“You can’t have a better tomorrow if you’re thinking about yesterday.” — Charles Kettering
Quote of the Week – Great quote that should strike a chord in any sales rep, manager or business owner bemoaning their poor 2009 sales attainment. Sales people are usually very good at moving on whether the last month was a win or a dud but for anyone needing a reminder, read and internalize this quote. Now go get them!
Since many Inquisix members are also entrepreneurs and business owners (like us), perhaps you’ll find these articles as interesting as we do. The first article caused a big commotion and discussion amongst the Boston startup crowd. Isn’t that what good articles do?
Nigel Edelshain of Sales 2.0 was interviewed on yourBusinessChannel recently and he discussed what salespeople need to do today to win more business. Nigel’s call to action is to “…get together and share their rolodexes….to win business and keep their jobs.” He suggests starting online with LinkedIn, AllyForce, SalesConx or Inquisix.
http://www.youtube.com/v/5kEN_73ftZw&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1
There were two articles I read recently that really resonated with me although they’re about separate topics. Hence the long and unwieldy title. I think the first issue about saying, “No” to friend requests is a new phenomena that the rise in social networking has created. And technology has also come in between you and your customer when you want to get your message across to one or two people. Hmm, technology – you can use it to increase quantity at the cost of quality. Maybe these two topics have a common link after all.
Is Inside Sales growing at the expense of Outside Sales?
I’ve sold as & managed an inside sales group. And I’ve done the same in the field so I can see both sides of this argument. Perhaps has the market for a certain product matures overtime, the distribution of that product changes from field to inside to channel to online. Are many big-ticket B2B products in a new market sold over the phone? I doubt it. But I’m sure the add-on sales of laptops once the vendor has been chosen is an easy sale over the phone or via the web.
So many professionals & businesses don’t see the end of their way of doing things. Look at newspapers today. Horse carriage manufacturers 100 years ago. Is this the beginning of the end for outside sales? Time will tell.
Following up on my previous post, “Better & Lighter Ways to Deliver Your Message”, Seth Godin posted recently on a chart he thought up about the delivery mechanism of your message:
Have you seen the old Microsoft television ad of a guy walking right thru airport security with just his Windows Mobile device while the next guy struggles with laptop and projector? And then the Windows Mobile guy just sets his phone down on the conference table and it sends the presentation to the prospect’s projector without wires? Such a tease since it didn’t exist. And Microsoft certainly wasn’t going to the be first one to release such a useful device.
So when I saw this posting, I was very happy. It’s a two-fer: projector light enough to put in your pocket and a tablet that’s smaller than a laptop but more useful then a netbook.
Did anyone see JigSaw’s recent announcement that they’ve sent up an exchange where you can sell a referral to your contacts? It’s called “JigSaw Connect” and given the number of members they have (850K registered members), this could be the first exchange to make selling a referral by the individual sales rep successful.
Selling a referral to your customer isn’t anything new. Companies have been doing it at the corporate level for years. They call it the affiliate program or the business development partner program or just the reseller program. And this seems to be a well understood and accepted practice by the customers.
Individual sales reps and agents selling a referral to their customer in certain industries isn’t new, either. The introduction of a mortgage broker by the real estate agent that just found your new home probably comes with a kick-back to the agent from the mortgage broker. Maybe the referral fee is not as well understood by the consumer but I don’t think anyone would be surprised.
Now JigSaw is taking this to a new level. It’s at the rep level where an individual rep can earn $200 by referring their customer to any vendor that’s signed up to advertise on JigSaw Connect. And it’s many industries, even ones where traditionally the selling of referrals at the rep level is frowned upon. The only other site I’ve seen that offers this exchange of referrals for cash is SalesConx, a startup based in New York City. But they don’t have the membership scale that JigSaw has.
I’ll be very interested to see how JigSaw Connect fares. JigSaw itself received a lot of negative press early on because people were offended that their business information was sold anonymously. JigSaw will say that they’re just collecting business information differently than a Hoovers or OneSource but aren’t any different in the information they deliver. I’ve used JigSaw for years and Inquisix is a JigSaw data partner so I don’t have an issue with the service.
Still, selling referrals versus giving referrals is an interesting dilemma for some. BNI members give referrals to get them in return, i.e. “Givers Gain“. At Inquisix, we encourage members to give referrals to increase their reputation with their own customer. But no money is exchanged.
Would you anonymously sell the business cards you’ve collected to a data broker, i.e. JigSaw?
Would you sell a referral to a business contact you have?
There’s a big jump in effort, responsibility, and reputation between the 2 questions. Let’s see how this pans out.
In addition to the blogs listed to the right under the Inquisix blog roll, there are many other really interesting blogs that I read on a regular basis. Posts at these blogs that I recently found interesting enough to star and comment on are below:
All About Referral Selling 