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Preaching to the [sales] choir

24 Jan

I’ve been reading a new blog from Geoffrey James over at BNET called SalesMachine. He’s generated some controversy, both intended and unintended, about selling. This is good for his blog, of course, because it’s getting people there to comment.

He recently posted a commentary on, “Should Sales Run the Company” where he quickly said –

Absolutely

He feels that the sales function in a for-profit organization should be leading the way. Not running the ship, mind you, but the group that leads the rest of groups to the destination. I titled my blog posting, “Preaching to the [sales] choir” because sales people already agree with his posting – we’re the only ones out on the street talking to customers and prospects alike on what’s going on and getting feedback from the only people who matter – those who buy our offering.

Of course, lots of non-salespeople are reading his blog….and disagreeing. His follow-up posting responding to these comments is an even better read than his first post. Much like one of my favorite sports columnists, Michael Silver, Geoffrey takes their comments and comes back swinging. Yeah, this is fun!

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Cold Calling Works?

19 Jan

I found a new blog called SalesPractice today because there’s a big debate going on there about the effectiveness of Cold Calling. The author’s argument is essentially

If you have nothing else to do, why not get on the phone? What are you scared of?

The author is trying to counter the argument of the sales reps who’d rather do anything but cold call. He argues that if there’s not enough warm leads for them, instead of waiting for the phone to ring, they should pick it up and start dialing!

He then relates the story of a sales rep who cold-called Toyota and got a million dollar sale from it. I can relate my own cold calling success story when I cold-called a man who’s name I read in a magazine. He agreed to meet and within 5 months of V1 product release, I had my own million dollar deal from a F500 account. So does cold calling work? Of course it can. But I made hundreds (no, it was thousands) of cold calls to land that deal.

With success in hand, I was able to leverage that “halo account” sale into new customers, new referrals and new partnerships. Did I stop cold calling? Not right away but as my other sources of leads became stronger and stronger, I was then able to reduce my reliance on cold calling.

I agree with the author’s argument that you have to start somewhere. And you can’t use the excuse of “…cold calling does not work…” if you are not leveraging other lead sources correctly.

rotary phone

hiking

But does this mean cold calling works like the author claims? Sure, like walking from Boston to San Francisco is a fast method of getting there!

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Collecting online friends like airlines miles

3 Jan

How many invitations are you getting a week to become a friend of someone on their online networking site? Invitations from social sites like Facebook and business sites like LinkedIn come to my mailbox daily. Then there’s MySpace and Going and MeetUp – the list goes on. It seems like a game or a treasure hunt, “…whoever collects the most friends win….” Remember in the early days of frequent flyer programs when you’d stand around saying, “Well I’m a 50K on United” and another salesrep would trump you by saying, “I have Platinum status on American!” Some of these people have collected online friends like they collect airline miles – I mean seriously, who really knows the 500 people they’re connected to in LinkedIn, for example?

I had these thoughts rattling around for a while but it was Seth Godin’s recent blog that got me to put it down on paper. Seth asks, “I wonder if there’s a more useful measure: who trusts you?”

I agree! Can you really know more than 150 people that well? Enough for them to trust you and vice-versa?

* eBay has seller ratings to help buyers determine if they can trust a seller.
* TrustPlus is a new site that lets you view the reputation of others while building your own reputation.
* Inquisix has member referral ratings for each of our members to help determine if members want to exchange referrals with each other.

Having lots of online friends is nice. Knowing who you can trust online is even better.

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Holiday Reading to Recharge Those Sales Batteries

19 Dec

For many of us, the end of the calendar year coincides with the end of the sales year. Have you made it yet? Will you (and your customers) enjoy the time between Christmas and New Year’s because you’ve already delivered your revenue committment to senior management?

Battery

When you need a quick break from all the holiday cheer and want to recharge those sales batteries with some quiet time then consider catching up on your sales reading and learning. But don’t have time to read all the new books on selling? Would you like the Cliff Notes versions instead? The Top Sales Experts website has just the booklet for you – and it’s co-authored by many of the top sales experts.

TopSalesExperts

I like “Leaving PowerPoint Behind and Make the Person-to-Person Sale” by Joanne Black, author of “No More Cold Calling” and guest blogger on this site.

Another good article is “A Glimpse at Sales 2.0 – the Potential and the Pitfall” by Keith Rosen. As salespeople, many of us started selling in the days laminated presentations and always making sure there was change in our pockets for the pay phone. Today we’re using web-based conferencing and wouldn’t be caught dead without our cell/PDA. So what’s next?

Read the article. Read them all – in the the order they interest you.

Which articles did you enjoy best?

Happy Selling!

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Where to start networking?

5 Dec

Everyone agrees that getting referrals to new prospects is so much better than cold calling down that long list that your company provided you. But how do you get started? John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing fame has put together a brief video primer on just this very topic. He focuses on

– defining your value proposition
– who you tell this to
– why you are asking for the referral

http://workbench.ducttapemarketing.com/kickapps/flash/premium_drop_v3.swf?b=1&widgetHost=workbench.ducttapemarketing.com&mediaType=VIDEO&mediaId=114181&as=10266

In principle I agree with how John suggests you get started even if it seems a bit pushy and low-tech. A vital part of any networking program is to ensure the people you want referrals from understand exactly what you do – ie your value proposition. Sure, your customers probably know that already but what about your friends, family and colleagues? Don’t bore them with a feature/benefit pitch – think of your elevator pitch that gets makes them chuckle and excited about telling other people about you. What do I tell people we do at Inquisix? “We’re matchmakers [pause] for salespeople!” Joanne Black, author of “No More Cold Calling” announces, “I’m the Referral Queen!”What do you tell people so they’re remember you?

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Bootstrapping an entire industry

27 Nov

I recently attended a dinner event hosted by the Pioneer Institute where the main speaker was selling his dream to us – to bootstrap entire industries. He has a great vision to get entrepreneurs and companies to build amazing things – but with no government funding or oversight. Even the big companies aren’t interested in participating but he certainly has captured the imagination of millions. So who is this gentleman and how is he achieving this? Dr. Peter Diamandis took his inspiration from Lindbergh’s first flight over the Atlantic. Lindberg was 26 years old who no one thought would be the first one to cross the Atlantic. Lindbergh won the Orteig Prize, “…a $25,000 purse offered by hotel magnate Raymond Orteig to the first person to fly non-stop between New York and Paris…” and proved that entrepreneurs could outperform large corporations and governments. Lindbergh’s success helped launch the commercial aviation industry.

Dr. Diamandis created the Xprize as a way to foster the drive to achieve great things. He partnered with the Ansari family to offer a $10M prize to the first organization to reach space without government funding. That prize was awarded in 2004 to the builders of SpaceShipOne. Dr. Diamandis believes that prizes are a great way to bring a whole industry forward, not just a single company. He sets the prize money low enough for the big guys to ignore about but big enough for entrepreneurs to care. He commented that the day before a breakthrough happens, it’s considered a crazy idea that only entrepreneurs are willing to risk it all to achieve.  Change is brought from the outside, not from the current group in charge.

100mgcar genome moon spirit spaceshipone xprize

He now has Google offering a $30M Xprize for the first organization to reach the Moon and send back video. Again, no government funding is permitted. They’re calling this Moon 2.0.

More prizes are coming – prizes for the first 100mpg car, for mapping the entire human genome and more. The foundation that Dr. Diamandis chairs is looking at prizes to focus on improving education, on renewable energy sources and on reducing poverty. This blog does not do justice to what he’s accomplished and how he’s inspired so many people to do wonderful things.

Please go to his website to learn more, to be inspired and to build something great yourselves.

Thank you to Erik Britt-Webb for inviting me to the event and to Pete Peters, Founding Chairman of the Pioneer Institute for inviting such a wonderful and inspirational person as Dr. Diamandis to speak to us.

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Stop the Cold Calling Insanity!

12 Nov

Frank Rumbauskas, of Never Cold Call fame, recently sent me a 5 minute video on why cold calling is ineffective. His premise is that cold calling equals 0 results. So cold calling 50 times still means 50 times 0 equals 0. His punch line made me laugh, “…I heard the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

FrankRNoColdCalling

Sales Coaching with Dave Kurlan

8 Nov

I recently attended a luncheon meeting with Mike Ford of TownConnect and about 150 other sales and corporate executives hosted by Dave Kurlan of Baseline Selling fame. Dave spent two hours with us discussing his philosophies on sales management best practices and sales rep hiring & success factors. The audience had the opportunity to choose the agenda based on our biggest concerns – sales management, forecasting, hiring & planned turnover were the most requested topics.

BaselineSelling-small

In reviewing my notes from the meeting, the things that I underlined as most interesting and thought provoking were:

– Hire sales managers for accountability, coaching, motivating, growing and recruiting. NOT for closing deals.
– Sales managers should motivate reps to get deals into the funnel and the coach them on moving deals through the funnel.

If you attended the event, what did you find as most interesting? (other than the tour of Gillette Stadium!)

Is Sales 2.0 Really New?

2 Nov

I attended the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on October 30. The speakers had very little to say that was “new news.” I heard statements such as: cold calling is dead—because it doesn’t scale, it’s all about relationships, it’s not about what’s in the funnel, it’s about what’s moving in the funnel, you need to have a sales process, salespeople need to ask good questions, etc. And, when will speakers learn that reading your slides word-for-word is not particularly engaging and does little to enhance learning?

Top salespeople have always built relationships, had a reliable process, and learned and listened from their customers. Successful salespeople build an active referral network and regularly win high profile deals. They don’t cold call.

What is new is the technology—which can speed up lead identification and qualification. Interesting sites are www.visiblepath.com and www.insideview.com. Then it’s up to us to pick up the phone and build a relationship. Technology will save time and thus increase productivity, but people do business with people. Period.

Sales 2.0 Conference….version 0.5

1 Nov

Well, I’m back from the Sales 2.0 conference held earlier this week in San Francisco. And now I can say that I survived an earthquake, albeit a minor one and certainly not on my to-do list. As I mentioned previously, the definition of Sales 2.0, as quoted from the website, is “…Sales 2.0 means integrating the power of Web 2.0 technologies with proven sales techniques to increase sales velocity and volume.” Conceived by genius.com, there were plenty of vendors talking the Sales 2.0 hype, from Oracle and Webex to JigSaw, Brainshark, Spoke and ZoomInfo. Some of the big names of the speaker circuit, including Moira Gunn, Geoffrey Moore and Michael Bosworth, presented their thoughts on Sales 2.0. And the turnout was quite successful as over 400 people attended the event.

So why do I call it version 0.5? Although it was well attended, the ratio of sponsors + vendors vs attendees seemed very high. I spoke with lots of people attending to learn more about the hype and to see if they’d sponsor a future event. But actual attendees? Rather few, I believe. So there’s work and socializing to see if “Sales 2.0” is a buzzword worth hyping. My opinion – yes, it is.

Interesting people I enjoyed meeting at the conference:

– Joanne Black, author of “No More Cold Calling” and fellow attendee. The ideal book to complement the Inquisix solution and vice versa.
– Katie Bruno, VP of Sales at Visible Path – we worked together at Sybase over 10 years ago and she has the same enthusiasm and energy as ever. Great to see you again!
– Jim Burns, President of Avitage – a fellow Boston entrepreneur/blogger and yet we had to meet for the first time (but surely not the last) in San Francisco.
– Razi Imam, CEO of Landslide, a sales solution designed for the sales person first and the VP second. He was genuinely surprised when the Webex keynote speaker mentioned his company’s use of Landslide to prove a point.
– Steve Burrows of Quantum, who spoke in length about the challenges of integrating two sales teams with differing cultures.

More about Sales 2.0 and my thoughts on the presentations in a future blog.

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