Sell, Sell, Sell!

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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Well there it is! If you have anything to do with marketing or selling, you need to read IBM report, “The End of Advertising as We Know It”, I picked up on TechCrunch!

Its a validation of all the trends we sense in the industry with some fascinating stats and trend data. There’s a power shift underway and this report spells it out in detail. Knowledge is power.

Enjoy.

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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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