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Make It Relevant

17 Feb

Make it relevant

I’m a big fan of Kevin Sasser’s The Sales Wars blog.  He  must be really busy in his day job because he’s not posted in almost 2 months.  Well, my wait is over and as usual, I learned something and laughed at the same time.

Definitely read the full blog post.  After the funny analogy, Kevin writes about a colleague who is putting together an agenda for marketing to update the sales team.  The standard agenda is suggested:

  • Our company overview
  • What we see happening in the industry
  • Our “vision”
  • Our unique approach

To which Kevin figuratively sticks his fingers in his mouth at the thought of listening to all that.  What struck me is that the sales team is probably doing the same thing to the prospect!  You are polite while marketing pitches you but you’re secretly daydreaming or reading your BlackBerry under the table.  Wanna bet your prospect is doing the same as  you pitch?  Kevin suggested the following agenda for marketing.  I suggest you follow the same agenda when selling to prospects:

  • Why you are in my office taking up my time
  • My problem that you can solve for me
  • How you will solve the problem in clear, concise, concrete terms
  • The benefit that you will deliver to me that your competitor can’t

As I get reminded at home, it’s not about me, it’s about what’s important to them!

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Inquisix Presentation and Networking Event – Fri Feb 20th

5 Feb

Brent Trethewey of the Executive Club of Boston has invited me to speak on Friday February 20th at 8.00am ET to his group. The topic of the discussion is “How To Integrate Your Online Networking with In-Person Events for Best Results”

Come join us by phone!

speed-networking

Brent is a member of Inquisix and runs a “speed” networking event every Friday. The concept is pretty cool, I’ve attended a bunch of his meetings. Instead of meeting face-to-face every Friday, he’s using a technology from BlitzTime that allows participants to connect via phone with up to 6 other executives, all in 45 minutes. Each week, Brent invites an expert to talk and then the participants get connected with each other to talk for 6 minutes. After your 6 minutes is up, you are connected with another participant. Hence, the “speed” in his networking.

So please come join us! It’s best to be online while on the phone.

At the moment, there’s only a US-based number to call into. I’m talking to the BlizTime founders to add a European number so our Inquisix members there can join us for the next event.

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The Highly Engaged Referral Survey

3 Feb

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing has a blog post today regarding the Highly Engaged Referral and the level of participation the person getting referred to is in the referral process. Obviously the higher the participation, the better the referral!

survey

John is asking people to take a quick 5 question survey on referrals. Why not respond?

PS - thanks to wickedphobica for the picture

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Good Cold Calling Leads to Referrals

22 Jan

I’m a big fan of reading Geoffrey James’ blog, Sales Machine.  He gets to be edgier and more controversial than his articles in Selling Power magazine.

He posted a great letter from one of his readers on the value of cold calling.  The real value in cold calling is disqualifying prospects, much like panning thru dirt to find diamonds.  I’ve posted on the value of cold calling in a previous Inquisix post.

The commenter’s conclusion on the value of cold calling?

coldcallingreferral

Same as what I said; the benefit of cold calling is….referrals!

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Networking is for Mentoring, too

14 Jan

I read just a great article today about 6 brothers who are all successful IT sales reps in the Boston area.  You can read the full article at MassHighTech and it’s well worth the read.  They said that the main reason for their success was the mentoring they all did amongst themselves over Sunday dinner.  They did it themselves because they found that “…many companies put less emphasis on mentorship and training than they should.”

MassHighTech 6 Murphy Brothers

The brothers not only mentor each other but take pride in mentoring the new hires working for them.

Do you have a mentor?
Who are you mentoring?

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Creating a Referral Machine

7 Jan

John Jantsch has a great blog post about creating a systematic process for creating referrals that everyone in the company should be using.

You can find the link here.  I don’t see anything dramatically unique in his steps but they’re all important and it’s surprising how many people forget some of the steps.  Of course his big reminder is to “make giving referrals a business strategy…best way to get is to give.”

He closes with “…everybody’s in marketing…” to which I’d reply, “…everybody’s in sales!”

Happy Referring!

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Face to Face Networking Revival?

22 Nov

Maybe it’s the recession. Maybe it’s learning first-hand the difference between a friend and a “Facebook friend.” Maybe you’re noticing that the phone’s not ringing and the thought of cold calls is making you take a coffee break. Or maybe it’s just the narrow selection of blogs that I read, but it seems that there’s a plethora of recent blog postings on how to network effectively in the real world.

Adrian Miller, author of The Blatant Truth, is offering a quick primer on improving your networking skills. His key point, “You need to know how to effectively communicate with others, build strong relationships, and make the most out of online and in-person networking opportunities. No, it’s not easy, and it’s certainly time consuming, too. But, the benefits of successful networking can be instrumental in growing your business.” Of his tips, the ones I find people forget about most are “Be Appreciative” and “Follow-up and Follow Through”

Then Erica Stritch of RainToday.com just posted a guide, “Face-To-Face Networking for Professional Services: A Primer for Relationship Building.” You can read an excerpt of it although you need to pay for the full download.

And one of my favorite recent titles is a book from Susan RoAne entitled, “FACE TO FACE: How to Reclaim the Personal Touch in a Digital World” Amazing that people might have forgotten the personal touch when online is so prevalent and easy.

Bottom Line – Successful Networking requires WORK and requires both an ON-LINE and IN-PERSON presence. Do all 3 successfully and you’ll be successful. Drop one and you won’t.

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The Virtual Handshake – Building an online business presence

14 Nov

On the recommendation of a friend, I’ve been reading, “The Virtual Handshake” by David Tetten and Scott Allen.  It’s an interesting mix of research into online networking and practical steps to improve your online networking experience.

They suggest that how you build relationships has not changed since the days of networking via face-to-face and email.  What’s changed is the medium in which you network – now it’s primarily the web. I think that while the web is important, it’s primary purpose is to enhance your face-to-face networking, not replace it.

The book focuses on their 7 keys to building and maintaining an effective online network.  I think these steps would be just as applicable in building an effective in-person network.

  • Your Character – what other people think about you.  It’s your reputation
  • Competence – do you walk your talk?
  • Relevance – how relevant is your network to your networking goals?
  • Relationship strengths – how strong is your tie to the people in your network?
  • Information you know about the people in your network – parallel to the strength of your ties is how much non-published information do you know about the people in your network?
  • Number of people in your network – both your direct and two-degrees-away network
  • Diversity – the more heterogeneous your network the better it can help you

The authors believe that social networking software allows you to have the best of both worlds, a large quantity of high-quality connections.  While I don’t agree with this sentiment, as I wrote here, I do concur with their sentiments that successful networkers focus on what they can give you and not what you can give them.

All in all, a good book to read.  Especially if you are looking for a how-to book on building a sustainable and positive online presence.

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When a referral is not a referral

28 Oct

I read a great blog post this morning by Diane Helbig on the SalesDog blog entitled, “Don’t Use My Name!”

She writes about people who give out someone else’s contact information and tell you to call them but, “…don’t use my name!”  And they consider it a referral.  That’s not a referral, that’s an invitation to start a cold call.

What’s a true referral?  When the person making the referral makes the introduction on your behalf.

You calling someone and saying, “So-and-so gave me your name and told me to call you.” is not a true referral.  And Diane’s example is nothing like a referral. I agree!

Diane thinks this behavior is worse than a cold call because it damages the reputation of the person giving out the contact information and the person acting on that information.

Then she goes on to discuss what quality referrals really mean.

Please go read her article in full!

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NYC Event – "Winning Big Company Clients"

3 Oct

Jill Konrath, author of “Selling to Big Companies” and Razi Imam, CEO of Landslide Technologies are discussing new Sales 2.0 technologies for helping salespeople win big corporate accounts. The event is being moderated by Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0.

I will be there as a guest of Nigel.  Will you join us there?

DATE:
Tuesday, October 14, 2008

LOCATION:
The Penn Club
30 West 44th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues)
New York, NY 10036

AGENDA:
6.00PM – 6:45PM Networking and Hors d’oeuvres
6:45PM – 7:45PM Presentation and Interactive Discussion
7:45PM – 8:00PM Wrap-up & Networking

Register here for this event. I look forward to meeting you there.

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