Selling In Difficult Times

Knowing the distinct points of differentiation of your product can help you win a deal no matter who you are competing with.   In a difficult market where there are so many me to offerings, how do you sell to your prospect? What can make a prospect select your product/service over more well known brands?

One key way is to know your product inside and out and know all of the differentiating characteristics of the product.  If you or the company has not done a good job of identifying those unique points of differentiation along with understanding what is most valued by the prospect, you have a problem.  If you know the characteristics, you have an advantage and need to place an emphasis on what has been enhanced and what is unique about the product versus those bigger name brands.

Be sure to look at how you stack up against the competition when it comes to things like ease of use – is there a learning curve?  What does product delivery look like, are there any company infrastructures advantages for the customer, any customer service improvements and what does your product cost vs those other named brands?

Generate Trust and Revenue using Twitter

If you still don’t understand the purpose of using Twitter, here is a short and sweet description:  You have the ability to send a concise ad to the constituency of your choice in 140 characters.  The ad is free – however, don’t place an ad right away.  The best approach to take is to give  in order to get.  Don’t just try and sell right out of the box,  Twitter is just like any other relationship you have to build trust first.

Some pointers:

- Only follow people that interest you

- Start with your friends. Twitter lets you import contacts from your Gmail, Yahoo or AOL e-mail accounts. It will show you which of your contacts have Twitter accounts.

- Make sure you fill in the bio section and provide information about you and what interest you.

- Use Twitter search or other types of search tools that have been developed for Twitter to look for people you want to follow and eventually connect with.

-  Give your time and knowledge for free. Talk about what you are passionate about.  With Twitter you have to prove yourself and build a reputation otherwise no one wants to follow you. You have some expertise that others will find interesting, so be generous with input and courteous.

-  Make sure to thank you’re followers for following you and re-tweet any tweets that you think others will find interesting.

-  Make sure that prospects can find your blog, company with phone number and or email so that they can connect with you.

-  Only accept followers who are relevant.  There are a lot of spammers, so check out the people who are following you and if they don’t fit – block them.  Remember that followers you are looking for may be checking out who follows you and if they see someone that they don’t like you could lose a potential prospect.

- Follow-up with a thank you for any re-tweets

- When you have the followers you want, send them an invitation or request a phone meeting.  If someone likes what you tweet or blog and wants to talk with you – contact them immediately.

- Ask “How can I help you today”

Are you getting burned out due to additional workload?

Are you getting burned out because engineering support, marketing and customer relations budgets have been cut and you are expected to carry the load? If the workload has increased to the point that you can’t find enough time to meet new prospects and you’re constantly scrambling to meet quota, you need to understand that all that damage control can hurt you.

Here are some tips for surviving, coping and staying healthy.

1.) Exercise once a day for 1 hour.  Try Yoga

2.) Schedule downtime with friends/family each day

3.) Listen to chill out music to or from work

4.) Meditate everyday.   If you don’t know how, there are many books and seminars available

5.) Make sure you have a real sit down dinner with soothing music at least 3 times a week. Loud music and watching the negative news on the tube does not help you digest food.  Watch what you eat, stay away from sugar, fast foods and a lot of meat.

6.) Rest up on the weekends before that Monday morning rev

7.) If you get annoyed, stop walk away from the situation, go to a private place and cool down

8.) If you get crazed by traffic and are a honker, don’t do it unless you see danger of an accident!

9.) If you are an habitual answerer of your cell phone, try not answering it and wait till you are in a comfortable spot and are ready to calmly return the calls.

10.) If you text message while driving, make a promise to yourself and all the other people on the road that you will STOP!

Burnout can destroy you and hurt the people you come in contact with.  If this is happening to you, stop and take the time to reevaluate your life and your choices.

TOP TEN – Selling to “CXOs”

1.) Know who you’re meeting with in advance (know something about their perceptions, interest, goals, competitors, mission)

2.) Listen, Listen and Listen Again –

3.) Be prepared, don’t waste their time, get to the point and DON’T ASK DUMB QUESTIONS

4.) Be prepared to be rushed, interrupted or rescheduled –know how to handle all of these situations in advance.

5.) In a meeting make sure you adjust your communication to their tone

6.) Speak with authority on the topic and know how your solution benefits his/her needs

7.) Permit them to help you solve their problems

8.) Don’t challenge their authority

9.) Understand his/her criteria for starting a business relationship

10.) Deliver what you promise

Beware Favoritism

In your career did you ever feel that someone did not deserve to get a promotion, bonus, commissions or privileges?  Did you think the person received the favors due to reasons other than performance? If so, you’re not alone, millions of people go to work everyday thinking this and working under unfair conditions. Favoritism is costing corporations billions of dollars annually.

Successful leaders know that poor performance, envy, dissatisfaction, rumors, hostility, and resentment are just a few of the results of favoritism. They know that if you praise others by factors other than performance you will create inequality within the team and you will be seen as un-fair.  True leaders expect everyone to play by the same rules.  As a good leader they are careful not to focus on personalities or hero’s because they know that they will not help those who need to learn, improve and excel. 

With all of our focus on Business Process Management, Business Process Software, CRM and ERP systems we can’t software our way out of human frailty and contain the financial losses due to favoritism – so the best we can do is to hire good managers and have them mentor others.

Quick Tip: STOP TELLING THE PROSPECT WHAT YOU THINK THEY NEED

The most critical part of the selling cycle after you’ve made the appointment for your first meeting with a new prospect is for you to LISTEN, LEARN and don’t ASSUME anything. Ask probing questions relevant to the prospects BUSINESS, wait for his/her responses, attitudes and tone.

Don’t go into a meeting with a mind dump on the products/services your company offers. Know how to transition you communications to meet the pace of your audience. Plan ahead and practice, practice, practice so that your every word is conversational and flowing. You can only uncover the real needs of the prospect by probing with good interviewing and questioning skills.

Managing Sales

I have had several request for the names of books on managing sales – Here’s my TOP 10 list:

1.) Solution Selling – Michael Bosworth
2.) Chasing Quota – Walter Brown Proactive

3.) CEO Tools – Kraig Kramer
4.)You ‘re in charge – Now What? – Thomas J. Neff & James. M. Citrin

5.) For new sales managers: Fundamentals of sales management by Matthew Schwartz

6.) Ziglar on Selling, Zig Ziglar

7.) Winning Without Intimidation – Bob Burg

8.) Competitive Strategy – Michael Porter

9.) The Ultimate Sales Managers Guide – John Klymshyn

10.) Selling With Integrity: Sharon Drew Morgen

Quick Tip

I’m starting out 2008 with a little tip for you. As a sales professional you may from time to time in your career take visitors to your place of business. Those visitors may include prospective clients, existing clients, partners, potential alliances or prospective employees. It is important that you make the visitors comfortable but it is also important that you acknowledge your co-workers . Know who they are, what they do and something about them that you can share with the visitor. Not only will this make an impression on the visitor but your co-workers will be delighted that you acknowledged them and that you took time to learn about them If you’re sincere, you will be successful. I garnered this tip from a book titled “How to become CEO”. It really works!

10 Sales Job Interviewing Tips for Losers

1.) Tell company management how proud you are of not having killer instincts

2.) Discuss how your not the type to make a commitment

3.) Tell the sales manager that your not interested in earning more money or better still that you’ve no interest in money

4.) Tell interviewer how you kept the laptop of your last employer

5.) Lose control of your emotions and show anger

6.) Discuss how you have no interest in networking

7.) Make tons of excuses for lack of results

8.) Tell them how you really like working from home because you have other things to do

9.) Discuss how you trust all prospects to do what they tell you they will do

10.) Tell the sales manager about your lack of personal goals

Believe or not, I recently heard that a guy actually got a sales job by saying most of these things – who knew?

Top 10 Surefire Ways For You To Blow A Deal

Here are some sure fire ways that sales people blow deals. These folks have developed their own sale methodology. See if you’ve met anyone who sells like this:

1.)Do not listen to the clients needs, tell the client/prospect what their needs are

2.)Make sure you don’t return phone calls and do not respond to a client/prospect request

3.)Be late for a meeting with prospect/client and make it worse by not apologizing

4.)Make sure your a know it all and don’t leave any room for questions

5.)Deliver a scripted message – be sure to make it worse by being low on energy

6.)Waste their time by not being prepared for the meeting

7.)Do not deliver on any promise that you make

8.) Tell them off if they complain

9.) Be very aggressive and arrogant if they don’t want to buy in the first meeting

10.) Rip the competition to shreds and tell the client/prospect that they are idiots for even thinking about buying from any other company