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By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca
Last Wednesday I had the pleasure of discussing sales and selling with Charles Adler, Canada’s Boss of Talk. Charles had read my piece in the Globe and Mail on the difference between a blue-collar approach to selling and the white-collar approach. We explored other aspects of sales and successful people, take a listen, and let me know or Charles (@charlesadler), know what you think.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca
When my kids were young and they would wish for something not real, or as a way to avoid a task, like “I wish I didn’t have to clean my room”, “I wish I could grow up to be a princess”, their grandmother always responded by saying “If wishes were horses then beggars would ride”. It’s interesting how that expression has great significance and application to many sales people and sales advisors, all now grown-ups.
I am speaking specially of advice doled out by some sales pundits that serves more to placate and patronize readers than help them improve their selling skills and success, delivering clichés and politically correct feel good myth, instead of proven and practical road tested advice based on experience. While we all want to make our audience feel good, I think it is more important to provide pragmatic advice that yields measurable results, even when it requires effort on the part of the reader and will often force them from their comfort zones. I for one do not see a problem in challenging readers and sellers, and do not apologize for creating some discomfort in helping them succeed. Much better than some of the sugar coated buzzword riddled schmaltz others seem to be peddling in an effort to make sellers feel good and allow them to rationalize their lack of effort, inventiveness and results. But as we all know sugar highs don’t last.
If you are wondering why I am on about this, it’s because once again I have someone taking a shot at my often debated, never disproven voice mail technique, not because it doesn’t work, it does, but because it does not appeal to their “sensibilities”, a sensibility that leads to no returned calls. As usual the technique is misrepresented, making it easier to cast in a questionable light, they then schmear a load of subjectivity mixed with value judgment, and raising but not speaking to the specifics of words like “trust” or “ethics”.
The reality is that there are no absolutes in sales, nothing works all the time, every time, most things don’t work most the time, so when you have a technique that proves to be 30% – 50% effective, you have something worth adopting. What’s more, while the technique may seem counter intuitive at first, those who try it, report back a consistent success rate. Recently there was a debate in a LinkedIn group, there were many who questioned the technique, who once they tried it, liked it, mostly because it got them call backs and appointments.
Most recently, the technique was again misrepresented, and labeled asinine. I bet I can find some internal memos at most record companies dating back to 10 years ago that called iTunes an asinine way to sell and consume music. I bet there were some Blockbuster folks who called Netflix asinine. Interestingly few are willing to challenge it head on. One challenger was invited to debate the technique on “This Week In Sales” webcast, but declined, I wonder why; not the worst thing, I had the whole show to myself.
As an industry, “sales enablers”, we keep highlighting the fact that only 50% of B2B reps make quota, well what is our role in that? If we do not push them to better themselves by trying, new, alternative, and yes at times outlandish but effective methods. We should challenge our audience, not just dust off the edges of tired techniques that play to the emotion of the reader even while ignoring the fact that what is being peddled are just retreads with new labels.
In the end it is down to the reader, our consumer, they choose how they want to make or not make quota. In the end the readers are like we the pundits, some know what is Shinola, and what’s not.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca
There was a good post this week at Funnelholic blog, looking at “Best practices for getting in the door”. In the piece there was a statistic attributed to the Harvard Business Review that stated:
“Harvard Business Review: 90% of C-level executives say that they never respond to cold calls or email blasts”
Now I can’t speak for the e-mail blast part, but as for the responding to cold calls part – “Horse manure! That’s for sure!”
I can tell you from personal experience, mine that of my clients, and other sellers, that the percentage of executives who respond is much greater than 10%, and even if they wanted to reframe the statistics and limit it to those who have made a purchase from a cold call, the number is still much higher than 10%.
There could be a number of explanations for this misrepresentation of the facts. One can be the way the question was asked, because it is true that in the wrong hands, cold calls can be painful for both parties; maybe they specifically asked executives predisposed to not taking cold calls or want to be politically correct in a social age; or they relied on data from the “never cold call” crowd, whose bias would taint the survey, after all it is hard to sell DVD’s, books, and ab machines if cold calling was shown to be working.
I suspect that this is the sales world version of the Bradley Effect, where voters told pollsters one thing about how they will vote, while doing opposite when they actually went to cast their vote.
As I have stated here before, there are no absolutes in selling, if your job is to engage with potential buyers, you will need to try all resources available to you, including cold calling. The post on Funnelholic highlights this in a clear way. While in certain markets you can get away with little cold calling, in other segments, you will never hit quota without picking up the phone and making some well-placed cold calls.
Another cause is the fact that many organizations spend a lot of money training their people on “selling” or managing accounts or relationships, but very little on proper prospecting. While lately there have been some programs focus on the use of social media or LinkedIn, again they ignore cold calling, after all, if you don’t do it, you can’t teach it.
Some of the referral based programs overlook the fact that while someone may give you a great referral, but unless the person making the referral calls in advance or introduces you, not always the case, and your call to the target is unscheduled, guess what, it’s a cold call, doesn’t matter what you want to call it to make you feel better. Unless you have mapped out the call, how you manage the likely objection, and turn it into engagement, you’re beat, and will become a statistic. Maybe the statistic was that 90% of cold calls are so bad that they would not buy from those callers. Which is reasonable given the fact that they have only been trained on the latter half the process.
What is interesting is that I have met executives leading sales force espousing alternate means to cold calling at conferences or webinars, who in a different setting lament their teams’ overdependence on their existing base, and the inability of their teams to prospect, including cold calling.
In the end, either both I and my clients are the luckiest sellers on the planet, or the 90% statistic is 90% politically correct BS.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
The Pipeline Guest Post – Kim Willington
Of course you know that social media is a great way to get exposure for your business. What you may not realize, however, is that social media is also a great way to increase direct sales — sometimes right from your feed. The immediate, conversational nature of Twitter makes it ideally suited for promoting your business and increasing sales.
In particular, hosting contests on your Twitter feed can increase your sales, not only in the short-term but also by promoting relationships with customers and generating leads. Here are a few tips for how you can increase your sales by hosting contests on your Twitter feed:
Promote New Products
When you have a new product, hosting a contest is a great way to generate buzz and to sell more of those products. By offering the contest, you instantly get more exposure for the product, amounting to free advertising that gets people instinctively excited about the product. Those who don’t win the contest will feel like they have missed out on something special and will be more likely to go back and buy the product instead.
Follow Up with Exclusive Offers
After a contest is over, you should build on the momentum that the buzz has created for you. You can do so by offering exclusive discounts or other promotions to your Twitter followers and to those who entered the contest. Perhaps you can offer a discount on the product, or you can offer a special free bonus for those who buy the product.
The exclusivity will not only increase your sales, but it will also help you to increase your Twitter following (which can help you build relationships and grow sales later).
Generate Leads
A contest is a great way to help you build long-term brand loyalty and sales by helping you to generate leads. The key is to create multiple methods of entry that work for you. This can include asking participants to join your e-mail list or to follow you on Twitter in order to enter. The more valuable the prize, the more people will enter and the more leads you will have.
Of course, the effectiveness of those leads will depend upon what you do next. Make sure you have a strategy for lead marketing that includes developing an ongoing relationship and encouraging repeat sales.
Twitter can do much more for you than help you promote your brand. If used correctly, it can help you to increase your sales of your own products or to generate additional revenue through affiliate marketing and advertising. Just be sure to strike the right balance between promotion and providing your followers the information they need, and you should see success.
Do you use Twitter to increase your sales? Share your tips for success in the comments!
About Kim Willington
Kim Willington is a freelance writer and researcher, where she has recently been researching service desk software. While away from work, she enjoys antiquing and hiking with her retriever, Spencer.
Last Monday I posted about the overlooked opportunity in that segment of buyers know as Status Quo, pundits and sellers alike commiserating each other about the difficulty of selling to a ready group of buyers, vs. taking orders from self-declared buyers.
I’ll be the first to admit change is hard, especially for business buyers who have their handful, trying to make headway in a competitive market. Change is time consuming, a drain on resources, creates upheaval, usually expensive, and fraught with risk, for the organization and the individual at the centre of the decision. Moving the dial with these types of buyers requires more than a bit of effort, which is why change is also hard for sellers; it is much easier and safer to rationalize, and wait for a referral.
This is why there is a healthy and growing industry of sages ready to sell indisposed sellers every mean of just waiting at the edge of the forest, encouraging them to wait for something to come out to them, rather than entering the fray and winning business most sellers seem reluctant to peruse.
How much effort does it take? Well take a minute, step back and look around you and study what it takes for people to make critical changes in key their lives. Frighteningly, you discover that people don’t often make big changes, right changes, preferring to avoid and live with the consequences of the Status Quo. Even when they know that the new state is preferable to their existing one. The naive notion which many buy into that people will move to a better mouse trap has cost both sellers and buyers much time and money. You can build the better mouse trap, Trap 2.0, and people will rodent infestation will maybe look your way, then rationalize why they shouldn’t beat a path to your door.
Don’t believe me, how many people do you know who continue to smoke, even after their father expired due to lung cancer; how many people do you know who continue to biggie size it, despite the fact that they have to buy a new wardrobe every six months? People can change these with a effort if they wanted to, but it takes effort. How many times have you watched companies go to the brink or beyond because the devil they knew was a better alternative to the one they didn’t know?
The answer is not offering the “right” or “better” solution, or in becoming their friend. It is about penetrating the barriers the buyers have erected to protect their current state. Your only choice is to shock them, shock your way past their fortress of hope. Hope it will work out, hope it will last, and hope no one will notice. For the “be found crowd”, this is not an issue, the buyer has dismantled the barriers, and are ready to change, but for the Status Quo, intervention time.
Now I am not talking about clamping a couple of electrodes to your buyer’s temples (or elsewhere); but I am talking about asking hard and very direct questions, which at best could be called provocative, at worst a punch below their reality belt. One does not have to be rude, but one does have to shake things up, which means the ultimate relationship you have starts out a bit rough, but ends up being a solid one, built on being a reliable resource, not a cuddly friend.
There is plenty of writing and thinking out there about how to succeed with the Status Quo, mine, others who provide means and questions you can use. But the first step is for you as a seller to recognize and decide how you want to deliver value to your buyer. Once you decide that you can do more than just take orders from ready buyers, and win more business who may not think they need you or your offering, there are plenty of resources to help you, but as with other changes, you need to first admit that you are a card carrying member of the Status Quo.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca
Sales people are constantly working at communicating value to their buyers, especially in the early stages of the cycle, lead gen to prospecting and engaging the buyer to where they could complete an effective Discovery process. After sellers have done all the work involved in getting to the point where they can engage with a buyer, I am always surprised at how easily they are willing to undermine it, and risk their opportunity by saying something completely unnecessary, and serves only to sooth their nerves.
The expression that does this most is “I just need 15 minutes of your time” or “A quick 15 minutes”. Both are stupid and useless, the second is one I never did get, how is a “quick 15 minutes” different than 15 minutes, don’t all minutes have 60 seconds, it is just the quality of the content that seems to make some minutes last a lifetime.
I know why it is used, generally comes down to two things, both can be dealt with more intelligently and effectively. First is the popular notion that if you can get 15 minutes, and do well, they’ll give you an encore and you can stretch it out; I guess we all think we can do a good job. On the other hand I used to work for a VP of Sales who managed his calendar down to the minute, busy guy. He would ask you how long you needed, and would book you in for that time, if you said 15 minutes, he would end the meeting right at 15 minutes. He wasn’t rude, he had to get to his next scheduled meeting, if you couldn’t live up to the expectation I set, it was your issue, not his, you had to deal with it, not him.
Which brings us to the first contradiction, most decision makers have more than what to do in a day, how realistic is that they don’t have other meetings behind your, or other things that require their time and attention. Yes, no doubt we have all had instances where we were able to extend 15 minutes in to 45 or even 60 minutes, but an occasional anomaly does not make for a sound strategy.
The other issue with this approach is that you are in fact misleading the prospect before you have even met them. Think about it, do you really want to start things off by lying to the prospective buyer? Any way you rationalize it, that is exactly what you are doing, not a good foundation for a trust based relationship.
The second reason sales people do this is linked to the first, and just as weak. Specifically they are trying to minimize the apparent impact on the buyer, trying to make it “easy” on them, “Your time will not be wasted”, is the implication. But unless you are selling a coffee service or window cleaning, how much real or tangible value can you effectively communicate. More so, when you are selling what you would call a “solution”, where information has to be exchanged, 15 minutes is not going to get you there, you can pretend all you want, you are going to pitch, worse, you are going to ‘speed pitch’.
Some will tell me, “I can at least get things started”, sure then comeback and continue, with a bit of recapping, you are costing you and the buyer more time. By asking for 15 minutes you are undermining your so called “value proposition”. What the prospect hears is that this is so basic and unimportant, what they are asking themselves is as follows: “we’re going to make real progress in 15, can’t be that important or unique, maybe it can wait, or I can delegate it to someone who deals with unimportant things.”
Think about it, assuming things get started, small talk, while you assume they checked out your web site, you have to validate; if they did, you still need to create context, if they didn’t you have to do a bit more than that. From here, you need to at least go through the motions of gather information or executing a Discovery of facts and objective. Ah, look at that time is up! I remember someone trying to sell me an ad in local board of trade directory, they said they just need 15 minutes, I pointed out to him that he will need to ask me some questions, I will certainly have some for him, so let’s get real, how much time will we really need, he was honest enough to come across with a real time frame.
What’s worse, it is usually the seller who brings time in to the equation, not the prospect, again communicating a lack of confidence in their offering, or their ability to sell, or both. Just stop this juvenile practice, and sell.
Now I know that there times when you will be asked by a prospect how much time you need; in my case I gear my first meetings to about an hour, I am the one that gets antsy after 50 minutes. But rather than saying “one hour”, I pause, and ask, “how long can you give me?” They usually come back and say “is an hour enough?” Touch down!
But assuming they ask again, I just say “I usually need about 30 minutes for Discovery, I assume you’ll have some questions, so 40 minutes is safe.” If I feel they have a sense of humor, I add “any longer than that I take as interest on your part.”
I do have people who say “I can give you 30 minutes.” Great I can work with that; if they offer 15 minutes, I say no, I know what is going to happen, it is not a good use of my time, my most important resource. Either we can find a mutually better time, or on to the next one. If you have lots of prospects, this is not an issue, if you only have one or two, you may have to settle for the scraps that a quick 15 minutes represent.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
Click here to complete the Voice Mail Survey!
By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca
There seems to be wide agreement that at any given time, only a small percentage of your target market is Actively Looking for what your are selling, estimates seem to be about 15%. A similar percentage, fall into a group I call Passively Looking, leaving about 70% of the target group is removed from the market, not looking, or working hard to look the other way, the Status Quo. Many pundits will tell you to stay away from the 70%, erroneously telling to avoid these apparently entrenched potential buyers, and spend your time with the other two groups.
Sure that is easier prey, but at the same time it is prey that is surrounded and stalked by every other sales person looking for an easy kill. Although you have to ask why it is easy, well, not only are these Passive and Active buyers, self declared, but they have been engaged gathering information, (if not knowledge). One bit of information they have is that most leading products’ feature overlap as much as 80% – 90%, leaving sellers a small and narrow platform to succeed from, leaving little more than price to lean on. Just like on the savannah, the weakest go first, the sale goes to the lowest price.
Time to be contrarian, stop chasing the obvious, and sell to those who may not be in the market, but still have objectives and opportunities they want to achieve in their business. The conventional wisdom is that you spend no time with the Status Quo, as one pundit insists:
“They are happy, not looking, satisfied with things as they are”.
The notion that they are satisfied, does not limit their desire to improve their situation, or that they are not open to better ideas. Sadly that view makes one a victim of selective perception, see what you want to see, in this case a sale that will require effort and skill, rather than the easy fray of the self-declared buyer. Believing that business people and business owners would ignore a means of improving or doing things better is just naive and dangerous; if you are reading this and are a business owner or executive – would you ignore something that could improve things even as little as 5%?
The reality, is that satisfaction is a poor measure of selling opportunities, more and more buyer are looking at how they can move forward rather than why they should stay where they are, especially when where they are is not optimal to their business now or moving forward. It is clear that many sellers are leaving money on the table using satisfaction as a threshold for change, for example, according to Bell & Patterson, in their “Customer Loyalty Guaranteed’, they show that “75% of customers who leave or switch vendors for a competitor, when asked, say they were ‘satisfied or completely satisfied’ with the vendor they left, at the time they switched.”
It is clear that those in the Status Quo are more likely :
“Buyers who have yet to be presented with, or perceive the right solution required to achieve their objectives or market opportunities.”
Getting to those buyers involves work, you need to use efforts and ideas that, not apps and tools. This may not be new, fresh, simple or specific economy dependent. It involves proactively engaging with buyers based on their current objectives, and presenting innovative thinking. Not necessarily products or solutions, again with 80% – 90% overlap, success comes down to how they can use the product to impact their business, their objectives, their opportunities.
Stop following the crowd, and track your target market, the big market. Ditch the product, and embrace their objectives, engage on that level and the product follows, more importantly, you have an unhurried sales cycle, as there is no crowd nipping at your heals, and you have a client that buys and pays full price for value, not negotiating on price.
You can start by reading Mine The GAP, and go from there; come back next Monday to see how you can shock the process forward with the Status Quo.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
Click here to complete the Voice Mail Survey!
Guest Post – Megan Totka
When thinking about writing a blog for a business, most people are not thinking about the blog itself bringing in revenue. The objective is usually to draw people in to the website with a good story, where they will then click around and perhaps make a purchase.
But why shouldn’t the blog itself try to make money and connections? The answer is of course, that it should! There are several ways to get a blog to make money.
Blog sponsorships – consider having blog sponsors who purchase space on your blog. This is an advertisement for a person or company that is permanent on your site. Most ads that you would find on a blog would be constantly changing based on the reader’s browsing history. Having a sponsorship allows the ad-buyer to guarantee a spot on your blog. Typically these are paid for up front, for a particular time period. You may want to consider sponsorships from companies that are in a related field. This way, your sponsor actually has some hope of people clicking on their ad.
Google AdSense or other ad companies – as I referenced above, most ads are ever-changing, based on the user who is browsing the blog. Google Ads target-markets to specific users by using their browsing history. For example, if someone who is reading your blog was also searching for colleges to attend, then they will likely see ads for colleges. This is good for you, the blog/business owner, because they are more likely to click on that ad, and thus make you money. The more readers that you have and the more your web pages help you customers, the more effective Google Ads will be. There are other similar ad companies, as well. If you want to put this type of ad on your blog, it’s good to research all of the companies that offer the service first.
Affiliate marketing – affiliate marketing is where you endorse or advertise a certain company, product, or service in exchange for a percent of the profit from the sales made from this particular company/product/service. There are many affiliate marketing opportunities. One that is popular is Amazon’s affiliate program.
A blog is a great way to give customers an insight into your company. Drawing new readers and keeping current readers interested is the most important factor in getting your company blog to make money. The more people who read your content, the more that can potentially click on your ad. Having strong content that people want to read and share is the cornerstone of a good blog.
About Megan Totka
Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.
While it is still early days, there are some definite ways social media is impacting selling and buying; some of this is good and has helped sellers better understand and meet the needs of buyers, others, well really not worth fostering, and should be nipped in the bud now.
One specific practice brings with it some risk for sellers, especially new younger sellers targeting more mature decision makers, even those active on social media, centers around communicating. Specifically, the real difference between connecting and communicating when it comes to selling. To some degree this is a generational thing, revolving around long formed habits, more specifically it comes down to each group’s view of communication, and expectations from that communication.
On one level it comes down to definition or semantics if you like, many social sellers blur the lines between ‘connecting’ and ‘communicating’, some go further and fail to understand the difference, and completely confuse connecting with actually communicating with potential buyers.
Connection and connecting is important, but it is only a step towards communication. Don’t get me wrong I am not suggesting or basing my statement on the notion that communication needs to be face to face, but it does need to be mutual, interactive and result oriented. The result does not need to be defined in a sale or moving the sale forward, but in delivering an enhancement of the relationship.
For communication to be meaningful, especially between two parties , it does have to be direct, one to one. There can be effective sales communication between an individual and a group, we have all done it on webinars, presentations at conferences, etc.; but again those fall more into the connect category; there still needs to be that one to one that results out of the initial connecting effort.
Part of this tracks the ongoing evolution in sales, blending existing best practices with new evolving and sometimes better practices, a necessary process. Where we run into problems is when the discussion takes the tone of out with the old, in with the new, rather than out with what no longer works, and in with what does, and does better. Where we are now in sales, is that if you throw out the old, you end up throwing many of best potential prospects out too because they are not as tied into the new as you and the “prophets on the new” are.
The best approach is to use social in tandem with other mainstream methods. As someone pointed out, will ‘spray’ your message, allowing it to touch a wider audience, creating a connection, perhaps a curiosity about your message. This initial connection is like a seed that needs to be nurtured to grow fruit. It is very much talking at an audience, not communicating with someone specific. So be prepared to do both, but realize that one will bring you to the point of talking at someone, you still need to take steps, even like a follow up cold call to someone responding to or retweeting one of your tweets, to fully communicate and move the connection to a prospect.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
“Leveraging Value from Engaging the Buyer to Closing the Sale” – A Sales Association Webinar
Tuesday, October 30 – 2 p.m. EST / 1 p.m. CST / Noon MST / 11 a.m. PST (1 hour in length)
On Tuesday October 30, I have the privilege to deliver a webinar for The Sales Association – I will be talking to specific steps sellers can take to delivering and leveraging value throughout the sale.
Almost every conversation about selling starts or ends with the concept of value. At the same time, there are as many different understandings and definitions of value as there are sellers and buyers. Without a clear and actionable definition of value, many conversations between buyers and sellers are less than effective, and do not help create a buy.
Starting with a clear definition of value, participants will learn the five-step process to leveraging value throughout the sale, from the initial engagement to winning the client.
Steps include:
Participants will learn how to use this process to create alignment with the buyer, their objectives and buying process.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
