The more information you have about each prospect, the better you will meet their needs, and possibly uncover more opportunities for your sale. A good salesperson understands that each client’s needs are different. Taking the time to understand their unique pain points will allow you to market your product better. Take a step back, look at the problems they have, and then go through the attributes of your solution and try to match them up these pain points. If you focus on remedying the prospect’s problems instead of trying to sell them on something they might not care about, they will be much more likely to take a vested interest in your product.

Don’t just use a general sales pitch. Customize your conversation/pitch for each prospect in order to engage and interest them in what you are selling. If you have taken the time before the call to figure out how your product fits their problems, this should be easy. Show your prospect that your product or solution is the best one to meet their needs instead of telling them how great it is.

While this requires a little extra effort for each call, it will pay off in the form of many more closed deals. Prepare for each call, understand your prospect and their needs, and devise a plan of attack in the form of an outline that fits certain aspects of your product to their needs.

Geoffrey James of the bNET Sales Machine writes about such an outline in a recent post. The pyramid of sales standards, as he calls it, outlines selling standards from the ground up. This set of standards works particularly well because of the pyramid structure, where each layer relies on the foundation, or layers, below it. As a sales rep, it is paramount to have a solid foundation of sales activities and skills, such as making the right number of calls, managing prospects in an organized manner, etc. Having a weak foundation, or not handling the basics well, will cause your whole pyramid (your selling strategy and effectiveness as a sales rep) to crumble. In fact, you might not even reach the top of the pyramid (repeat business and ultimately being profitable) if you do not have a sturdy foundation of the essential sales skills.

James calls the second layer of the pyramid ‘Sales Skills’, or your skills in terms of how you handle the call, how you deal with prospects, and how and when you followup. While it is key to be organized and thoughtful in creating a solid foundation of sales activity, a large amount of effort is needed to improve you’re on the call and followup skills. Along with lots of practice, being prepared for the call is essential. If you take the time to do the research on your prospect’s company, you will be much better off when you actually make the call. Research will lead you to a better understanding of your prospect’s needs and how your solution can fill them. You also might find a news alert that gives you an opening: a new executive hire at your prospect’s company, or the company being given a large amount of funding, etc. Finding the right news event cannot only give you an advantage but can sometimes result in an easy sale. News may be hard to come by all the time, but the research will always pay off on some level.

However it is certain that you can better manage prospects and sales calls if you’re getting the latest and greatest updates about them all the time- whether it be from social networks, browsing the web etc. There are in fact platforms out there that can aggregate all this “hot” information for you, eliminating the majority of the time you spend researching so you can have more time to focus on closing the sale and improving the top levels of your “sales pyramid”. You can check out one of these platforms here.

 While the practice of not letting leads go cold is widespread, increasing the speed at which the leads are contacted after they first appear may be more crucial than is currently perceived by the majority of sales and marketing individuals. A new study by Leads360 shows that there is a direct correlation between the time it takes to contact a lead and conversion rate. According to the study, 88% of all leads that eventually convert were called within the first 24 hours. Even more astonishing is this figure: “sales leads called within 60 seconds of being first generated online showed a fourfold (391%) advantage over average conversion rates”. While it may be a bit of a pipedream to think that you can always get to your leads within a minute of them popping up, this stat still shows the importance of getting to your leads quickly. The faster you can get to the leads, the more likely they are to still have your product top of mind, and the easier it will be to convert them into an opportunity.

 That being said, don’t sacrifice speed for quality here. Don’t call the prospect if you aren’t fully prepared (for instance if you haven’t done any research into the prospects needs and how to position your solution to them appropriately). The fact that you called them within ten minutes of them opting in doesn’t mean squat if you have no idea who they are and why they might need your product. Take a few minutes to figure out who you’re talking to and what their needs are, and then make the call.

Creating an argument to convince your prospect to buy depends on your product/service. If you have a great product that dominates the competition, you need to formulate an argument to exhibit this to your prospect. Demonstrate the value that your product will provide with real numbers if you have them; talk about the significant ROI that your product has shown vs. your competitors. Talk about how it drives revenue, productivity, pipeline, or whatever is appropriate for you. If your product is more in the middle of the pack, consider why your customers choose you over others. Is your product less expensive? Can you provide more ease of use than others? Figure out what advantage you have over others and create an argument around it. Again, demonstrating the value of your product/service is the key and you must do this through showing hard evidence or with a very convincing argument.

Positioning can be broken down into three categories: Attributes and benefits of the product, the user application of the product, and the how it compares to the competition. 

• Attributes and Benefits: If you’re struggling to come up with substantial evidence that demonstrates your product’s value, list out the attributes of your product and the benefit to the user that each attribute gives.
• User Application: Then if possible, try and show how one or many of the attributes of the product contributes to the ROI for the user. Next, go into the user application of the product: Who are the users and why do they need your product? What do they find important about your product?
• Competition: Finally, once you have identified the users, take each of your major competitors and brainstorm a list for each on how your product is better.

Using this methodology will more than adequately prepare you to position your product. Combining proper positioning with knowledge about the prospect and the prospect’s organization is a sure-fire recipe for a successful sales call.

 When you are selling a product or service, you need to remember that you are also selling yourself. “Each of us sells a certain set of attributes and intangibles that create meaning and value.” says Anthony Iannarino in a recent post from The Sales Blog. Just like the car salesmen, you cannot just assume that a slightly better product or a lower price will win over a prospect.

 It is critical to keep your personal brand aligned with the positioning of your product or service. Your customer wants the best product and one that fits in his/her organization. If there is something “off” about you, or if your personality doesn’t seem to fit your product or service, it will reflect on what you are selling. (Wouldn’t you feel uneasy if someone who sounds like a computer geek tried to sell you sports equipment?) 

While it’s essential to keep the professionalism in your approach, it’s also important to make sure you have your customer’s or prospect’s trust. On top of being personable, make the prospect think that you know what you are talking about and that your personality fits with the product. This will build your company brand and will reflect well on you in the future.

 A good way to do this is to have your reps attempt to outline this plan in writing, telling them to try and work backwards from their monthly, quarterly, or even yearly goals. In a recent article on Sales2.com, Lee Salz discusses how to help your sales reps develop a framework for their sales plan. Lee describes how you can give them some structure for the plan by showing them the different components the plan should contain. These include sections on current accounts, top prospects, tracking sales metrics, sales training, and needs of the sales rep. While listing current accounts and prospects is important, also having the rep outline how he/she plans to retain and develop current accounts as well as how they plan to gain more insight into prospects is just as critical. Down the road when they feel a prospect slipping away, they can turn back to their written plan which can help them determine which steps to take to help win the prospect back.

 Tracking sales metrics is also important because it will allow the rep to see where they are having the most success, and where they are wasting their time. It is essential to have the method of recording outlined in the plan so that the rep can develop a routine for recording the metrics.

 Training is important to have in the plan because this gives the rep a schedule they will have to stick to since their manager also sees their plan and knows when they are due for training and in what areas. While the rep might not like this part, you can rationalize it as a show of good faith to management and executives that they are constantly trying to improve themselves. They don’t necessarily need to plan out every training session that they will attend, but instead they should dedicate a certain amount of hours to training.

 Lastly, the rep should include their individual needs for the time period the plan represents. This can include needs from the company, what assistance they will need from you (their manager), and what potential roadblocks they might face. This will allow you to have time to prepare and remedy any potential barriers that the sales rep might have in the way of achieving his/her goal.

 In addition to these long term plans, consider having the rep write up a general plan of attack for winning over prospects and for retaining customers. Have them outline the process step by step, from how they acquire information about the prospect, to frequency of calling/emailing/leaving voicemails, and finally on when and how to close. These are your sales reps; the more adequately you prepare them the better the chance they, and in turn you as the manager, will have at succeeding.

In fact, Brian Vellmure of CRM Strategies recently posted on the importance for sales individuals of being “social anthropologists”. This means knowing not only the basics about your clients but also knowing what influences them such as who they associate with, their interests, preferences etc. Brian describes it as striving to learn about your customers in the contexts of their lives. He describes how understanding how your customers work will allow you to gain insight into how they influence others, which can lead to additional sales for you.

Being connected via social networks is imperative to a sales 2.0 world, where this up-to-date information can often provide more valuable insight into customers/prospects than static information. For example, in a recent survey conducted by OneSource, it was found that 47.8% of those surveyed were using LinkedIn more this year than last year for B2B sales prospecting. This suggests that sales professionals are using social media more and more for prospecting purposes, most likely because of the amount of readily available information it provides about the prospect. The more information you can gather about a prospect, the more likely you will be to close.

•  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.

 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.