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Posted on March 8th, 2010
Today is the first day of the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco and surprisingly the conference has grown significantly to around 350 attendees this year from only about 50 a few years ago. Geoffrey James of BNET is giving first hand impressions of the conference as it happens, and he posed the question as to why the conference has grown so significantly over the past few years despite the ongoing recession. The answer is that companies are trying to make the most out of their current sales and marketing organizations by utilizing the sales technologies on display at the show. If you aren’t making the most out of your current resources, then current strategies won’t be as successful. Time is money, especially in sales. And, every business – along with their sales people – should use every resource they can. That is the key to success.
In addition, it is important to make sure sales and marketing teams are aligned and working in harmony. Even if both departments are working full out all the time, it won’t matter if a rift exists between the two. The use of sales technologies and platforms can significantly reduce or even erase this void between sales and marketing groups in some organizations, therefore dramatically increasing productivity.
Are you at the conference? ADP panelist (and OneSource customer) Suzette Godwin Romer discussed how over 2,000 of their sales representatives use OneSource to find relevant, targeted sales opportunities. It’s important for sales people to use their resources to the fullest when it comes to leads – if you understand your prospect’s needs and company as a whole, the prospect will be more receptive to what you are saying.
Posted on March 5th, 2010
In this era of web 2.0, where social networking sites dominate the social and now the business scene, it is difficult to tell just how beneficial some of these sites are for B2B purposes. OneSource Information Services recently conducted its own primary research on the topic, asking B2B sales professionals about the types of information resources and tools they use for building their sales pipelines and qualifying opportunities. They found that most social media tools are not having a large impact on the way they research companies and contacts:
- 66% of respondents suggested LinkedIn is “significantly” or “moderately” changing their methodologies
- 23% said the same of Personal & Professional Blogs
- Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube did not achieve mentionable numbers (4% or less)
To some this might be surprising, but to me it makes perfect sense. I have heard again and again from a range of marketing and sales professionals that LinkedIn is providing real value to business professionals, as opposed to the other social networking sites. While a site like Twitter can help you keep connected and up to date, it takes too much effort with too little a reward for marketing purposes. Sales reps may occasionally catch a tweet from a prospect or customer that gives them valuable information to use during a call, but for the most part LinkedIn will be their go-to source of info.
Check out the survey results here: http://bit.ly/aZop5H, and be on the look out later this month for more results from the OneSource survey.
Posted on March 3rd, 2010
Sales is a multi-step process that takes time and persistence. For many sales professionals, obtaining timely, accurate information is the key to opening the door of a sales prospect – but what do you do once that door is open? One of the most important steps in the sales process is following up with your prospects. The February issue of the most recent Smart Selling Tools newsletter provides some helpful insights on this topic.
Following up is so important because it keeps your conversation relevant in your prospect’s mind and calls them to action – which is why timeliness is essential. If you wait too long, the details of your conversation are forgotten and the sense of urgency is lost.
The newsletter states that: “Often, the amount of time spent following up with a prospect is many more times greater than the time spent in front of a prospect. If we can flip that ratio around and spend more time with prospects than we do following up, it will get us one big step closer to closing more sales.” So how to do this? You cannot just wave a wand and hope that you can start to spend less and less time following up with the same results.
In order to expedite the follow-up process while maintaining relevancy, your follow-up documents should contain all the information your prospect needs to lock them into a sale: tell them why they need what you’re selling, remind them of the benefits your product or service can have to them, and then show them how to act on it.
Posted on February 26th, 2010
Everyone in business has goals that they set for themselves periodically, but meeting those goals on time is something that not everyone achieves. No one knows this better than people in sales. Ask a few sales reps how they plan to meet their goals this quarter and you’ll hear a lot of well-meaning, but vague responses like “I’m going to work harder and with greater focus than before.” That’s all well and good but you need more of a plan than that to make tangible improvements in sales performance
Tibor Shanto recently listed a few methods on the Sales Dog Blog. First off, sales reps should become very familiar with their client base. Knowing each client on an almost intimate level can give them a better understanding of where their best efforts are needed. They can then consider getting rid of the bottom feeders: those clients who take up the most time but produce the least revenue and are the most likely to disappear from your client base in near future. These clients are not worth the time; instead reps should be focusing on other leads and their more dedicated and/or profitable existing clients.
Another thing to do is to segment your client base. If it’s unclear what to segment it by, try first separating by smaller and larger clients. Smaller clients typically have a smaller payoff but also take less time to close, and vice versa for larger ones. Depending on your business, it should become clear the ratio of small to large clients that you should be going after that optimizes your revenue vs. the amount of time you spend selling.
Keep close track of your deals and over time you’ll begin to see some trends developing. You should be able to tell who your top prospects are based upon the data you have gathered. Keep a database that not only tags each client by segment but also has a record of all of the time and resources you have spent on them. Periodically, you will be able to do a simple analysis of the data which reveal the winners and losers among your prospects. Go one step further by using a sales intelligence and prospecting tools that will provide even more insights about each of your prospects and help you refine your segmentation process. It sounds like a lot of effort, but in the end you’ll have each of your leads placed into segments ranking from most desirable to least, allowing you to focus on those that will make the most of your time.
That’s time well spent.
Posted on February 23rd, 2010
While there are lot of marketing executives tweeting, blogging, and podcasting about sales these days, many sales professionals say they are too busy prospecting and closing deals to pay much attention to RSS feeds, search engine optimization and micro-blogging. For all intents and purpose, their social media tool of trade remains the phone.
Innovation can pay off, but there is also an opportunity cost to social media. Time is money. So it’s wise for sales people to be discriminating when trying to decide which, if any, social media channels make sense.
However, there is one important aspect of social media that no sales executive can afford to ignore, and that is how they are perceived online – because their mistakes can come back to haunt them.
As George F. Snell of HighTalk.com pointed out recently, social media gives the illusion of intimacy and privacy – but you are being watched. A friend of George’s seeking a new job asked him if he should be concerned that the friend had engaged in some online political debates that were appearing in search engine results. The answer, unfortunately, was yes.
George cited a recent study commissioned by Microsoft surveying more than 1,200 HR people. Seven out of ten reported that they had rejected applicants because of information that they had discovered online.
Taking baby steps when it comes to social media and sales may be a wise plan of action, depending on your situation. But when it comes to how we are perceived online, we all must think and act like adults. Borrowing from the Hippocratic Oath (the ancient code of ethics for physicians) when it comes to social media, first do no harm. Think before you post.
Posted on February 19th, 2010
I found another great article on sales training was written by Grant Cardone that continues a thought from my last post on how to correctly implement training. Grant and I share the same opinion that sales training is not only important but is actually a necessity. The question is how to correctly implement that training. [more...]
Posted on February 17th, 2010
In the Sales and Management Blog, Paul McCord recently blogged about the importance of supporting your sales team. I agree that it is crucial for managers to not simply just “manage” but to also teach and serve their sales team. Sales reps are the backbone of the sales process, yet they are often underappreciated and used as scapegoats for the shortcomings of [more...]
Posted on February 10th, 2010
So you have been talking with a prospect for the past few weeks. You have explained to them multiple times how great your product is and why they need it. You pick up the phone and make a call to the prospect expecting to move forward toward a close, only to find out that they [more...]
Posted on February 9th, 2010
The follow up call is usually the most important, and the most difficult, call in the sales cycle. Without an organized plan of attack it is easy to lose the interest of the prospect even if they were very responsive during the initial cold call. In an article written by Jim Domanski, president of Teleconcepts [more...]
Posted on February 3rd, 2010
Last week I posted about an interview between Chad Levitt and Kipp Bodnar – this week I came across an interesting interview on the Selling to Big Companies blog in which Chad was the interviewee.
Chad talks about how important it is for salespeople to market themselves, and he’s right. In order to maximize results, sales [more...]
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