Increase Sales Blog

Archive for February, 2010

If you are engaged in education based marketing, you become a valuable resource allowing you eventually elevate your client level of engagement. The goal is for you to become the expert, the Einstein, the Red Jacket in the sea of gray suits.

Source: Piffe.com

Of course to do this well, you should know your target market and well as your centers of influence.

Maybe you want to work with young entrepreneurs. These are busy folks who want information in short blurbs. So why not find a list of 100 tips for Young Entrepreneurs or any one else in business?

Then maybe your ideal customers are small business owners who are also timed pressed and quickly need some tips to build customer loyalty. Then a list of how to keep customers is just what the Doctor ordered.

By just keeping your eyes and ears open you can quickly elevate your value in your potential customers (a.k.a. qualified prospects) because you willingly share timely information that helps your clients or customers from where they are now to where they want to be.

Sales professionals including entrepreneurs, single office/home office (SOHO) and small business owners need to believe in their products or services.  However, some have such strong beliefs they end up losing more earned sales than they ever realized.

Source: Science Blogs

These folks truly have drunk the “Kool Aid” and believe it is the only drink.  What happens is they lose all perspective and can become quite argumentative in their encounters with potential customers (a.k.a. qualified prospects). Additionally, this belief may extend to their business model as well as other operations within their business.

In the E-Myth, Michael Gerber describes Entrepreneurs who must control everything. These people have drunk the “I’m It Kool Aid” virus.  Only they can take care of:

• Picking up the mail
• Paying the bills
• Meeting with clients
• Overseeing every operational activity
• Approving contracts, etc.

In selling when infected with the Kool Aid virus, sales professionals believe that only they have:

• The best product or service
• The only solution to the customer’s needs
• The only resource the customer will every need

When salespersons are engaged in the Sales Kool Aid behaviors, potential customers may feel like they are being threatened to actually insulted.  One tell tale sale if a salesperson has this virus is if he or she knocks the competition every time by relating news stories such as their CEO is under investigation to sharing disparaging hearsay remarks.

Check your own beliefs and respective behaviors to determine if you mildly to intensely infected by this virus. This action along may help you to increase sales.

Fulton’s Folly was the first effective steamboat. Many people jeered this new mode of transportation because they preferred the traditional way of water transportation that being sails and oars.

Courtesy of kiac-usa.com

The word folly comes from Old French and means Fool.  According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, this word means being foolish and any foolish action.  In sales there is one folly that continues.

In my weekly business column I examined this foolish action – the continued use of the word close or this belief “always be closing.” Why sales people engage in this folly is beyond me. Think about what this word means.  To close something means to shut it off or close it down. Do you truly wish to shut off your customers?

In Chicago Business, writer Barry Moltz discusses the 7 deadly sins (think follies) of selling. Even though I believe confusing selling and sales is a deadly mistake, I believe he is pretty much on track.

So what other follies or if you prefer sins do you believe sales people make as they routinely engage in their marketing and selling activities within the overall sales process? Please share your thoughts.

The quest to increase sales is a monthly effort. Now with the second month of 2010 are quickly coming to an end this begs to ask the question:  Are your hitting your sales targets or not?

Possibly now is the time to start thinking differently.  When you are asked “What do you do?” How do you respond?  Do you begin your “elevator pitch” with either one of these words?  “I” of  “We”  Sales Training Coaching Tip:  Remember to respond with what you do, not how you do what you do.

What would happen if you were able to describe what you do by using an adjective ending with “ing” such as:

• Accelerating?
• Building?
• Growing?
• Helping?
• Partnering?
• Streamlining?
• Working?

Then finish your marketing message in another 6 words.  Would such a marketing statement get the attention of your potential customer better than what you are currently saying? Sales Training Coaching Tip: Having an executive  marketing summary helps you in this endeavor.

One of my coaches, David Herdlinger,  once said “If you are telling you ain’t selling!” When we provide long, detail rich answers to that first simple question we are not building a relationship.  The human brain can only remember about 7 to 10 bits of information at a time.  Just think about attempting to remember someone’s name.  Sales Training Coaching Tip:  Ask yourself this question:  Is my response memorable?

Your marketing challenge to increase sales begins at the very first moment to grab someone’s attention and start to build a relationship.  Excess verbiage only confuses the person standing opposite you.

As you construct your 7 word response consider these three communication tips.

Accuracy - Your response needs to be accurate. This means you need to answer the question. Now some may answer the question with a question.  Depending upon your communication style, this may work for you.

Brevity – Being brief in 7 words or less helps the other person to remember what you said. Again your goal is for the other person to speak so you learn more about her or him.

Creativity - Saying what others have said such as “we grow health and wealth” (a common financial advisor response) or “I turn potential into performance” (an often heard statement by business coaches, executive coaches or business consultants) only reaffirms that you are just another gray suit in the Sea of Sameness. You stand out, to be that Red Jacket, demands an investment of your time to construct a truly creative and compelling message.

By applying these communication tips  to your marketing message, you can become the Red Jacket where people remember you and truly want to become better acquainted with you.  Sales Training Coaching Tip:  The words you speak along with the behaviors you take are critical to your ability to increase sales.

To win more sales means you must begin to change some of your existing behaviors that generate the most bang for your buck (think resources beyond money including time, energy and emotions). A recent post at the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur listed over 50 tips in how to increase productivity just by using technology better.

A good friend and colleague Doug Brown of Paradigm Associates has often said: People confuse motion with progress and activity with results. What Doug is talking about is how a lot of individuals including small business owners, C-Suite executives, single office/home office (SOHO) salespersons, sales management along with other department heads tread water while far fewer actually make it to the beach or the finish line.

Back in the dark ages before cell phones, faxes and computers, my father monitored his daily activity by giving himself points for leads received, appointments scheduled, actually meetings made to sales earned. His goal was to maintain 3 points per work day or 15 points per week. The prior week’s points never transferred to the current week. This sales productivity tool (which I turned into an Excel file) has worked for me. My goal is for 30 points per week since I have advantages Dad never had.

Additionally, you may wish to consider examining yourself by informally assessing your own sales skills or engaging in a more formal sales talent performance appraisal process.   How to increase productivity is up to you and the daily choices you make.  Sales Training Coaching Tip:  The choices you make are directly connected to your ability to increase sales and make more money.

With 80% of all sales being made between the 5th and 12th contacts and with over 50% of all sales leads never acted upon, there is a lot of wasted productivity for those who are engaged in selling products or services.  By taking the time to reflect and determine exactly what you need to do to improve your sales productivity and win more sales will be a worthwhile investment.

Not being a great movie follower unless  it is science fiction, I recently came across a movie clip on YouTube – Glengarry Glen  Ross.  This is a 1992 independent film about a man who is brought in to increase sales through his rather forceful sales training approach of Always Be Closing. Since the language in this film is very offensive, I have elected not to link to it. You can look it up for yourself.

What I found interesting is this notion of Always Be Closing.  In my book, Be the Red Jacket the Keys to Unlocking Sales Success. I specifically reference how much I believe this word “close” works against both the seller and the buyer because the close means to shut off. Why would anyone want to shut off their customers is one of the questions I ask in my book?

In further reflection, I have come to realize something else.   Many believe this word focuses on the potential customer or client (a.k.a. prospect), but this is truly a smokescreen.  Others believe this sales training technique directs attention to you the seller.  Both beliefs are in error. This word is all about the competition.

Yes, you read that right.  This is all  about your competitors!

When you use the word close, your efforts are not geared to the customer, but are directed straight to your known and unknown competitors.  You want to close them off  to isolate them from your customer so that you can make the sale.

If you have an individual in front of you who has met the five qualifying sales criteria and you are working her or him through your sales process, then why are you worried about your competitors?  Simply speaking sales professionals who have built relationships with their potential customers and have invested the time in understanding their needs along with market place trends do not need to focus their limited resources of time, energy, money and emotions on anyone else.  Sales Training Coaching Tip: Do not totally  ignore your competitors, but do not focus on the majority of your efforts on them be them consciously or subconsciously as in the case of always be closing.

People like remembering through such acronyms like A-B-C.  So instead of thinking “Closing,” consider these other behaviors instead:

• Communicating – How are you communicating your value especially if you are engaged in education based marketing?
• Casting – Where are you consistently seeking qualified potential customers?
• (in) Character – What messages are your behaviors sending?
• Checking – How often do you check for agreement to avoid obstacles?
• Coaxing – How can you coax more information from your potential  client through your probing questions (think fact finding questions)?
• Confirming – When and where do you confirm the information you received is accurate?
• Congruent – How are your behaviors (actions) and words in congruency?

Marcel Proust once wrote: The true voyage in discovery is not seeking new landscapes, but seeing with new eyes. When you change how you look at things, the things you look at will change.  Consider changing how you look at securing the sale and you may find your ability to increase sales has dramatically improved.

Each morning before you leave your building or just in case your single office/home office, by taking these 5  marketing actions you can quickly begin to increase sales:

1. Change your LinkedIn Update. Let others know what has happened in the last 24 hour. Keep it professional and related to what you do.  For example, today (2/16/10) I shared that one of my articles concerning education reform  has been posted to Scientific American online.
2. Quickly check your email. Sort what needs to be done within the next 2 hours, today, tomorrow, next week and when you have time.
3. Review your schedule. Make sure you have all contact information, direction information and additional information specific to making sales calls or appointments.
4. Post to Facebook or Twitter respective to what you are doing, where you have been, what results you have achieved. Remember your goal is to build a relationship through educating. So leave your ego at the door.
5. Check your other marketing goals.  Between attending quality business networking events, posting online social media comments, mailing thank you to follow-up notes, etc.  From a time perspective, at least 60% of your time should be invested in marketing.  Each day I write at least one article and submit it to Ezine Articles among other sites. Also I send out at least one post card to a note card each day.

Once you established a daily “before you leave the building” behavior specific to your marketing action plan then you will begin to increase sales and keep that ever necessary marketing funnel full.

Numbers are the beyond important to professional salespersons. These figures may range from sales to earn ratios to actual website data.

Nielsen released its January 2010 search statistics for the U.S. Internet searches. What this data reveals is 66.3% of all searches are conducted using Google. Now just think of that in terms of what it means for you or your business. Two out of three potential customers are using Google as their primary search engine. Yahoo gets a little more than 1 out of 10 of your potential customers with MSN/Bing also getting 1 out of 10 Internet searches.

By knowing these numbers you can work them to your advantage within your marketing action plan by focusing on improving your Google Page Rank, your search engine optimization (SEO) and your overall traffic. Ignoring this data may have you working harder not smarter with your Internet marketing efforts.

Some FREE tools to help you include:

Google Page Rank Tool Bar
Alexa Traffic Tool Bar
Link Popularity

Given so many potential clients (think prospects) use the Internet to find specific products or services or even to check you or your business out, then the more visible you are on Google dramatically elevates your ability to potentially increase sales because you are reaching 2 out of 3 instead of 1 out of 10 potential customers.

P.S. When you decide to work the numbers, remember slow and steady wins the race. (Think organic growth instead of the flash in pan scams to build links to spam your message over cyberspace. Search engines do not take spam lightly and will penalize you for a very long time.)

For many small businesses owners, their employees not to mention all those much larger organizations, today is a regular working day.  Phone calls are made, voice mails heard, emails responded to, orders placed, appointments scheduled.

Yet, this national holiday, President’s Day, that combined the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln is also a time of reflection.  Simple Truths (a great site for affordable books and 3 minute DVD’s) released this short, moving movie, Great Quotes from Great Leaders that helps to reflect about leadership.

Invest 3 minutes, turn off the cell phone, close the email and learn what our great Presidents along with other incredible leaders had to say. This is truly time well invested.

A recent posting devoted to best practices for on-line marketing by Charisse Lewis migrated to a LinkedIn discussion.  Charisse asked this question (paraphrasing read the blog):  Would you allow your sales rep to go out looking messy to a business networking event, sales call, etc. if you truly want to increase sales?

Her remarks reminded me of another posting by Jonathan Farrington a while ago specific to the number of business professionals who have messy business cards. In six months, he wrote if I remember correctly that 90% of all business cards had cross outs, hand written new numbers, emails or addresses.

Marketing efforts from websites to blogs to business cards to even handwritten notes must be clear, sharp, professional and achieve your predetermined results. These actions should always be aligned to your marketing action plan and embracing an education based marketing approach would not hurt either. Sales Training Coaching Tip: Education based marketing focuses on educating your potential client not spewing price, product or proposal which happens when adopting Product or Sale based marketing approach.

As a good friend of mine Bill Napolitano has said: “There are a lot of Captain Wing Its.” The adoption of this role creates what I call  “spraying and praying” behaviors with the hope of something sticks.

Charisse makes a great point about seeking help.  In creating this blog, I sought the help of Matt Geier from The Sales Corner and he is now working on revamping the banner on my main web site.

Business people including professional sales persons sometimes fail to make the necessary outreach and then end up with less than the desired results. Even though I am not a marketing expert, my clients do ask my opinion about marketing copy and websites. Knowing some basics about writing copy and search engine optimization, I can educate (share my knowledge) and continue to build that relationship with my client.

Invest the time to make sure your business cards are professionally produced without any cross outs or handwritten numbers or email addresses. Revisit your website and blog (if you have one and you really should I may add) to ensure it is clean and not messy. Review all your marketing materials. Finally, return to your marketing action plan, your marketing executive summary and your core positioning statement to verify your marketing actions are all in alignment. By taking these actions, you should increase sales because you are working smarter not harder.