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”

Prospects and client should be active partners

Hello! I know its’ been awhile since I’ve provided you with updates to my blog – so I thought I’d start back up with a new Quick Tip to get back into gear.

When you find a prospect that wants you to act as a partner, make sure you manage the account and understand what the prospect wants from you and your company. Some salespeople don’t grasp the meaning of “partner” – they give it lip service. You will create an effective business relationship that can last a longtime if you include your prospect in dialog that helps contribute to product use, new or better features and functions. You need to listen. Take his/her advice and discuss the ideas with your management and have them acknowledge the prospect/clients value. Work to co-create a meaningful and successful relationship.

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.

Fear In Techland – Sales troubles ahead?

I’m hearing that many technology sales people are complaining that deals that were suppose to get done are being postponed and that prospects are fearing the loss of jobs. If this is true, we only have to look at history to know what to do. This is the time when products/services that don’t save or make a company money will not sell. Fluff or me too just won’t cut it. Sales people who have not learned to really sell in bad times won’t be successful.

Absolute have to do’s in a down market:

1.) Fully understand your products/services

2.) Spend the time to fully research the target company and contact before calling on them, and then spend more time researching before your first meeting.

3.) Ask the right questions of your prospect and listen for their answers. Don’t think you know it all.

4.) If you don’t know how to cold call you had better learn (this is for those folk who’ve never had to do it or never became good at it. In a down market many companies cut cost by getting rid of the people who where garnering leads for salespeople. Keep your pipeline full of QUALIFIED prospects

5.) Know your competition well

6.) Know how to overcome objections in advance of any meetings (practice, practice, practice overcoming all the known objections)

7.) Develop a strategy for each account – don’t do the same thing every time.

8.) Keep up your education about sales, trends in your industry, competition and what your company is doing

9.) Work closely with marketing to come up with ways to target more/new prospects

10.) Increase the amount of networking events you attend. Do in-person and online. Know about social media and Web 2.0 tactics

You might be saying to yourself at this point that sales people should be doing these things all the time in both up and down markets and your right, the difference being that those that have been doing these things all along are the one’s that are keepers if things get bad.

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!

Sell with Happy/Sad Stories

Sounds simple enough but why don’t more sales professionals tell prospects about existing customers that overcame this or that problem with his/her products/services? Sure, they may mention that x company purchased xx but they don’t go into the various reasons with a story that has a beginning, a middle and an end.  I think the reason that some sales people don’t tell a good story is because they are not trained to do so and in some cases it is just plain lack of preparation.

While many companies have sales toolboxes for the sales team with success stories and case studies in it, some sales people will gloss over them and forget the story. Some ways a sales manager can help is to continually review one or two past and present wins at each sales meeting and correlate them to some existing pipeline opportunities. Have one of the team members who is good at story telling role play with another member and get a good flow going. Have everyone make comments. This will keep fresh in the teams minds the success stories and how to use them in different situations. In addition, you can have a customer focused technical type attend a sales meeting monthly to discuss difficult problems and how they helped win the deals. Since not all success stories are in the sales tool box, sales people can also do research on their own with technical teams prior to making a sales call or presentation to see if they worked on a similar vertical issue in the past and see how it was overcome.

Remember in sales people love stories if it’s relevant to their situation. If the story is a good one it will go a long way towards getting the prospect to want that to happen to them, if it’s a bad story they will want to make sure it does not happen to them.

Good selling!

 

Google’s new tool called “Knol”

Here’s a heads-up on a new tool from Google – it’s called “knol” and it will compete with Wikipedia communal encyclopaedia. It allows anyone to provide information about any and every topic.

You can now write about a subject that your knowledgeable about and add it with KNOL.
The knol pages will get search rankings to reflect their usefulness. Knols will also come with tools that readers can use to rate the information, add comments, suggest edits or additional content.

Revenue from any adverts on a knol page will be shared with its author.

Check it out!

Unavailable Managers

Some of the best managers I’ve met in my life have the ability of gaining loyalty because they are good listeners and are excellent at building coalitions that help them achieve their goals and yours. They know how to build relationships with both their internal and external constituencies and make themselves available when needed.

I say “available” because I frequently hear from sales professionals that their manager is “not available” or “the boss is incognito when needed”. You wonder how this can be, how does a manager get away with this behavior and keep the job? Some of the ways that they accomplish this is by traveling, being in meetings, delegating difficult issues to someone else that they can point to if the situation blows-up, and by not taking responsibility for anything. Surprisingly many managers go through their careers this way. When things get hot they just move to the next position.

If you have this type of manager you better be self-reliant, figure out how to get help from someone else or find a new job with a good manager. If you’re interviewing for a new job, make sure you find out in advance what your manager is like. Try interviewing them more than once. Also, check with others in the organization and see what they think about the manager. You can also talk with vendors, business partners and customers of the company that you plan to work for. Obviously, you will need to be careful how to word the questions but there are ways of doing this that will help you get the information you need.

Here are some questions you can ask the manager directly

Start out by asking: “Before we get started, may I ask you how why you joined this company”? This will disarm and implies that it is not part of the formal meeting. Continue moving the process forward with these questions:

-Who’s the best manager you ever worked for?

-What did you like about the way he/she managed you?

-What is your management style like?

-What are your expectations of how I should approach you regarding XXX?

-Besides making my numbers what do I need to do to have a good working relationship with you?

-What are the most important qualities you look for in a XXX and what do you think the most important qualities of a manager like yourself should be?

These are some ways of drilling down to get the details that you’ll need to say yes or no to your next sales job.