Sell, Sell, Sell!

Sales wins customers and customer service keeps them.  Growing your business depends on both.  In recent posts, I’ve addressed how easy and profitable it can be to use an information system to beat the pants of your competitors at customer service and turn your sales reps into top performers by getting them just a little bit organized.

If you’re sales team and customer service team are both finely tuned to execute efficiently and effectively, you will beat your competition everytime.  This is virtually guaranteed.  Why?

Because most companies struggle so much with getting there.

Here’s the secret to taking sales and service to levels your competition can’t touch -

Motivate your team to use an information system to organize and share information about prospects and clients. 

Please note - this is not dependant upon the technology your choose as your information system.  Use Outlook and MS-Exchange, build an Access database, use ACT!, subscribe to an online contact management or CRM system or spend big bucks on something with all the bells and whistles…  The #1 reason for failure across all these system is user adoption.

User adoption is where soooo many companies fail.  On the surface, it sounds too easy to mess up.  You’re the boss, you tell them to use it or leave.  In fact, most businesses fall into one of two categories:

1) Established businesses where the problem is taking the risk of changing the habits of successful sales reps.

These companies have sales people that have “been there and done that” and management is often reluctant to “force” a top producing sales rep to change their methods.  The rational being “what they’re doing now is working for them”.  Sales reps with long established habits will resist the change and nit pick minor technical challenges, using them as excuses for not using the system consistently.

In this case, the key element to success is trust.  They’ll never say it but, the inner most fear of the sales rep regarding the new contact management system is that management will be watching what they do.  They’re afraid of measurement and accountability.  Strangely enough, even the hardest working reps on your staff will fall victim to this fear.

2) New businesses or divisions where the problem is that no one really understands the sales process yet. 

No one can identify the “best practice”.  Sure, every rep has their own idea of the best processes, etc. but, there’s little evidence that any of it is right.

In this case, management is sooo busy with sooo many other unknowns that they’re typically trying to hire sales reps that can “hit the ground running” without a lot of oversight.  This leaves the sales process up to the reps.

Regardless of which group your company falls into, the problem is the same.  The inmates are running the asylum!

So, when we talk about trying to motivate the sales team to get on board with your new sales automation system, we’re talking about convincing them to give up control.  That’s never easy.

Steps to take to get your team on-board:

1. Involve the end users in every step of the requirements, selection, design and implementation process. 
2. Be firm.  Do NOT let the discussion be about “if we do this”.  Take charge.  Communicate the compelling reasons that your business needs to make this change.  Make it clear that you are committed to moving forward and resistance is futile.  So, the question for each individual is not whether they’ll have to use it but, whether they want to be involved in designing and selecting the solution before they have to start using it.
3. Identify the bits of information that each person in the team struggles to get their hands on at critical moments.  Product specs, price sheets, latest marketing materials, deal status, a copy of the last proposal, etc.
4. Do some time and motion analysis.  Estimate the amount of time each person spends preparing or searching for this information and more importantly, the amount of time customers spend waiting for solutions while your team coordinate and communicates.
5. Customize the system so that each person can find that crucial bit of information that they’re always searching for instantly.  Usually this is pretty simple.  Put a few custom fields in the database to easily record the stats you need about a customer like # of employees, trucks in their fleet, etc.  Put standard collateral like marketing materials, specs, price sheets and agreements in the system so that anyone can grab them any time.  Be sure that proposals and agreements can be easily archived and retrieved.
6. Now, sell it to them.  Show them how much time is being wasted now.  Show them how much more quickly their customers could get solutions.  Discuss what that means to your company competitively. Ask your team to help you identify the ways in which you’ll know the change has been worth it.  What evidence should you see in 3 months, 6 months or a year that making this change is moving your business to the level you set out for yourselves?  It may make sense to provide some incentives to the team for making these goals a reality.

Good news.  This process does not need to take months or involve outside consultants.  It does not require that you spend big bucks on the technology.  In fact, keeping the requirements and the chosen solution simple is your best bet. 

If you’ve defined realistic objectives and everyone involved knows what is at stake for the business, your biggest risk is that you’ll need to upgrade to a more comprehensive solution in a couple of years because your requirements will grow as you automate more and more of your process.  This is a very good problem to have!

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You don’t have to be in the Fortune 500 to build superior customer service into your business.

In fact, when’s the last time you called a Fortune 500 company for service and came away impressed with the service you got?

The big guys have the resources to do whatever they want but, their size makes it difficult in itself. Why?

Because good customer service is mostly about information. When a customer calls, they want information: how to buy, how to use, how to pay, etc. From the customer’s point of view, the measure of good customer service is two fold - how fast can I get what I need and how pleasant is the experience?

The larger the organization, the more layers and departments there are. That makes it tough to keep things simple for the customer.

For a small business, it can seem difficult to provide instant access to information and solutions. That’s because most business owners have the impression that they must spend large sums of money to implement an information system (contact management, CRM, etc.) that empowers sales and service personnel to assist customers quickly.

So, the process is normally one in which some one logs the call and the request, then promises to get back to the client as soon as possible. Then the staffer tracks down someone who has the information and authority to make decisions. Of course, this process is inherently inefficient and leaves the customer waiting.

What if any customer facing employee in your company could look up a comprehensive status for the client on the phone? Everything they’ve ever bought, service issues they’ve had, pending orders, general notes about their application of the product, etc.?

Good news! Its not that hard to achieve. If you have some IT expertise on hand, it can be done with Access or even Microsoft Exchange. Solid CRMs or Contact Management systems can be had for less than $500 per employee per year, when you factor in all the costs of implementation, maintenance, etc.

So, the client calls and the person who answers the call has all the facts they need to help the client on the spot.

The client gets what they want - fast answers without having to talk to several employees while being transferred around, waiting on hold and repeating their story.

So, if $500 per employee seems an affordable cost for beating your biggest competitor at customer service, all you have to do is decide that your company can make the transition from keeping information in their heads to entering it into a contact management database.

That transition doesn’t have to be painful. More to come in my next post on how to motivate employees to get on board with sharing information and how to make it easy to get started while reducing the training costs.

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I hope its obvious but, to be sure its understood, I try not to use this blog to shamelessly promote SalesNexus’ contact management services, which is my day job.

However, when the “godfather of modern networking”, Ivan Misner, lays the pitch up there, I just have to take a swing!

In his recent Entrepreneur.com article, the founder of BNI, lays out a perfect description of how a tiny bit of effort at organization and tracking results can yield tremendous returns.

The concept is simple and can be followed using paper note cards.  Just jot down the real business results that come from referrals so that you can refer back to them and know who referred you good business and who referred you dead weight.

So, if you sell telecom services and you network with a IT outsourcing sales person, you would have a card for your IT contact and write down the referral he/she gives you and then what results from each referral.  You could also write down the things you do to “nurture” the IT contact as a referral source - referrals you give them, tips on good deals, etc.

Yes.  Absolutely.  If you’re reading this blog, you probably have a bent toward technical things.  So, I’m hoping that the question going through your mind is “Why not use a database to track this stuff?”

Well, THAT is an EXCELLENT question!

Of course, if you put your contacts in a database and flag each of them as either sales prospects, referral sources, etc., then record which prospects came from which referral source and which prospects turned into good clients, you can produce a list of your most profitable referral sources with just a couple of clicks.

That’s all well and good but, where it gets real interesting is in being able to use that list to send special emails to or setting yourself reminders to call those contacts more frequently, etc.

These things are just scratching the surface of what most contact management or CRM systems can do.

What I find frustrating is that sales people don’t buy these system, management does.  And management buys them for entirely different reasons and then neglects to show the sales team how they could benefit from the system, while management gets what they want too.

Its a very lucky business owner or sales executive that has one or more sales people on their team that just have a knack for figuring out how to leverage these systems for their own good.  They sort it out and the rest of the team can learn from them.

Management gets a lot more out of the system if the sales team is using it because they want to, because it helps them sell more.

And it really is just as simple as Mr. Misner describes.  As Bo Jackson said, “Just do it!”

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An article by Gary Jones on Sales Motivation.net got my attention today…

Gary talks about changing your mindset to open up opportunities for sales success.

There’s no question that we are usually our own worst enemies.  Our fears and doubts slow us down and cause us to overlook opportunities.

Why is it soooooo difficult to keep one’s self in a positive frame of mind?

Of course, there is tons of medical and psychological research out there about how the core of our brains are ruled by survival instincts like fear (fight or flight…), etc.

Those emotions take over quickly and easily.

In spite of the countless books written by the godfathers of sales expertise and motivation, all of them preaching affirmations, etc., human nature keeps getting the better of us.

And as sales managers, business owners and sales trainers, we tend to reinforce the fears and self limiting thought patterns.

We focus on overcoming objections.  We focus training on sales “funnels” where most of the prospects fall out of the funnel…

At SalesNexus, many of our clients’ biggest concern is to track the activity of newly hired sales reps so that they can see where they need help, training, coaching…. i.e. what they’re doing wrong.

I see a future in which your Sales Automation system sends the manager an alert when a rep reaches a goal - 50 calls completed today - or even better, congratulates the rep.  Where the rest of the sales team can see a “leader board” of reps who have excelled or exceeded expectations.  In my business, this should not be limited to how much they sold but, its most valuable at the day to day activity level.  The blocking and tackling.

Think about your world.  What are you doing right consistently?  How can you spend more time maximizing that strength?

What are the things that slow you down each day?  What are the dark clouds that haunt you day in and day out?  Can you look past them?  What would you be able to do if they disappeared instantly? Write those accomplishments down.

Read your list of accomplishments each morning.  Watch solutions and opportunities appear where the clouds once were.

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A “put off” is something a prospect says to “get rid of you”. To get you off the phone or out of his office. To end the meeting and move on with his/her day.

Examples:

• “Send me your brochure and I’ll get back to you”
• “Can you send me your basic price schedule to review?”
• “Let me talk it over with my team and I’ll get back to you”

Countless pages in sales books and hours in sales meetings have been spent addressing techniques for responding to put offs - to prevent yourself from being “put off”. A typical response might be “If I agree to send you my catalog, will you commit to talking with me for 15 minutes next Thursday morning?”.

How about using a Judo approach? Wiki defines Judo as “the principle of using one’s opponent’s strength against him and adapting well to changing circumstances. For example, if the attacker was to push against his opponent he would find his opponent stepping to the side and allowing his momentum to throw him forwards”

So, here we are spending considerable time and money developing online methods for our customers to obtain the information they need to make a purchase decision and to make the purchase itself.

And the customer just wants to end the conversation with the sales rep. Many times its just because there are other pressing matters that need attention.

So when the customer asks for your price list, how about directing him to the online sign up page on your website? Now their only a credit card number away from a purchase, rather than just waiting to receive something from you.

If you design your site to include other actions that a prospect can take prior to purchase, such as sign up for a webinar, subscribe to your newsletter or blog or view an online demo or presentation, these things become measurable steps in your sales process.

So, when the client gives you the brush off, you move him to the appropriate step in your process and agree on next steps.

Go through this exercise - write down the top “put offs” you hear from prospects. Then identify a corresponding piece of information or action you can direct the prospect toward on your site for each put off. Now you’ve got them going to the store in order to move on with their day.

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If you sell over the phone, you know that establishing trust and rapor over the phone can be a unique challenge.  When you’re not face to face, you don’t have the benefit of your winning smile, successful dress and empathetic facial expressions!

To get a prospect to share their “Pain” over the phone requires trust.  This article posted recently on Dig It! suggests a very simple, very effective approach.

This is the kind of thing we can all use every day!

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Typical sales people are not engineers.  They’re not detail oriented.  They’re right brained types, creative, impulsive and extroverted.

Sales people like to make things up as they go.  The take it as it comes environment is what attracts this type of person. 

This is a pretty common personality type among entrepreneurs too.  And so business owners, sales managers and the sales people they manage are all sort of winging it out there.

As with just about any other profession (notice I didn’t say discipline!) a little bit of accountability goes a long way.

In my experience as the President of a CRM provider, most businesses are looking to hold their sales people accountable in some way.  Its tough.  Sales people don’t respond well to that generally.  That’s why CRM implementations end in disappointment so often.

And yet, what sales person wouldn’t want to be better at what they do?  Higher commissions, more referrals, etc.

What I’ve found works effectively is to motivate sales people to begin a basic organization plan.  To make themselves more productive, save themselves time, free up hours each day for “more productive activities”.

I know, it seems overly simple and obvious.  But, business owners find it hard to focus on just simple organization.  They can’t help dreaming about all the wonderful things that a CRM can do for their business.  And so they skip to step 2 or 3 before they get the sales people organized.

Take for instance the simple technique of questioning a prospect for their “pain”.  Its a pretty simple concept to grasp in a sales meeting or while attending a seminar.  Its an entirely different thing to do it well with prospects.  We’re all trained from birth NOT to upset people, not to agitate them.  Going for pain is about making the prospect uncomfortable.

So to do it well, you have to self evaluate.  After the call is over, you have to ask yourself “Did I get a real pain? Was it deep enough? Emotional enough?”  But how many of us find self evaluation easy?  We’re usually not very objective.

Getting organized can make you better at getting pain from a prospect.

How?

First, selling any product or service involves finding out some minimal set of things from the prospect.   How many of these do you use each year?  Do you use small, medium or large? etc.

The prospect’s pain is usually described in terms of these things to some extent.

So the way to get better at digging for the prospects pain is to document which of these tidbits you’ve obtained from the prospect.  If you’ve gotten all the standard questions answered, the odds are you’ve gotten a good handle on where his “pain” comes from.

So, there it is.  Sales reps can improve themselves significantly by simply putting a few custom fields in a contact management system or CRM in which to record the answers to the core questions that describe the pain that your company solves for customers.

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Wow!  If you spend a few minutes surfing blogs on sales and internet marketing, you can get the feeling that sales people are dinosaurs…  Here’s an example posting.

Its easy to get a bit myopic and assume that we (those of us reading and writing blogs) represent the majority opinion.

Since beginning this blog, I’ve made it a point to ask customers and colleagues if they “blog”.  The answer is almost always no.

In a group of young people working for a technology company, only 1 out of 10 responded that they spend time reading or writing blogs.

At a networking group I participate in, I polled the group for blog participation and ended up having to explain what the heck a blog is in the first place.

And so, as we all write about the evolution of Internet marketing techniques that increasingly make the buying process a self-serve endevour, we see a trend that we’re a part of but, sometimes forget that its a trend that has yet to really grasp the mainstream consciousness.

The point here is that what’s written in blogs seems to represent our predictions for the future.  To a large degree, we are all preaching about Internet marketing and sales automation because we have an interest in helping businesses do it.

In the meantime, most businesses are out there doing it the old fashioned way.

What I find most challenging today is to find a sales person that is comfortable with the rate of change in the marketing and sales processes in businesses.  Most small and medium sized businesses are constantly tweaking their online marketing and purchase processes to try and get it right.

In the meantime, the sales rep can become numb to all of this.  They just try to go about their daily lives and ignore the latest new fad from the tech guys.

What I’d like to find are sales people that have been around and closed some deals but, are technology oriented enough to be comfortable with a few twists and turns in the process every now and then.  I’d really like the sales rep to bring me ideas.  They should be asking their customers - “how can I make it easier for you to do business with my company?”.

I think the challenge for sales people today is not to pack up your bags and admit its over for one to one contact… its to open your eyes to the trends and the technology and make it your ally, not your enemy.

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I read an article over the weekend describing a sales methodology, called “Buying Facilitation“, and going all the way back to Dale Carnegie as the root of the approach.

What struck me is that the 1980’s was quoted as the era of the introduction of “Consultative Selling”…

Its true that there was a boom in gurus and programs based upon the approach of asking questions instead of “pitching”.  However, the approach has been around literally forever.

The original sales gurus all got started in the very early 1900’s, when the industrial economy was exploding.  There were more and more businesses making more and more stuff and it all needed to be sold.

W. Clement Stone, Og Mandino and Dale Carnegie were all born within 15 or 20 years of each other at the turn of the century (1900…).  Wikipedia has a really cool quote engine that gives you a good take on each “master’s” wisdom - click these links to read - W. Clement Stone

If you read the works of these masters, you see that their principals were founded in religion.  In fact, when I read Og Mandino’s “The Greatest Salesman in the World” for the first time, it struck me as more spiritual than business related.

I wasn’t there but, it seems to me that these guys took good old fashioned Christian ethics and repackaged them for business people.

There is a parallel between industrial and technological growth and increasingly secular societal standards.  The 80’s were another period of economic growth and another opportunity for a new pack of gurus to break into the market with “new approaches”.  David Sandler, etc. are less “values” based and more mechanically oriented than Clement, Og and Dale but, the mechanics are the same.

So I wonder, when will this cycle repeat itself for the Web 2.0 world?

We’re driving customers to our web sites, offering them rich content for free, letting them find their own solutions and generally trying to make it easy for them to get what they want without having to talk with a sales rep.  How does “Do unto others” work on a web page?

Well, one could argue that the plethora of free online content is a step in this direction.  Information that used to have a cost, in either dollars or time invested, is no longer costly.  So, are we being charitable by making it so?  Well, not exactly.  We’re doing it because there’s something in it for us.  But, so were Og and Dale, etc.  They just found that doing the right thing was in their own best interest.

Maybe one answer is that focusing on the customers needs is even more valuable and important in a world where there is less human to human contact during the process.  So, if your sales team still has to get on the phone or meet with clients to close the deal, they should recognize that your customers find that experience increasingly unique.

Imagine yourself as the kind hearted pilgrim that comes across a lost and thirsty traveler and offers him the last of his water.  Your competition is focusing more and more time and money on the online experience, just as you are.  Your customers know it.

Put them on a pedestal and help them any way you can.  That will be such a rare experience that they’ll be compelled to do business with you.  And its just good karma anyway.

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I read a great article on Yoest the other day about a meeting with David Sandler. Funny thing is, when I met my first Sandler trainer, his approach was almost exactly the same…

I expected him to act like every other sales person I’d ever met and start “selling” me on his services and he didn’t. One of the first sentences out of his mouth was “So, why am I here?”. It put me off. Made me nervous. Made me start blabbing…

Later, “It doesn’t sound like you need me”… Wow! By the time it was over, I felt like I was begging him to do business with me!

As I first began to be trained in the Sandler approach, of course, this seemed totally counter-intuitive. As I warmed up to the concepts, I would try to put myself in the mind set of the super-cocky sales guy. Sort of “I’m too good for you. You better convince me that I need to waste my time with you…”

The approach is called the “Take Away” by Sandler trainers. When a prospect is hesitant to commit, take it away. The prospect usually responds by try to convince you not to “take it away”. The reason is that their hesitancy was based on their expectation that you as the sales rep are going to beg them for their business. When you refuse to play that game, you change the rules and you’re in control.

Its a tough thing to pull off in the beginning. It feels uncomfortable because you’re afraid to offend. Of course, the cocky sales guy attitude worsens that risk! I always felt that I was either being too blunt or beating around the bush to much.

Experience taught me that the right approach was to adopt the posture and “attitude” of someone who really cares. Just try to help the prospect. Make it clear to your prospect that you’re there to help them, whatever that means, even if it means they don’t buy anything from you. Just try to find an opportunity to help in any way possible. If its genuine, it establishes trust and respect. Then its easy to say, “What can I do to help?” or “I’m not sure how I can help?”, etc.

Kind of cool when just doing the right thing is the right thing all around!

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