long on the phone. You are rarely going to convince someone to listen to you if they aren’t in the right frame of mind to do so or caught them at a bad time.

Always measure your cold calling efforts and make adjustments by fine tuning your power dialing approach. Avoid burn out, every 3-hours take a break and stick to your consistent power dialing schedule. Make efficient use of your time by diligently executing your long term sales plan.

Filed Under: Social Selling Tagged With: cold calling, Sales process

Motivate Your Sales Team Because Can’t Never Did Anything!

February 12, 2009 By
LAKE BUENA VISTA, FL - OCTOBER 30: (EDITORIAL ...
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I can remember it like yesterday–”Coach, I can’t do another 800 split.” As I am puking on the infield. “Billy (that is what they call young William’s in the south) can’t never did anything–finish up and give me another one.” Guess what I beat my personal best in the 2 mile at the next meet and qualified for State.

It is time to remember this lesson and put those words back in our head. No more grumbling on the sales floor. No more bitching about customers that are afraid to make a decision. Your job is to make customers understand you are the hope, you are the solution, you are the positive step in a bad market.

It is time to kill the “can’t” attitude in your organization.

Make sure your sales process and lead management system are full of reminders of  what a lack of action, effort, and belief yields–nothing! Don’t let defeatism infiltrate your sales organization, that is your number one job as a sales manager. You are the coach, whether you are leading yourself, a team, an organization. You are the only one that can make it happen.

Motivation Fuels Sales

Sales people like roller coasters. We soar on wins and dive on the multitude of objections and rejections that we get each day. This is why creating a sales culture built on team motivation evens out these individual peaks and valleys–sharing successes are critical. If you are a sales team of one get a mentor.

There are lots of ways to build this power of motivation. Here are a few guaranteed winners:

  • Run a leader board to create competitive push in sales
  • Use sales contests and games to get energy on the sales floor
  • Have sales managers showcase best practices with live calls

Leave a comment with your favorites. Be specific.

Avoid letting mediocrity creep in–routines, status quo erodes sales targets. Positive energy needs a certain imbalance and agility in the organization. Use these motivational techniques to shake things up on a regular basis.

Confidence is Customer Contagious

Sales motivation almost instantly translates into confidence–confidence is contagious. Get this element in your sales DNA right now. It will pump your sales team and reassure your customers.

A motivated and confident person will evangelize products and services with reckless abandon–giving your customers little hesitation in saying, “yes!”

Down markets and shaky economies bring customers with hesitation, apprehension, and fear. They bring these hidden objections into every sales call. Confident sales people will quickly overcome steady these client fears–making them strong points in the sale.

Confidence is contagious–transfer it to your team and your clients.

Pump Up Your Sales Numbers

Driving out “can’t,” ridding the organization of negativity, and inspiring motivation will increase your sales.

Motivation and confidence make your sales more persuasive and tenacious. It helps sales reps to overcome objections and calms customer apprehension.

Remember, “can’t never did anything.” So, make sure that your sales processes and lead management systems build a sense of urgency and confidence into your sales organization.

What are you doing to motivate your sales teams?

lead management

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Filed Under: Lead Management, Sales Management, Social Selling Tagged With: Lead Management, Marketing and Advertising, Motivation, Sales Management, Sales process, social selling

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