Sell, Sell, Sell! » qualifying

Selling More = Helping More

craigklein — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 18:49:10 +0000

This post was originally published on the Sales Bloggers Union here.

I love the posts by Dave Brock and Tibor Shanto this month – “Want To Sell More, Disqualify More!” and “So You Want To Sell More? It’s Easy!”. Tibor suggests better prioritization and time management and Dave suggests disqualifying prospects early so you have more time for the qualified ones.
Both are extremely worthy concepts and in my experience, the two most valuable and timeless ways to multiply selling results.

Allow me to attempt to take these two concepts to a philosophical plane please.

Selling is a profession that has taken its share of lumps over the years. Mostly due to the manipulative techniques oft employed. Don’t get me wrong… I love selling and I love sales people but, I believe that the failure of many sales people to raise their game and adopt the many tried and true techniques available to them right here on this blog and in countless books and training programs is that they can make the sales person feel manipulative.

What if we see the profession of selling as an act of kindness? We are helping customers find solutions to problems or paths to opportunity!
Your sales manager may not want to hear it but, if you go into each and every conversation with customers with the objective of identifying that customer’s greatest and most pressing need and helping them meet that need, good things are bound to happen.

I’m not just putting new, more altruistic labels on the same old tactics of asking leading questions to help the customer realize that they need what you’re selling. I’m suggesting that we’ve all been trained by society to think of what we do as manipulative but, it’s not.

So, if you want to sell more, leave all your preconceived notions about ABC (Always Be Closing) at home open your mind when you enter a meeting with your prospect or customer. Try making your sole goal to serve as a friend, trusted advisor or mentor for your customer.

Each and every core sales tactic can be re-imagined in this light and not much changes about the techniques but, everything changes in terms of the simplicity and attitude that you’re able to bring to the table, which leads to far more effective execution.

Such as bonding with the customer – we all know we should take time in the beginning of a conversation with the prospect to “get to know them”. How’s the wife?, kids?, etc. Of course, sometimes you get more than you bargained for. The sales person, knowing that they’re expected to report meaningful progress forward in the sales pipeline to their management, eventually feels compelled to cut the personal conversation short and direct it toward the potential purchase. Actually, the fact that the customer feels like talking about the wife or whatever indicates that they NEED to talk about that subject. Maybe they have some frustrations, fears or recent successes that are dominating their thoughts. What better way to establish a relationship of trust and respect with a customer than to just talk with them about what’s on their mind. Let them share their pride in their kid’s success. Listen to them if they just need to vent. You may run out of time before you get to talk about business and you won’t be able to tell your sales manager that you’re any closer to getting the order but, you’ll know that you can expect honest answers based on their trust in you from this customer in the future. That’s truly valuable.

What about qualifying or disqualifying? Well, if your goal is to listen carefully, ask probing questions and really understand what your customer needs the most, then you may find that they don’t need your product or service that badly. Fine. Give them your best recommendation for a solution that will fit their needs. Now you can spend more time with prospects that do need what you’re selling and this customer now sees you as someone they can trust. If things don’t work out with the solution you recommend for them or their needs change and your solutions are a fit for them, they’ll know it and they’ll truly want to do business with you.

So, you’re not a salesperson anymore are you? You’re just a very kind, understanding and helpful person. Trust me, people like to buy from those types of people.

Double Your Sales in 2010

craigklein — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:45:59 +0000

Its that time of year…

Crunch time. In sales, the end of the year is like what the stock brokers call the “triple witching hour”. You’ve got to wrap up the year strong and beat your quota, you’ve got holiday activities with clients, prospects and co-workers and you’ve got budget meetings planning for next year.

Just relax and enjoy the season right? Not for us friends. This is the two month stretch that defines the rest of the year.

In time for your 2010 planning, we’re releasing our free eBook, “Double Your Sales in 2010“! This free ebook shows you how to refocus your selling efforts on prospects most likely to buy and how to manage the rest efficiently.

The fact is, failure to meet your goals in selling is not usually due to lack of effort. Its due to spending too much time in the wrong places and not enough on activities that are most likely to bring closed deals.

In “Double Your Sales in 2010” we break down how to know which prospects are worthy of your full blown efforts and how to nurture the rest toward that point.

In truth, you can have a dramatic effect on your sales results simply through better qualifying earlier in the sales process and moving high cost activities to the later stages of your sales process. “Double Your Sales in 2010” shows you how to do it in simple steps that don’t involve hiring or firing anyone or spending thousands of dollars on training or consultants.

In January of 2009, we published “Double Your Sales in 2009″ at the height of the doom and gloom of the financial meltdown. It was popular beyond our wildest expectations. For “Double Your Sales in 2010“, we’ve updated and added to many of the fundamental elements and added specific examples of how to measure and manage the process as your reorganize it using affordable online CRM solutions.

Stay tuned, we’ll be announcing a webinar very soon where we’ll go through real business scenarios and show you how others have actually doubled their sales following these practices!

Download the free ebook – Double Your Sales in 2010 here.

4 Steps to Attract Quality Prospects to Your Sales Team

craigklein — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:22:57 +0000

If your sales team is doing its own prospects then kudos to you! You’ve got your team doing a number of things and keeping your life simple.

When you think about it, finding, making contact with and qualifying new prospects involve a very different set of skills and strengths than preparing proposals, negotiating and closing sales.

In the end, the objective is to maximize the dollar volume of sales generated by each sales person. So it makes sense to reduce the burden of the least productive activities they manage and allow them to focus on the most productive. In this case, productive means profitable really. A simple example of this is a business that invests in hiring a sales assistant to prepare proposals for the sales team, based on their specs, so that the sales reps spend more time with clients.

Did you know that most sales people that generate their own leads spend over 50% of their time finding and qualifying prospects vs. presenting, proposing solutions and closing?
So what does 50% of your sales staff’s time cost? A lot!

You can free up the 50% of your sales teams time and feed them with highly qualified leads for less than $100 per sales rep per month.

The following is a step by step guide to making it a reality quickly and affordably.

Step 1 – Make a list of the criteria that make up a highly qualified prospect.

Are they in the right industry? Do they have the requisite number of employees/trucks/facilities, etc.? Does the prospect have responsibility for the appropriate are in the customer organization? Do they have decision making authority this size purchase?

Your business has its own set of criteria and no one knows them like you. Get your team together and get all the criteria into one list.

Step 2 – Get a list of leads that fit the criteria.

You may not be able to get the perfect list. You may be limited to choosing certain industries, sizes of companies and titles. That’s fine. Get as close as you can get. Be sure you’re as inclusive as possible. Get all the industries and titles, etc. that are likely to be a fit.

Step 3 – Develop something to offer this list of people, for free.

Whitepapers, reports, ebooks, event invitations, webinar invitations, etc. are some common examples. Whatever it is, the subject or use of this offer should be designed such that whoever shows interest in it is indicating that they’re likely to be interested in your product or service.

Step 4 – Send your offer to your list.

Email, direct mail, that’s your decision. Whatever you send should intice the leads to request your offer. An email invitation for them to visit a page on your site, complete a form and download the report or a phone # to call, provide their contact info and have the offer mailed to them.

Its that easy. Everyone that requests the offer is a prospect for your sales team.

Clearly, developing the offer is key to the quality of the lead. As an example, a report on the health benefits of water filtration is one thing, a buyer’s guide for purchasing a water filtration system will generate fewer but, more qualified leads.

You don’t have to be a high tech company to do this. Here’s an example:

A manhole repair product manufacturer was focusing its sales efforts on manhole repair contractors. For every repair job needed by a city, there could be several contractors bidding on the project. So the sales team spent most of its time making contact with and nurturing relationships with hundreds of contractors in hopes that the contractor would order the company’s products if they were awarded the job. In addition, often certain products were spec’d into the RFP by the municipate engineer because they had used that product before.

So, they created a document with detailed specifications for manhole repair that municipal engineers can use to prepare a request for proposal to send to contractors. They offer the specifications document to municipal engineers via email. Engineers that download the specs become prospects for the sales team.

The result is that the company can target a much larger list of engineers via email than they could via sales calls and the sales team spends its time with engineers currently working on specs for manhole repair jobs.

A few tools you may want to consider once you’ve gotten your list and your offer ready…

A good online CRM that allows you to easily prepare and send out the offer via email or print. You’ll also want to be sure that as prospects request the offer, you’re able to track their request, easily and quickly fulfill it and make sure a sales person follows up quickly.

At SalesNexus, our online CRM does just that and our Marketing Service partner, Steven Green, can even help you develop the entire campaign.

Here’s what the customer says -

“This is just a note to let you know how much we value what SalesNexus and Steven Greene have taught us.Â We have only started utilizing some of what you have done for us with tremendous results! I can’t wait to see the results as we implement more and more of our strategy. The time and money we spent on SalesNexus has already shown a return on our investment! We look forward to building our sales force utilizing the SalesNexus online CRM system!” – Michael Farruggia, Parson Environmental

If you’d like to see just how easily you can begin generating quality leads for your sales team with the SalesNexus Online CRM, join our webinar any Wednesday at 2pm Eastern. Click here to register!