It’s the community not the application

19 Sep

I enjoyed reading a posting from Brian Carroll, a fellow blogger in the B2B lead generation and sales effectiveness space. The recent posting discusses Lead Management and the challenges in effectively generating leads and measuring program effectiveness, especially as marketing transfers leads to sales.

Towards the end of the post he comments, “It’s certainly is not easy, so start with the mindset that lead management is a process and make that process as simple a possible. Don’t forget that software does NOT create collaboration.”

Dave and I are in complete agreement with this. From Dave’s experience as a CTO at a social networking site, he’s always telling me, “It’s the community that matters, not the product, we just facilitate it.” And I nod my head in agreement. I’ve been the sales liaison at several companies for their new SFA initiative. Although I’m the sales manager, I’d argue that the system first needed to support the rep’s daily activities – calling, to-do’s, calendar, quoting and forecasting. Once reps adopted the SFA system, then management’s wish list could be implemented. Otherwise, the reps would not adopt the software and we’d all be frustrated that the software did not improve productivity.

So as Inquisix gets closer to beta rollout (email me at msk at inquisix dot com if you’re interested in an invitation) we continue to remind ourselves that it’s YOU and the community that makes Inquisix worth using.

Humor from SalesLadder

13 Sep

The SalesLadder emailed me this funny comic today.

GlobalWarming

Do Not Call Registry – 139M numbers have spoken

11 Sep

Have you registered your home number with the US Federal Government’s “Do Not Call” Registry? A good many of you have, as the registry database contains over 139 million home and cell numbers listed. I’d say that 139M phone numbers registered is a clear indication of how people feel about cold calls!

Of course, being registered doesn’t stop all telemarketers from calling you at dinner time or early weekend mornings. Non-profits, government agencies and companies you’ve given your permission to contact you can still telemarket to you. That’s where caller-id comes in handy at my house – when the phone rings and the handset says it’s a private number, it’s not answered. People/companies I’ve given my number to identify themselves when they call.

Did you know that the do-not-call registration is only good for 5 years? So 5 years after you registered your home number on the site, telemarketers can start calling you again. You may want to revisit the do-not-call site soon to see when you should re-register your home number.

I find it ironic to have registered my own home number when I’m a salesperson who’s livelihood depends in part on my ability to successfully cold call. What does it say that even as my employers expect me to cold call into businesses, I don’t want others to cold call to me? I wonder if the government will consider a do-not-call-business registry? Then the only people who could call you at work are non-profits, the government and companies you’ve given your permission to contact you.

No Wires. No Hands. All Business.

4 Sep

That’s the tagline for the on-the-go sales person’s dream – a wireless headset that works with your landline phone, cell phone and Skype account. Finally – the one headset that will work with all of my phones. Now I don’t have to have one headset over my left ear and another over my right ear.

Plantronics Phone

I’m a big proponent of the selling tip – “When on the phone, always stand up and use a headset to talk to customers/prospects.” Why? Simply because by standing up and letting your hands move freely, your voice tone and quality change dramatically for the better. Since the person on the other line can’t see you, there’s no way for you to use your body language to communicate your excitement for the solution you’re selling. So instead of utilizing several methods to communicate, you only have your voice when making a telephone call. And your voice will come across much stronger and vibrant when you are standing and gesturing.

Years ago when I was a telesales manager at Sybase we demonstrated this tip to the team. We put each person in front of a video camera. We had them sit down, pick up the phone and make a prospect call while we video taped them. Next, we gave them a headset, told them to stand up and make another call. Then the telesales rep could watch their videos and see the dramatic difference. Every one of them came away convinced.

Try it yourself – use your web cam to video yourself making calls sitting in front of your monitor and then making calls while standing and gesturing. Share the results as a video link in the comments section. Maybe the tag line should be “No Wires. All Hands. All Business.“

Good read – Strategic Negotiation by Brian Dietmeyer

28 Aug

I’ve recently re-read a good business book on negotiations, “Strategic Negotiation” by Brian Dietmeyer. Instead of the old win-lose or even the newer win-win negotiation styles, Brian advocates a style I’d call 1+1=3. Some of the results from his surveys suggest that while negotiations are becoming more complex, the competitors for the buyers are behaving irrationally. In the book, he outlines a 4 step process towards successful negotiation. Parts of the process are hard work or even impossible since you don’t know what the buyer is really thinking. However, the process is more than an interesting intellectual exercise since it helps position your standing with the buyer and helps your management understand the parameters of the deal.

I especially found valuable Brian’s discussion of determining each party’s wish list and the consequences if either party walks away. The questioning of the buyer required to validate the wish-list and walk-away areas not only helps you better understand the buyer but also ensures that the buyer has truly thought out all the details of what they want to purchase. This understanding also helps you determine what kind of power you have. Your negotiating power is derived from the difference between your proposal (based on your knowledge of the buyer’s wish list) and their walk-away choices. The bigger the difference the more power you have in negotiating.

By making your proposal better for the buyer then choosing to walk away and then by trading items on each other’s wish list to finalize the negotiation, you’ve created that 1+1=3 situation.

What is your best referral system?

21 Aug

A great question asked on LinkedIn a few weeks asking to share your best referral system.

My answer would be –

After customer referrals, my best referral system is through my peers in sales. We all have customers that we’ve sold to, either for our current employer, or past employers. Often, these customers have purchased multiple times from me while I was at different companies. I also have a network of sales peers that I keep in touch with since we’re often selling complimentary solutions or selling to the same types of customers (either by industry or job title). I often trade a referral into my customer base for a referral into a peer’s customer base when I know that my customer would be interested in meeting with my sales peer. It’s a win-win-win-win scenario as both sales reps get to meet a new prospect via a trusted referral and both customers get to learn more about something they’re interested in.

If you want to read all the responses, then jump to LinkedIn.

Cold Calling (in)effectiveness

14 Aug

No sales rep truly likes cold calling, even the ones that claim to thrive on it. With admin assistants screening for their bosses and many businesses utilizing caller-id now, it’s very hard to get a prospect on the phone. Of course there’s the standard “call early, call late, call often” method of cold calling but it’s still hit-or-miss. And how many times have you heard someone say, “Hello” in a cheerful voice only to have them change their tone because they realized they accidentally picked up the phone to a cold-caller? So while cold-calling is good for a few things – good practice for your elevator pitch is the only thing that comes to mind – it’s quite ineffective in today’s world. And a recent survey by CSO Insights reflects this ineffectiveness. Their “2007 Sales Performance Report” pointed out several key survey results:

  • 18% of a sales rep’s time is spent on cold calling
  • 41% of their leads are self-generated even though
  • 70% of the reps say their own lead generation needs improvement

And many sales reps consider following up on leads transferred by marketing to be not much more than a cold calling exercise – 53% of them consider Marketing’s leads as poor.

So maybe it’s time to start pro-actively and systematically leveraging that sales network of yours!

Selling by referrals via your network

7 Aug

This blog is about sharing ideas on how to become better at sales – to internalize a selling process that you’re comfortable with, that’s repeatable and ultimately successful. The central idea to this blog is the concept of network-based selling – also called referral-based selling. Selling to new customers is hard work especially the prospecting part of the sales cycle. Why else would we get the big bucks if it was easy! Think how much better it would be to get an introduction to a new prospect by someone in your network that the prospect trusts and respects.

After 10 years of selling technology solutions for big companies I transitioned to selling at start-ups and learned that it’s a different sell. Where once I had the corporate marketing and business development staff behind me and a well defined market and product in front of me, I now had the heady job of selling new technology solutions to new prospects that had not ever heard of my company and were not eager to answer my phone call. Where I once had brand awarness, I now pushed value proposition. But thru these 20 years of selling, I’ve continued to improve my selling skills, learning from mentors, keeping what worked for me and throwing out what didn’t.

So I hope you find some valuable tidbits of information in here, some that you’ll think is obvious but a good reminder and others that you’ll think are interesting enough to try for yourself. And if you do try, please share your results with the community.

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