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May 20, 2014  

What is your 1% Sales Activity to Drive Future Business Success?

Do you know where to focus your sales activities to get to the next level?

Most companies were successful in the beginning because of one or two main clients that represented 80% of their sales.  Their second stage growth then came from employers from those first two clients that moved to other companies and pulled that company with as a supplier.  But what happens when that organic growth stops and your company has to go find new customers to achieve that third stage of success?  Would you be able to develop a plan, create new habits, and commit to the right sales activities that drive your sales funnel growth and sales funnel movement?

For every sales effort, there is an identifiable key sales activity that drives the growth and movement of the sales funnel.  It is that one activity that if you repeat it over and over, success will follow.  Example of 1% sales activities would include:

  • Presenting to ideal prospects and key strategic partners about value you can add to their business
  • Having lunch with key centers of influence to understand how they integrate with clients
  • Speaking at a business networking event full of people representing businesses that are in your wheelhouse
  • Meeting with a new ideal prospect to learn about their business and understand where you might be able to help them add value to their clients
  • Making introductions for others to help grow their business
  • Writing blogs to share your experience with the world

I refer to these activities as the “1%” since when they are completed, the other 99% of activity follows automatically. My personal 1% is having 3 meetings per week; One meeting with a business owner to learn about their business, one meeting with a center of influence or a service partner in the market to learn about what their challenges are, and one meeting where I am introducing two people that I know should be working together.  If I have those three meetings per week, I know that my sales funnel will stay full through referrals, and that I will be scheduling meetings with potential clients to learn where I can help their business.

When was the last time you reverse engineered where your sales success comes from? Do you know what your 1% activity is? Do you know who you need to perform that 1% activity with? What do you need to clear from your schedule to make sure that 1% happens every week?  Please feel free to contact me if you need help identifying what your 1% is and creating the right habits to make sure it happens.

August 12, 2013  

The 3 Types of Selling Activities That Lead to Sales Success

Great sales people are not a mystery, they are just able to commit their time to the right selling activities and best practices that the rest of us do not.  They could be rain makers for a pharmaceutical firm or they could be a start up business owner that has to sell his own product or service.  Regardless, most sales people are only able to sell 20% of their time because of the non-selling activities that they get involved in.  What would your sales look like if the non-selling activities could be delegated and more time could be committed to selling activities?  How many sales have you lost because the non-selling activities took up too much time?

Let’s take a look at the three types of selling activities and the specific selling activities that you need to start or improve upon to get the results of a great sales person.

Funnel Filling Activities: These are the activities that are going to fill your sales funnel with a higher qualified volume of potential opportunities.  Notice how these are “in-person” selling activities or will lead to other “in-person” selling activities regarding conversations about new business.

  1.  Attending networking events relevant to your potential clients and referral partners interests.
  2. Sponsoring seminars and speaking engagements that attract potential clients and referral partners.
  3. Setting appointments with potential clients that meet your ideal client profile regarding their needs.
  4. Setting appointments with referral partners to help target opportunities to work together.
  5. Meeting with current clients to further understand their business and where you can add value.
  6. Always helping others grow their networks or improving their business when you have the ability and time to do so.

Funnel Accelerating Activities: These are the activities that are going to move your potential opportunities through your sales funnel to become a client and remain a client.  Notice how all of these are meant to move potential clients to a next step.

  1. Understanding who your potential client really is, what they really want, and how they buy.
  2. Presenting as a team with your technical expert to qualified potential clients.
  3. Providing your potential client with two closing options.
  4. Overcoming objections and put-offs that arise unexpectedly.
  5. Giving your potential client all of the information they need regarding integration and delivery.
  6. Making sure that everyone in the organization understands the potential client’s expectations and what their role will be in the integration and delivery phase.

Focusing Activities:  These are the activities that will improve yourself and help you keep your time and energy focused on the Funnel filling and funnel accelerating activities listed above.

  1. Making sure you have a plan for what you are attending, who you are meeting with, and who you are talking to about new business for next week before you leave this week.
  2. Making sure all of relevant customer information is updated in your CRM where others can find it when they need it.
  3. Delegating non-selling activities to the proper support people so you can stay focused on the selling activities.
  4. Taking time to grow your knowledge about business success and industry innovations.
  5. Taking time to grow your skills, capabilities, and belief in yourself.
  6. Unplug once in a while to focus on your personal life.

Notice how nothing has been said about Process and Systems.  That is because I am assuming that you have defined processes and systems in place for you,  your sales people, and your support functions to focus on the right activities for the duties assigned.  Considering that every minute you spend in the non-selling activities is a potential lost opportunity or even potential lost revenue, how much more do you have to lose before you start to integrate some of the right selling activities into your daily and weekly routine?

Please feel free to contact me if you need help on where and how to integrate any of these activities to help you become a great sales person.

July 7, 2013  

13 Free Sales Tools to Help Build Your Business

Having worked with these sales tools in my own business and helping my clients integrate these sales tools  into their own habits, I sometimes take it for granted that everyone knows about them.  These should not just be tribal knowledge and I hope these help you in your own selling efforts to the markets you are targeting.

Jigsaw is a user-generated database that is continually updated by its members.  It gives you the name, title, postal and email addresses and direct-dial phone numbers for individual contacts you can’t find directly.  This allows you to find the direct contact information for decisions makers you are targeting without going through the gatekeeper and wondering if you message is even being received.

InfoUSA is a sales tool available with just a library card through your library system.  Not only is this tool useful for finding information on your target customers, but it also give you a list of management names, their competitors, and their SIC and NAICS codes to be able to download searches for even more target customers that may not appear on other search tools.

MyBrainShark is a website that allows you create a voice-enriched multimedia presentation or podcast.  It also makes it easier for you to record your PowerPoint presentation for online display purposes.  This allows the market to view and hear your message and learn from your expertise 24/7.

FirefoxSuperSearch is like the the”Swiss Army Knife” of search engines. It allows users to perform web searches, people searches, reverse lookups, public records searches, due diligence and background research, using over 160 of the internet’s best search engines.  This allows you to learn a lot about your prospects and customers before you engage with them.

Google Analytics generates detailed statistics about the visitors to your website. It can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, email marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents or other downloads.   This will help you identify how your website is connecting with in your market and help you identify what content you need to change.

Xobni is a free add-on to Microsoft Outlook that turns it from an email system into a powerful sales tool. It creates another window in outlook that displays a profile of whoever sent you the currently highlighted email by grabbing that person’s photo and telephone number from LinkedIn, Facebook, or several other social networking sites. It also shows a string of communications that you’ve had with that person. If you use outlook, this is the easiest way to start “social selling” using all of the social media tools.

Hoovers is a database of companies and other organizations, which includes top level data on financials, strategies, competitors, key executives, market dynamics, and so forth. It’s built on a database of information on more than 30 million corporations and organizations, and more than 35 million people. This is a great place to learn about a customer or a competitor, without having to dig through the SEC reports.

Zoho CRM is a Customer Relationship Management tool that has all the features you’d expect in a world-class CRM product, including marketing campaigns, lead management, sales pipeline, forecasts, etc.  This will allow you to keep track of all of your opportunities and activities in one location and you can even have up to 3 people on the same system before you have to pay for it.  I have 3 clients using this currently as their first CRM tool and it works great for a sales management function.

Demandbase Stream is a nice little sales tool that works like a news ticker displaying information across the desktop about which businesses are visiting your Web site, along with their interests, and contact details for the most appropriate decision makers to contact for follow up. You can also flag existing customers, prospects, partners, and competitors, so that you’re aware when they’re doing something on your website.  This helps you act fast when someone is interested in what you have to offer.

Super Pages has proven useful for search for companies that are typically hard to find because they do not “fit” into a specific market segment.  You are able to search for companies in specific geographic areas using key words of the service they may offer.

LinkedIn continues to be a valuable sales tool for business development as more and more companies are joining and senior leadership begins to adopt it as a tool themselves.  Although they have removed some of the features since going public like Events and Answers, you can generate plenty of activity with a target audience by posting useful information to help your network or take part in discussions within the groups you belong to.  Make sure you join 50 groups that are relevant to your expertise, industry, and interests to get the most reach.  Chances are, if I do not know something, my network or fellow group members do and I get an answer very quickly.

Evernote is a great way to keep your projects and to-do list organized.  You can access it through both a desktop and your mobile device to add activities and make new notes when you think about them so you do not forget about them

Xmind is a mind mapping tool that helps you visualize strategic plans, build organizational charts, develop fish bone diagrams for processes, and even can be used to map a potential website site map.  This is a great tool for those of us who are more visual learners.

Please feel free to contact me if you need any help with these or just want my library card number.