All About Referral Selling

First Review of the Inquisix Referral Exchange

Jan Visser over at SalesTeamTools has written the Jan Visser has written the first review of Inquisix: Do You Need Sales Leads Or Real Introductions To Your Ideal Prospects? I was a bit nervous about the review because we just started beta and we’re constantly updating the site. But as I hoped (and sort of expected, given Jan’s successful sales career), he immediately understood the value of the referrals and introductions Inquisix offers and how important it is that we protect the confidentiality of your contacts.

If you’re already an Inquisix member, please comment on his review.

If you’re not yet an Inquisix member, please read his review and then come join us!

Either way, if you have not already visited his site, you should.

Happy Selling!

Tags: "jan visser", Inquisix, introduction, referral, review, salesteamtools

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Categories Other Interesting Sites, Press, Referrals

Humor From SalesLadder – part 3

18 Feb

Just in time for spring training…..let’s see if my accountant is as creative as this one!

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Categories Humor

Use Customers for References Not Referrals

16 Feb

Two recent postings by Jan Visser and Paul McCord got me thinking about how to best use customers to increase your business. As the chart from eMarketer below says, business decisions are heavily influenced by colleagues’ word-of-mouth. Naturally, sales people try to get referrals from their customers to gain new ones. After all, they’re the best referral you can get! But as Paul pointed out, having your customer say, “Give so-and-so at this company a call and use my name” is often not much more than a cold call. Paul and I agree that it’s much better if they contact so-and-so and make the introduction directly. But they often won’t.

Why is this? Why won’t customers give you referrals? Or as Paul prefers to ask, “Why won’t customers make introductions for you?” There are several reasons but the primary one is that customers don’t really know how. It’s not in their DNA to voluntarily call someone up and tell them about your solution. However, they will respond to a request for feedback on your solution.

The chart says that the top influence on buying decisions is from colleagues. However, the chart does not suggest if the buyer received a call or made the call. I will bet that it’s the buyer making the call to their buddy, “Hey, do you have any thoughts on this product?” or “I have this problem, do you have any idea on how to solve it?” Since Customers often give references instead of making referrals, why not use them that way? If customers are uncomfortable making referrals/introductions then don’t use them that way. Get your referrals somewhere else and let your customer give the reference.

Expect your customers to receive calls on your behalf but not make them on your behalf.

Tags: "paul mccord", customers, emarketer, influence, introduction, reference, referral, salesteamtools

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Categories Other Interesting Sites, Referrals, Selling Tips

Adding to our Blogroll – SalesTeamTools.com

9 Feb

One of my favorite sites is SalesTeamTools because it’s one of the few sites I’ve found that is focused on productivity tools for salespeople. Hence their name! I have worked at small companies for years and while that means I don’t always get full support from corporate, it does mean that I can pick and choose the sales tools best suited for me.

Some of my favorite postings include:

Outlook plugins to improve your productivity

More Outlook plugins

20 Great Sales Resources

Must Have Tools

Finding email addresses

Sales Templates

Free way to track customers, prospects, competitor and yourself

Why LinkedIn won’t help you sell

Have you found any other top 10 links in SalesTeamToolsto share with us?

Tags: "outlook plugins", "sales tools", productivity, salesteamtools

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Categories Other Interesting Sites, Selling Tips

Closing Ratio's

6 Feb

According to Colleen Francis in her blog, “Sell More, Work Less, Make More Money”

The closing ratio on cold calls is 75:1 while the closing ratio on referred leads is 4:1

CSO Insight’s 2007 Survey says that

Sales people spend 18% of their time cold calling.

With a 40-hour work week (yeah, if we only worked 40 hours), that’s over 7 hours of cold calling resulting in …. frustration.

In other words, if you spent those 7 hours working on referrals instead of cold calling, you’d close 18 times more deals!

Tags: "closing ratio", "cold calling", referral

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Categories Referrals, Selling, Selling Tips

Inquisix Networking Night SUCCESS

1 Feb

You know those days (no, those nights) leading up to the big presentation? I mean the BIG presentation, the one you’ve spent a year working up to? You’ve been planning the presentation, you’re looking forward to it, you’ve been role-playing what the other party is going to say, you’re prepping your team members on what to expect. And then it’s show-time. That’s how I felt walking into the room Tuesday night.

The setting was perfect – leather chairs, white linen table cloths and bookshelves lining the walls. Just the theme we want our website to convey – the members-only club where business is conducted over a handshake.

What a great turnout – it was standing room only. Thank you everyone who attended!

We started the night with some networking and introductions. For Dave and I, who’ve been talking and emailing with beta members, it was great to put member faces to names. Then Rick Roberge stood up and spoke about why giving referrals is better than exchanging referrals and both are better than asking for referrals. No real surprise here, Rick was preaching to the choir!

Then it was our turn to walk through the Inquisix solution and answer questions. Did we have a scripted demo? Of course but as it is the members who provide the content, I opened the discussion with, “What do you like, dislike, find confusing or think we missed the boat on?” Again, thank you members for your participation! The discussion was lively, it was informative and it was valuable. The members that had already used Inquisix to exchange referrals were leading the charge and helping us explain to the other members the how’s and why’s on getting started – upload your contacts, search for prospective customers, make referral requests and network with members with matches.

The unanimous decision – “The more you put into Inquisix the more you get out and it’s worth it!”

Presentations like this are why I’m in sales. Wow, what an endorphin kick to feel the energy of a group of people all arriving at the same decision by the end of the night! They are ready to embrace the Inquisix way of exchanging referrals and bring their sales colleagues into the fold, too.

Happy Selling!

left to right –

Inquisix Chief Sales Officer Michael Kreppein, Sales Coach Rick Roberge, Members Jim Glynn, Mark Tremblay, Andrew Adams, Bill Perrier, Mike Sachleben and Dan Wilcox

Tags: "networking night", event, presentation, rick, roberge

Comments 5 Comments
Categories Events, Referrals, Selling

Tonight – Boston Networking Night

29 Jan

Don’t forget – tonight!Tuesday, January 29, 2008 starting at 6pm

Our guest speaker is Rick Roberge, the great sales coach and mentor from Dave Kurlan and Associates, who will speak from experience on why giving referrals is so beneficial to his business….and yours.

Location
Papa Razzi
2 Wall Street, Burlington, MA
781-229-0100

Schedule
6-6.30pm – Registration & Networking
6.30-7.30pm – Rick Roberge, Sales Coach
7.30pm-? – Networking, Inquisix Q&A

Appetizers & cash bar will be provided.

Tags: Events, face-to-face, networking

Comments 1 Comment
Categories Events

Cell phones – the new cigarette

28 Jan

I travel often and if I’m not entertaining clients or partners, then sometimes you will find me at a restaurant or bar by myself. I enjoy it because people watching is one of my favorite things – if I’m alone then there’s plenty of opportunity. Have you noticed? Nowadays, people play with their cell phones in bars & restaurants like they used to with cigarettes. It used to be by holding a cigarette, putting it to your mouth, exhaling….. you know what I mean. Now, it’s the cell phone – opening it, checking to see if anyone called/text/emailed in the last 5 minutes, responding…… you know what I mean. What will be the new fixation when they ban cell phones in bars & restaurants like they banned cigarettes?

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Categories Uncategorized

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!

Tags: "Geoffrey Janes", sales, Selling

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Categories Selling

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.