Well.  I don’t know about you, but I found England’s dismal performance at the World Cup embarrassing.  The debate about what went wrong has been raging for a while now, but the fact remains that a bunch of highly-paid, professional sportsmen (who should have had a good chance of winning on paper), massively under-performed.

So, what sales lessons can we learn from the dismal failure?

Sales Lesson No 1 – Motivation Is Crucial

Of course you’ll already know that motivation is crucial to success, whether that’s in sport, in business and particularly in the sales arena.  However it’s motivation on a consistent basis that’s vital to producing good results in sales over a period of time.

Consistent motivation is even more important when it comes to new business activities.  For example if you know you’ve got cold calling, or even follow up calls to do, and you’re not feeling motivated, how likely is it you’ll do the calls you need?  Not very likely.

Alternatively, you may do the task, but in reality you’re just going through the motions, and even through you’ve done your activity it was never going to produce any kind of results for you.  Some people then even use that result to justify saying ‘”old calling just doesn’t work for me” or “I’m no good at that”.

You saw the impact that lack of motivation had on the England team – make sure it’s not happening to you or your team right now!

Sales Lesson No 2 – Don’t Play People Out Of Position

This is one of the biggest lessons to come out of the World Cup.  Not just for football, but for sales as well.

I’ve lost count of the amount of people that have said to me over the past year or so that they’re having to get people who were previously account managers to do new business activities.  When I’ve asked the question “and what training have you put in place to support them in getting the results you need?” there’s usually been an awkward silence.

That means their answer to that is “none”.  How likely are those account managers to succeed?  Not very.  And the more new business the activity is, the less likely they are to do it well.

This is compounded when managers and directors then get non-salespeople involved in the sales process – like marketing making appointment calls, and administrators taking incoming sales enquiries for example.  You aren’t doing any of that in your business, are you?

Sales Lesson No 3 – Be Flexible In Your Approach

Roy Hodgson insisted on sticking to a 4-2-3-1 formation, even when the commentators, the fans, the media and even the players were asking for a different formation!  He again showed his unwillingness to be flexible even when the players complained about being stuck in a boring routine.

Now, putting your thoughts about the players and whether they should just have put up with it or not aside, there is another valuable sales lesson there for us as well.

Whether it’s following up a marketing campaign that isn’t generating results, a sales system or script that is imposed on you by the company, or continuing to do things that aren’t working just because you’ve always done them that way, you need to have flexibility in your approach and consider changing things when the evidence shows that they aren’t working for you.

Also the market has changed for the majority of salespeople over the last few years – are you still using techniques that were developed in the old market, or are you training your team and using newer, more effective ones?

Sales Lesson No 4 – You’ve GOT To Handle Pressure

Another reason (excuse) given by the England team and those involved with it was that fans were piling too much pressure on the team.  Now I don’t know about you, but I’d be of the opinion that handling pressure is part of their job.

In the business world, salespeople, managers and directors do this everyday, so why on earth should footballers be different?

As a salesperson, there’s pressure on yourself to perform well, pressure from your boss, pressure from clients or potential clients, pressure from production staff – in fact, pressure from pretty much everybody associated with your job.

Especially with the pressure of hitting your sales targets and bringing in new business, every salesperson needs the ability to handle pressure, or they’re going to struggle in the role.

Sales Lesson No 5 – Stop Being A Sales Whinger

Now, if you’ve worked with me or trained with me in the past, you’ll know I talk a lot about the sales whingers – salespeople whose only purpose in life appears to be to complain about anything and everything.

One of the key attributes of a sales whinger is that they always blame someone (or something) else for their misfortune – it’s never their own fault.

Now, think about this in respect to the England team, their management and their poor performance.  First of all it was the fault of the heat, because our players weren’t used to it.

Then it was the fault of the fans and the media, putting too much pressure on the team and certain individuals in it.  Then it was the fault of the Premier League for wearing out those poor professional athletes.  Obviously ignoring the fact that Premier League stars playing for other countries were doing pretty well.

So how many things are you and your team blaming their poor performance on right now?  The market?  People’s budgets?  Nobody wants to buy?  The target is unrealistic?

Stop blaming on other things and get thinking about how you can improve your own performance and that of your team.  And then let me know what you come up with

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Read more:
Sales Lessons From England’s Dismal Failure At The World Cup

Yet the problem is that those very same people are often called on to pitch their agency to customers. You don’t need to be a professional salesperson to learn from the mistakes below, but you do have to remember that a pitch meeting is a critical sales interaction – one that can win or lose you business.

Below are some real-life examples of mistakes agencies make when pitching. Ones that I personally experienced recently when sitting on the buying side in pitch meetings with a couple of clients.

Pitching Mistake No 1 – Not Clarifying The Budget

This is probably the most basic of all sales basics. Yet most agencies still don’t do it! Why? Some because they’re afraid to ask, some because they don’t know HOW to ask and some because they think the client will pay whatever price we charge because they love us and our work so much.

Oh, and for those of you that are saying to yourself ‘oh but when I ask ‘what’s your budget?’ clients just say they don’t have one’ – you’re wrong. They have one alright. They’re just not telling you because you didn’t ask in the right way.

Here’s a reality check. Clients ALWAYS have a budget.

And if you’re not within it or very close you’re probably LOST the business before you even start.

In my opinion, not clarifying the budget beforehand is either stupidity or laziness. Why on earth would you go to the time and trouble involved in preparing for a pitch, only to miss out because you were out on price?

One company that pitched myself and my client was over 5 TIMES THE BUDGET!! No matter how good they were, they weren’t getting the work! Don’t make this same mistake.

If you’re still struggling on how to ask about the budget, I have a sure-fire way of asking that will get you the answer – go to www.andy-preston.com/ask-andy/ and ask for my ‘budget’ questions.

Pitching Mistake No 2 – Not Understanding The Brief

Understand Clients BriefThis would be the second-most-basic of all sales basics. Yet many agencies fail to do this too. This is often caused by time pressure, or by a mindset of ‘oh I know that already’.

Just for clarity’s sake, let me put it this way. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR NOT UNDERSTANDING THE BRIEF. Ever.

You have plenty of opportunities to clarify the brief. Yet either you’ve chosen not to do so, you’ve misunderstood what they meant, or you haven’t asked the right questions.

In a real-life example with another client, the majority of agencies misinterpreted the brief. They pitched for a complete re-brand of the organisation including a brand workshop, designing new logos, logo and brand guideline documents etc.

In actual fact, the organisation was perfectly happy with their existing brands and logos – what they actually wanted was someone to help tie them together better, ensure a common theme on web and print media and advise them the best way forward. Only 20% of agencies demonstrated they understood this in their pitch, so therefore only 20% were in the running for the business!

Pitching Mistake No 3 – Only Talking About Your Big Clients

Another mistake many agencies make in their pitch meetings is just to talk about their ‘big’ clients. You might think it’s big. You might think it’s clever. The client just thinks you’re going to be expensive.

If the company you’re pitching is not a similar size as the companies you’re talking about they won’t be able to relate to them as easily. And if the company you’re pitching is smaller, that runs the risk of them seeing your services as not appropriate and too expensive for them – even before you’ve talked about price!

The more you talk about your big clients, the more the people you’re pitching perceive you as showing off – and the client is also more likely interested in THEMSELVES than your other clients, so you should be focusing on what you can do for THEM!

In order to be more successful in pitch meetings, your pitch, your questions, your creative examples and your client references should be tailored to that individual client and can easily be related to by them. Otherwise you may have lost the client as soon as you start pitching!

Pitching Mistake No 4 – Not Showing Prices Or Creative Examples

I’m lumping both these together as they fall under a similar category of mistake. Now I know this can be a contentious issue in the agency world, particularly on the ‘creative’ side, but it can be essential as to whether your pitch meeting is successful.

Another real-life example is a company that didn’t bring prices with them to the pitch meeting – saying that they ‘didn’t price at brief/pitch stage’, nor did they bring example creative either! They said the reason for not bringing creative was that companies just ‘pinched’ their ideas, so they didn’t do it.

Now if that’s your policy, you’ve got to be very, very good to pull that off. And they weren’t. Let’s face it, if you’re not going to bring neither prices nor creative to a pitch meeting, you’re going to struggle against the other companies that are pitching because they probably will have done!

At some level, the reason for a company inviting you in to pitch is to get an idea of your creative and your ideas – not to ‘steal’ them, but to enable to make a decision if you’re the right company to work with or not. And if you don’t give them any idea of what you could do for them, nor a price, you’re making it very difficult for them to make the decision to go with you….

Pitching Mistake No 5 – Not Preparing Well Enough

The right preparation can make a HUGE difference as to whether you win the client. The wrong (or lack of) preparation can also make a huge difference – but in a different way!

In both pitch meetings I participated in recently, it was obvious who had prepared well and who had prepared badly or not at all. The companies that hadn’t done as much preparation were shown up by the ones that had. One company pitching was able to tell my client some things he didn’t know about his own industry – very impressive and gave them a huge advantage in the selection process.

Another company however was less impressive. They turned up and admitted that they hadn’t been able to do any preparation or research whatsoever – due to ‘meeting deadlines for existing clients’!

Now even looking past the fact that this put them to the bottom of the pile straightaway, that would also raise concerns over their ability to hit deadlines if we did give them work! Sounds like they certainly couldn’t cope with any more than they already have.

They opened their pitch by admitting the fact, but then suggested that we have a ‘chat’ and maybe they could come back at another time and pitch properly? The response from the client was ‘well we’re making the decision today, so it better be a good ‘chat!’

Pitching Mistake No 6 – Poor Presentation Skills

The presentation skills of all the people pitching were not good, however some were really bad! For 3 of the companies pitching, the person leading the pitch was visibly shaking, and one was so bad that his colleague had to keep jumping in and saving him from awkward silences!

In an agency, it’s very unlikely you spend a lot of time presenting – yet when you have to do so (like at a pitch meeting) then you need to be good! Sometimes you can lose business purely down to you having poor presentation skills compared to your competitors.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, one company printed out their powerpoint slides onto paper (as the company specified no powerpoint etc) which were white text on a solid green background  and then proceed to talk through all the bullet points on every slide. Awful!

Hopefully, after reading the above, you won’t make the same mistakes at YOUR pitch meetings in future.

Follow these tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Read more:
How NOT to pitch – real-life mistakes people make when pitching

Cold Calling Mistake No 1 – Not Having The Right Details

This is something that most people are guilty of – especially when it comes to the colder type of calls. They don’t have the right details for the person they’re calling. The absolute minimum you should have is the person’s name, company name and telephone number. Their website address is also useful so you can do some research beforehand if necessary and job title so you can think about what they are likely to be interested in.

Notice above I said ‘details’ not ‘data’. That’s because most people consider that ‘bad data’ is someone else’s fault. However, not having all the ‘details’ is the salesperson’s fault! In my opinion, if the salesperson doesn’t have the right details, it’s up to them to do something about it, not just complain about ‘bad data’.

And if you don’t even have the NAME of the person you’re about to call, Empty Notebook Pagemake sure you make a separate call to get the right information! Nothing shows a lack of credibility to a gatekeeper faster than asking something like ‘can you put me through to the person who deals with your ….’

Cold Calling Mistake No 2 – Lack Of Preparation

Another common mistake most people make is not being prepared enough. I’ve observed a manager or team leader start a calling session, only for some people to still be looking for their list of people to call, their questions they’re supposed to ask, or their diaries to book their appointments into! Bizarre.

And for all those people who are feeling smug and saying to themselves ‘I don’t have to worry about my diary because it’s on my phone’, here’s a wake-up call. If the diary is on the phone you are using to make the call, then that’s also a lack of preparation! Unless of course, you’ve noted down dates and times for possible appointments beforehand!

In my opinion, you should NEVER start to close for an appointment without having a few options on times and dates for that appointment to hand. Otherwise, while you search for your diary, or try and search through your phone while you’re talking to someone you’ll sound confused, less confident, less credible and it may well affect your chances of getting that appointment.

Cold Calling Mistake No No 3 – Being Too Nice

Another common cold calling mistake some people make is to be too nice on the call. I wrote a longer article about this topic previously, that you can see at this link

Now some people will disagree with me here. They would be the people that think, or have been told, that it’s important to develop rapport on the phone. I would totally agree that developing rapport is essential, but being too nice actually in most circumstances can LOSE you rapport, rather than gain it!

If you’re making a business-to-business cold call, into a decision maker in an organisation, in the main they’re going to be of senior manager or director level and probably time poor. This means, generally speaking, that their communication style is going to be quite pragmatic.

Therefore, you need to match their pragmatism in order to get rapport, respect and get them thinking you’re someone they can do business with! If you’re too ‘nice’, it runs the risk of them potentially seeing you as weak, pathetic and junior!

Cold Calling Mistake No 4 – Not Being Resilient Enough

Let’s face it – if you’re going to cold call, you’re going to get rejection. However the majority of people making business-to-business phone calls aren’t resilient enough.

As an example, think about how many times that you (or a member of your team) haven’t handled an objection well enough? Think about how many times someone you know has got up to make a drink, started reading their emails or called an existing customer when they were meant to be cold calling?

You have to have a certainly amount of resilience to be in sales to cope with the ‘knockbacks’. It’s even more important in cold calling, where you’re going to get more rejection than ever! Do you or your team fall over at the first objection? At the first bad call? Or are you resilient enough to carry on and get results from your calls?

Cold Calling Mistake No 5 – Not Keeping Your Outcome In Mind

Far too many people make the mistake of not keeping their outcome in mind when they’re on the call. In the majority of cases, there will be an outcome, a purpose or an objective for the call, but all too often it gets forgotten whilst the call is in progress!

I’ve heard countless calls where the person making the call has got caught up in a technical discussion about their product or service that has resulted in the call having a poor result for them at the end. After the call has finished, I’ve asked them ‘what was your outcome or objective on that call?’, only to be told that their objective was to get a meeting! When I’ve then asked ‘so why on earth did you get caught up in a technical discussion about the product?’ – the normal response I get is something like ‘I’m not sure. It just happened.’

It didn’t ‘just happen’. They got caught up in the call and forgot their outcome. Therefore the person they were talking to wasn’t sure of the point of the call, gave some objections to the product, and the call ended up in ‘no result’. Not a great outcome for the caller, was it?

Cold Calling Mistake No 6 – Losing Control Of The Conversation

Another big mistake most people make when cold calling is to lose control of the conversation. This is one of the biggest reasons why people’s cold calling sessions don’t achieve the results they should.

In my opinion, the salesperson should be in control of the conversation, not the recipient of the call. Notice I didn’t say that the recipient should FEEL controlled, just that the salesperson should be IN control.

The most effective way to control the conversation is through good questions. The problem is, the average salesperson is ‘average’ in terms of their questioning ability, at best! The ability to ask good questions and then ‘feed’ off the answers is a much-underrated sales ability. The top salespeople use this ability to control the conversation and get the results THEY want. The average salesperson gets controlled by the customer and wonders why they don’t make as many appointments or as many sales as their colleagues!

Cold Calling Mistake No 7 – Not Gaining Commitment

Okay, so the above 6 mistakes were important, and this one is probably THE most important of all. The majority of salespeople fail to get any kind of commitment from their clients, and this is very much true when they’re cold calling as well.

The problem is, most of the commitment falls on the salesperson’s side. Ever committed to sending some information? In that case the commitment probably was more on YOUR side than theirs. How committed to sending the information? You did! Did they even commit to reading it? By a specific time? If not, the commitment was probably all yours! Can you see how this happens?

The more commitment you can gain from a client, the more likely the ‘next steps’ you have proposed will happen. Fail to gain commitment and be prepared for the client to ‘forget’ the appointment, not do what you asked, or fall into an endless loop of call-backs where they keep saying ‘I haven’t had time to look at it yet’. Sound familiar?

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Read more:
Cold Calling Conundrums – 7 Common Mistakes

A well-executed cold call can be one of the fastest and most cost effective routes to new business – yet most people never learn to do it properly.

Generally, when initiating a cold-calling exercise, going for appointment is considered less favourable than going for quotes as the process is often slower, but it is important to consider which approach consistently produces more profitable results in the long term. Going for quotes can certainly boost a salesperson’s confidence and ego as the chances of rejection is usually low – but ultimately this is because they are unlikely to close the business in the end.

As a rule of thumb, if a client agrees to a meeting then it can be accepted that at some level they have an interest in the product or service and for many salespeople and business owners; a face-to-face meeting with the decision maker is often all that is required to covert a prospect into business.

Aiming for an appointment or an in-depth conversation is more likely to run into objections and the risk of being “rejected” by the prospect but is infinitely more profitable for the ones that are converted into clients”.

But in order to secure an initial appointment with a prospect, the cold caller must exert confidence and attitude, and by adopting a few simple techniques they could dramatically increase their chances of a successful cold call outcome.

Step 1: Advocate a 2-call strategy

A 2-call strategy involves a first call to get the name of the decision maker and some brief information and the second cold call directly to the decision maker. Failure to use a 2-call strategy increases the likelihood of running into challenges with getting past gatekeepers and also runs the risk of irritating the decision maker.

Step 2: Distance yourself from the competition    

The first thing a salesperson must do in a competitive industry is to distance themselves from the competition as failure to do this properly runs the risk of customers perceiving them as “the same as all the rest”, and that is when they will change supplier for a slightly cheaper price or when a mistake is made – as clients “perceive” the supplier can be replaced very easily.

The trick is to position yourself as different than the competition, get to know your clients and their business needs very well, so you become more than just a “supplier” to them – you become almost an extension of their business.

If clear differentiation is achieved, the likelihood of many clients changing their supplier purely because of a marginally cheaper price or a small mistake is greatly reduced and whilst there can be the odd occasion when a cold call to supply a catalogue or a quote might work, they are few and far between. And crucially, if a client has switched to a particular company easily, they will more than likely change just as easily to the next supplier!

Ultimately the golden rule of the cold call is to get commitment in the first place, and then become an extension of your client’s business so that they’ll do anything to keep you as a supplier.

Step 3: Never focus on price alone (even in a price driven market)

Often many salespeople consider themselves positioned in an industry they think is competitive, in which the products or services can be hard to distinguish between and they think that customers buy solely on price – and so they mistakenly try and sell on price.

There are very few companies out there that buy just on price – and if the clients do solely buy on price – the salesperson is setting themselves up for problems retaining them in the future.

I recommend following these crucial guidelines when approaching a cold call opportunity with a key decision maker;

1. If you win business on price, you’ll lose business on price

This strategy simply means that as soon as a competitor comes along offering them a better deal, they will get the business instead – leaving the original salesperson with a little bit of short-term turnover, a low turnover and a large proportion of wasted time and energy.

2. People do not buy for logical reasons, they buy for emotional reasons

People will buy usually only when they’re emotionally “bought in” to the purchase and the higher your price, the more emotional buy-in you need. Clients will justify the purchase with logic and reasoning as an after thought – but the initial decision to buy was bought through emotion – because they wanted the product or service at that crucial moment in time.

3. Selling requires commitment from your clients

By agreeing to receive a quote, a salesperson receives little or no commitment from the client and often, little effort has been made to find out what prices they are currently paying or whether they even have any inclination to change suppliers. The unfortunate result of this is that sending a quotation is likely to be either;

a)      the quote never reaches them

b)      they receive the quite but quickly discard it and never bother to take any follow up calls

c)      they review the quote, examine the prices and then ring their existing supplier and get them to match the price

Whilst a salesperson may feel reasonably satisfied from making these calls by perceiving an agreement for a quote as a positive result, the majority of ‘leads’ end up not taking follow up calls or will announce that “they have everything they need” or “they’ll be in touch when they need some” but the order never comes through.

Getting a prospect to agree to receive a quote isn’t going to persuade them to buy so there always needs to be a stronger outcome for the call – a meeting, or at least a more in-depth conversation about their needs, how their problems can be solved – and then get some commitment from them about changing suppliers.

Read more:
There’s life in a cold call yet…

One of the most common questions asked by directors and managers is “why is salesperson x under performing?” closely followed by “and what can I do about it?”

The most common reason for sales under performance is a basic lack of motivation. As a manager or director, how often have you hired a salesperson based on their CV and their performance at the interview, only to find out very quickly the person who is now on your payroll seems like a different person entirely? The person who said “long hours don’t worry me, I’m not afraid of hard work” but is never in the office before 8.59am and leaves at 5pm, so much so that you can set your clocks by them?

The person who said “cold calling?  I love it!  You give me the phone, I’ll close the deal”, yet now seems to hide under their desk or never be around whenever you mention doing some pro-active calling? This doesn’t only apply to new sales staff.  How about the existing sales team that have been in place for a while?  If they’re starting to feel like their job is monotonous, or that there’s nothing new or fresh in the role, then the likelihood is they’ll be demotivated and probably just going through the motions.  This will be even more the case if they’ve been passed over for promotion, missed out on commission or a pay rise, or they feel let down in some way.

Sometimes, underperformance can relate to their lack of desire. What I mean by this is the want or the will to do something, or to make something happen.  Most salespeople can perform well when things are going well for them.  The test is, when things aren’t going so well, how do they react?   If they’re cold calling and someone puts the phone down on them, what do they do next?  Pick up the phone and keep going?  Or hurl abuse at the phone, or stomp around the office, telling everyone within a 10 metre radius how rude the person was and go off for a cigarette or a coffee?

Often missed by sales managers, a change in personal or work circumstances can lead to a salesperson underperforming.  From the personal side, perhaps a new baby that leads to sleepless nights?  A stressful house move?  A new marriage where the new wife/husband expects the salesperson to spend less time concentrating on work? Now whilst I agree that on the whole we shouldn’t bring personal stuff into work, but we’d be naive to expect that it wouldn’t affect someone, at least on some level.

From the work point of view, perhaps sales targets being increased?  Or how about the commission structure changing?  Or that the salesperson feels undervalued or unimportant?  The work examples we have some control over, but it often amazes me how often a commission structure or target change is brought in by management, without any thought as to how it will affect the sales team.

Many salespeople also suffer from a lack of belief – in themselves, their company, the market, the industry, their role and so on. Constantly facing rejection, the salesperson now starts to believe the things said to them by prospects.  Having been told “that’s too expensive” enough times, the salesperson now starts negotiating with their boss on lowering the price for their customers.

In another scenario, having been told enough time that their product “isn’t as good as company x’s product”, they now start to believe that’s the case and give up almost as soon as they hear that company x is also pitching for the work. This is also one of the biggest reasons for salespeople leaving a company, in that they think that if they go to a different company, it will be easier to sell their products – often to find out too late that that’s not the case.

If you want to keep your salespeople motivated, you must engage them and get them to buy-in to any changes.  If you can get them to see the positives in any changes, you’ll find they embrace them and go out and sell more because of it.

You must make them feel valued by making sure you see or speak to each member of the team on a regular basis, one to one.  Ask them how they are getting on, and don’t just be fobbed off with their first answer, look at their pipeline; ask how you can help them convert more business and how the business can best support them.

You must stay positive. Whilst I agree salespeople should take responsibility for their own motivation, the team will take the lead from the sales manager or business owner.  If you can’t stay positive about your company and what it offers, how on earth can you expect your salespeople to do so?

And finally, you must reward effort as well as results. Sometimes, when the salesperson has put in lots of effort but not reached the result you both wanted, you may choose to reward their effort.  After all the last thing you want is for them to feel like when they put in that amount of effort, they don’t get any reward.  If they’ve been working late/early, or done something special that for some reason didn’t get the business, consider rewarding them in some way to encourage that behaviour in the future.

Follow the tips above and watch your sales (and that of your team) soar.  I look forward to hearing about your sales successes!

Read more:
Why salespeople under perform & what to do about it

In this article, leading sales expert I’ll explains that with the current economic climate, it can be tempting for employers to look to sharp, quick fixes and cuts as a remedy to their financial challenges.

However now, more than ever, it is important for businesses to take a longer-term view and ensure they retain and motivate their key talent.

In the current market conditions, businesses are having to rely on their key members of staff more than ever.  As organisations are downsizing, cutting costs and freezing hiring the key members of staff are crucial to business success, and even business survival in some cases.

However, what plans do companies have in place to retain, motivate and inspire their key members of staff?  Or are many organisations taking those members of staff for granted?  The staff who seem to have been around forever?  The members that have been ultra-reliable, we count on and put a lot of faith in?

These are the people that have been working harder than most for a long time.  The people that put in additional hours when necessary without question.  The people you can leave to handle situations when you’re away from the office.  The people who you can rely on to give you an honest assessment of the establishment and what’s going on.

Yet these are the people that often get overlooked or taken for granted.  Therefore disillusioned, they lose motivation, their desire to work hard and start looking for other opportunities.  Not the best result from some of your best staff.

So Who Are Your Key Members Of Staff?

For some people it’s the head of their accounts department or credit control, which keeps late-payers in check and the cash flow where it should be.  For others it’s the top salesperson that outperforms all the rest and brings in large amounts of profit to the organisation.  It could also be the head of the admin department or office manager that keeps things running smoothly for your establishment.

Now, more than ever it’s important to motivate, inspire and retain those key members of staff to ensure business efficiency, productivity and profitability in these uncertain times.  So how does your company measure up?

So How Can We Identify The Key Players?

As the market gets tougher, the key players in your team might well be different than the key players in the past.  So how do we identify the key players now as well as the likely key players in the future?  As businesses change and adapt to the market, it becomes increasingly difficult, but you can accomplish it with a simple exercise.

Exercise:  Get out a pen or pencil and a blank sheet of paper.  I want to imagine you’re starting the business again today.  That you were starting an organisation designed to succeed in today’s market.  Plan an organisational chart of what the business would look like, with the key positions in it.  Now step back and have a look at it.  How different is it from the company you have now?

If you were to fill in names for those positions on the chart, who are the key players?  The essential ones you couldn’t do without?  Are they different than who you view as your key players today?

As businesses re-engineer themselves and their offering in the current market, it means that the key players may change or certainly to adapt.  Are your team on board with the changes?  How do they feel about it?  Can you rely on them to deliver under a new structure?

Motivating And Leading The Team

In these tough economic times, people need leadership more than ever before.  As a leader, people will look to you for direction, motivation and inspiration.  If you’re implementing any changes in the business, you need the buy-in of your staff members, and particularly your key players for the changes to succeed and stick.

Many change management programmes have failed because it failed to get the key players on board, who prefer things the way they were – and the longer they have been in the business, the more they prefer it the old way.

You need to sit down with the key players and staff members and discuss the changes, the reasons why changes have to be made and what you’re trying to achieve, and get their buy in to the new proposed process.  Failure to undertake this critical step properly could lead to people sabotaging the project or stiff resistance at the very least.

Setting Up And Managing The Perfect Team

If you’re planning on setting up a new team, or re-engineering the business and the people within it, you have a great chance to take a fresh look at the business and set up the perfect teams within it.

So what does a perfect team look like?  What is it made up of, particularly one designed for success in the current market conditions?

Right now you need people who are pro-active, that will do things without you having to prompt them or stand over them to make sure it happens.  You need people that are determined to make things happen and see things through.  You need people that are on your side, that you can rely on to perform, no matter how adverse the conditions.

Nowhere is this more important than your sales team.  Your sales team are always an important part of your business, but now they’re more important than ever.  They have a direct influence on your profits and the potential survival of your business in the current climate.

So right now, who are the members of your sales team that are regularly demonstrating the traits mentioned above?  They’re going to be facing more objections from clients than ever before – things like “we’ve got no budget”, “things are on hold for the moment” and “we need to get a few more quotes” – and these are from clients that would have ordered without looking to closely at it a few months ago.

They’re also going to be facing more objections and rejection from new business prospects than ever before.  There are going to be more competitors in for every deal.  More projects are going to be cancelled and more companies are going to be closing their doors than ever before.  How are your sales team placed to cope?  And how are you supporting them differently than before?

You need to work on your sales team and their attitude, skills and abilities more in the current market than previously.  To ensure their sales skills stay sharp.  To make sure that they can display tenacity, determination, resilience, self-motivation, confidence and all the successful traits associated with top sales people.

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar. I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Read more:
Motivating & retaining key members of staff

1. Be Confident

Confidence is vital when making an outbound call. For anyone to buy from you or take the action you want, they have to see you as someone who knows what they’re doing! Far too many people make outbound calls with fear or hesitation in their voice – resulting in a poor impression of themselves, their company and their product/service.

In order to be confident you need to ensure that you understand the basics of the product or service you’re selling, be composed at the start of the call and make sure you deliver your script with a strong voice tone! One of the biggest mistakes I hear people make on the phone is to sound too ‘weak and wimpy’ – meaning that the people on the other end of the phone don’t take them seriously.

2. Be Natural

I’ve lost count of how many calls I’ve heard made where the person making it sounds ‘false’. They’re either reading a script given to them by someone else that they don’t believe in, or they don’t take the time to learn what they need to say well enough (so it doesn’t sound like them).

If you’re working on a new product/service or a new area, you’ve got to take the time to learn what you’re saying. Most people don’t bother to do this well enough, but if you do, you’ll find that it starts to sound more natural as once you’ve mastered the words you naturally start to put your own voice inflections and tonality onto the script, so it sounds more like you – therefore more natural!

Customers want people who sound ‘natural’ and able to have a conversation – can you do that, or do you sound more ‘robotic’?

3. Listen More

This is something that should come naturally to everybody, yet most people fail to do it anywhere near well enough! I’m always saying that there is a difference between ‘hearing’ and ‘listening’. True listening involves things like ‘verbal nods’ like ‘uh-huh’, and ‘I see’, paraphrasing back what someone has just said to you and asking further questions about a piece of information the customer has just given to you.

This is very common in everyday social situations, yet I’m often amazed how many people can’t do it when it comes to a sales situation! In order to be able to do this more effectively you have to take a genuine interest in the person you’re speaking to – again, something that most people don’t bother to do.

The key here is to get the person on the other end of the phone into a conversation, not an interrogation!

4. Don’t Assume

Yes, I know. You’ve heard this before. But if people did anything about it then people like me wouldn’t need to keep saying it! I’ve lost count of the number of calls I’ve heard where the person making the call thinks they know what the customer is about to say, therefore they ‘switch off’!

One of the most common examples of this is when the person making the call starts finishing off the sentences of the other person! What’s that about? This only serves to irritate the customer and sometimes results in them putting the phone down – not the sort of result the caller was looking for!

In most cases, whenever the caller finishes off the customer’s sentence, they get it wrong – leading to the other person having to correct them and a loss of rapport. Again, not the result we were looking for!

5. Make It Interesting!

This is something that has affected every person who has made an outbound call at some point in their career – and it affects some people every day! If you’re the sort of person that has to make a large number of outbound calls in which you’re saying the same or similar things on each call, this is probably affecting you right now!

Think about it… you’ve delivered your script probably 70 times today already. You get through to the next person and, guess what – you sound like it’s the 70th time you’ve delivered it today! The problem is, it’s the first time this particular person has heard it! Don’t they deserve your best effort, rather than the tired, bored, ‘I’d rather be at home than making this call’ way in which you’ve just delivered it?

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on…

Read more:
Tips for selling over the phone

Sales Tip No 1 – Write A Sales Plan

If you’re a salesperson, you need to have a written sales plan of how you’re going to exceed your sales target. Notice I said exceed, not achieve there. If you’re a sales manager, you need to have a written sales plan. If you’re a sales director, you need to have a written sales plan. If you’re a business owner, you need to have a written sales plan. Anyone notice a pattern here?

There is no excuse for not having a written sales plan. The most common one I hear when I mention this to people are “oh but Andy, I don’t have the time to write a sales plan”. Wrong. You don’t have the time not to write a sales plan.

The second most common one I hear is “oh but Andy, I don’t need a sales plan. I can sell my product or service to pretty much anybody”. Wrong again. You probably need a sales plan more than anyone else to be better targeted in your business development and lead generation efforts.

Sales Tip No 2 – Focus, Focus, Focus

Now you’ve got your written sales plan, the next step is to make sure you’re focused. Focusing has been forced on a lot of people as the recession hit, with many companies noticing a drop-off in incoming enquiries and sales leads.

This forced their sales team to concentrate harder on those opportunities, and focus more on each opportunity individually – and how they were going to get it to convert into business. If the market is starting to pick up for you and your team, make sure you don’t fall into the trap of taking those enquiries for granted – as some companies had done before the recession really hit them.

And if you’re starting to get lots more enquiries, your sales plan will help you focus on the best opportunities, and the ones you and your team are most likely to convert!

Sales Tip No 3 – Work To Your Strengths

This is an important point, and one that’s often missed. One important thing here is to be aware of (and manage) your energy levels. Back when I was a sales manager, I had one rep that truly was a morning person – jumping around at 8.30 in the morning, yet when 3pm came he was almost asleep.

He’d tried a number of things to solve this problem – what he ate and drank, exercise and even how much sleep he got – and nothing seemed to have an effect.

We then decided to play to his strengths, and re-arranged his diary to take advantage of his energy levels. We made his new business activity (cold calls, new business appointments etc) in the morning, and existing client calls and paperwork in the afternoon. Month on month his sales went up fifty percent. Amazing.

If you’re a manager or a director, are you playing to the strengths of your team? Are you asking account management staff or sales admin staff to do new business sales roles? Are you asking marketing staff to make cold calls? Think about what the best use of your resources is right now.

Sales Tip No 4 – Block Out Time For Prospecting

This is something I’m very keen with my clients. I’ve lost count of the times people have said to me “oh but Andy, we don’t have time for prospecting/cold calling” or “I know I should have made some calls today, but things just got in the way”.

There is no excuse for not prospecting. Sales managers and directors all over the world continually get frustrated with salespeople who ride the sales rollercoaster – a good month, followed by a bad month, followed by a good month, followed by a bad month – you get the idea.

This is usually because the salesperson has become so busy dealing with their leads that they haven’t had time for prospecting – leading to a lack of leads for the following month – which leads to a lack of sales. So why does this keep happening? Because we let it.

Everyone should block out time for prospecting. It should be the most important thing in your day. The first thing in your diary, and the last thing out of your diary. Too many salespeople don’t prospect because it’s easier to deal with existing customers – then they complain when they miss target the following month.

Sales Tip No 5 – Get Motivated

It’s interesting that already this year, how many companies are calling me and asking me to come in and help motivate their sales team. Companies that want to steal a march on their competitors are looking to get better results from their teams – whether it’s an internal team making appointments for field sales, or an external team that the company wants to perform better.

Motivation is an area that’s vital to the success of yourself or your team. It’s not unusual for people that have been on sessions with me to have doubled or tripled their performance, whether that’s in terms of numbers of appointments booked, or in sales they’ve made in the months after the session.

Many organisations make the mistake of assuming their salespeople are already motivated. Yet in my experience, most salespeople generally work between 30-50 percent of their potential.

If you’re a manager or a director, what steps are you taking right now to work on the motivation of your team? If you’re the salesperson, what would it take for you to get and feel more motivated right now? And then go and do it! And don’t say more money. That’s known as commission.

Read more:
5 Sales Tips for 2014

2013 was an interesting year for many salespeople and business owners I’ve been speaking with.

Whilst some had a successful year, many others were grateful for making the sales they did, and some were grateful to make it through the year.

There are some interesting lessons in terms of sales and sales tactics, things we should all learn from whether we’re a salesperson, sales manager, director or business owner, so follow the tips below and watch your sales soar in 2014!

Sales Lesson Number One – Prospect Continuously

If 2013 taught you nothing else, it taught you that you can’t always rely on your existing customers to hit your sales targets. Existing customers are always looking for ways to cut costs in their businesses – and maybe you and your product or service were one of those costs?

Prospecting should be done on a continuous basis, not just when you’re quiet.

Sales Lesson Number Two – Control The Sales Cycle

2013 highlighted the need for the salesperson to control the sales process more than ever before. It was the year where customers started asking for quotes regularly, but then didn’t seem to proceed with the order quite as fast.

In a lot of cases, prospects were trying to get a feel for how much it would cost, before trying to get approval for the spend, which often wasn’t forthcoming. Therefore if salespeople weren’t careful, they’d end up doing lots of running around for very little reward.

Sales Lesson Number Three – Know More About The Competition

Again, 2013 showed us that we have to be sharper in this arena. Many companies were finding increased competition when trying to sell their products or services, and often this was happening in existing accounts as well!

If you truly want to be able to sell against your competition, you’d better know them – inside and out.

You want to know about their marketing and promotion, their sales campaigns, their products and services, their strengths and weaknesses, and if you’re based in a regional areas – your competitors sales rep for that territory and their selling style.

Sales Lesson Number Four – Write A Sales Plan

Whenever I mention this topic at an event that I’m speaking at, I’m often amazed how few people have a proper sales plan in place. I mean a specific document, written down, with a focused plan of how the individual, team or business is going to win business for the forthcoming year.

Without a proper sales plan in place, most people will miss opportunities that they could have converted, and miss other opportunities they weren’t even aware of.

Not the best thing to happen in a tough market, so start your year off well and get a written sales plan in place, right now.

Sales Lesson Number Five – Examine Your Selling Level

2013 was the year that purchasing and sign-off responsibility shifted somewhat. Managers or department heads that were previously able to sign-off quite large sums of money were reigned in somewhat, and directors and owners started taking more interest in exactly where the company’s money was being spent.

This means that all the salespeople that were selling at user or manager level found that decisions we’re going above – and that they weren’t coming back as positively or as quickly as previously might have happened.

Sales Lesson Number Six – Ask Better Questions

If you or your team are still asking mainly fact-find questions of prospects you’re calling or going to see, then you’ll probably be one of the first to be left behind in 2014.

If your prospects and clients are looking at other vendors, and your phone calls and meetings are conducted knowing you’re not the only supplier they’re talking to, one of the biggest things that will differentiate you is your questioning ability.

How does yours, or your team’s, currently measure up?

Sales Lesson Number Seven – Look At Who’s Involved

As businesses have re-engineered themselves and their business offering over the last few months, for some companies that’s meant re-shuffling their staff and their responsibilities. This is worth looking at closely from a sales point of view however, as we want to make sure you aren’t losing any opportunities through any re-structuring or re-organisation.

Have a think right now, who’s making the calls to try and get appointments for the field sales team? Highly sales trained individuals? Or have you got people from marketing or sales admin making those calls? How many meetings could you be missing out on right now?

Or how about the incoming sales enquiries? Highly trained sales staff with an incoming call structure and questioning process? Or are you just leaving the admin staff to answer those valuable sales calls? How much could that be costing you in lost opportunities right now?

Sales Lesson Number Eight – Don’t Miss Existing Opportunities

2013 taught us that far too many people took their existing customers for granted. Never forget that your customers could well be on your competitors prospect list.

Are you regularly in touch with all your existing customers? Are you up-to-speed on what their plans are for the next few months as they re-focus their businesses? Are you working to increase your number of contacts in each of your clients? Are you on top of every single potential opportunity?

Sales Lesson Number Nine – Focus On Your Pipeline

2013 was the year that whoever was in charge of the sales team realised how lazy they’d become. I’ve spoken to sales managers that had stopped doing sales meetings, stopped doing field visits with their team and stopped checking their sales reps pipelines. How crazy is that?

When I’d ask them when was the last sales meeting they conducted with their entire team, they’d say things like “well I’d rather have them out in the field”, “it costs a lot to get them together for a whole day” or “I don’t know what we’d do for an entire day”. Doesn’t give you a lot of faith, does it?

When was the last time you had a sales meeting in your company out of interest?

Sales Lesson Number Ten – Work On Your Sales Skills

2013 taught us that many of the basic sales skills that are needed for success in a sales role had been taken for granted – yet were lacking in a large number of the companies and the salespeople I spoke to.

Last year was the year where sales skills mattered far more than in years previous. Prospects were taking longer to make decisions, higher level decision makers were getting involved, return on investment needed to be proven at every stage, more competitors were involved in every sale and prospects were looking to negotiate all your profit out of every deal.

How did you and you team’s sales skills measure up? And what are you going to do to improve that this year? I look forward to hearing how you get on!

Read more:
10 Sales Lessons from 2013

Mistake number 1 – are you too worried about yourself?

In my experience when training businesses and salespeople, I’m often told that most are more concerned about their own preparation, such as: Have I got enough business cards? Are my Power Point slides done right? Or, have I got my product samples in my case?

This is a big mistake in my opinion – surely you should be more worried about your client than yourself?

Mistake number 2 – Are you doing enough client preparation?

This brings me onto the second mistake most people make when it comes to preparation and, be honest, how many of you out there can say that you are more concerned about preparing for your client than you are for yourself?

The best preparation is client preparation, such as looking at and printing out pages from their website. You’d be surprised how many people do not even visit a prospect’s website before meeting them face to face, only to be left faced with awkward situations that involve them asking questions such as: “tell me a little about your business”.

Mistake number 3 – Not using Google!

There is no excuse for not even carrying out basic preparation – after all, anyone can use Google.

Googling the company name (to see what else comes up, not just checking out their website), googling the name of the person you are meeting, checking out their competition and looking who you’ve worked with in a similar industry or situation.

What sort of difference do you think it would make to the prospect if instead of asking questions like “tell me a little about your business” you were asking questions like “I was looking on your website and noticed that….” or “I noticed on your website that you worked with…and I wanted to know a little more about it…”

Do you think these have a different impact on the person you’re meeting?  You can bet on it!  Do you think they would perceive you differently than your competitors who ask the same tired old questions, time after time?  You can bet on it!

If you do the right kind of research, do you think it might have a big impact on the results from your sales calls and appointments?  You can bet on it!

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Read more:
3 common mistakes people make when preparing for appointments

The other day I had an email through from “Katie” who attempted to sell me her company’s Social Media services via LinkedIn.

I thought I’d share this experience with you as it serves as a useful example to dissect her approach, and examine the lessons you can learn from it, in order to improve your own sales approaches and increase your sales.

First of all, let’s take a look at Katie’s pitch:

‘Hi Andy,

If I could win you more clients through Social Media would you want to chat?

Katie x’

Now, selling over LinkedIn isn’t easy, but there are various sales lessons we can take from Katie’s approach here:

No 1 – Lack Of Research

Katie has clearly failed to do any research on me or my company whatsoever. If she had, she would have come across some interesting figures. Firstly, at the time of writing this article, she currently has 618 ‘likes’ for her company on Facebook. I have 2,802.

She has 8 testimonials on LinkedIn. I have 233.

She currently has 1,669 followers for her company on Twitter. I have 19,603.

Does anyone else see a problem with her trying to sell me Social Media services here?

Unless you’re making over 200 calls per day, if you’re going to make a sales approach via any means, make sure you do some research on your potential prospect first! This doesn’t have to be a long, drawn-out affair – a quick look around their website or social media profiles will give you enough of an idea of your angle to go in with.  Sales pitches with an angle are far more likely to get someone’s interest than a general approach.

No 2 – A Generic Approach

Here’s where Katie fails…she doesn’t personalise her message enough!

Katie then compounds her first mistake by making it a very generic approach.  Now I don’t know about you, but it looks very much like a ‘cut and paste’ email to me, even though she’s put my name at the top.

My guess is that this same message has gone out to a number of people, and she’s just changing the name on each one.  The problem is, that’s an obvious approach and it will cost her sales.

One of the keys of selling effectively over Social Media is to make your communication personal, not generic!  Recipients don’t want to feel like they’re just a number, they want to be treated as individuals.  If you fail to do this, your chances of selling via Social Media are very much limited.

And don’t forget, this message is coming from someone trying to sell Social Media services here, so she actually demonstrates her lack of knowledge and awareness of her supposed area of specialty in her sales approach!  Not good.

No 3 – Closing Too Soon!

Let’s look at the sales situation here.  This is a first approach – the first message I’d got from this person.  There was no warm up of initial emails, messages or conversations of any kind.

There was no questioning prior to this email, no research, and nothing at all before the message ‘if we can do xyz for you, would you want to chat’.

In order to influence other people, you need as much rapport as possible.  How much rapport did she have with me by coming straight out with that question in her first approach?  None whatsoever.

No 4 – Over-Familiarity

Now this is something you have to watch over email and Social Media.  Because there isn’t human communication like there is face-to-face or over the phone, it’s much more difficult to read emotions and understand meaning.

This is meant to be an introductory message, introducing me to her and her company, what they do, and trying to give me a professional opinion of them and their credibility.

And she puts a kiss on the end of her message.

While that might be suitable for her friends, or for people she knows really well, do you think it’s suitable for professional business communication here, particularly on a first approach message?

It might be something she just naturally does. At best it’s showing her naivety and lack of experience – exactly the opposite of what you want to do when you’re trying to persuade someone to buy from you!

No 5 – Compliment To Gain Rapport

Katie missed a huge trick here.  One of the ways to gain fast rapport with someone is to sincerely compliment them on something that they’ve done that is impressive, or you find interesting.

As a salesperson, one of my favourite things to do while waiting in reception for meetings with prospects, was to read their company literature, awards and press cuttings while waiting for my prospect to arrive.

That usually gave me 3 or 4 things to ask about, or compliment the person on, let alone anything I got off the website. Which meant the start to my meetings were easy, and I had huge rapport when I started to talk about MY products and services – which gave me far more chance of winning the business.

Taking that same approach into the Social Media field, in this example the first thing Katie could have done was compliment me on the number of followers/fans/testimonials I have.  From a sales persuasion point of view, that would have been an easy way to deal with the fact that she has far fewer numbers than me, and would have got rid of the major objection whilst raising rapport at the same time!

The crazy thing is, I was actually in the market to buy some Social Media support when Katie approached me.  I already see the value in Social Media.  I already get good business from it.  How difficult would I have been to close at that moment?  Not very!

Yet she failed to even gain any knowledge or understanding of that, and her sales opportunity was over, even before it really started.

So, in summary….

You can see that with all the areas that Katie has made mistakes in that have led to his ‘Sales Failure’. Think about them when you’re conducting your own new business sales efforts, whether that’s over the phone, face-to-face, or online. Then think about what you can do to improve them and of course, drop me a line here if you’re struggling! Good luck with your sales!

Read more:
Selling Social Media Services? Read this First!

LinkedIn is a great way to sell yourself and your business, but one of the things I’ve been asked about a lot recently, is the LinkedIn ‘Endorsement’ feature.

Added to a few profiles for testing last year before they rolled it out fully this has been a topic that comes up recently whenever LinkedIn is mentioned.

I thought it would be useful to put my answers to various people’s questions down here, so here are some of the questions I’ve been asked and my responses to them. I’d love to hear from you if you have got any further questions – so please don’t hesitate to contact me and ask!

Does Anyone Like The Endorsement Feature?

I must admit, I’m personally not a huge fan of the Endorsement feature on LinkedIn. I personally feel that it actually distracts people from focussing on the more important parts of the profile – like the recommendations section – where you can get a true gauge of that individual and what they’re like.

Unfortunately, when LinkedIn made the changes to the profile layout, Endorsements are higher up than your Recommendations and the Endorsements are one of the initial things people base some of their initial judgements about you on.

Is The Endorsement Feature Reliable And Trustworthy?

I think the short answer to this is no. Unlike the Recommendation feature, where people write individual feedback (so you can make a judgement as to the strength of the recommendation), the endorsements are done simply with a click of a button – in fact LinkedIn often prompts you to endorse people’s skills on occasion just when you land on their profile!

The consequence of that, is that you get people endorsing you for skills when they have had little or no interaction with you, and have no idea if you have that skill or not! Even worse, you get endorsed for skills that you don’t actually want on your profile, just that the person endorsing you decided to endorse you for that too – it then appears on your profile. Everyone I’ve spoken to talks about this happening to them – and everyone hates it!

What Would You Suggest In Terms Of Risk Mitigation?

I think, whether we like the feature or not (and I think you’ve guessed my opinion on it by now) we need to bear in mind that people will make judgements on us and our capabilities based on the what we’re endorsed for, and the numbers.

Their initial judgements will be formed based on that, and backed up based on your profile summary and your recommendations. Those are the two other places people pay most attention to when looking at a LinkedIn profile as a potential buyer of your products or services for example.

So in terms of risk mitigation, I’d recommend that you ensure your Endorsements are for things that relate to your role or areas of expertise.

For example if you’re in Recruitment, ‘recruiting’ should be a skill high up if not at the top of your endorsement list.

I know this sounds simple, but you’d be amazed how many people fall foul of it!

Any Final Tips?

Well the people I work with most in relation to training on LinkedIn are salespeople, and people using LinkedIn for Lead Generation and Business Development purposes.

The biggest tip I can give you is: think how your profile looks to potential buyers. Your objective (from a Sales Persuasion point of view) is to demonstrate your credibility, your professionalism, how you’ve helped people, how you’ve generated results for them etc. Think about the key skills they would want to see in order to think about buying from you, or at least giving you an enquiry and make sure they’re right at the top of the endorsements on your profile!

Good luck with your LinkedIn profile and your future sales!

Read more:
LinkedIn Endorsements: Useful or a Waste of Time?

This has become even more true in the current market conditions – where savvy buyers and decision makers are looking to get the best value when they’re purchasing. Therefore to get good results, the salesperson or business owner has to be able to stand their ground in a negotiation in order to get the price they deserve. Sadly, this often isn’t the case.

So why is it that the buyer or decision maker often has the upper hand when it comes to negotiation?

Reason 1 – They’re Better Prepared To Negotiate

One simple reason why the buyer or decision maker often does better than the salesperson in a negotiation, is that they’re better prepared to negotiate than the salesperson is! Often a salesperson gets caught up in a negotiation when they aren’t ready for it – and this is a recipe for the salesperson losing the majority of the profit from a deal!

Most salespeople get negotiated with before they’re ready. So if you think that a meeting or phone call could result in a negotiation, make sure you prepare for it beforehand! If a negotiation starts before you’re ready, don’t be afraid to postpone it and re-schedule it for another time when you’ve had chance to prepare.

Reason 2 – You’re Too Desperate

Another main reason that salespeople struggle to get better results from their negotiation is that on most occasions, they’re so desperate to win the deal that this comes across to clients, and the clients use that as leverage to swing the negotiation in their favour.

Prospects and clients can smell desperation and it certainly isn’t attractive! One a client knows the salesperson is more desperate to do the deal than they are, that’s just given them the green light to get the best deal they can – at the expense of the salesperson

It’s about time as salespeople that we got some pride back and realised that prospects and clients often want to do the deal as much (or sometimes even more) than we do – but often we don’t know it.

Reason 3 – You Fail To Spot Their Tricks

Any buyer or decision maker worth their salt will attempt to play tricks during a negotiation. If you can spot these and deal with them, then you’re usually fine. However, most salespeople aren’t even aware what the other party is doing, think that their tricks are real, and end up falling for them!

If you can learn how the buyers and decision makers are tricking you into losing profit, then learn how to deal with them, then you’re fine. Fail to identify them however, and you could continue to struggle.

Reason 4 – You Don’t Know Enough About The Other Party

Another reason salespeople often come off worst in a negotiation is that they fail to find out enough about the other party before the negotiation starts. The buyer or decision maker might well have strong reasons for wanting the product or service the salesperson is offering, and strong reasons to purchase now. But, often the salesperson doesn’t find that out, and ends up worse off in the negotiation.

Very often there are pressing issues, or demands on the buyer or decision maker’s time – which would force them to do a quick deal – but often the salesperson fails to find that out! Therefore they end up the keener party to do the deal – and often miss out on vital profit that could have been gained, had they bothered to find out more in the first place!

Reason 5 – They Have More Skills Than You

Think for a moment: When was the last time you went (or sent a member of your team) on a professional negotiation skills course, lasting from between 1 and 3 days in total? Possibly never!

Think about the other side: If they’re a professional buyer, you can guarantee that they will have been on such a course. If they’re a decision maker in a business, they’re also likely to have been on a similar course. At the very least, they’re far more experienced at negotiation than you!

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Read more:
5 Reasons Why You Struggle With Negotiation

Even though we may be officially out of recession, many business are still experiencing ‘recessionary conditions’ which therefore means they’re selling in a tough market  A tough market for other companies might mean that they’re selling against a lot of competition, or that potential prospects are beating them down on price – meaning lost margins and lost profit.

Whichever of those situations is affecting you and your business right now, here are some tips on how to sell more in tough market conditions…..

Andy’s Sales Tip 1 – Increase Your ‘New Business’ Efforts

My first tip for anyone selling in a tough market is to increase their ‘new business’ or ‘prospecting’ efforts.  The first good reason to do that is if people are taking longer to decide whether to buy or not, having more prospects is a good exercise in ‘risk mitigation’.  A second good reason would be that the more prospects you have, the ‘choosier’ you can be who you work with.  A third would be that you can then prioritise your prospects, based on who can make quick buying decisions – which mean quick sales!

For most small businesses I work with, their levels of ‘new business’ or ‘prospecting’ just aren’t high enough.  Which means that in a tough market, they sit there and think ‘if only the phone would ring more’ or ‘I wish I got more enquiries over the web’.  It’s time to take some action and to get some prospecting done, instead of waiting for it to come to you…. Because it probably won’t!

Andy’s Sales Tip 2 – Increase The ‘Interest’ From Your Network

One of easiest things to do for more sales, more quickly, is to increase the levels of interest in you and your business from your network of existing contacts.  The progress of Social Media has made this very easy.

How are you communicating with your prospects and existing contacts over Social Media?  Now I’m not saying that all social media is useful (there are plenty of so-called ‘Social Media’ Gurus peddling that kind of rubbish), but I am saying that you need to be where your prospects are and communicate with them.

Are you posting success stories for your business?  Your new business wins?  Examples of how you’ve helped people?  Positive feedback and testimonials from customers?  If not, now would be a good time to start!

Andy’s Sales Tip 3 – ‘Ring Fence’ Your Existing Customers

When you’re selling in a touch market, it is VITAL that you ‘ring fence’ your existing customers, in order to stop them going to your competitors!

Think about it, you’ve invested time and money in getting that customer to buy from you in the first place!  So why on earth would you let them go without a fight?

Surveys have told us for years that the biggest reasons customers leave an existing provider is because of supplier apathy…. They just didn’t feel like their business was valued… that we didn’t care…. So they took their business elsewhere!

Can we afford for that to happen in a tough market? I don’t think so!  So make sure you ‘ring fence’ your existing customers as a matter of priority….

Andy’s Sales Tip 4 – Look For Additional Sales Opportunities

Sometimes there are additional sales opportunities sitting right under our noses!  And often we don’t spot them, or sometimes even think of them in the first place!

One of the most effective sales questions of all was simply ‘would you like fries with that?’.  Simple, effective, and even broke some of the rules of being a ‘great’ question, but did it work?  Of course it did!   Responsible for millions of dollars of additional sales all over the world!

Now, if something as simple as that question can have the impact that it did, what could you introduce in your business to have a similar effect?

It’s simply about spotting the additional sales opportunity at the right moment, or even preparing for it in advance like the ‘fries’ question.  Think about the process a customer goes through when buying from you.  What opportunities are there for additional sales that you’re not taking right now?  Or not taking consistently enough?  And if you did, what kind of difference would it make to you and your business?

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar!  I look forward to hearing how you get on….

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Small Business Sales Tips – How To Sell More In A Tough Market

In a recession, you can’t afford to take your eye off the ball – business is tougher, existing clients beat you down on price, and you risk losing valuable profit.

Customers are afraid of making a wrong decision, so take much longer to decide whether or not to proceed with your proposal. Even people not directly affected by the recession start to hold onto their cash ‘just in case’.

So, are your sales skills sharp enough to cope?
Most small business owners I speak to are not traditional salespeople, haven’t been through weeks and months of rigorous sales training, and don’t continually practice their skills by selling full time. In fact, these small business owners would hate to call themselves ‘salespeople’, and because of everything else they have to do in the business – strategy, leadership, production, distribution, delivery, accounts etc, sales is traditionally only a small part of what they do.

Therefore if you want to thrive, or even survive, the economic conditions we’re experiencing, you’ll need to look at your sales skills, at the very least in the following areas:

Sales Skills Area Number 3 – Cold Calling or Follow Up Calls

I know. You hate cold calling don’t you? Most of you probably have avoided doing it altogether, or only done it when times are hard and you’re more desperate.

The question is, what else are you doing as a pro-active new business development activity. When I’ve asked this question to business owners in the past, people have said to me ‘oh but Andy, I have a website’, ‘I get all my business through networking’ and ‘I don’t go after new business, I just deal with my existing clients’.

Aha. Those would be the people that will be struggling in the current conditions, wouldn’t they?! Incoming enquiries are drying up, people are putting off making purchasing decisions, you’re being driven down to almost no profit on your prices, and you’re still sat there, wondering if the phone is going to ring?

You’ve got to do some sort of pro-active new business development activity in the current market, but how prepared are you to do good follow up calls, let alone cold calls?

Sales Skills Area Number 4 – Questioning and Uncovering Needs

Most professional salespeople are poor at questioning, so this is another area where you need to take a close look at your current skill levels. Most business owners I meet commit the ‘cardinal sin’ of talking too much about their product or service too early in the sale! The end result being is that most decision makers switch off from that sort of sales approach and the business owner wonders why more people don’t buy from them!

In addition, most business owners only ask information based questions of the potential client, questions that give the business owner more idea if they can sell their product or service to the potential client, but have little or no value for the decision maker whatsoever, resulting in the decision maker being bored at best, or having very short meetings at least! Again, neither of these is a great result for the business owner!

Sales Skills Area Number 5 – Closing

Now this is the biggie! The most misunderstood and poorly executed part of selling, closing and closing skills will be one of the biggest things that causes success or failure of many businesses in the current climate.

Again, even professional salespeople struggle with this part, so business owners will definitely need to work on this area. However, most of them find this part a challenge, as it’s not something that comes naturally to them or they don’t feel a huge amount of confidence in doing.

The challenge is, if you can’t master the closing part of the sales process, you’re probably missing out on a lot of deals. This isn’t a big problem when you’ve got a huge amount of prospects, or lots of business is coming from existing clients. However, in the current market conditions, not many people are lucky enough for that to be the case. The problem is, it may have been a few months ago, but now you have to adapt.

If you struggle with closing, clients will procrastinate over making a buying decision, more so now than ever before, because their fear of taking risks has risen in the current economic conditions and also they’re looking to hang onto their cash more – all bad news for you if you’re trying to get business off them.

In summary, in a negative market, if you don’t work on your selling skills and keep them sharp, you’re virtually handing business to your competition on a plate and allowing yourself to struggle to survive. When would be a good time to work on your sales skills do you think?!

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you got on.

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Small Business Owners: Are Your Sales Skills Sharp Enough To Cope? Part 2

Customers are afraid of making a wrong decision, so take much longer to decide whether or not to proceed with your proposal. Even people not directly affected by the recession start to hold onto their cash just in case. Are your sales skills sharp enough to cope?

In a recession, sales skills come to the fore. More so than in any other market conditions, right now if you’re struggling to win profitable business then it’s probably down in no small part to your lack of sales skills. Most small business owners I speak to are not traditional salespeople, haven’t been through weeks and months of rigorous sales training, and don’t continually practice their skills by selling full time.

Most small business owners I speak to would hate to call themselves salespeople, and because of everything else they have to do in the business – strategy, leadership, production, distribution, delivery, accounts etc., sales is traditionally only a small part of what they do.

Therefore if you want to thrive (or even survive!) the economic conditions we’re experiencing, you’ll need to look at your sales skills, at the very least in the following areas….

Sales Skills Area Number 1 – Objection Handling
How good are your objection handling skills? Most full-time salespeople are not great in this area, so as a small business owner, how do you rate yourself? Are you used to dealing with rejection and objections? Are you prepared for objections like “we don’t have the budget for that at the moment” or “call me back in 6 months”, “that’s too expensive or “leave it with us and we’ll come back to you when we’re going ahead”?

Then, can you deliver credible answers to those confidently and with certainty, bringing the conversation back on track, position more value and then close with conviction?

Sales Skills Area Number 2 – Negotiation
You know people are going to negotiate with you in the current market, because your existing clients have already started to negotiate with you, haven’t they? In market conditions like these, clients become more price-focused than ever, and start to look around more and evaluate other options before making a decision (or putting it off entirely!).

You know you’re going to get existing clients and potential clients negotiating with you, particularly on price and payment terms in the current market – are you properly prepared for this? Or do you find yourself ‘caught out’, suddenly caught in the middle of a negotiation before you realise what’s happened?

That is only going to result in a poor end to the negotiation for you – either you don’t get the business, or you end up giving away most of your profit in your desperation to at least ‘win’ the deal. Neither of those is a great result for you.

Sales Skills Area Number 3 – Cold Calling or Follow Up Calls
Now I know, I know. You hate cold calling don’t you? Most of you probably have avoided doing it altogether or only done it when times are hard and you’re more desperate. Right now would be one of those times (or very shortly!).

The question is: what else are you doing as a pro-active new business development activity? When I’ve asked this question to business owners in the past, people have said to me “oh but Andy, I have a website”, “I get all my business through networking” and “I don’t go after new business, I just deal with my existing clients”.

Aha. Those would be the people that will be struggling in the current conditions, wouldn’t they?! Incoming enquiries are drying up, people are putting off making purchasing decisions, you’re being driven down to almost no profit on your prices, and you’re still sat there, wondering if the phone is going to ring?

You’ve got to do some sort of pro-active new business development activity in the current market, but how prepared are you to do good follow up calls, let alone cold calls?

Stay tuned for part two coming soon where I’ll talk you through following up calls, asking the right questions and closing deals!

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Small Business Owners – Are Your Sales Skills Sharp Enough To Cope?

Here’s the challenge: you’ve spoken to a potential client in the past, and now they’ve come up again in your follow up list.

Now, depending on the quality of your follow up call, the opportunity for you to do business can be won or lost at this point. Which puts a lot of pressure on you for this call, doesn’t it?

It won’t surprise you to learn that the majority of follow up calls that I hear made are fairly poor so here are a few mistakes you need to avoid, in order to get more business from your calls.

Mistake Number 1 – Being Desperate and Lying

Now I know we’re in sales, or have to do sales as part of our role, and sometimes we may have to bend the truth a little on occasion, but I’m not sure that outright lying helps our cause as a professional, trying to build profitable business relationships.

An example of a call I heard made earlier this month went like this: “Hello Mr X, we spoke 3 months ago and you asked me to call back today to make an appointment with you”.

Why was this so bad? Not only because the potential client hadn’t said anything of the sort, but also because the salesperson had never even spoken to the client before!

What could that potentially do to your credibility in the eyes of the potential client, and, if you’re speaking to a decision maker with any level of authority, expect to be challenged on it quite strongly with something like “No we did not” or “I don’t remember that” – leading to either an argument or a rapid climb-down on your part – and probably the end of the call.

Now whilst the above statement by the salesperson is quite unusual, it does have a similar, more common cousin – the “Hi we spoke 3 months ago and you asked me to call you back today”. Usually said by salespeople who are desperate and don’t have a better opening statement or in their misguided belief that lying will help get them rapport with the decision maker – not likely!

Mistake Number 2 – Talking About Literature or Emails

The biggest mistake I see most people make when they follow up literature or an email is when they say something like: “Hi Andy, it’s Fred from XYZ company, we recently sent you some literature. I’m just calling up to make sure you received it.”

Let’s think about this for a minute. What are the two most likely responses from a decision maker that you don’t have that much rapport with? Something like “No I didn’t, would you please go through the same rigmarole again, just for my amusement?” Or how about the other option: “Yes I did, and I’ve got all the information I need right now, thank you”.

Where on earth are you going to take the call now?

Even if you’ve sent literature and been lucky enough to get the decision maker to take the call you run the risk of the call being very short, with another call back scheduled for a later point in time, but without having moved forwards with the prospect in any way.

Mistake Number 3 – Having Endless Call-Backs

This is another big mistake that many people make without even realising it. Far too many salespeople either end their previous call badly or without a defined outcome. What kind of impact do you think that has on the potential success of their next call?

How do you think this affects your attitude when the call comes up in your call back list? Might the fact you got nothing from the first call and the person won’t even remember you in some cases play on your mind a little?

If you’re like most people, of course you have! One of the reasons for this cherry-picking is that you know you got nothing from the call last time and you’re worried that the same will happen this time and you’ll ruin the prospect.

Also, because your attitude has been affected, might that affect your confidence in making the follow up call a little? Perhaps less likely to handle objections well and give up too easily? You bet!

Therefore, most follow up calls start something like this: “Hello Mr X, we spoke about 3 months ago about you xyz and I was just calling to see how things are going for you at the moment”.

Awful! Let’s imagine you were the senior decision maker you were trying to reach with that statement. What would you think of a call like that, that interrupted you doing whatever you were doing to take the call? That it has real importance and value for your business? Or that it’s pretty much a waste of your time, exactly like most of the other calls you receive on a day-to-day basis? My guess is for the second one.

Is it any wonder that the response decision makers give to that sort of opening is something like “Things are fine. What do you want?” Now we’re under even more pressure, aren’t we, and it’s pretty hard to rescue the call from here.

So, if you’re about to do a follow up call session, or try and reach people you’ve spoken to in the past, make sure you don’t make any of the mistakes shown above and you’ll have far greater successes with your calls!

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3 Classic Follow Up Mistakes Most People Make With Their Sales Calls

During a discussion with a group of networking contacts recently, I realised that we all knew at least one person who was ruining their chances of getting referrals just by trying to be seen as a ‘jack of all trades’.

It is easy to become unnerved by the slowdown in business but staying true to your business and its core offering is crucial if you want to be seen as a credible supplier and stand a chance of being recommended by others.

Here are some of the most common ways in which businesses are ruining their chances of getting valuable referrals:

Promoting a different business or service every time you meet them

This will lead to no referrals because they are not specialising in one area, which will eventually lead to confusion in professional stance and ultimately it will ruin their credibility with others.

For example, if you wanted to find a leadership trainer, and found a good one with great testimonials, but also promoted themselves as a sales trainer, communication expert, teacher of presentation skills, change management and facilitation, would they really look at you as a credible leadership trainer? After all, how can you expect to be seen as expert in all these areas? The result is no credibility and no referrals.

Delivering a poor service and then not putting it right

I shouldn’t have to mention this one, but sadly it happened to one of my contacts in a networking group. Then what happened? That’s right, he told everybody! This is not the ideal situation when you need people to talk about how good your products and services are. The result was an instant loss of future referrals.

Selling to the group without doing any prior qualification

I always remind people of the following statement: the people in a networking group are your route to market, not your target market. This means that until they are properly qualified they do not require the hard sell. If you do, the result will be people avoiding you.

Publicly asking for help and advice, then arguing with it, or not doing anything about it

This has two effects on the person you are seeking help from. Firstly, the initial impact on the person that tried to help is “well I won’t bother wasting my time like that again!” But it also might communicate a form of one-upmanship – you don’t need to ask for help if you are only going to ignore the advice given, this will also demonstrate that advice was not needed in the first place, but that you thought you knew better! This doesn’t create a great overall impression does it?

Not giving (but expecting) referrals

I’m not talking here about “oh, you should really talk to xyz, he might know people that need your help”, but proper referrals – a qualified introduction to someone that needs your help (and is willing to pay for it). Result? People get fed up with your taking attitude and don’t bother with you.

Not connecting with people at a deep enough level

Until people really understand what it is you do, how can you expect them to give you referrals? Let alone trust you enough to refer you into their biggest client, where their reputation and credibility is on the line? So make sure that you are coming across as the leading expert in your field – and add some confidence in there too!

Are any of these points familiar? Is this you, or someone you know? If so, make sure the above tips are put into place, and watch your sales soar!

I look forward to hearing how you get on!

Read more:
How to ruin your chances of referrals

Making first impressions count
I was recently doing some sales training for a client in Hertfordshire.  The client had hired a local hotel as the venue for the training, and had booked me in to stay at the same hotel.  As I’m normally delivering training during the day, most of my travelling is done in the evenings, so I’m often arriving at hotels quote late at night.  On this particular occasion, it was midnight just as I was arriving at the hotel.

The hotel building and grounds were quite impressive, however, as I got my luggage out of the car and tried to check in, this is where things started to go wrong.

I enter the hotel lobby with my suitcase, my case of training equipment and 2 suit carriers.  It’s also just gone midnight and I’d been driving for nearly 5 hours at that point. My focus was solely on checking in as quickly as possible and the least I’d have appreciated was an acknowledgement of this from the receptionist, perhaps with something like “we’ll get you checked in as quickly as possible sir, would you like any help with your bags?”

However, unfortunately this particular hotel failed to do anything like that.  Quite bizarrely, the check in desk went around the corner and doubled as the bar where 2 staff members were serving a couple of customers.

So I patiently waited.  The members of staff looked at me a few times but nothing happened.  I decided to keep waiting just to see what they would do.  A full 10 minutes later nothing had happened – until I said “excuse me, is there any chance of checking me in before one of us dies?!”  Then they got someone within a minute!

Just think about the impact of that first impression.  What would that do to the chances of me booking again?  Or recommending them to others?

All the small things
Also, because my first impression of them was so bad, what do you think was in my mind as I eventually got into my room – was I “super positive”, eagerly anticipating my 2 night stay with them?  Or was I annoyed, frustrated and probably going to be critical of even any small things that they got wrong over the next 2 days?  That’s right – the second one!

And guess what – they managed to get a lot of things wrong over the 2 days!  Were they large, insurmountable problems?  No, they were mainly little things that they didn’t do, or didn’t do as had been arranged.

How is your company’s first impression?
So have a think about what the “first impression” of your company is like to potential clients.  What’s your website like?  Does it give a good impression of your company?  Is it easy to navigate?  Can potential clients find what they need easily?  Does it truly represent your company’s values and present you in the light that you’d like to be shown in?  Does it demonstrate your credibility, encourage interaction and get people to contact you?

What about your company’s reception area if you have one?  Does that present your company in your best light to visitors?  Again, if visitors are waiting in your reception area, they’ll be looking around, making unconscious judgements on what your company is like to do business with.  If your reception area looks cheap, what do you think their impression of your company is like?  Does it have quality printed literature about your company that they can look through?  A company newsletter so they can find out more about you?  Or just copies of old magazines with coffee stains on? (as one did that I was visiting recently!)

If you haven’t already done so, try ringing your own company pretending to be a potential client.  You could be horrified at what you might experience!  But at least it makes you aware of it and gives you a chance to put it right!

Use these strategies and watch your sales soar!  I look forward to hearing how you get on.

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First Impressions Are Vital In Sales

When I working with sales teams all over the world, Sales Managers and Directors often tell me that they believe all salespeople are inherently lazy. I’m not sure I agree with that hugely sweeping statement, but I do think salespeople often look for the quickest way to do something.

I think this is partly down to the fact that a lot of salespeople only start earning real money when their commission kicks in, so any task that isn’t directly related to bringing in new customers, orders or money, they tend to try and find the quickest way to do. Hence why the managers think they’re lazy.

As salespeople though, this quickest route habit can often cause us problems. Particularly as technology has advanced and email is a popular communication method for many. However, this often results in salespeople resorting to email communication – at the expense of their own sales figures! Have a look at the examples of common email sales mistakes below, and see if any ring true for you.

Email Sales Mistake Number 1 – Using It To Follow Up

Let’s look at this from a new business perspective. You’ve spoken with or met with a client previously, you’ve started to develop rapport, but they’ve probably got an existing supplier, or existing way of doing things. So you didn’t pick up their business from your initial call or appointment.

Your boss has probably been putting pressure on you about your sales figures or your sales pipeline. So you decide you need to follow up with a few people, this particular prospect included. So what do you do next? Pick up the phone and call them, establish their current situation and needs and potentially see how you may be able to add value to what they’re trying to achieve over the next few months? Close for another appointment, attempt to dislodge the existing supplier or existing process and pick up their business? Or send an email?

If you’re in the email category, stop it! Right now!

Email Sales Mistake Number 2 – Just Adding People To A Mailing List

Another great idea from the marketing department. Sending an email newsletter or similar to keep people informed of your products and services. The funny thing is, how many newsletters do you get that you don’t read, or you don’t read in full? I bet it’s quite a few. If you don’t know the sender well, you probably don’t read it at all. Sometimes even when you know the sender well you still don’t read it.

Don’t sit back and think that just because someone is on your generic email list that that’s helping you ‘sell’ to that person. In most cases it isn’t. The responsibility to move that person through your sales pipeline is still yours.

Email Sales Mistake Number 3 – Sending Mainly Flyers By Email

Please tell me you don’t do this? Even worse if the email is titled ‘offer of the month’ or similar. If the person hasn’t used you before, you’re relying on luck for the person to buy from you. And the more competitive your marketplace and the higher the price of what you sell, the less likely people are to buy.

Plus as mentioned in my last point above, it’s hardly personal communication to that prospect, is it? Is this really the professional sales job you were employed to do? If this is the best you can do in terms of sales persuasion, you’re in trouble!

Email Sales Mistake Number 4 – Responding To New Sales Enquiries Via Email

Let’s think about this one. You or your company has expended time, money and effort in producing the incoming sales lead. Whether it’s come from a previous phone call by you or a colleague, networking, advertising or over the internet, you’ve managed to get a precious incoming sales lead.

The next question is, what are you going to do about it? Pick up the phone and find an excuse to start a dialogue to understand their needs in more detail, position a next step in the sales process and look for some commitment from that person. Or just send a quick email giving some information and leaving them to wander on their own, with no idea how motivated they are to purchase, their timescales, or what other options they’re considering?

Looks like you’ve missed your chance again, doesn’t it? In most cases if they come back to you, it’s because when they enquired with your competition, they did a worse job than you did. Is this really the best way of dealing with that precious incoming sales lead do you think?

Email Sales Mistake Number 5 – Sending Proposals Or Quotes By Email

Now it’s time for my personal favourite! Sending proposals or quotes by email. You’re in field sales and you’ve had the meeting with a potential client, the prospect then asks you to send a proposal and you put it in an email. Now you’re in trouble.

Why on earth didn’t you position your offering when you were face to face with the client? When you could read their body language and reactions to your offering and your price best, when you could judge whether you had got the proposal right or not, when you had the best chance of getting them to say ‘yes’?

Even if you needed time to put the details together, why on earth didn’t you organise a second meeting to discuss it in more detail? You’re giving other salespeople a better chance to win that business over you.

Note – if you’re in internal sales or do most of your selling over the phone, it may not be practical to go out and see the prospect face-to-face, and if you can’t get them to come and see you, you’re almost forced to send the proposal via email – however, you know when you do this it’s less persuasive.

So Why Do Field Salespeople Send Quotes Or Proposals Via Email?

Normally field salespeople send quotes or proposals by email for a few reasons. The first reason is fear of rejection. It hurts less to send it by email as at worst, they just send an email back saying ‘no thanks’ – much easier to deal with than them saying it to your face, isn’t it?

Or if they don’t reply to you or send an email back saying they’re thinking about it they haven’t really rejected you at all, have they? Can you see how that kind of thinking is holding you back from making more sales?

The second reason is laziness. You probably would say it’s because you’re busy, but it’s laziness. This is one of the most important parts of the sales process, and you’ve decided to email it because it’s easier.

The third reason is because is normally do it that way. Does that mean it’s the best way? Let’s think about this – it could be the most important part of the sales process, and you’re just sending it off into the ether and hoping they’ll give you a positive response. Again – the more competitive the marketplace, the higher the price of your product/service and the longer the time elapsed from your initial conversation/meeting the less likely you are to get the business.

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on!

Read more:
Selling By Email – 5 Mistakes Most Salespeople Make

How about when you ring those people back, the people you were trying to get a buying decision from? The people who needed to “run your proposal past a few people?” Or maybe the people you were trying to get an appointment with? Very often they either still haven’t made a decision, they give another fob-off, or even worse – you can’t seem to get hold of those people ever again! Has this ever happened to you?

So Why Do They Do It?

There various reasons for this. Sometimes, there’s a genuine reason why they can’t proceed with the order – perhaps a colleague is away that needs to be involved, perhaps even that the person is so focused on delivering existing projects, they just can’t even think about another one!

However as mentioned above – in a number of cases, decision makers use objections as a convenient way of getting salespeople and business owners to leave them alone, and they keep using them because they work! Far too many salespeople and business owners fall for these objections, take the decision makers at their word – only to be surprised when they can’t get hold of that person.

The challenge is – unless you learn to do something, you’re going to suffer the same problems year after year, after year! If you’d like to do something to tackle it now, here are some ideas for you….

Tip Number 1 – Prepare To Tackle Them

You know you’re going to start getting these sorts of objections so why not consider how you’re going to deal with them and practice your responses? This means working out your objection handles, then practicing them with friends, colleagues or even in meetings with the rest of the sales team. The better prepared you are for when the objections come up, the better you’ll deal with them.

Tip Number 2 – Think About What They Really Mean

Might some people use the objection when actually what they really mean is “go away?” Or perhaps “it’s not important enough for me to look at right now?” As someone who originally trained as a professional buyer, I can guarantee you that’s the case.

Here’s a quick distinction – the more new business your telephone call or appointment is, the less rapport you have – therefore the likelihood of them ‘fobbing you off’ is much higher. If you’re with an existing client you have personally a very good relationship with, it’s more likely that they’re telling the truth.

Tip Number 3 – Try Asking Better Questions

Most salespeople and decision makers I meet struggle with asking good questions. Questions that get them the information that other people don’t get, questions that elevate the decision maker’s perception of you and questions that make the decision maker think….

Before the end of this conversation or meeting you need to ask some more questions to get the information you need!

The most important thing to find out here is if they’re trying to fob you off, without asking or accusing them directly! There are a number of ways you can do this, but the important thing to find out here is the motivation or urgency behind the project – if you haven’t already of course.

If the decision maker doesn’t appear to give specific reasons for the delay, they don’t seem as interested/motivated as they were, or they seem to want to get rid of you as fast as possible, that’s a pretty big sign they’re trying to fob you off.

Tip Number 4 – Have The Right Attitude

The attitude of the salesperson or business owner is also vital in getting the results that you want here. If you pick up the phone or walk into a meeting expecting the other person to say ‘call me back after Easter’ then guess what you’re probably going to get in most cases?

If you’re in a competitive market you can bet that the buyer or decision maker is talking to other suppliers and all it takes is for the salesperson at one of those companies to be better at dealing with the objections than you are.

The decision maker might say “oh we went with xyz firm because they had a better proposal” or “we went with abc because they gave us a cheaper price” – but in most cases what they mean is “we went with xyz because they dealt with our objections better than you did and that won them the business”.

Now that you’re aware that’s often the case, you’re not going to let that happen to you in future, are you?

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Read more:
Sales Advice: Call Me Back After Easter….

This guy – let’s call him “Mark” –  attempted to sell to me via an email on Linked In and his email serves as a useful example to dissect his approach – and examine the lessons you can learn from it – in order to improve your own sales approaches and increase your sales.

Here’s Mark’s email…

Hi

How are you today?

I wanted to share some interesting stats with you about email marketing!

That’s right statistics prove that Video email marketing can improve your results by as much as 280%.. now that’s powerful stuff.

So why aren’t you using it yet ?

1. Never heard of it …

2. Worried at being in front of the camera

3. Costs too much

So lets answer those objections … you now know that video email exists, there are loads of different ways to market using video with out putting yourself in front of the camera … and the cost doesn’t come into it when you see the results it can provide you and your business, but even so for a meager $20 a month you get the full range Video Email, Video Autoresponder and Video Conferencing! Imagine how much time and money is saved just from the video conferencing!

Get started here http://blahblahblahvideosolutions.com (weblink changed to protect the guilty party)

I look forward to helping you with your video email marketing.

Regards

Mark

Now, let’s just put aside for one moment the fact that he’s tried to start his sales relationship by selling over email (or in this case, LinkedIn Inbox message – so in effect the same thing) – a major error in my opinion.

Let’s look at where Mark went wrong, and what sales lessons we can learn from his poor sales approach.

Sales Failure Lesson No 1 – Is ‘How Are You Today?’ The Best Call/Email Opening You Can Manage?

Think about how you feel if someone starts their call like that to you… Irritated? Annoyed? Frustrated? Perhaps even put the phone down straightaway? That’s the emotional state you put people in when you use ‘How Are You Today?’ to a prospect you don’t know that well.

That’s not a great emotional state to put people in if you want to sell, persuade or influence them afterwards, is it?

Sales Failure Lesson No 2 – Stop Lying To People

In Mark’s email to me, he said ‘I wanted to share some interesting stats with you about email marketing!’ But he didn’t did he? Apart from the fact he only went on to share one stat (see my next point), his purpose or reason for the email was NOT to share stats with me, but to get me to sign up for his service! He’s lying. I know he’s lying. That’s not helping me to buy from him (or even buy INTO him in the first place!).

So think about what the reason or purpose of you sales approach is… is it to arrange a meeting? To get them to sign up for a webinar? To arrange a demonstration? To discuss their needs in relation to…. Whatever it is, make sure your reason or purpose is clear at the start of your sales approach.

Sales Failure Lesson No 3 – If You Say It, Prove It!

If you’re going to mention a statistic in your sales approach, then you better be prepared to back it up.

In Mark’s approach to me, he said ‘Statistics prove that Video email marketing can improve your results by as much as 280%…’

In Mark’s case it’s even more important that he backs this stat up, as he uses the word ‘prove’ in his statement.

Most people are cynical. That’s even more the case in UK and most of Western Europe. So quoting this stat and not backing it up actually gets them thinking ‘Does it now? Really? Where’s the proof? I’m not sure I believe that…’.

Now you’ve got a BIG problem. Your prospect is now in the emotional state of ‘I don’t believe you’. So now you’ve got a credibility issue, and you have to be really careful with the next statement you make – because if you give them the chance to disagree with you there too, you’re potentially just lost the person, the relationship, the opportunity, and any chance you had of making the sale.

Sales Failure Lesson No 4 – Don’t Belittle Your Prospects’ Problems

If you’ve done your research, you’ll know the problems your prospects have – plus how you can overcome those problems/objections to give yourself more chance of moving them ahead in the selling/buying process.

In Mark’s case, he’s listed the following ‘objections’ in his email…

So why aren’t you using it yet ?

1. Never heard of it …

2. Worried at being in front of the camera

3. Costs too much

Now if those are the biggest objections your prospects have to proceeding with a product or service you offer (in Mark’s case, video) do you really think you’re going to overcome all three of their biggest problems with a short paragraph afterwards?

If you belittle a prospects problems or objections they feel like they’re not being listened to. They can feel as though you’re not interested in them, and then can feel like you’re trying to sell to them without having taken any of their concerns on-board.

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Read more:
A LinkedIn Selling Fail

If you follow these tips below, you and your team won’t get caught in that trap – and will not only convert more sales opportunities, but also be able to prioritise your time and have more idea which are likely to convert the fastest, for the most money.

So let’s have a look at the 7 things you must do, before sending that proposal.

Andy’s Tip No 1 – Establish Full Specification Of The Project

Most salespeople will get the majority of the specification down, but some have to call back a second time to get things they forgot, or that their colleagues tell them will be needed in order to produce an accurate quotation or proposal.

You can imagine the impact this has on the prospect.  If you’re in a competitive market with other people pitching for the work, you’ve put yourself on the back foot before you’ve even started.

Andy’s Tip No 2 – Establish Why Now and Why You?

These two areas are essential areas to question around in every sales opportunity – you need to establish early on in your sales conversation how serious they are, and how serious the project is.  Even more important however is getting the why you bit answered.

The aim here is to uncover both the buying motivation, and also what chance you have of picking up this business. Remember – the fluffier the answers to the questions you ask here – the less likely you are to win the work!

Andy’s Tip No 3 – Establish Decision Makers and DM Process

Failure to establish the decision makers involved will mean that you could go all the way through the process, and then fall at the final hurdle as someone else comes in to influence the buying decision that you weren’t aware of.

Once you’ve identified the decision makers, you can then decide your approach for engaging them.  You also need to identify the process they’re going through in order to make the decision.  If they’re cagey about the process this time, it might be that the person you’re talking to is low-level in the organisation.  In which case, simply asking about a previous process for similar projects will uncover most of what you need to know.

Andy’s Tip No 4 – Establish Their Other Options

Asking about the other options they’re considering will usually set the platform for you to get information about other potential suppliers/vendors.  It will also get you vital information about alternative competition – either them finding another way to achieve the results they want, doing it themselves in-house, or not doing it at all.

Andy’s Tip No 5 – Establish Their Timescales

Another area you need to question around is their timescales.

Most salespeople make the mistake of only finding out about when the clients want to implement the project, or when they need to take delivery of the product.  If you only get this timescale then you’re missing out on something that’s potentially more important.

Make sure you understand the timescales they have to buy in order to give yourself the best understanding of how to handle the proposal, and give yourself the best chance of winning it.

Andy’s Tip No 6 – Establish Budget Or Funding

It’s vital in any sales opportunity, let alone a proposal situation, that you identify budget or funding as early as possible.  As most decent-sized projects require money from someone’s budget, or the company to have thought about how they’re going to pay for it, failure to identify this can mean the project stalling at the last minute – when you’ve put lots of time and effort into it.

Make sure that you’ve got the budget area covered and you’ll reduce the risk of the project being put on hold, or shelved – plus it may also bring to your awareness other people involved in the buying process that you weren’t aware of.

Andy’s Tip No 7 – Establish Commitment

This is the final and most important part of any sales situation, and even more vital at proposal stage. Now for those of you with a short sales cycle, you could also think of the word closing here.  For those of you on longer sales cycles, usually with higher-value items or projects at stake, think about gaining commitment to the next stage and to yourself and your company.

Failure to get commitment to the project and/or next stage and also to you and your company will mean that you’re likely to be disappointed when it comes to announcing who won the business and who lost it.  So gain commitment to ensure you end up in the winner’s enclosure.

So, make sure you take action on the above and the best of luck with your sales!

Read more:
Send Me A Proposal: 7 Things You Must Do First

Sales Tip Number 1 – Ringfence All Your Existing Accounts
If you want to get ahead, and stay ahead, of your competitors in 2013, the very first thing you need to do is ringfence all your existing customers.  What are your relationships like with your existing accounts? The ones you don’t get on as well with?  Would they tell you if a competitor had been in?  And if they did, would you retain the business at the same price, or would you have to price match to keep it?

Sales Tip Number 2 – Focus Your Prospecting
The quality of your prospecting will be one of the biggest factors in how successful you are in 2013.  As the individual salesperson is asked to do more and more, it’s vital that the time you spend prospecting is time well-spent.

There will be certain specific criteria that make certain prospects more ideal for you than others.  If you don’t know what they are, you need to find them out – and fast!  If you’re really not sure, take a look at your existing client base.  What was it that made them purchase at the moment they did?

Sales Tip Number 3 – Become A ‘Valued Resource’
In order to be seen as a valued resource, you have to earn it.  You have to give value first.  You have to get updated on industry trends, technological advancements and understand the impact that these could have on your client’s business.  You have to be able to hold a business conversation with the level of decision makers you’re meeting.  Invest the time to do things like this, and it will pay you back tenfold!

Sales Tip Number 4 – Have A Plan For Your Attack
One of the best ways to get ahead of the competition in 2013 is to get some of their customers off them!  Why not map out competitors accounts in your territory, then create a call plan for getting into see them, and focus on winning their business.

If you’re in internal sales, make notes on the prospects that are currently using your competition, then filter the data by competitors name.  Then you can create a phone campaign designed specifically to convert their customers to your customers instead!  Experience shows that dedicated and focused approaches like those above have a far better chance of success – and also put a big dent in your competitor’s motivation at the same time.

Sales Tip Number 5 – Increase Your Activity
Now, once you’ve targeted your prospecting, the next thing you need to do is crank up the volume.  I’m a big fan of a high level of activity and the reason for this, is that the more deals you have in your pipeline, the more you can afford to lose! Purely by increasing your activity, you increase your chances of success – and therefore increase the amount of money you can earn.  Who wouldn’t want to do that?

Sales Tip Number 6 – Develop Consistent Motivation
We all know that motivation is important for a salesperson.  But it’s the salesperson’s ability to be consistently motivated that will help them stand out from the rest, and stay ahead of their competition in 2013.

Sales Tip Number 7 – Sharpen Your Sales Skills
If you truly want to stay ahead of your competition in 2013, you’ll need to sharpen your sales skills.  This means getting up-to-date, relevant sales tips and advice from trusted sources.

If you get some internal training at your company, great!  If your company invests in bringing an external trainer or motivator to help you improve, even better!  If you’re one of those people that believes in investing in yourself (even if your company doesn’t) I take my hat off to you.

However, you don’t have to spend money to keep your sales skills updated – there are various audios around that are free or low-cost, and there are plenty of seminars you can attend without spending a fortune – just make sure you put into practice what you learn, and I look forward to hearing how you’re staying ahead of your competition in 2013!

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Read more:
7 Simple Ways To Out-Perform, Out-Manoeuvre &; Out-Sell Your Competitors in 2013

Despite the poor weather playing havoc with transport and inevitably affecting business productivity across the country as salespeople struggle to get into work, sales teams, managers and business owners need to keep their eye on the ball and maintain momentum.

The snow has the same effect on people as Friday afternoon syndrome, when people assume there is no point in making any calls as no-one will be there or they won’t want to take the call. Adversity can sort the best salespeople from the rest and the top salespeople will take quiet times as an opportunity to build connections and rapport with new clients when their competition aren’t even trying.

With reports claiming that one in five adults stayed away from work during the snow, I believe that many businesses miss out on crucial opportunities to make headway with sales calls when other firms take their eye off the ball completely.

I’ve closed many major sales leads at such times and I’m pretty sure there were deals to be made during the bad weather for those who were bold enough to make the call. Business is picking up for many and I’m hearing time and time again from businesses that they’ve never been so busy. For those savvy enough to remain motivated, the next few days will present a fantastic opportunity to grow the sales pipeline.

Read more:
Snow Days & Fridays are Prime Time for Selling!

Sales Tip Number 1 – Take A Long Hard Look At Your Pipeline
Now is a great time to sit down and analyse your sales pipeline. You’ll have had a number of people say to you “call me back after the holidays”, and perhaps now you’re struggling to get hold of those people? Or they suddenly don’t sound as keen to meet you (or buy from you) as they did before the holidays?

That’s probably because the “call me back after the holidays” was a simple objection, and you didn’t deal with it very well! Now, it’s a few weeks later and their level of interest (if they had any in the first place) has cooled from Lukewarm at best to pretty much cold. Sometimes you can revive it, and sometimes you just need to move on.

Sales Tip Number 2 – Be More Realistic
As salespeople, we tend to be positive. Sometimes we’re even guilty of being over-positive! And nowhere is a better example of that than with our own sales pipeline.

I’ve worked with some salespeople in the past that are entirely convinced that everything in their pipeline is going to come in, and probably this month. Most salespeople probably need the majority of it to come in, to have any chance of hitting their target!

If the people who said “call me back after the holidays” are no longer that interested, get them out of the pipeline.

Sales Tip Number 3 – Re-Qualify If Necessary
This is a really important point and one that is overlooked by the majority of people. If it’s at least 4 weeks since you spoke to the prospect last then there is a good chance that their situation has changed.

This means that their buying motivation may have changed, the drivers behind their initial interest and potentially the business or divisional goals may well have altered in that time. Therefore it’s imperative that you re-qualify the sales opportunity to ensure there is still good potential for bringing in this piece of business, quickly.

Sales Tip Number 4 – Get Things Moving!
Once you’ve taken the above steps, for any potential deals or prospects that are still in your pipeline, it’s important to get them moving. Far too many salespeople sit on a big pipeline, with deals or customers that have been stuck at one stage or another for ages, without any idea of when or how they’re going to move to the next stage.

Depending on the length of your sales-cycle, if you’ve got deals or prospects that have been stuck at one stage or another for a while, you need to take a close look at them and determine some actions to get them moving through the pipeline, or get them out!

Sales Managers and Directors much prefer realistic pipelines to ones that are pie in the sky. It also can be quite demoralising for a salesperson to have an unrealistic pipeline, as the more deals or prospects that don’t convert, the worse the sales person feels, and their confidence, attitude and motivation are affected – therefore they’re less likely to bring in the other deals.

So, be more realistic about your pipeline, get the deals or prospects out that are unlikely to convert, re-qualify them if necessary and get what’s left moved through your pipeline – and you’ll see an immediate impact in your sales performance.

Read more:
The Holiday Is Over – Get Back To Your Sales Work!

Now I know this particular speaker pretty well, and I know that he’s good value for money, but what was most interesting was one of the responses to his post. The person who commented wrote ‘You can’t be too expensive. And you’re value for money. They must have cash flow issues!’

Now whilst I would agree the speaker concerned IS most certainly value for money, there are 4 quick things we can learn from the other person’s comment:

Sales Tip Number 1 – People’s Beliefs ARE Reality – To THEM

The problem I see here is that I think you CAN be too expensive. One of my favourite sayings when it comes to sales and pricing in particular is that ‘people’s beliefs ARE reality – to them’.

What I mean by that in this example is that if someone says ‘that’s too expensive’ it may be that in the moment they DO consider you too expensive – as long as it’s not a negotiation tactic to bring your price down of course.

Now of course there will be some context behind them saying that. They might think it’s too expensive compared to their budget. They might think it’s too expensive compared to what they’ve paid in the past. They might think it’s too expensive compared to what they were expecting to pay.

However, unless you deal with the fact that right now, they consider you too expensive – it’s unlikely you’re going to be able to win this deal, and bring them on board as a customer. Fail to change their belief and therefore THEIR reality, and you’ll fail to pick up their business.

Sales Tip Number 2 – It’s Not Their Fault – It’s Yours

If someone says to you that you’re ‘too expensive’, make sure you don’t dismiss them and the sales opportunity too quickly. As an ex-sales director, I often used to hear my team come back from new business appointments with excuses like ‘they weren’t ready to buy’, ‘they didn’t have the budget‘, and ‘our price was too rich for them’.

My response was usually something like ‘Ahh, so you failed to deal with their price concern then?’

My belief is that the majority of the time, a price concern or price objection is normally the salesperson’s fault, not the prospect’s.

– It might be that…. the prospect doesn’t see enough value in your offering to think it worthwhile paying the price you asked for – YOUR FAULT for not positioning your value to them correctly!

– It might be that…. the prospect doesn’t have the budget to pay the price you want – YOUR FAULT for not finding that out, or speaking to the person who can make a NEW budget!

– It might be that…. the prospect has bought a similar product/service in the past and not paid anything like the price you want to charge them now – YOUR FAULT for not finding out their buying history and positioning correctly against it!

– It might be that…. the prospect won’t get enough value from your offering, in order to generate enough ROI to justify the purchase – YOUR FAULT for not qualifying the Sales Opportunity well enough in the first place!

How many of the above are you and your team guilty of right now? Stop putting the ‘blame’ for price concerns on the client, and see what you and your team could do to handle them better.

Sales Tip Number 3 – Find Out – Or Set – Their Expectations

One of the biggest reasons people get price objections, is that the price they want to charge isn’t what the prospect was expecting to pay.

This often occurs when the salesperson fails to find out, manage, or on some occasions – set – the price expectations of the prospect.

In the old days, Sales Managers used to lecture their reps ‘make sure you get the customer’s budget BEFORE talking about price’.

Whilst back then that was pretty solid sales advice, these days people don’t always have budgets. They don’t always have cash available right now. But they ALWAYS have price expectations – and if you don’t find out what they are, re-set them if necessary – or even set them in some circumstances – then you’re always going to struggle with objections to your price.

How well do you and your team set prospects’ price expectations currently?

Sales Tip Number 4 – Qualify Harder Early In The Process

Another reason I find that salespeople come up against price objections is that often they’re sat in front of or speaking to the wrong people! People that may not have the money to be able to pay the price the salesperson wants to charge, or have the authority and ability to find extra money if necessary.

This is usually caused by a failure to qualify well enough or hard enough earlier in the process. Then often results in the salesperson spending lots of their precious time dealing with people that aren’t able to buy what they offer at the price they want to charge.

Often this leads to the salesperson becoming frustrated, having to walk away from deals, or heavily discounting just to win the business – none of which are good outcomes for the salesperson.

Follow the tips above and watch your performance and that of your sales team soar!  I look forward to hearing about your future success….

Read more:
Can You Ever Be ‘Too Expensive?’

If you’re one of those people that has some spare time over the break, and want to use it to help your sales figures in 2013, here are some ideas.

A quick tip – if you don’t have these exact figures to hand, use your best guess – any figure to work from is better than nothing and you can always adjust the figures later.

Tip Number 1 – Work Out Your Numbers

First of all, in order to prepare to have a great 2013, you need to know what numbers you need to hit. This will either be a sales target figure particularly if you’ve been given a sales target by your boss, or a revenue/profitability figure if you’re a business owner for example.

You also need to work out your average order value or average profit if you’re targeted on profitability figures, and then work out how many orders you need to hit that target.

Don’t be one of those people that says: “I don’t have an average order, my orders are all different!” Simply take your revenue/profit total from last year and divide by number of orders.

Tip Number 2 – Anticipate Existing Customer Spend

The next stage is to look at what your existing customers have spent with you in 2012, and then work out what you think each account will spend in 2013.

For most people, this will involve a certain amount of educated guesswork, however it’s still an exercise worth doing as it will help you to understand how much business you think you can get from your exiting base next year.

Don’t fall into the trap of being overly optimistic or overly pessimistic – and if you really have no idea what they will spend, use their 2012 spend figure if you’re in a business that gets repeat business from their customers, rather than one-off purchases.

One you have your existing customer figure, take that from your total revenue/profit needed and move onto the next step.

Tip Number 3 – Separate Your New Business

The figure you’re now left with total revenue/profit, minus existing customer spend is the figure you’ll need to achieve in 2013 from new business.

You’ve already worked out your average order value, so now it’s time to work out your average new client value. In order to get this figure, find out how much each new customer in 2012 spent in total in the year.

The figure should average out – in other words you’ll have some clients that spent a lot, and some that spent little – perhaps because they only came on board towards the end of the year for example.

This will now tell you how many new clients you need in 2013 to hit your targets. Again, I’m not expecting these figures to be perfectly correct – you can always adjust them to be more correct as you go along, but at least it gives you a base to work from.

Tip Number 4 – Look At Your Activity

Now you’ve got all your overall numbers, now it’s time to break down those figures in terms of activity. You’ll know the critical numbers in your company of course, but the usual ones to look are phone call to meetings, meetings to quotes, quotes to orders etc.

These figures will then enable you work out how much activity you’ll need to do in order to hit the targets that you’ve set.

Once you’ve got these figures, you’ll notice you start to feel a little more confident about hitting your targets for 2013. Now it’s time for the next step.

Tip Number 5 – Work Out Your ‘Stretch’

The figures you’ve worked out above are based on purely hitting the targets you’ve set. The next step is to stretch you a little.

Once you’ve got all your figures together for the above tips, work out those figures again – but this time for 120% of your target, 150% and 200% for example.

This will give you the figures and the activity required to hit those 120%, 150% and 200% figures sales managers/directors normally love this part!

Then I’d pick one of the stretch targets to aim for rather than just the 100% of target. Don’t worry if it makes you feel a little uncomfortable – that’s part of the process!

Tip Number 6 – Break Them Down

Now you’ve worked out how you’re going to hit 100% or more of the targets you’ve set or you’ve been set, it now time to break those figures down.

You now want to break those yearly figures into quarterly ones, monthly ones, weekly ones and even daily ones. This will enable you to see the revenue/profitability figures you need to be aiming for – and more importantly for the salesperson – the activity you need to be doing on a daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly basis, in order to hit and exceed the targets you’ve set.

If you’ve done the above steps properly, you’ll now start to feel more confident about hitting the targets you’ve set, as breaking them down usually makes people feel like they’re more achievable.

However, depending on your activity levels in 2012, you might have given yourself a bit of a shock, in terms of how much activity you’ll need to do in 2013 to hit your new targets. However it’s better to know that now that find out half way through they year when you’ve got less chance to do anything about it!

Tip Number 7 – Work On Yourself

This is probably THE biggest tip I can give you to set yourself up for a great 2013.

It’s about keeping that motivation up consistently in 2013, and now you’ve given yourself a head-start over your competitors, making sure you stay there!

Good luck with your sales in 2013, and if I can help you in any way, get in touch!

Read more:
7 Things To Do Over Christmas To Make Your 2013 Sales Great

Sales Lesson Number 1 – Work The Process
On the factory tour itself, it was fascinating to find out that the whole factory operates on a conveyor system, at different levels. Everything is timed and they know how long each procedure should take before the cars move onto the next station. Should they fall a few cars behind schedule however, it’s not as if you can get a few people to come in on a Saturday to catch up – the entire factory has to be there as everything relies on small jobs on each station before moving on the next one!

The sales lessons we can take from this is to think about our own prospecting process. In order for it to work as effectively as possible, it needs to be consistent, not stop-start! One of the biggest traps salespeople fall into is only prospecting when they’re quiet – yet only prospecting on a consistent basis will being consistent sales figures!

Otherwise we leave ourselves open to the sales roller coaster effect – our sales figures alternative between good and plain awful because we don’t keep prospecting when we’re busy!

Sales Lesson Number 2 – Focus On The Handover
The handover is a key part of the process in sales, just as much as it is in the car business! Think about the handover you and your company may have to do at the moment. It might be a handover between colleagues, such as a salesperson and a project manager, or a salesperson and an account manager for example. It might even be a handover form the salesperson to the customer, or a delivery person to the customer. Whatever is the case, it’s a vital part of the process – and also an area where a lot can go wrong!

The smoothness of the handover counts for a lot – and is often the part when things go wrong! Whether it’s the salesperson not preparing the account manager or project manager properly, or not managing the customer experience well, this part usually needs more focus than most people tend to give it!

Mercedes excel at this part. A specially created coffee lounge where all the new owners sit and their cars are driven into the handover part of the showroom, everything is checked and you’re given a tour of your new car and what it can do.

Sales Lesson Number 3 – Do Something Extra They Don’t Expect
Lots of people talk about adding value to their customers. Lots of companies bang on about their value proposition and how they excel at customer service. Yet most miss the opportunity to create even more buyer-loyalty by failing to wow them with a simple gesture!

Doing something extra that they don’t expect – yet you know will be viewed as valuable to the customer – is one of the best ways of creating more enthusiastic and loyal customers, and more importantly, generating a stream of referrals! Yet most people still don’t do it!

For Mercedes it was simple. Providing a map of sights and visitor attractions for a few miles around the factory was useful, as was the customer service staff member casually mentioning that because they knew I had a long drive back to the UK, they’d made sure my new Mercedes had a full tank of petrol at no extra charge!

Now, am I naive enough to think that they only did that for me? No. Am I daft enough to imagine it was something special they dreamed up on the spot? No again. But did it create loyalty, gratitude and a great impression nonetheless? Of course!

So how can you create that yourself in your sales process?

Sales Lesson Number 4 – Follow Up Swiftly After They’ve Bought
One of the most critical parts of the sales process is what happens just AFTER the new client has purchased from you!

This is an area that most salespeople neglect, as often they’re not involved once the customer has bought, or have moved on to other prospects! Some time taken here to speak to the new customer can help avoid buyers remorse, solve any difficult issues, and also be a good time to ask for referrals and testimonials!

It also creates the impression that you care about more than just getting the sale, and therefore deepens the salesperson/customer relationship – and that’s never a bad thing for business going forwards!

Mercedes excel in this area. Not only is the salesperson in touch a few days after you getting/taking delivery of your new vehicle to see how things are going, but they also have an independent customer survey call afterwards to see how they performed!

Now I’m not saying that you have to go to those lengths, but if you or your colleagues put in a call swiftly after your customers have purchased from you, would that help your sales figures going forwards? You’re damn right it would!

Follow the tips above and watch your performance and that of your sales team soar!  I look forward to hearing about your future success.

Read more:
Sales Lessons From The Mercedes Benz Factory

There are a number of benefits of introducing or using incentives but they have to be considered carefully, as introducing the wrong thing at the wrong time could actually have the opposite effect, demotivate the team and actually reduce performance against targets set. If you’re in the situation where you’re wondering about introducing incentives, then the following may help:

Question No 1 – What behaviour are you trying to encourage?

Do you want increased activity? Increased financial figures? Improvement in morale? The team to work better as a unit?

Depending on what you are looking for, you need to design any kind of incentive system around it.  In order words, you need to think about your desired behaviour first, then think about the incentive.

Question No 2 – Do you have the team’s buy-in?

Will all the team be motivated to achieve what you want, based on the incentives you’ve offered? Do they actually want to win it? For example, in a typical sales team the standard is to award high performance over a year in terms of sales achieved.

If however, the prize can only be won by one person (usual examples are a car for a period of time, or a holiday) then if 6 months into the year if one person is way ahead of the rest, then it may result in the rest of the team giving up on the incentive and actually demotivating them and reducing their activity and performance levels. The same is true if certain team members don’t believe they can win it, or that it is already biased in favour of a particular salesperson.

Question No 3 – How are you planning to track, monitor and enforce it?

Most incentives are introduced without much thought (beyond the basics) of how to monitor and enforce it. However we know salespeople are creative people and if they can find a way around it or a loophole, believe me they’ll find it.

Every eventually has to be thought about before introducing the incentive and how it will be tracked, monitored and enforced at every step of the way. Most important of all, the incentive must be simple and the process easy to understand so as to avoid confusion.

Question No 4 – How long is the incentive period for?

As a general rule of thumb, the longer the incentive period is, the less impact it has. For any incentive period longer than a month, be prepared for having to work hard to keep the team focused and motivated towards it. Salespeople generally tend to be attracted to the latest thing and keeping their attention on a long, drawn-out incentive period can be challenging.

Question No 5 – What size of incentive are you offering?

Again, a general rule of thumb is the longer the period, the bigger the offering, and the bigger the increase in performance, the bigger the offering. However, don’t think you have to have a huge incentive to get people motivated, quite the reverse can sometimes be the case. As we move more and more to a younger and more flexible workforce, the more the old school motivator of money has less and less impact.

Some of my clients have been seeing big increases in performance from incentives like leaving the office early, a small prize for top appointment maker of the week – and having the prize having been on the desk from the Monday is always good as a reminder, and even team incentives like foreign days away. Now these might seem like small things compared to the traditional incentive schemes, but as people and their motivation habits change, we have to change with them, or risk being left behind by those who do.

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Read more:
Sales Managers – Incentivising Your Team – What Are The Pitfalls and Potential Successes?

Steve Jobs was inspirational to me personally, as he was to many people.  The difficulties he overcame, the things he was able to accomplish, and the devices he was able to bring into people’s everyday lives had a profound impact on me personally, as I’m sure they did on you too.

From a sales point of view, I especially admired his ability to release new products that people don’t even realise they needed until he released them!  At which point they became must-buys for a lot of people – and that’s said by the owner of an iPod, iPhone, Macbook Pro and iPad 2!

While Steve may no longer be with us, his legacy will continue to be.  So what sales lessons can we learn from it?

Sales Lesson No 1 – Don’t Be Afraid Of Being Different

Steve Jobs was never afraid to be different and stand out from the crowd.  To pursue things ways of doing things that other people thought were stupid.  Until he did them and people stood back and applauded.

In a sales context, what aren’t you doing right now because other people think it’s stupid?  If other people say “cold calling is dead” that’s great!  It means less people are doing it, so less competition to your calls – so long as you’re still making them that is!

If colleagues or competitors are saying “prospecting is hard work” or “difficult” – that’s great!  It means they’re doing less than they should – so a great opportunity for you to win business from the people they’re not calling on, and retain your best accounts as they’re not bothering calling them either.

If people are saying “sales are tough right now” or “business is tough out there at the moment” you can bet they’re not picking up the phone or walking into their sales appointments with the right mind set – meaning they’re less likely to win the deal!  That means there’s more deals for the people like us that are prepared to go out there and get them!

Being different and doing things other people don’t want to do, and even tell you not to do, takes a certain mind set.  The mind set that you’re not going to worry about what others tell you, and that you’re prepared to work harder than they are.  That you’re prepared to win the business that they would have given up on ages ago.

Steve Jobs wasn’t afraid to be different.  Are you?

Sales Lesson No 2 – Love What You Do

One of Steve’s favourite sayings was “love what you do”.  My question to you is “do YOU love what you do?”

The answer for most salespeople, and most people in general, is “yes, when things are going well”. I’ve always said that in my opinion, sales can be the best job in the world when things are going well…. And the worst job in the world when things are going badly!

So for those of you that don’t currently love what you do, you need a more compelling reason or outcome for doing what you do.  That can be a compelling reason for your customers, for example –wanting everyone to have access to better quality IT support at a more competitive price.

It can also be a more compelling reason for yourself  – wanting to have family able to have two foreign holidays per year and be able to afford the things they want.

It could also be an even bigger compelling reason. Mine for example?  I want to be able to change the quality of life for the better of everyone I come into contact with.  How do I do that you ask?  By increasing their sales, thereby increasing their income, thereby helping them to increase the quality of their own lives and those of their families.

Do you think that compelling reason drives me to be better at what I do?  Do you think it drives me to give as much value as possible in my speaking and training engagements?  Do you think it drives me to do whatever it takes to get the best possible results for my delegates and people that train with me?  Of course it does!  Do you think I love what I do by any chance?

Sales Lesson No 3 – Turn Your TV Off!

I remember Steve saying: “We think you watch television to switch your brain OFF, and work on your computer when you want to turn your brain ON”.

I’ve always loved that saying.  When I ask most salespeople “how much time do you spend on trying to improve your sales or your sales career against how much time do you spend watching TV?” guess which one is normally most popular?

Now I’m not saying that you shouldn’t watch TV.  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use it relax, or watch it with your kids.  After all, it’s your personal choice what you do.  I am saying however, think about how much time you spend watching it, as opposed to working your sales career.

Most salespeople I meet rarely work on their sales career outside of work and even inside of work they rarely work on improving it, more that they just end up doing it.  When I ask most salespeople “when was the last time you listened to a CD to improve your sales?” what do you think their answer is?  The same answer I usually get when I ask them when they last read a sales book or had some external sales training or coaching – that answer is usually “never” or “not for a while”.

Sales Lesson No 4 – Create A ‘Buying Experience’

Steve Jobs and Apple were fantastic at creating a ‘buying experience’ every time you bought one of their products.  Pretty much anyone who’s bought from Apple will confirm this!  Whether it’s been an iPod, iPhone, iPad, iMac or anything else in their product line, if you’ve bought one you’ll know that it’s a bit different to the usual buying experience for example.

If you’ve also experienced the Apple Store in person, you’ll have an even higher opinion.  Forget trawling around a usual computer store trying in vain to find someone that knows anything about what you’re trying to purchase, and isn’t just the Saturday boy.

An Apple store experience is just that – an experience!  The majority of people on the shop floor know exactly how to answer your query, or find someone who does in a minute!  Does that have any impact on how many people buy more products from Apple?  Of course it does!  Apple is one of those manufacturers that once you have one Apple product, most people go on to buy more!

The sales lesson in this is therefore – how do you currently go about making buying from your company an experience like the Apple one?  Or maybe if you’re a salesperson, how do you go about making buying from YOU an experience like the Apple one?

Because if you can create that kind of buying experience, then perhaps you can create the kind of customer loyalty and raving fans that Steve Jobs and Apple have managed to create around their company and their products and services.  Don’t try to tell me that wouldn’t be useful for your sales figures?

Sales Lesson No 5 – Don’t Fear Failure

The majority of people I speak to, at some point, have to deal with failure.  So therefore most people also have to deal with a fear of failure.  Something that happens in advance of an event that they think will mean failure for them.

So one of the things that I do when I work with an individual or sales team is to look at what failures they’re afraid of.  Number one on this list is usually cold calling, or in some cases, any kind of sales calls at all!

Now the second will seem strange to those professional salespeople out there, but for some non-traditional salespeople – i.e marketing staff trying to make appointments for field sales reps, business owners who’ve never been in sales, professional service people for example – getting over the fear of making a sales call or cold call is probably the biggest barrier that’s getting in the way of increasing their sales.

You might not even be thinking of it as fear of failure because you might not be physically afraid of it, but what if I changed the question into what are you putting off right now that you know you need to do? That would bring up some interesting answers.

How many of you or your team are putting off calling a prospect that could be a really good source of income for you, because you feel like you’re not ready?

How many of you are putting off calling a customer back that’s called in with a complaint?  Even why you know it’s better to deal with it swiftly and smooth things over?

How many of you aren’t calling a prospect right now that you’ve sent a proposal to, and are just allowing them to decide without you trying to influence it to come to you?   Might that be because you’re afraid of messing it up?

Sales Lesson No 6 – You Can’t Join The Dots Forward

I remember watching a recording of Steve’s speech to Stamford University in 2005, where he said: “You can’t join the dots forward, only backward”.

It was a great speech and I remember the impact the above phrase had on me.  For me, it meant that sometimes you only realise what actions got you to an outcome – once you’ve got there!  And whilst we can plan and prepare and go for our goals, we never know what action helped us get there, until we get there!

In sales, as in life, there are no guarantees.  Just because you make 10/30/100 prospecting calls today/this/week/this month, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee you hitting your target.

Just because you decide to pick up the phone or get out of your car and speak to that prospect you’ve been thinking about contacting for ages (but done nothing about it) doesn’t guaruntee that you’ll get their business.

Just because you write a great proposal, make a great presentation and do your best sales meeting ever, doesn’t guarantee that you’ll win that account.

There’s one thing I can guarantee you however – if you don’t make the effort in the first place, you’re definitely not going to win enough deals!

Far too many people dismiss someone else winning a big deal as luck – when in fact that salesperson has probably put in lots of effort in the past, in order that they can look back with satisfaction now!  Winning business on a consistent basis usually leaves behind a trail of good sales activity and behaviour – can you be proud of your behaviour and current activity levels?

Don’t worry if things seem tough in the moment – put the effort in now and you’ll see the results happen for you going forward.  Then you can look back once you’ve achieved the results you want and join the dots going backwards realising you have success because of that activity and behaviour that everyone else gave up on… apart from you.

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Read more:
Sales Lessons From Steve Jobs

I realised it was time for an article on the stupid mistakes that salespeople (or anyone manning the stand) make that cost them leads, business, and the company valuable sales!

Stupid Mistake No 1 – Judging Prospects By Their Name Badge

I’ve seen so many salespeople do that at exhibitions it’s ridiculous! Far too many people gaze at prospects’ name badges, in order to find out their job titles, to see whether they’re worth talking to or not!

Prospects know you’re doing this – as the salespeople on pretty much every stand they’ve walked past so far have done that to them as well! They tire of this very quickly. You might as well be saying “Excuse me. Do you mind if I stare at your name badge in a really weird kind of way? I’m just looking at your job title to find out whether you’re worth talking to or not. If so, great! I’ll be really nice to you. If not, move along. And don’t think you’re taking one of our chocolates either”.

Experienced exhibition visitors, myself included, will go to exhibitions and either not fill in the correct details on the name badge because we don’t want to be leapt upon by every salesperson, or give a more junior job title – because we know that salespeople won’t bother us if we do! How many of those prospects are you missing out on by using your current approach?

Stupid Mistake No 2 – Drinking Too Much The Night Before

I thought long and hard about including this one. Every time I thought about I wondered “surely salespeople know this isn’t a good idea?” and “surely I don’t have to remind them not to do it?” Unfortunately based on the exhibitions I’ve attended recently, I do!

Even though salespeople know this is a bad idea, somehow they always end up doing it! The idea of “just going for one or two” turns into quite a few, a late night and usually a VERY large hangover the next morning!

Being on an exhibition stand when you’re hungover is not a very pleasant experience. Either for you, your colleagues or your prospects. You look awful, feel awful and smell awful, and no matter what you do, people can tell. Imagine the impression you’re giving if you’re best client turns up unexpectedly, or your best prospect walks up? Not good.

Whenever you have to be on a stand the next day, avoid drinking at all costs! If you don’t, you’re costing yourself leads, sales and your company valuable business. Not to mention probably creating an HR issue as well. Don’t do it!

Stupid Mistake No 3 – Not Being Welcoming Enough

Far too many people aren’t welcoming enough on their stands. Prospects are walking around looking at various companies while their salespeople are busy talking to each other, not looking around for potential prospects that would like to engage in conversation, stood with their backs to prospects etc.

Some prospects aren’t necessarily confident to march right up to you on the stand and ask for details of your latest product or service! They’ll linger a little off the stand, trying to work out what you do and if they want to engage or not. If you and your stand look more hostile than welcoming they’ll move on to one of your competitors instead!

Start being alive and awake to opportunities with prospects who are lingering just off your stand itself. Look for opportunities to engage them and make them feel more comfortable talking to you, rather than driving them away.

Stupid Mistake No 4 – Breaking Down The Stand Too Early

This is one of the stupidest mistakes of all! I think this has happened at EVERY exhibition I’ve ever been too.

Once I was at an exhibition that was due to close at 5.30pm. At 4.30pm, not only were a number of people breaking down their stands and packing up, but some had already done so and their stand was empty – are these people crazy?!

There were still prospects walking around the exhibition at 5.20, never mind 4.30! When I went over to a few stands and said them “you’re packing up early aren’t you?”, guess what their responses were? “Well it’s been a long day”, “We could do with getting home now” and “We want to get a head-start on the traffic”.

Now, whilst I realise that exhibitions can be tiring, how ridiculous are those statements?! How could they know that some of their best prospects weren’t coming to look at those times? What about the impression it had on potential customers if they say a stand being packed up, or worse still completely empty?

What kind of impression might that give someone? In the economic climate maybe even that you’re gone out of business? Or that you can’t afford to pay for the stand? Neither of these are very good impressions to give people, are they?

There is NO EXCUSE for packing a stand up early. Ever.

Stupid Mistake No 5 – Various Related Stupid Mistakes

Here are some more stupid mistakes that you need to make sure you’re not making. They’re all related to each other, so I’ve included them all together here. I’ve seen all of these personally at exhibitions over the past year, so don’t think people don’t do them!

Eating On The Stand – I’m astounded how many times I see this! Why on earth would you want to eat or drink in front of a potential customer? Would you go to see them at their offices, and then pull out a pre-packed sandwich from your case and start to eat it in front of them? So why are you doing the same thing at an exhibition? Bizarre!

Sitting Down – Now, I know exhibitions can be tiring, but sitting down does not show you in a good light. If you really have to do (on the stand), then make sure your stand is designed so you can sit on bar stools, rather than anything at normal ‘chair’ height. If you’re sat down, the unconscious message you’re sending to prospects is that they have to disturb you to speak to you. So they probably won’t bother!

Reading A Book On The Stand – Even more stupid than the last one! I saw a lady on a stand at an educational show last year break out a book and start reading it on the stand! What faster way of showing people you’re not interested in them is there than that?!!

Texting Or Using Your Mobile Phone – You’ve just found the faster way than the reading example above! I’ve lost count of the amount of salespeople that I see sat down (see above) and texting on their stand – meaning they’re looking down at their phone, not at potential prospects!

Even worse is making/taking calls on their mobile – you might as well say to people “I’m more important than you because I’m on my mobile phone. And the person I’m talking to is more important than you, everyone else here, and the amount of the money the company has paid me and the exhibition company to be at this event otherwise I’d wouldn’t be on the phone, would I?”

Pathetic! There is NO EXCUSE for being on your mobile on your exhibition stand! If you were in a client meeting, you’d turn it off wouldn’t you? So why don’t you do that now? And if you really do HAVE to make/take a call, why not get a colleague to cover you, while you step off the stand to make it. Not hard is it?

Follow the steps above and make sure you don’t make these mistakes and lose valuable leads, sales and your company business at exhibitions in future

Read more:
Selling At Exhibitions: Stupid Mistakes Salespeople Make

Digital selling is the process of engaging more online with business and social networks, plus using the digital sales tools available to drive more sales opportunities that you otherwise wouldn’t be aware of.

Failing to use digital selling could mean you and your team losing out on valuable sales opportunities. But if you are going to embrace it, there are some things you need to be aware of, in order to make sure you’re maximising your potential sales opportunities.

Digital Selling Tip No 1 – How Are You Planning To Use It?

There are various ways of making digital selling work for you. It’s important that you understand the various ways so that you can work out how you’re going to use them more effectively.

Some examples of the ways you can use digital selling are:

Generate additional sales leads
Raise the profile of the individual salesperson and company
Warm-up cold leads
Increase your credibility and become better ‘positioned’
Generate or increase the level of rapport with potential clients
Control the perception of you by clients
Research prospects
Manage your organisation’s online identity
Keep in touch with prospects and be aware of any changes in circumstances
Generate referrals and testimonials

So how do you plan to use digital selling? Ideally of course you should be able to do all of the things listed above, but some might be more of a priority for you than others. Once you’ve worked out how you want to use it, then you can start planning what you need to do next.

Digital Selling Tip No 2 – Choose Your Methods Of Engagement

How are you going to engage online? Where does your target market live? Are you engaging using the right channels, in the right ways? Here are three examples:

If you’re selling business-to-business, you HAVE to be on LinkedIn.

If you’re selling business-to-consumer instead, you should consider using Facebook to drive new sales leads. 

If your target is small and micro businesses, you should look at using Ecademy to prospect for new clients.

All of these networks can yield good results for you – if you work at them properly. Don’t make the mistake of labelling them a waste of time if they don’t get instant results for you – you need to work at them a little first!

Digital Selling Tip No 3 – How Good Is Your Profile?

For those salespeople or business owners that actually have a profile on LinkedIn or any of the other networks, the majority of the profiles only contact the basic information, like the person’s name and company name. They may contain brief company details if you’re lucky!

If you’re going to bother to have a profile on any of these networks, make sure it’s a good one! That means at the very least having a photo (professional looking of course), summary of what the business does, ideal prospects or target markets you work with, links to your company websites and ways of getting in touch with you!

Remember, a profile on any of the online networks is like an online brochure for you and your company – so why aren’t you treating it as such? It can be a valuable source of generating extra sales leads if you take the time to do things properly.

Digital Selling Tip No 4 – Make It Personal

I’m seeing a huge shift in online communication from the mass-emailing methods of offers and promotions, towards more of a 1-2-1 communication. This means if your sales team have been to a networking event or exhibition, mass-emailing people they met or came into contact with actually can switch-off prospects, especially as they very quickly realise that if the communication isn’t personal or individual, they’re just one of a ‘list’.

If you’re looking to make contact with people and get engagement over any of the networks, then make sure your communication on there is more tailored as well. If people see a message that is impersonal it can cause more damage than not sending one at all!

So, are you making the best use of digital selling currently?  Or are you concerned you could be missing out on potential sales opportunities?

Read more:
Digital Selling – Are You Ahead (Or Behind) Your Competition?

So first of all, let’s take a look at Peter’s email pitch:

Hi,

Please forgive the direct approach. My name is Peter and I work for (company name withheld) as a Marketing Consultant in your market sector. I have been looking at your website today and would like a few minutes of your time to have an informal chat with you.

I really like the site, but you may be curious as to why the site isn’t ranking, and with that in mind I wondered if you would like a free SEO audit of the site looking at keyword density and a detailed analysis of the back link profile.

That should give you an excellent insight, and hopefully allow us to develop a plan for getting the site into some top positions.

The audit is FREE and with no obligation. So do please get in touch.

Kind Regards

Peter

PS. I know you must get lots of contacts like this, but I promise I am a real person based in our Birmingham office, and overall we are UK based staff serving numerous UK & International clients. More details of what we do below on (website withheld) or call us directly on the numbers below, Thanks

Let’s dissect Peter’s approach.

I’m not a huge fan of cold email approaches to start with but there are some even bigger problems at play here.

Sales Failure Lesson No 1 – Lack Of Personalisation

Here’s where Peter fails he starts the email with just “Hi” – with no name after it – even though he’s emailed me personally.

In addition he says in the first paragraph that he works as a Marketing Consultant in “your market sector” – again it wouldn’t take a lot of personalising to have a much better impact, but Peter fails again here too!

If you’re making any kind of sales approach, whether that’s via email, phone or any other method you have to personalise your communication, otherwise the other person will lose interest quickly.

In addition, lack of personalisation means that the prospect doesn’t feel valued and that they’re just one of a number of people you’re emailing, or just another number on the list that you’re calling.

One of the key things that prospects want at the start of any sales approach is relevancy. In other words, why is this relevant to me  now, and why should I consider it important and give my time and attention to it? Fail this part, and your sales approach could be over before it’s even started!

Sales Failure Lesson No 2 – Stop Apologising For Selling

Here’s where Peter fails – he says “please forgive the direct approach”.

Peter manages to hit on one of my personal bugbears here! In my opinion, no-one should need to apologise for being in sales and no-one should need to apologise for just doing their job.

This problem stems from a lack of confidence and an expectation of getting a negative response to the sales approach, so therefore the salesperson thinks if they apologise first, it makes everything better!

In actual fact, it often has the opposite effect, and actually makes things worse.

Apologising, or asking permission actually lowers your credibility in front of senior decision makers, and authoritative prospects. It can make them think you’re not confident in what you do, and therefore transfers a lack of confidence to them in you, your company and your products and services – plus it makes them think you’re someone at a junior level.

Sales Failure Lesson No 3 – Stop Telling Lies

Here’s where Peter fails he says “I really like the site, but you may be curious as to why the site isn’t ranking”.

Actually, my site ranks very well the search terms I want – so that now causes Peter a credibility problem. Either he doesn’t know the key words I’m optimising for, or he lied when he said it isn’t ranking and hasn’t really done any research into it whatsoever.

Either way, his credibility is now shot, and the likelihood of me believing anything else he says, or listening to his ideas is pretty much zero. This mistake alone could be enough for prospects to decide NOT to do business with him.

Outright lies or lack of research definitely don’t help your sales calls. Make sure you don’t fall into the same trap…

Sales Failure Lesson No 4 – Stop Confusing People

Here’s where Peter fails he says: “I wondered if you would like a free SEO audit of the site looking at keyword density and a detailed analysis of the back link profile”.

Now let’s move past the fact he’s making a free offer and look at the words he’s used. “Keyword density” and “detailed analysis of the back link profile”. Now although I know what they mean, most decision makers, especially those in small businesses, wouldn’t!

Therefore he’s confused his target prospects before he’s even started! People don’t buy when they’re confused. All you do is make them retreat and potentially either decide not to go ahead with whatever purchase or offer they’re considering, or worst-case, go to one of your competitors that doesn’t make them feel confused and stupid.

You need to use language that’s simple to understand. Language that prospects can know exactly what you mean, and make sure you stay away from technical, high-level or company-specific language or acronyms. This has the effect of either confusing the prospect, or making them feel left out – as if they don’t understand your terminology, they will feel excluded from the discussion and therefore probably not buy!

Sales Failure Lesson No 5 – Make Sure You Don’t Lose Control!

Here’s where Peter fails – he says “The audit is FREE and with no obligation. So do please get in touch”.

Here’s the problem. Peter’s handing control over to the prospect with the phrase “do please get in touch” – hardly a call to action. No compelling event, no mention of him calling me, no commitment gained whatsoever, so therefore has no control over whether I call him back or not. The bigger problem is the “no obligation” bit. Well done Peter, you’ve hit on another of my personal bugbears here. In my opinion, OF COURSE THERE SHOULD BE OBLIGATION. It’s simply good negotiating to follow the influence pattern if I do this for you, I want you to do this for me.

The whole idea of doing the free SEO audit IS to make the prospect feel obligated to you, isn’t it? So why lie again here and say that it isn’t? This will just cause credibility issues once again.

No obligation is simply another phrase that is over-used by people that have confidence issues with selling. Those people would be far more effective at selling if they were proud of what they sell, confident in their own abilities and wanted to get obligation and commitment from people. That would definitely result in higher sales figures.

In summary you can see that with all the areas that Peter has made mistakes in that have led to his sales failure. Think about them when you’re conducting your own new business sales efforts, whether that’s over the phone, face-to-face, or online. Then think about what you can do to improve them.

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Read more:
Sales Failure – Peter tries to sell SEO services…. and fails

The problem for most people is that when they call those people back after the break, they either still haven’t made a decision, they give another excuse, or even worse, you can’t seem to get hold of those people ever again. If you’re anything like the hordes of people that ask me what to do about the summer holiday problem every year, you probably get it quite a lot.

So Why Do They Do It?
Why is it that the buyers and decision makers give us the summer holiday objection? There are various reasons for this. Sometimes, there’s a genuine reason why they can’t proceed with the order, or appointment, until after the summer break – perhaps a colleague is away that needs to be involved, perhaps there isn’t a budget until later in the year, perhaps even that the person is so focused on delivering existing projects, they just can’t even think about another one.

However as mentioned above – in a number of cases, decision makers use the summer holiday objection as a convenient way of getting salespeople and business owners to go away – and they keep using it because it works! Far too many salespeople and business owners fall for this objection, take the decision makers at their word – only to be surprised when they call back after the break and they can’t get hold of that person ever again!

Unless you learn to do something about the summer holiday objection, you’re going to suffer the same problem year after year. So here are some ideas for you:

Sales Tip Number 1 – Be Prepared

You know you’re going to start getting these sorts of objections from the end of June onwards so you need to prepare for them!

Why not consider how you’re going to deal with them and practice your responses? This means working out your objection handles, then practicing them with friends, colleagues or even in meetings with the rest of the sales team. The better prepared you are for when the objection comes up, the better you’ll deal with them.

Don’t leave this until the last few moments before your telephone call, client meeting – or even worse until you’re waiting in reception, do this in small chunks – a little bit at a time but done on a regular basis – that helps you remember and use the objection handles best.

Sales Tip Number 2 – Think About What They Really Mean

Often when the buyer or decision maker says the words “call me back after the summer holiday”, that phrase might have a different meaning than the one you’ve accepted at face value.

Let’s face it – if everyone who said those to you either met with you or bought from you in at the end of the break, then there wouldn’t be a problem, would there? So I’m talking here about the people that use that phrase, but then don’t seem to necessarily follow through afterwards.

Let’s think about this a little deeper – might some people use that phrase when actually what they really mean is “go away”? Or perhaps “you/your offering/the appointment isn’t important enough for me to look at right now?” As someone who originally trained as a professional buyer, I can guarantee you that’s the case!

Here’s a quick distinction – the more new business your telephone call or appointment is, the less rapport you have – therefore the likelihood of them fobbing you off is much higher. If you’re with an existing client you have personally a very good relationship with, it’s more likely that they’re telling the truth.

Sales Tip Number 3 – Make Your Call More Compelling

If you are making new business calls in the holiday period, make them more compelling!

Generally speaking, people will be busier as they’re either about to go on holiday, just back from holiday, or covering for someone else who’s on holiday. Whichever of those it is, they’re going to be time poor, so make sure your call is as good as it can be.

Take a closer look at your voice tonality and your message.  Does it sound as though you and your call are important?  Does the outcome that you are suggesting sound like a must do for the person receiving the call?  What’s the conviction in your voice like? Is your close short and to the point?

The more compelling you make your call the more likely it is that you’ll get the outcome you want.  The less compelling it is, the more likely you’ll fall for the summer holiday fob-off.

Sales Tip Number 4 – Ask Better Questions

Most people I meet struggle with asking good questions.  Questions that get them the information that their competitors don’t, questions that elevate the perception of you in the decision maker’s eyes and questions that make the decision maker think.

Most people seem to think that the other person says call me after the summer holiday or something similar, that means that is the end of conversation/meeting. Not true. Before the end of this conversation or meeting you need to ask some more questions to get the information you need.

The most important thing to find out here is if they’re trying to fob us off, without asking or accusing them directly! There are a number of ways you can do this, but the important thing to find out here is the motivation or urgency behind the project – if you haven’t already of course!

If you can establish there are genuine reasons to put the order/project/appointment on hold until after the break, you’ve lessened your chances of being fobbed-off and it should be relatively easy to pick things up from where you left off come September.

If on the other hand, the decision maker doesn’t appear to give specific reasons for the delay, they don’t seem as interested/motivated as they were, or they seem to want to get rid of you as fast as possible, that’s a pretty big sign they’re trying to fob you off!

Sales Tip Number 5 – Have The Right Attitude

The attitude of the salesperson or business owner is also vital in getting the results that you want here. I’ve seen far too many people trudge round on appointment after appointment, or from phone call to phone call looking and sounding like they’re terminally depressed! Not many people are going to buy from you in that state, are they?

If you pick up the phone or walk into a meeting expecting the other person to say “call me back after the summer holiday” then guess what you’re probably going to get in most cases?

If you’re in a competitive market you can bet that the buyer or decision maker is talking to other suppliers, and all it takes is for the salesperson at one of those companies to be better at dealing with the summer holiday objection than you are…..then when you ring back in September they’ve bought off someone else!

The decision maker might say “oh we went with xyz firm because they had a better proposal” or “we went with abc because they have us a cheaper price” but in most cases what they mean is “we went with xyz because they dealt with the summer holiday objection better than you did and that won them the business”.

Now that you’re aware that’s often the case, you’re not going to let that happen to you in future are you?

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Read more:
How To Deal With The Summer Holiday Objection

There may well be one of, or a combination of, the reasons above here.  Either way, at the moment the sales call issue or lack of them has become a problem in the business and by outsourcing it, they think they’re getting rid of the problem.  This isn’t a great reason either.

You can outsource the activity, but you can’t outsource the responsibility.

Many small business owners are far too quick to outsource their cold calling or sales calls just to get rid of the problem of making the calls themselves, or giving them to a colleague who doesn’t really want to do them.  Just because it’s easy to outsource the calls, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right decision.

However, if you are going to outsource the calls, here are some things to think about:

Tip No 1 – Consider Where They’re Going To Work From

Is the person you’re outsourcing your calling to going to work from their business premises?  Their home?  Your business premises?  Your home?

How are you going to handle call costs?

Tip No 2 – How Do Their Calls Fit Into Your Sales Process?

How does their sales call fit into your sales process?

In other words, what is the outcome of the call?  Is it a meeting?  A conference call?  A web demonstration?  How is it moving the sales process forward?  What is the next step after that – you don’t want lots of pointless meetings!

Tip No 3 – How Are You Going To Pay Them?

Percentage of sale basis?  Payment per hour? These methods have their benefits and pitfalls and will affect the type of outsourcer you should go for.

A typical example I see often is a small business owner tries to convince someone to do their calls for them and expects the person to do it for just a percentage if the business owner makes a sale from that appointment. That rarely works, if ever.

Tip No 4 – How Are You Going To Manage Them?

Even if you’re outsourcing your calls to a company, you still need to manage the organisation and the person making the calls!

In addition to that, what do you consider under-performance? Do the outsourced organisation and/or the individual have the same perceptions?  What are your expectations of success on this project?  Have they been clearly communicated to all parties involved?

Tip No 5 – How Well Do You Know The Person?

Are they someone you’ve known for a while?  Or just someone employed by a telemarketing organisation you’re talking to?

What’s this person’s reputation?  Their experience?  Their knowledge of your market sector and the people they’ll be calling?  How much do they know about you and your company?  What do other people say about them and their work?

Tip No 6 – What Training Are You Giving Them?

What training are you giving the person?  If they’re from an outsourced company, they may well have had some sales training in-house – but it will only be delivered by their manager (not an experienced trainer) and if they’re an individual they probably haven’t done any for ages – not a good sign!

What training are you planning to give them on your products and services?

Tip No 7 – Who Are They Going To Be Calling?

In other words, where are they going to get their prospects from? Do you have a list of prospects on your CRM system or database that you want them to contact? Are you going to purchase some data to give them some leads to work on?

Are they using their own data?  Have you got unlimited rights to contact the data in future?

Tip No 8 – How Long Do You Want Them To Work For?

If you can only cope with a certain number of additional appointments per week, it might not make sense to employ someone on a full time basis.

If they’re starting to make more appointments for you than you can cope with then perhaps it’s time to spend more time on sales, or hire a full-time salesperson to make the calls and do the appointments for you?

Tip No 9 – How Well Do You Understand The Process?

You still need to be responsible for this process and as an old manager said to me many years ago you can’t manage what you don’t understand.

What’s your experience with making sales calls and cold calls?  Is it enough to support and direct an outsourcer that’s not delivering the results you want?  Or are you just going to blame that company for not delivering and kiss goodbye to your investment in them?

Follow the tips above and you’ll avoid most of the problems involved with outsourcing your calls.

Read more:
Business Owners: Thinking Of Outsourcing Your Cold Calling? Read this First!

Why would you spend ages researching who to ring and put them into your diary for calls today, only to filter through them just as you’re about to ring? Sounds crazy doesn’t it?

Saying to yourself “he won’t be in today, I’ll call him next week”, “He’s just back from holiday, better not disturb him yet, he’ll be busy”, “hmmm, that would be some good business for me but I’m not ready to ring them yet, I’ll make a coffee first” and so on is just procrastination.

So why do you think this is?

Having worked with thousands of salespeople and business owners around the area of cold calling and sales in general it seems to come down to a number of things:

Reason Number 1 – Lack Of Confidence In Your Cold Calling Abilities

How do you feel when you know you’re about to pick up the phone? Enthusiastic? Motivated? or more like nervous? Afraid?

Reason Number 2 – A Poor Prospect List

You’ve got hold of the data somewhere and anywhere will do – there’s been no research done into the company or any initial call to find out the name of the decision maker, let alone any idea if this company is even a prospect for what you offer.

Reason Number 3 – The Last Call To This Prospect Was Rubbish

The last call to this prospect was really bad wasn’t it? So bad in fact that you’ve been procrastinating about calling them for days, or even weeks and months. It’s been in your call-back list for ages and you keep moving it back in your diary because you remember how the prospect treated your call last time – and you’d hate to go through that again, wouldn’t you?

Reason Number 4 – You’ve Already Decided That This Call Is Going To Be Terrible

You’re worried about this call aren’t you? Something is stopping you making it and you’re imagining it’s going to go very badly. Perhaps due to one of the above reasons, or it might also be that the prospect would represent a very good deal for you and you’re frightened of messing it up if you don’t do it properly?

Successful athletes talk about the value of “visualisation” or “mental rehearsal” – a process where they visualise the event happening in their mind, before it actually takes place, and see it happening perfectly – exactly as they wanted it.

What we tend to do when it comes to cold calling, or even warm calling, is what I call “negative visualisation” – we see the event happening, but always predict the result to be terrible. That would include not getting through to the prospect, them not seeing value in what you offer, having the phone put down on you.

When we cherry-pick prospects, we’re usually only making the easy calls, the ones where we feel most comfortable with the people on the other end of the phone! In fact, we’ve probably got a few favourite clients haven’t we? The ones we can call for a chat so we can feel like we’re doing something to develop our business, rather than avoiding calling – but they never seem to buy any more from us?

This is exactly the same as field-sales people doing what I call the “Tea and Biscuit Tour” – calling on existing clients or prospect they get on well with, usually for a drink and a chat, in order to avoid walking into potential new clients or trying to win new business.

Cold calling, or any kind of calling for that matter, is about energy – keeping up the energy and enthusiasm from one call to another. Which means you have to make call after call after call so you’re in the flow or the “zone” as an athlete would call it.

If you’re wasting time between calls – cherry-picking prospects, searching through the database, playing with your email, making coffee – you’re probably not aware of how much it is affecting your calls, or the results from them.

In summary, the big lesson in this article is – never cherry-pick your prospecting or cold calls – The next person you ring could have an order waiting for you or be giving it to someone else if you don’t make the call!

Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Read more:
Are You Guilty Of Cherry-Picking Prospects?

Read more:
Sales – Is it all about luck?

The
New Year is always an interesting time for salespeople and sales teams.  Plenty of people make New Years’ Resolutions
at this time of year, and some even make them for their sales, their career or
for their business.

I
thought it would be useful therefore, to give you an idea what I’m working on
with the sales leaders and salespeople of my clients, to help them make great
sales in 2011 – so that you can implement the same things to get great results
for yourself (or your team) as well!

Here
are my suggestions for the top New Years’ Resolutions for your sales team.

Sales Resolution No 1 – Increase Your Prospecting Activity

If
your goal or outcome for 2011 is to increase your sales, or that of your team,
one of the things to look at is to increase your prospecting activities.

Most
salespeople tend not to have enough prospects, and therefore rely on most of
their deals coming off, in order to hit their targets.  That’s a recipe for failure.

Take
a look at whatever prospecting activities you’ve been doing (that have been
working for you, of course) and look at how you can increase them.  You might also want to increase the ‘range’
of activities as well.

Whether
your prospecting activities include networking, cold calling, referrals, cold
canvassing or anything else, simply upping the activity will generate better
results.  Once you’ve done this, it’s now
time for the second step.

Sales Resolution No 2 – Filter Your Prospects Better

You
can only do this step, when you have a lot of prospects (hence my
recommendation in ‘Resolution 1’, above), so if you haven’t got enough
prospects yet, go back to the first step until you have!

One
you have enough prospects, the next step is to filter them.  What I mean by that is to look at which
prospects are better for you.  So how on
earth do you judge which are better than others?

If
you’ve already profiled your prospects, then you’ll already know what I
mean.  If you haven’t, here are some
quick tips.  From experience either you
or your manager will have an idea which of your prospects are most likely to
convert, which will do so faster than others, and which will be worth the most
money.

This
might be based on their industry, the level of decision maker you’re talking to
(or not!), their buying motivation (you have found that out, haven’t you?) size
of project, approval process and impending deadlines etc. 

Based
on the results of your filtering, you can now work out which prospects you need
to focus on, and which ones require you to qualify them a little harder.  Please note, if the thought of doing this
makes you hesitant or concerned that you might lose a prospect or two, then you
probably haven’t got enough prospects in the first place – go back to step 1!

Read more:
Sales Resolutions 2011 – Part One

Read more:
Dealing With Christmas Objections – Part Three

Read more:
Dealing With Christmas Objections – Part Two

Read more:
Dealing With Christmas Objections……

Read more:
The 10 Biggest Sales Mistakes People Make On LinkedIn – Part One

Read more:
Your Problem With Cold Calling Isn’t Cold Calling – Part 2

Cold calling is one of the things most
people seem to ask me for help with, usually because they want to get better
results from it – although some people like to avoid it altogether!  However for a smaller business, often the
problem with their cold calling isn’t cold calling – it’s something earlier in
the process that’s causing them problems later on.

Now, whilst in these circumstances
getting better at cold calling can help, it’s sometimes more important to look
earlier in the process, to ensure you’re giving yourself and your team the best
chance of success when it comes to the phone call.

Let me give you some examples we’ve
uncovered whilst working with clients recently….

Problem No 1 – Poorly Planned Sales
Process

This is a common problem that occurs far
more often than it should!  Whether it’s
the manager, director or business owner that hasn’t thought the process out
fully, or that the salesperson just hasn’t got their head around it, either
way this needs looking at before the sales calls start!

An important point to look at here is
what has happened prior to the call you’re about to make?  And compare that to what should have
happened!  Has the person responded to an
advert?  Have they come from a web
enquiry?  If it’s a ‘pure’ cold call,
where have you sourced the data from and what is it like?

If it was a response to an advert for
example, what ‘filtering’ have you done on the advert?  Did you want only the good quality enquiries
(useful for a small sales team that can’t handle larger call-volumes, and
salespeople with less experience), or did you want all the enquiries you can
get, so you can use your sales skills to try and get a positive outcome when
you call?

The more ‘filtering’ you have done, the
‘warmer’ the enquiry is, generally speaking. 
I’ve seen far too many companies do too little filtering – usually
because they naively think that the more responses they get, the better the
advertising worked!  It just means you’ve
got lots of ‘follow-up’ calls with people who are less interested – which
becomes a problem if you don’t do a lot of cold calling and aren’t used to the
rejection!

Problem No 2 – Poor Handling Of Initial
Enquiry

Think about this for a moment.  If your enquiry comes in over the phone, who
is the person who takes that call? 
Someone that’s been well trained in sales?  Someone who’s completely conversant with the
campaign that generated the lead and knows everything about it?  Someone you can rely on to have the best
chance of converting that enquiry into business?

Far too often companies spend large
amounts of money on websites, advertising, branding and marketing campaigns,
yet when those campaigns generate an incoming lead, they fail to deal with it
properly!  They fail to invest in the
most critical part of the process – the part that could win or lose them the
business – the training of the person handling the incoming enquiry!

If it’s an enquiry that came in via your
website, how quickly do you respond to the enquiry?  Within a few hours?  Or is it more like days?  Some people I’ve talked to recently often
don’t respond to them at all!!  Hands up
all of those who respond to the email or web enquiry with an email.  You deserve to be shot!  This is the main (or perhaps the ONLY)
opportunity to engage the prospect into your sales process and you’re going to
do it by sending an email?  Dear oh
dear….

If it was a telephone enquiry, what
questions do you or your staff ask that person? 
Questions that just get the ‘facts’ or the ‘details’ of what they
want?  Or do you ask questions that
uncover buyer motivation, desire, needs, control the call and win the business
(and a new customer) at the end of it?

So,
until next time, the best of luck with your sales!

Read more:
Your problem with cold calling isn’t cold calling

I always find it interesting how many sales opportunities that salespeople or business owners miss out on, often that they could have won! If they realised how much that lost business was worth over a 12 month period, I’m sure they’d be quicker to do something about it!

There are many different reasons why a salesperson or business owner loses the sale, but here are a few of the most common – and also the easiest to put right!

Sales Mistake Number 2 – Not Taking A Genuine Interest

This is something that’s vital to generating more sales, yet is something that’s often overlooked. Far too many people don’t take a genuine interest in their clients!

Let’s use a retail store as an example. Most people have had the experience of going into a retail store looking to make a substantial purchase – usually electrical like a television, computer etc etc. However that experience often isn’t as good as it could be!

Particularly at the moment, when stores have cut back on the number of staff on the floor and available to help. Now if there’s a shortage of staff it’s more of a management issue than something the individual salesperson can do anything about, yet the staff who are left don’t seem to take any interest at all in the potential customers, let along a genuine one!

I’ve seen many potential customers stood around, desperately looking for someone to help them make a purchase! They wait for ages (the ones that don’t get fed up and leave) then when someone finally comes along, they appear to have no interest in the potential customer, no interest in what they’re looking for, and definitely no interest in making the sale! What kind of behaviour is that for a salesperson?!!

However most salespeople and business owners make the same mistake to some degree. Most either don’t take enough genuine interest in potential clients – either they don’t the right questions to uncover needs, buying motivation and drivers to purchase, or they are too self-focused and talk to much about themselves and their solutions!

What Could They Do Instead?

Be aware of customers looking for help. Engage them in conversation. Ask them what they want the product or service for, not just ask about the technical specification. Ask them better questions about reasons and drivers behind the purchase!

Sales Mistake Number 3 – Poor Last Impression

If your business would like repeat business, testimonials, or customers referring you to others then people’s last impressions of your business are as critical as their first impressions of your business!

However, most people don’t think about the last impressions of their business. Perhaps the last impression of your business is the delivery driver or courier? The person experience the customer has when paying for the goods or service? The package when it arrives at the customers offices?

Let’s take the hotel example we mentioned in the first impressions part above. What is the second most annoying process of being in a hotel? That’s right – checking out!

Think about it…. you queue up at the desk, behind people checking in and people just wanting directions etc, then when you finally get to the front of the queue you’re asked for your credit/debit card details again (the same ones you already entered online and the same one you already gave them when you checked in). Then you have to wait while they do yet another card transaction – when you’re in a hurry and all you want to do is leave! The best you can hope for at the end of this long-winded procedure is a mumbled ‘thank you’ from the receptionist!

Does that sort of experience inspire you to book that hotel again? Send them a testimonial? Recommend them to all your family and friends? I thought not.

 What Could They Do Instead?

How about when you check out, they ask you if you’d like the payment to be taken off the same card you used when checking in? I know they can do this as one hotel offered to do this last week. That’s the only time in over 250 nights I’ve stayed in hotels over the past 18 months it’s been offered!

Or how about taking full payment when you check in, so you can leave quickly in the morning? How about if the receptionists were trained to say thank you for staying with us – here’s a voucher for 10 percent off your next stay with our compliments. How much extra loyalty and extra business would that generate? Quite a lot I’d think!

Read more:
Why People Don’t Buy from You – Part 2

I always find it interesting how many sales opportunities that salespeople or business owners miss out on, often that they could have won!  If they realised how much that lost business was worth over a 12 month period, I’m sure they’d be quicker to do something about it!

 There are many different reasons why a salesperson or business owner loses the sale, but here are a few of the most common – and also the easiest to put right!

Sales Mistake Number 1 – Poor First Impression
I’m astounded how often people struggle to get this one right!  Think about the first impression people have of your business.  If you’re a salesperson, their first impression of your business might be you!  That means looking smart, arriving on time (or early), and looking the person in the eye when you greet them.  If people are coming to your premises, it might be things like how easily they can park, how your receptionist greets them, or the literature in your reception area for example.

An example of a business that often gets this wrong (as anyone who travels a lot knows) is a hotel.  Think about one of your first impressions when you enter a hotel.  The first interaction you normally have with staff is when you check in.  What’s often one of the worst things about a hotel?  That’s right, their checking-in procedure!

Think about it……. it’s 01:00am, you’ve been driving for 3 or 4 hours and you finally reach your hotel for the night.  You’re tired, exhausted and just want to get to bed.  You wearily drag your bags and suit carrier up to the counter to be greeted from a voice (coming from somewhere below the counter) with the immortal line ‘SURNAME?’ Resisting the opportunity just to reply with ‘Yes!’, you drop all your bags, answer their inane questions and fill in the registration card with all the same details you filled in online and that you’ve already given them the 14 times you’ve stayed with them so far this year!

What Could They Do Instead?
Now I might be slightly exaggerating in the above example, but not by much!  Think about what action a hotel could take to improve the experience.  How about if you were greeted with something like ‘Good evening sir.  You’ve probably had a long journey.  While I quickly check you in, I’ll get the porter to take your baggage up to your room straightaway – do you have your booking reference?’

How much extra effort does this take?  Not much!  Is it worth it for the impression it leaves the customer with?  Of course!

So, until next time, the best of luck with your sales!

Read more:
Why People Don’t Buy From You – Part 1

Last month in the UK, we were officially out of the recession, according to The Guardian newspaper, which still contrives to somehow make the story sound negative! Funny how coming out of the recession hasn’t got nearly as much media coverage as when we went into it, isn’t it?

The savvy salespeople and companies right now are getting ready to take advantage of the upturn. Are you really fully prepared and ready?

If not, don’t worry, here are some tips on how to get yourself in the best position and maximise the opportunities that will come your way……

Sales Tip No 4 – Block Out Time For Prospecting

This is something I’m very keen with my clients. I’ve lost count of the times people have said to me oh but Andy, we don’t have time for prospecting/cold calling or I know I should have made some calls today, but things just got in the way.

There is NO excuse for not prospecting. Sales Managers and Directors all over the world continually get frustrated with salespeople who ride the sales rollercoaster – a good month, followed by a bad month, followed by a good month, followed by a bad month – you get the idea!

This is usually because the salesperson has become so busy dealing with their leads that they haven’t had time for prospecting – leading to a lack of leads for the following month – which leads to a lack of sales! So why does this keep happening? Because we let it!

Everyone should block out time for prospecting. It should be the most important thing in your day! The first thing IN your diary, and the last thing OUT of your diary! Too many salespeople don’t prospect because it’s easier to deal with existing customers etc – then they complain when they miss target the following month!

Sales Tip No 5 – Get Motivated

It’s interesting that already this year, how many companies are calling me and asking me to come in and help motivate their sales team. Companies that want to steal a march on their competitors are looking to get better results from their teams – whether it’s an internal team making appointments for field sales, or an external team that the company wants to perform better.

Motivation is an area that’s vital to the success of yourself or your team. It’s not unusual for people that have been on sessions with me to have doubled or tripled their performance, whether that’s in terms of numbers of appointments booked, or in sales they’ve made in the months after the session.

Many organisations make the mistake of assuming their salespeople are already motivated. Yet in my experience, most salespeople generally work between 30-50 percent of their potential.

If you’re a manager or a director, what steps are you taking right now to work on the motivation of your team? If you’re the salesperson, what would it take for you to get and feel more motivated right now? And then go and do it! And don’t say more money. That’s known as commission.

Read more:
5 Tips For Selling On The Upturn – Part 2

This month in the UK, we’re officially out of the recession, according to The Guardian newspaper, which still contrives to somehow make the story sound negative!  Funny how coming out of the recession hasn’t got nearly as much media coverage as when we went into it, isn’t it?

The savvy salespeople and companies right now are getting ready to take advantage of the upturn.  Are you really fully prepared and ready?

If not, don’t worry, here are some tips on how to get yourself in the best position and maximise the opportunities that will come your way……

Sales Tip No 1 – Write A Sales Plan
If you’re a salesperson, you need to have a written sales plan of how you’re going to exceed your sales target.  Notice I said exceed, not achieve there.  That was a little nudge!   If you’re a sales manager, you need to have a written sales plan.  If you’re a sales director, you need to have a written sales plan.  If you’re a business owner, you need to have a written sales plan.  Anyone notice a pattern here?!!

There is NO excuse for not having a written sales plan.  The most common one I hear when I mention this to people are oh but Andy, I don’t have the time to write a sales plan.  Wrong.  You don’t have the time NOT to write a sales plan!

The second most common one I hear is oh but Andy, I don’t need a sales plan.  I can sell my product or service to pretty much anybody.  Wrong again!  You probably need a sales plan more than anyone else to be better targeted in your business development and lead generation efforts!

Sales Tip No 2 – Focus, Focus, Focus
Now you’ve got your written sales plan, the next step is to make sure you’re focused!  Focusing has been forced on a lot of people as the recession hit, with many companies noticing a drop-off in incoming enquiries and sales leads.

This forced their sales team to concentrate harder on those opportunities, and focus more on each opportunity individually – and how they were going to get it to convert into business.  If the market is starting to pick up for you and your team, make sure you don’t fall into the trap of taking those enquiries for granted – as some companies had done before the recession really hit them.

And if you’re starting to get lots more enquiries, your sales plan will help you focus on the best opportunities, and the ones you and your team are most likely to convert!

Sales Tip No 3 – Work To Your Strengths
This is an important point, and one that’s often missed.  One important thing here is to be aware of (and manage) your energy levels.  Back when I was a sales manager, I had one rep that truly was a ‘morning’ person – jumping around at 8.30 in the morning, yet when 3pm came he was almost asleep!

He’d tried a number of things to solve this problem – what he ate and drank, exercise and even how much sleep he got – and nothing seemed to have an effect!

We then decided to play to his strengths, and re-arranged his diary to take advantage of his energy levels.  We made his new business activity (cold calls, new business appointments etc) in the morning, and existing client calls and paperwork in the afternoon.  Month on month his sales went up fifty percent!  Amazing.

If you’re a manager or a director, are you playing to the strengths of your team?  Are you asking account management staff or sales admin staff to do new business sales roles?  Are you asking marketing staff to make cold calls?  Think about what the best use of your resources is right now……

So, until next month, the best of luck with your sales!

Read more:
5 Tips For Selling On The Upturn – Part 1

Tip Number 2: Think About What They Really Mean

Often when the buyer or decision maker says the words call me back after Christmas, that phrase might have a different meaning than the one you’ve accepted at face value!

Let’s face it – if everyone who said those to you either met with you or bought from you in January, then there wouldn’t be a problem, would there?  So I’m talking here about the people that use that phrase, but then don’t seem to necessarily follow through come January.

Let’s think about this a little deeper – might some people use that phrase when actually what they really mean is go away?  Or perhaps it’s not important enough for me to look at right now.  As someone who originally trained as a professional buyer, I can guarantee you that’s the case!

Here’s a quick distinction – the more new business your telephone call or appointment is, the less rapport you have – therefore the likelihood of them fobbing you off is much higher!  If you’re with an existing client you have personally a very good relationship with, it’s more likely that they’re telling the truth.

Happy Christmas! I will be back in the new year with more tips on how to make 2010 your best sales year ever.

Read more:
Dont back down on your sales in December part 2