This blog is not about a new term for sales prospecting, it is more about what your mindset is when needing more prospective clients.
When your mindset is to “find” or “get you” some prospects you might be focused more on finding people you can get something from.
When your mindset is to find new people you can build a relationship with, it changes from what you can get to what you can give, as relationships require a give and take.
Use the relationships you have to introduce you to new relationships. Get to know other business people without trying to qualify them to buy your products. When you are geniunely interested in others and how you can help them, most people will reciprocate and be happy to help you.
Here is an action item. Contact five people you know or do business with and ask them to introduce you to someone they know that you don't know. This is not a referral for business it is an introduction, a chance for you to meet someone else. Ask them to introduce you, not just give you their name. The introduction can be via email, phone or in person. Next blog will cover how to handle the introduction of your new contact.
Most of us have heard the definition of Insanity, “Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” In most sales departments as well as in the company in general, a little “Insanity” usually exists and it is part of my role to shed light on it and make changes that produce different results. Increasing your B2B Sales will not happen by accident or just doing more of what is not working. It is worth stepping back to see what does not work as well as what does. Preston Pond, co-founder of The Center of Organizational Design says, “Organizations are designed perfectly for the results they produce.” Design includes the strategy, structure, culture and execution. Let me provide you with food for thought in these four areas that might provide some light for you to assess your current design.
Strategy: Do you have a long-term (3-5 years) and short-term strategy? A good balance between both provides an effective mix to fuel business growth. By keeping an eye on where you are heading (3-5 year vision) will help you maintain the perspective to develop processes and systems that support long term growth instead of simply fixing todays problems for today’s results. If you are an organization or sales person that is constantly putting out fires you are most likely designed for short-term goals. On the other hand if your organization works to build systems and processes that not only solve today’s problems, but also streamlines work in the future or improve customer service, you are better designed for growth.
Structure: This is a look at your people and roles. Do you have an organization chart that spells out the roles needed to make things work smoothly? Do you then have the right people in place to cover those roles? I often find, especially in small businesses, that people are asked to do conflicting roles or perform duties that they are not particularly strong at. Many of these are associated with the web such as creating and maintaining a Linkedin profile, creating Facebook pages, tweeting, blogging, creating attractive emails on top of their calling and database managemnet. All of these tools are great when used with the right strategy, but overloading an effective phone caller, presenter or closer with these duties will usually work against you. Production, customer service or administration might have the same scenarios. If you don’t have the right talent internally outsourcing is an affordable way to go.
Culture: Let’s begin by defining culture. Preston Pond defines culture as, “The set of shared attitudes, practices, and beliefs of members within the organization.” It is what we do, the attitudes behind, and the belief driving our attitudes and actions. Culture impacts the effectiveness of strategy. It is important to understand your culture to have realistic expectations with your strategies. Culture stems from leadership and no matter what a mission statement says, what the leader believes and passes down to the organization, is what forms the basis of the culture. If you want to read more on culture and a case study of two companies, you can find it here.
Execution: Maps are only good if you read them and plans are only valuable if you follow through on them. The failure to implement or execute on initiatives, to dos’, action items or sales calls will kill all the well designed culture, strategy or structure. When it is all said and done our results will show us what we “did or did not do.” So execution becomes most important but without a sound strategy and structure you will limit yourself or work harder than necessary.
With the year end approaching it might be a good time to evaluate your design for next year.
Improving your closing ratio is all about working smarter and 
harder. Once you have proven to yourself you can produce consistently at an acceptable level most good sales people want to sell more. Since sales is a numbers game, doing more of what you do now to make sales seems like a good formula for success. Unfortunately, sales is also a time game, and there is only so much of it in each day. There comes a time when you are maxed out and this is when working smarter and harder can come in handy.
Three ways to work smarter would be to find accounts that bring in more business for the time invested, have your existing accounts buy more frequently, and improve your closing ratio.
Here are five keys to improving your closing ratio.
1. Be more selective with who you approach
Evaluate your best customers or clients and create a profile called “My Ideal Client.” What are the most obvious characteristics that you could look for in new prospects? The more you drill down the closer you will be to creating focus. It can start with a vertical industry or business size, but consider things such as culture, decision makers personality or role, referred or not, if the company is strugging or succeeding as well. You need to find the common areas of your best clients so you can go look for more that match this profile. This profile has proven to be a key to success.
2. Be more diligent at qualifying
An early no is better than a late no. Remember you only have so much time in a day so spend it with the most qualified prospects. Quit simply bidding or quoting anyone that wants a price and start qualifying harder. Have they expressed their pain, problem, goal or objective to justify making a purchase? If no, walk away. Do they have the resources to purchase or are they simply shopping? Do they fit your ideal customer profile?
3. Slow down the b2b sales process
Once in a great whiile we run into a prospect that is ready to buy yesterday with check book in hand. The rest of the time they might say they are in a hurry but things usually slow down once it is time for a decision. Keep things moving but don’t let your fear of losing their interest or your hope for a quick close compromise your sales process. Be thourough with you discovery process. Taking short cuts will always come back to bite you.
4. Work a referral system
We all know referrals are our best prospects. I would also tell you that most sales people do not proactively help their customers or clients produce more referrals for them. Create a referral system. The link will take you to an article on referrals.
5. Go beyond the traditional selling process and become part of your prospects buying process/system/culture.
This last step is really the masters’ course in selling. It is not required to make some increase in your closing ratio, but for those who want to push their closing percentage up in the 75%+ range need to learn about this step. It is hard to explain but Sharon Drew Morgen in her book, “Dirty Little Secrets – Why buyers Can’t Buy and Seller Can’t Sell, and What YOU Can Do About It!”, spells it all out. In a nut shell it is taking off your selling hat and becoming a consultant who can ask questions that allow decision makers to explore the internal systems that help buying decisions along and ones that slow or stop them in their tracks. Let me just say this, it can be as simple as one person not wanting to deal with an attitude of another manager or employee that stops a smart business purchase from taking place.It is not all about business, as there are hidden interpersonal agendas that never are spoken of that kill many deals.
In any economy, the people that work smart and hard will prevail. Now get out of here and close some business:).
Should you leave a voicemail message or should you hang up when cold calling? I have seen both work, but with caller ID just hanging up becomes a little more obvious to the prospect and can work against you. I suggest polishing up on your voice messages to increase the number of call backs and position yourself as someone your prospect would like to talk with. Leaving a bunch of missed calls will probably not peak a quality prospects interest in speaking with you.
Don't give up if your phone does not start ringing off the hook with call backs. If you are calling on busy people it will probably require more than one call to get through. Still, if your messages establish credibility, piques curiosity and closes with confidence you will see progress.
Jill Konrath, sales strategist and bestselling author of Selling to Big Companies and SNAP Selling has a very good short video on How to Leave Effective Voicemail Messages. If you follow her advice and examples you should be well on your way to more appointments and sales.
Here are the three points Jill suggests to improve your message on her video.
1. Establish credibility by showing you understand what is happening in their market place.
2. Pique their curiosity by stressing your value proposition or what might have been realized by one of your other clients.
3. Close confidently by sounding equal to the prospect not like a self serving sales person needing to get something from them.
My last tip would be to have a strategy when leaving multiple messages with one prospect. Plan more than your original message. Make sure there is value and connection between your messages and keep them brief.
If you want to see more of what Jill has to offer, find her at www.sellingtobigcompanies.com.
If you or your sales team wants help crafting your message give me a call and we can set up a time to do that 916-596-3713.
If you have managed to maintain your sales volume and customer base during the past 14 months, I say well done! If business has been down or you feel like you have taken a beating during a weak economy, make sure you have not weakened your approach to opportunities.
Here are a few reminders to keep you selling from a strength position.
Remember Who You Are - You are not your sales. You are the person who helps customers make quality decisions and push through their uncertainty to act. You can be confident in that fact day in and day out.
Qualify Strong - Don't let yourself fall into the trap of "trying" to win every opportunity that crosses your path. You might need to say "no" to more opportunities today to allow you time to find the customers who prefer to buy from companies like yours. This will also allow you to have more time to do a better job at selling than your competition.
Add and Re-sell Your Value - Add unexpected value to your current customers and make sure they understand that it is why they choose to do business with you. Also, ask them why they continue to do business with you and your company. This will help both you and your customer recommit to what is important to them.
It can be very easy to fall back to order taking and slave selling (doing whatever they ask, good or bad), in hopes of winning a deal. Don't do it. Challenge poor buying practices. Remember, you want to practice consultative selling. Be the consultant your customers rely on.
I have received a number of searches seeking sales manager evaluation criteria. Here is a list to consider in your hiring and evaluation process.
LEADERSHIP - How effective is the sales manager at providing leadership for their sales team and department? To what degree is the team working toward long and short term goals?
STRATEGIC - How effective is the manager at providing strategic directions and approaches that can be duplicated and produce more cost effective results?
COACHING - How effective is the managers' coaching techniques with the sales people? Are sales people improving their selling ability and results?
SYSTEMS - To what degree does the sales manager develop and implement systems that help drive business, monitor progress and allow for ownership to evaluate the department?
MOTIVATION - To what degree does your sales manager provide motivation directly or indireclty to the sales team?
EXPECTATIONS - How effective is the sales manager at providing clear expectation to the sales people that are aligned with the business goals?
EDUCATION - To what degree is the education the sales manager provides improving the sales team?
TRAINING - How effective is the direct or indirect training the sales manager provides to the team?
COMRADERY - Does the sales manager provide comradery for your team and if so is it resulting in more teamwork and improved sales?
ACCOUNTABILITY - To what degree is there accountability among the sales people?
RECOGNITION - Does the sales manager provide or facilitate recognition that results in a stronger sales person and team?
REPORTING - Does the sales manager receive and provide reports that allow for effective management and improved sales of the sales department?
FORECASTING - How reliable are the sale forecasts produced by the sales department?
SALES RESULTS - How effective is the sales team at achieving the company sales targets?
PROJECTS - How has the sales manager done at completed assigned projects?
COOPERATION - How cooperative is the manager with the other managers in the organization?
You can easily put these into a rating scale format from 1-10 if you prefer. A sales manager should not only be measured by what he/she does but how effective their work is through their team and in conjunction with the long term goals of the company.
If you have sales reps spinning their wheels, pumping out proposals but not closing an acceptable percentage of business, they might need some help with qualifying and managing the sales process. In order to manage your sales people easily and effectively, you need to clarify expectations and build in some accountability steps.
Here are five ways to improve sales efforts by improving skills to qualify prospects and build accountability into sales processes.
Clarify and document your qualifiers. Make sure you define and document who a qualified prospect is for your business. As an example, I have listed the following criteria I use to qualify my clients:
• Small privately owned business
• 1-4 sales people
• B2B selling model
• Does not have a dedicated sales manager
• There is a market for the product and services that are being sold
• The company is willing to invest in infrastructure with growth in sales
• Owners are willing to use an outsourced resource
In addition, require your reps to document to their manager how each prospect they pursue meets these requirements before they move forward. You can build the qualifiers into a Discovery Form.
Use a Discovery Form that will outline what a rep needs to know to qualify the prospect and build their Letter of Understanding. To learn more about a Discovery Form and download a sample click here.
Add a Letter of Understanding to your process. The Letter of Understanding will document that the rep understands the prospects current situation, their goals, needs and problems, and what the next steps in the sales process should be. The prospect will confirm that the rep has it right. The manager will now have a tool that lets them know their rep has a viable prospect and is planning the sales process as the company prefers. (Sample Letter of Understanding)
Require completion of Discovery Form and Letter of Understanding before proceeding to a presentation. This step builds in a true accountability step versus leaving it up to the sales reps opinion of when to move things along.
Make sure the reps understand and buy into a consultative sales process. If a rep has a lot of activity and not a lot of results, they may have been taught selling through the "show and tell" method versus a consultative approach. Show and tell reps are always trying to push their ideas, features and benefits onto a customer (anybody and everybody) in hopes of winning them over. The consultative rep understands the value of qualifying and discovery and will be more patient land that will lead to more sales.
The idea is to build real accountability into the sales process and stop reps from showing and telling. Some reps will have a resistance to new processes, but if they understand the value and how it will help them, they will begin to use the tools and the quality of opportunities will be improved.
Have you walked into a selling situation where the prospects seem completely sold on another vendor or approach and shows little interest in hearing about your solution? Sometimes it might feel as if they are defending their preference as a protection from hearing something new. Let's say they like apples and you are selling mangos. Apples might be a good solution for them, but the mangos you represent are better. How can you help your prospect
disconnect from their love of apples and be open and begin to
focus on mangos?
First, have the right attitude (no one sale matters). Don't resist their like for apples or defend your mangoes. Be open to learn.
Second, don't make assumptions, go deep into discovery. Find out what they like about apples and why they believe they are the right solution. Have them explain how apples will solve their business objectives if they know what they are. Ask quality questions to learn more about company issues, problems or objectives. You end up learning what you need without creating a wall between apples and mangos.
Third, resist the urge to say "mangos do that too but better" as you hear opportunities to share. Stay in discovery and save it for later.
Finally, when you have gained a clear understanding of their problems, goals or objectives and how they understand apples will help them, use this type of phrasing as your "disconnect and re-focus."
"You have done a very good job at identifying apples as a good solution for you. We don't sell apples, but many of our customers used to buy apples as their solution until they learned how mangos were able to exceed their apple expectations. Would you be interested in learning more about why others are choosing mangos to solve the problems you have expressed and attain your objectives in a more effective and efficient manner? (Of course using specifics they share will be better)
If you get a yes - you have just completed your disconnect and re-focus and it is time to get back to your selling process.
One last reminder: What you resist will persist, when you are okay with someone liking apples you give them room to listen to what mangos have to offer.
Business relationships are no different than personal relationships. Things can go awry when we take things for granted, become less appreciative or neglect the details that first built the strong relationship. When a competitive large sales opportunity presents itself with an existing client or customer an easy trap to fall into is, trusting your key contact (the one with the strong relationship) to do your selling for you.
When you are servicing an account, making small or average sales you will tend to work with the same person for all the buying decisions. You build a strong relationship and there is trust being built. When a new system or major purchase is being considered it is easy to continue selling to the same person you always have in the past, trusting them to do your selling up. This usually happens for a couple of reasons. One; you are getting good vibes; they are saying they will recommend you and two; it is sometimes awkward to work around them to their boss and peers.
On the other hand, the competitor is going straight to the top to sell down, instead of up. If they get to the top level and convince them of their value, your years of relationship can be in serious jeopardy. You obviously don't want this to happen, so I recommend the following sales tips to prevent losing what should be yours.
- Do your job. Remember you have a job to do, not just a relationship to build. As a sales professional we are there to help buyers make quality decisions, hopefully in our favor. If there are new buyers with authority to make a larger purchase they deserve to hear from you so they can make a quality decision just as your regular contact has in the past.
- Don't take anything for granted. Every buying decision must be justified. Never let the past be the justification for a new buying decision. Perform your quality discovery and present a solid ROI. Don't let the "good feeling" from your solid relationship cause you to take a short cut.
- Don't get bogged in technology and features. When you are servicing an account you will tend to discuss features and technology more as the buyer is already sold on the strategic advantage of doing so. When a larger purchase is in play and new buyers are involved, make sure you are talking about their strategic objectives and how your offering will help them solve their high level problems. Talking tech or features to higher level buyers will weaken your sales position.
- Take the lead. You don't need permission from your long term contact to do your job. Lead them in a way that makes them look like a champion for doing business all the years that they have.
When things are comfortable it is easy to fall asleep on the job. If you approach each sale as if you were winning it away from your competitor you will stay sharp, serve your customer and preserve a strong relationship for the future.
Someone on Linkedin asked the question, "What is missing in the sales profession today." I believe if you fill the leadership gaps in companies the sales people will follow. Leadership gaps exist in three areas, the sales team, sales management and the company.
I don't see much of a difference in today's B2B salespeople as in years past (30 years of selling, managing and consulting). Salespeople will follow quality leadership and leaders among the team will emerge.
This does not mean the leaders need to be replaced, but they do need to know how to lead a sales team (see sales management process diagram in this link) and what a sales team needs from the company to meet expectations. The sales leader (manager) needs leadership and support from the company to be the best they can be.
To build sustainable sales success, with people who represent your company well, requires leadership working toward this end. It is not much different in other disciplines or departments. People like to be led and their best will come out under quality leadership and a company that supports them.
In today's world of constant improvement, doing things better and faster, and new software every day, it is easy to look for new solutions to old problems. I believe many times today's problems simply require time tested solutions with a few new tools.