Every Company has Low Hanging Fruit
The question “How do we grow sales quickly?” is asked in every business on a weekly basis. The easy answer for us is that you would not have to ask that question if your sales function was doing three simple activities on a regular basis.
Asking for additional business from existing clients
When was the last time you met with your top clients to review the current business you were doing with them, showed them what else you could do for them better than others, and asked what they were planning that you might be able to help them with?
Asking for referrals from existing clients
Your clients have stayed with you for a reason. When was the last time you asked them who they knew in the industry that you could help as well and who else they do business with where you might be a fit?
Asking for new business from other “ideal” future clients
Can you identify your best clients and why you have been able to be a partner with them? Take your success and replicate it by producing a marketing piece about why people do business with you and send it to other “ideal” prospects with a call to action about engaging you.
These simple activities are often overlooked because businesses get caught up in their business and do not focus on them. Make these activities part of your regular sales meetings and their will be no need to have conversations about how you can grow sales quickly.
Everyone Has a Part in Creating Opportunities for Their Organization
It has become quite apparent lately that employees in non-traditional selling roles are being asked to help create more opportunities for their organizations. Attorneys, specialized consultants, sales support personnel, engineers, bankers, and traditional account managers, executive directors, and even board members are all attending meetings and being given new “selling” tasks…usually with a reply like “If I wanted to be in sales, I would have applied for it!”
Downsizing, budgets cuts, shrinking margins, shrinking markets, and changes in client buying behavior, and increased costs are finally leading organizations to realize that they have to pick up the phone, they have to go knock on doors, and they have to go out and build relationships in the community…..and guess what, there is no budget to hire someone specifically for “sales”.
Sales is not a dirty word
The stereotypical image of a used-car salesman is that he is a pushy, arrogant, egotistical deal maker, and a bad dresser, to boot. Good sales experts are just the opposite of this clumsy, thoughtless, ugly stereotype. Think of a time when you left a selling interaction and thought to yourself, “That was a really good salesperson.” The positive attributes are universal:
• They listened
• Asked good questions
• Cared about me
• Gave me options to think about
• Was interested and genuine
Are these not the traits that we would all like to have and be known for?
Selling is not winning a deal at any cost, it’s being realistic
Selling is about doing what is best for the customer. It is always about creating measurable business results for the client. If you can’t help your clients with their business, you shouldn’t be doing business with them. Be willing to walk away from situations that aren’t right, and when you may not be the right fit for the client be willing to offer a referral to someone who has the expertise you don’t.
Sales success is about building and leveraging your relationships
You know lots of people from many different areas of your life. Consider your community groups, hobbies, volunteer organizations, sports, service providers, family, neighbors, and friends. The list goes on and on. Companies are asking you to leverage these relationships by finding out who these people know, what their network is, and who they might know that would be interested in what your company does.
You’re not asking your contacts to do business with you. You want to know whom they know and how and when they can refer you to opportunities in the market place. People are actually very delighted to help when they are asked.
Do not look at it as “selling”, look at it as creating opportunities
Several clients tell me they don’t “sell”, and we can’t use the word “sales” in our discussions. I agree! Look at it as creating opportunities for the organization that were not there before and you are accomplishing that by simply talking to people you know about what you do. Good salespeople are authentic and genuine and when you are sincere, care about your clients, and ask your contacts who they know, you are helping your organization grow.
Are you willing to help your organization grow?
The Benefits of Having a Cause
What does you organization support and how have you integrated that into your marketing?
With 75% of soldiers returning home have some form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. They are truly returning home broken after bravely volunteering and serving our country out of a sense of duty. Until now, there has not been a location dedicated to veterans connecting and supporting each other in our community which is why SalesTechnik has joined forces with DryHootch of Waukesha County to raise enough funds to build a permanent location.
Having experienced what the lack of support can have on our returning soldiers, I decided to purpose my own sense of duty to improve things and help companies focus with their selling efforts if they make a donation to the organization. You can learn about our offering here.
It is called “Cause Marketing” and I would suggest that every company discovers the “why” in them and finds an organization to align with. This alignment has increased awareness for DryHootch of Waukesha County in the business community and has increased awareness for what SalesTechnik can do for individuals, organizations, and companies. We have developed a sustainable revenue source for this cause and without much energy, built a pipeline of clients that share similar values, extreme gratitude, and concern for our returning soldiers.
With charitable donations at an all time low, this tactic should be integrated into every marketing plan. It has led to a much higher level of conversation with business leaders, gives a risk free and tax-deductible introduction to our services, and has helped individuals, organizations, and companies develop a high level focus on increasing their opportunities in the market place.
Feel free to contact me should you want to learn more about what we are doing to build a DryHootch in Waukesha County.
How to Become An “Opportunity Creator”
A mentor recently reminded me that the word “sales” is not always perceived well when used in a conversation. It is unfortunate but true because some “sales people” have ruined the reputation of all of us through non-standard practices that are remembered and shared with others. Even those companies and employees that I coach have trouble being called “sales people” even though what they do does have an impact on company revenues. Maybe that is why most businesses do not even print the word “sales” on business cards.
The primary duties of anyone in the business development field is to create opportunties for their company by finding a need in the marketplace and filling that need the products or services that their company offers. How do you do that without being “sales’ like? I would offer that the activities that you do have an impact on how you are perceived and that some of the best sales people I have know have never been described to me as “sales people”.
What do these people do differently that leads to increased opportunities for their companies?
- Perform strategic business reviews with current clients that helps them understand how you have added value to their business and what other services you offer
- Conduct lunch-n-learn sessions for account managers in other companies that can refer you to opportunities in their client base.
- Schedule breakfast and lunch meetings with centers of influence that are secondary stakeholders in targeted companies you want to work with.
- Focus your free time and champion a non-profit by volunteering your services to help with their fund development.
- Ask current clients for referrals.
- Introduce your clients to prospects, strategic partners, and other service providers that help them grow and improve their business.
- Make sure all of your family and friends know what you do.
Working any of these tactics into your activity calendar will help you increase your opportunities without the traditional sales tactics that are taught in videos and highlighted in the movies.
How to Guarantee Your Success in Sales
What you do today has an affect on your future income. Whether you’re a sales manager developing a plan for your salespeople or a salesperson developing your own sales plan, you need to develop a daily and weekly plan that is based on pre-determined activities levels reverse engineered from your goal in order to be successful. It is the only way to stay focused on growth and stay self-motivated to actively pursue success, rather than waiting for it to come your way.
How do you develop the plan?
1. Set your annual sales goal that is needed for you to make your targeted income level.
How much do you want to make this year? How much revenue do you need to close in order to justify your salary and company overhead expenses associated with your position? If you don’t know your goal, how do you know what success looks like?
2. Define your ideal client and what their average value is to you.
Do not take every piece of business you find. What type of clients do you want? What is their average worth to the organization? If you do not have business intelligence to use, your need to determine an average worth of your client base to set a baseline for the next steps.
3. Divide the sales goal by the average client value to determine how many clients you need.
If your goal is to make $100,000 this year and the average client is worth $5000 to your organization and you make 10% commission, you need to find 200 clients…..Pretty simple! Know how much business you need to close in order to meet the goal.
4. Know your closing ratio.
If your closing ration is 50% and you know you need 200 clients, then you need to propose to 400 targets to meet your goal. Again, pretty simple!
5. Know how many targets you need make proposals for.
You can’t do business with everyone. If you do, I guarantee that you will lose money. 20% of the typical customer base in any company costs more money to the company than they bring in revenue. If you make sure you are talking to “qualified” targets based on your ideal client profile, you will know how many qualified targets you need to propose to.
6. Know how many prospects you need to qualify as targets.
How many prospects do you talk to or meet with that do NOT meet your ideal client profile? At first, the prospects may seem like they can do business with you but when you are done talking or meeting with them, it is not a good fit for the organization. It’s not your fault! They looked like a target and do NOT feel remorse by disqualifying them to stay focused on better targets.
7. Know how many leads you need in the top of the funnel to qualify as prospects.
The phone book is not a lead list! Although you may think everything with an address is a prospect, you need to be smart about where you spend your time and energy to develop business. Much like the conversion of prospects to targets, the smarter you are about the leads that you generate, the more successful you will be at moving leads to clients.
8. Develop your “lead-o-sphere” to fill your funnel.
Much like the universe started in chaos and eventually developed into form, you need to form leads from the chaos in the market place. What are your lead sources? Who have you partnered with to be a complimentary provider? What networking groups have you joined to increase your contact base? What service organizations do you belong to? What boards are you on? What social events do you attend? Where do you go hang out? Who is in your LinkedIn network? Who are your centers of influence? Who do you need to meet to put you in a position to talk to your next lead?
You can download the “Get There” Calculator on the Technik Resources page to help you determine what your funnel volume and funnel velocity needs to be to guarantee your success.
Make Cold Calling Part of the Plan
There will always be a place for cold calling in any sales strategy and knowing how to do it is a critical differentiator in all market segments. For many sales people, cold calling can be the best and most effective way to build a pipeline but only through determination and polite persistence.
To be a good cold caller it’s key to understand the environment. Cold calling is interruptive and not permissive. Therefore from the second the call is placed, the people on the other end of the line have their defenses up and are NOT receptive until you give them a reason to let you in.
Because cold calling is interruptive and not permissive it requires 4 things to be executed flawlessly:
1. You have to know who you are calling – have a list.
Before you pick up the phone and start making calls, you have to know who you are calling and why. Let’s call this pre-qualifying. Pre-qualifying means creating a key customer profile that outlines the traits of a company that is the best possible fit for what you are selling. Build a list of pre-qualified companies to work from and make it as long as possible before you start calling. Don’t do research while you call, it slows down the process and makes it difficult to get into a rhythm. A calling list is the most valuable asset a cold caller can have and spending the time upfront building it will make all the difference.
2. Know what you are going to say
You have less than 10 seconds to capture someone’s attention. If you don’t know what you’re going to say, you’ll look sound like a rookie. I’m not a big fan of “scripts” and actually I consider them constricting, impersonal, and don’t always align with the flow of the call and what the person on the other line wants to hear. I prefer improvisation and agility. This doesn’t mean wing it, it means you have a set of key messages you know you must get out, but how you communicate them and when is driven by the person on the other end of the line.
Create a set of key messages you think are critical to your customer and to make sure they impact the key business elements of my target customers. I don’t talk about my services, but rather how my services can positively affect their business in the next 30-60-90 days.
3. Set Goals
Set daily cold call goals since the hardest part of cold calling can be just making the calls. Setting goals you know based on past success will ensure you can make your numbers. Know how many new calls you need to make in a day and know how many return calls you will make. New calls are calls made to someone on the list you’ve never called before. Return calls are someone on the list you didn’t get a hold of the last time you called them.
Overtime, as you call more often, your call back list is going to be as equally as big as your new call list and the most important thing to remember is to not quit until you reach someone. Make the call, leave a message, set a reminder to call them back, but never quit calling.
4. Don’t stop until they say “NO!”
This is where determination and stamina come into play. Do not stop calling until you get a no. Without a no, you don’t know why they aren’t calling you back. My rational is this; if they’re not interested, they’ll let you know because they may be too busy to do otherwise. For every prospect that will tell you to stop calling, I bet that you will have five that will thank your for your persistence and were glad you kept on them as they wanted to talk but were so busy they never got around to calling you back. – Don’t stop until they tell you to stop.
Cold calling is not dead. It maybe warping, but, regardless of what it’s doing or not doing, doing it right matters and will have an impact on your income.
Why You Need Sustained Activity Goals and Metrics
One of the most dangerous mistakes a salesperson can make is to go without activity because it will cause major problems in producing results later. As much as a salesperson may want to resist activity goals and metrics, they are necessary, and as much as the sales manager may not want to measure or enforce activity goals, it is necessary that you do so even when the numbers are being made.
Maintaining Momentum
The great game of sales is not very different than an athlete maintaining peak performance with the right activity (training). Without the right sales activity (prospecting) for even relatively short periods of time in sales, your pipeline starts to look a little light. Without face-to-face meetings, your deals start to stall and your pipeline looks even weaker. Eventually, your numbers will not be sufficient for the company to consider you a value to the organization, your commissions will sufferr, and a change will have to be made.
Maintaining momentum requires that you keep some standard of activity level, just like an athlete. Your activity goals and metrics are an indication of your future sales results. Your activity metrics are a snapshot of your fitness level as a salesperson and without them it easy to underperform and miss your numbers.
Build a “Model” Week for Momentum
The best way to maintain momentum is to create a “model” week with specific activity goals with prospecting calls and prospect meetings. Every week is not going to look exactly like the “model” week, and some are going to look very different based on the demands of the business you are in. One week of poor activity isn’t likely to make or break your quarterly or annual sales results, so it’s better to look at the averages since some weeks are naturally going to be more productive than others. Activities like prospecting calls and first sales meetings are good metrics and it is important to review your results and make changes to your activity levels as necessary.
Selling is one of those endeavors where it is very difficult to make up for lost time. You can train in the off season and perform during the season. You can also train like crazy in the season but you are guaranteed to produce nothing but a sense of frustration and panic. Activity goals and metrics are what keep you deliberately training for the season and in sales, the season never ends.
Sales Accountability VS Organizational Responsibility
Customers are disappearing, buying habits have changed, profit margins are shrinking, marketing budgets have been stripped, and the competition is entrenched. To compound the problem, your sales team is only selling 20% of the time, call reports are fictional, sales are unpredictable, and the training seminar that was purchased has had no impact on results whatsoever. In this day and age, more production is needed from the sales team and they need to be held accountable for results.
To truly hold sales people accountable, organizations have a responsibility to have certain things in place. These responsibilities include:
- Having a lofty goal in place
- Aligning the company on the lofty goal
- Knowing their “ideal” client
- Having current marketing materials
- Knowing opportunities exist in the market
- Being market-oriented and customer-centric
- Being able to measure success
Once these responsibilities are taken care of, the next step is to design a sales system and create a roadmap that is reverse engineered on the lofty goal. This road map should include clearly defined expectations such as:
- Specific activity metrics
- Weekly sales plans
- Public activity calendars
- Expected funnel size and velocities
- Structured reporting mechanisms
- Time bound results
Once an organization has taken care of their responsibilities, developed a sales system to follow and fully communicated what is expected, only then can the sales people be held accountable
Increase Your Sales Throughput with Process Alignments
| No matter what you offer for a product or service, customer buying habits have changed and organizations are becoming increasingly frustrated by a lack of market understanding, conflicting strategies between marketing and sales departments, and a lack of understanding about buying decisions. These frustrations are leading to unfocused selling efforts and wasting precious marketing dollars.To combat this, organizations must align their sales & marketing process to answer key questions in each stage of the prospect’s buying process in order to convert market opportunities into sales. Here are some pointers about what you need to accomplish when the prospects are asking the following quest Why do I need to solve this problem?
The customer is looking to learn so you should teach them in the way that they want to learn. Connect your teaching to something they’re passionate about but remember to be polite and keep it relevan Why do I need you to solve this problem? The customer needs to make a decision so you need to become a trusted advisor by creating relevance, building credibility, demonstrating value, and being honest about limitations Why should I buy from you now? The customer is looking to commit so you need to motivate them by providing a reason and making their decision easy by eliminating risk. How do I get the most out of my purchase? The customer is looking for confirmation so you need to continually add value, fix all problems as they arise, and inspire them to demonstrate why they made a good decision. By aligning your sales process to your prospects buying process, you will shorten the sales cycle and utilize your marketing dollars more effectively because your efforts will be focused. |
Maximize Sales Opportunities through a Division of Labor
With the sales function in most companies looking remarkably like production did prior to the industrial revolution we can apply the same division of labor principles to the selling function in order to increase productivity or in this case “sales”.
The primary duty of a sales person is to convert new opportunities into a sale but most companies do not allow them to perform that duty because salespeople are increasingly expected to perform non-selling activities such as customer service and even fulfillment duties. By assigning the non-selling activities to other positions in the organization, a sales person will be able to increase performance of their primary duty of converting opportunities into sales. But who in the organization should the non-selling activities be assigned to and how do all of those people and activities work together to increase the number of opportunities for the sales person? The positions and their respective duties should include:
The Promotions Coordinator is responsible for communicating the product or service offering to targeted prospects in order to generate leads. What is your company doing to keep the top of the funnel full?
The Sales Coordinator is responsible for ensuring that leads are followed up with by the sales people and that the sales people’s calendars are full at all times with business development meetings. They are also responsible for communicating the result of those meetings to the departments responsible for fulfillment and ongoing customer service. At the end of the day, sales people should only be reading what is in the CRM and not entering data.
The Technical Team is responsible for maintaining selling capacity by developing unique offerings to the market, providing marketing materials, automating standardized communications, and monitoring key activities such as business development meetings and conversion of opportunities into sales.
The Salesperson should only be responsible for conducting the business development meetings and converting the opportunities into sales. Additionally, a company may be able to decrease the amount of sales people since non-selling activities can be performed by more administrative and technical skilled staff.
The number of people dedicated to the above listed positions will vary depending on the size of the company, the amount of products, and the number of opportunities that are being generated by effective marketing but by having the right people in the right positions with the right procedures and the right promotions for the right product, a company will maximize the amount of selling opportunities and can guarantee an increase in their sales.
I hope these thoughts and philosophies help you increase your opportunities.
Peter C. Rathmann 