Sales Laundry

Q&A’s are excerpts of questions I have answered as part of Sales Laundry or other forums that I am apart of. If there is a relevant sales message for the masses I post it here to share, gather feedback and discuss.

Q:  I work with a web design company that is not running at full capacity at the moment, so they are looking at getting a sales person. We have tried various methods to find salespeople, from outside sales professionals to inside tele-salesmen. Mainly it is lead generation, just getting the lead, not the actual closing that we need, but so far we have yet to find anyone who can actually do a decent job.

A:  You might look at this from a different angle.

If you would, ask a few questions of your firm first.  (Stay with me, there is method to my madness)

1. Why should a customer buy web services from us vs. every other web services provider?

2. Do we have a product, unique point of view, or skill set that really seperates us from the competition?

3. Have we identified who our primary customer base is?

4. Have we determined an effective way to consistently generate leads?

5. Have we developed any products to entice our existing customers to spend more with us?

6. Do we have any reference letters, videos, etc. compiled to help a sales rep land new accounts on the backs of our success stories vs his word as a sales man?

7. What sorts of marketing efforts do we have in place to help drive our sales message?

There are other good questions, but that should put you on the correct path.

It will always be difficult to find exceptional sales people because exceptional sales people are rarely out looking for a job too long.  Their existing employers either keep them happy or competitors tired of losing to them snap them up when given the chance.

If you have some clear and decisive answers to these questions, you can stop looking for a “sales genius” that can overcome other potential internal shortages and be successful with the more plentiful “young to pretty good” sales person that can execute given some direction.

In short, the more you refine and perfect your sales process, the wider and deeper the pool of candidates become that can execute your process successfully.

Spending more time searching for and refining the perfect sales process for your business may ultimately prove more rewarding than the search for the ultimate commission sales representative.

Hope that helps.

In twelve minutes, John Nese, owner of Galco’s Soda Pop Stop, is going to make you want a bottle of soda pop.  John is also going to teach you something that will change the way you look at soda pop from this day forward, and make you want to buy that bottle of soda from him.

A business focused on a niche makes for focused sales people.  Focused sales people become niche experts and niche experts, in many cases, sell circles around sales generalists without really trying that hard.

I like the way John said it better.

Ready for that soda pop?  Head on over to the Soda Pop Stop and say hello to John for me.

Q&A’s are excerpts of questions I have answered as part of Sales Laundry or other forums that I am apart of. If there is a relevant sales message for the masses I post it here to share, gather feedback and discuss.

Q:  How do I convince a prospective customer to switch from using a competitors product to using mine?  He likes my product but is content with the product he is using.

A:  There has to be a compelling reason to get them to switch.  If there is no compelling reason, you are probably better off spending your time on better prospects.

With that said, here are a few strategies to try and help you find that differentiator.

Strategy 1: The laziest solution is to cut your price to the point you still make money but have undercut the incumbent significantly enough to convince his customers to move.  This, of course, will eventually be followed up by someone else undercutting you.

Strategy 2: Analyze the prospective customer’s product, learn it, and look for significant feature/function/benefit advantages your product provides to justify the change.

Strategy 3: Analyze the competitors business looking for weaknesses that you can exploit to facilitate a change.  Better yet, just be better than your competition at every turn.  Better still, look past your competitor and give your customers more than what than they want, give them what they dream of and let them do your selling for you.

Strategy 4: Help the prospective customer so they can help you.  Per Keith Ferrazzi’s book, Never Eat Alone, you could try a strategy of helping the prospective customers solve some of their personal/business problems, if you can identify them, with contacts from your network of people.  Providing legitimate answers to their problems without looking for direct compensation might give the prospective customer just the compelling reason they need to switch.

Strategy 5: Look for a way to change how the game is played, like what Amazon did to Barnes & Noble/Borders; Netflix is doing to Blockbuster, what Napster/iTunes did to CD sales for the record labels, etc.  A good book on this topic would be Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.

Strategy 6: Tie your product to something bigger that makes switching to you a more compelling proposition.  Kellogg’s cereals tied Mini-Wheats to bigger issue of improving education of our children; Microsoft has tied themselves to Jack Welch of GE fame and a video interaction series to help teach businesses executives, or what Lance Armstrong did by tying his story, celebrity, athletic ability, and even the color yellow from the famous Tour De France winners jersey to his foundation and cancer research with a simple yellow Live Strong bracelet that became the “cool” thing to have and cause to support.

Strategy 7: Bundle your product with a product or service that is compelling to your prospective customer that your competitor can’t offer.

Strategy 8: Be attentive to your prospective customer and take care of them and keep an eye out for an opportunity to sweep in when your competitor ignores their customer or makes a major misstep.

Strategy 9: While not a full strategy, per se, find the leaders or first movers in the industry of the prospective customers you want to reach and focus your efforts on winning one or all of them.  Getting the respected thought leaders of any group using your product will make future sales easier as their followers will be more easily convinced.

Where do you find these thought leaders?

Here is a hint:  They are often the people quoted in the Business Journal, the newspaper or the trade magazines on the hot industry topics of the day.

Good luck.  It can be a very daunting task to get a happy customer to change from a vendor/product that is a known quantity to a vendor/product that is an unknown quantity, even if it is a significantly better product.  However if they are willing to take that jump with you, then they were probably not that happy to begin with.

Q&A’s are excerpts of questions I have answered as part of Sales Laundry or other forums that I am apart of.  If there is a relevant sales message for the masses I post it here to share, gather feedback and discuss.

Q:  What is the single greatest obstacle that would prevent a new CRM implementation from being successfully adopted by the users (sales team)?

A:  The biggest adoption challenge to achieving successful CRM adoption is getting the willing support of the sales team and their commitment to use the CRM tool as intended.

There are a few underlying issues that perpetuate this problem.

1. CRM deployments are often designed and customized to serve the group paying for the CRM solution (management) vs. the people who actually use the CRM tool day to day (sales)

2. In many cases, few attempts are made to legitimately get the sales team on board by showing them how using the CRM package is going to help them do their jobs better/make their lives easier thus inspiring them to increase the depth and quality of data input.

3. Failing to get the sales team to willingly use the CRM package, use of the CRM package is typically mandated leaving the front line sales team feeling the CRM tool has been forced down their throats, taking up their time while not doing anything appreciable to help them close more sales.

4. Real, or perceived, there is a concern by a segment of the sales professional population that keying all of the information they know about an account and contacts diminishes their value as an individual to the company and makes them more expendable.

5. There is also an undercurrent of concern that the (Management mandated) data that a sales person puts in the CRM package under the pretense of helping close more business will actually be turned against them and used as a tool to micro manage their sales efforts or bring about their own elimination.

The end result is, when forced, that the sales team provides the minimum amount of data entry necessary to stay in compliance and will continue to use or develop their own tools outside of company purview as needed to assist them in doing their job, only further eroding the likelihood of successful adoption of the CRM implementation.

To avoid all of this, a CRM deployment needs to be developed with the front line sales team engaged from day one so they have input in the process and more importantly, a stake in making sure the implementation is successful.

Last night I saw a small business owner hitch her business to a much larger cause and pull off an absolute rock star marketing strategy.

Forget how Kellogg’s tied breakfast cereal to our kid’s education, pardon the pun, but that is kid stuff by comparison.

I was watching America’s Got Talent (you can slap me later) with my two little girls when Pam Martin’s Top Dog act began.  The act was just as you would imagine; a routine with owner and dog doing tricks to music trying their best to be one of five acts out of twelve on the show to make it to the next round.

In real life Pam Martin runs a small pet obedience training business called Top Dog in what might as well be Dallas, Texas.  Pam branded her act on America’s Got Talent with the same name as her business, so every time Pam is on television her business gets a plug because at the bottom of the screen is “Pam Martin’s Top Dog.”

Now for the Rock Star Marketing Genius part.

By going on the show with her act, appropriately called “Pam Martin’s Top Dog” and showing off her training skills, Pam has successfully created and aired two commercials almost two minutes in length each showcasing her business to a national audience on prime time network television.

If Pam were paying for commercials on America’s Got Talent she would have paid $800,000+/- for that same air time, plus the cost of making the clips, not counting the 30 second human interest pieces that endear the performer (or business woman, in this case) to the audience. No matter the outcome,  Pam has already won $1,000,000 from America’s Got Talent and spent all of it advertising her business.

Consciously or not, Pam has tied her business to the number one television show on network television in its time slot, with 11.2 Million viewers that Tuesday night alone.  Pam has also benefited from NBC’s own marketing spend in all forms of media promoting America’s Got Talent for the price of a couple of costumes and stage props.

That beats the pants off of the marketing strategy and budget of every other pet obedience school in Dallas, TX.

Pam will also get to carry forward a little bit of celebrity to add to her business raising her exposure in her market and raising obedience training as a priority in the minds of her prospects.

Where else are you going to get to spend six weeks with a minor TV star for $100?  Call Pam.

I would bet Pam’s business is booming from the national exposure boosting her efforts to earn her next million on the back of that million+ advertising budget, regardless of what happens to the million the TV show is giving away.

Genius.

Pam tied her small business to a bigger business that could raise her exposure, add celebrity and other elements making her services a higher purchasing priority in her customers minds and managed to squeeze a million+ in free advertising out of the deal.

What can you do to think outside the box to become a top priority in your customers mind and start to work on your own million?

Image courtesy of http://topdogdallas.com

Networking.

Historically just saying that word out loud has made me think of smarmy business card exchange exercises with people that have a paper-thin layer of genuine friendliness masking unfathomable depths of desperation and a near unstoppable urge to smack you over the head with their latest product pitch just because you happened to be standing suspiciously out in the open, unprotected, and dared to make eye contact with them at a business after hours event.

Just typing that makes me want to go wash my hands.  Yuck.

Why then do we even entertain the idea of slapping a plastic grin on our faces and moving about uncomfortably stuffing our pockets with random business cards?

We do it because we have been told that “networking” is important to our careers.

Which it absolutely is.

Unfortunately, who ever tossed out that bit of sage advice failed to leave proper instructions on how to “network” properly.  Thus the “biological business card dispenser” model was born, and the mere thought of attending a networking event is met by most with the same level of disdain reserved for the drill at the dentists’ office.

We have been bamboozled, my friends.  That is  not “networking.”  That is just a more polite form of Rockum Sockum Robots I like to call “notworking.”

The right way to network

So how can anyone build a solid network of people to help their business without feeling like they have been collecting business cards while wading chest deep in a pool of snail slime?

Networking for me got a whole lot less “slimy” when I stopped thinking about “me” and about the important stuff I had to say and started listening to the person I was talking to, and thinking how I could help them solve their problem/be more successful.

With the simple change in mindset of looking to help someone else first, dozens of new opportunities to genuinely connect with people began to present themselves.

As you listen to someone talk you will discover some of the things that are really important in their lives and you will find some new paths to connect with them outside of tradeshows and seminars where you can form a relationship that can help you move right past the gate keeper when it is time to talk business.

Here are a few ideas to get the wheels turning:

Start with the small stuff

Everyone in the room has something in common.  They are people.  (Godzilla and Bigfoot do not typically attend these things.)  They are people that have, more or less, the same problems and daily challenges you face.  Start with the small stuff, share something personal, and let the conversation unfold.

Listen for all of the opportunities to help, not just the ones your company’s product or service can fix. Is their child having a hard time in school or looking for an entry level job?  Offer to connect them with someone in your network that can help.  Are they relocating?  Buying a car?  Need a new cell phone?  Need some contacts to get their business going?  Planning an anniversary?  Need help pulling off a customer appreciation event?  There are opportunities to connect at some level in all of the “stuff” we fill our lives with.

Figure out who you want to network with in advance. Do your best to figure out who you want to meet at an event and position yourself to make that acquaintance instead of randomly trolling about the room.  Research them online so you can pick up some of their specific interests and have something relevant to say.

Prepare a small secondary event. For the handful of people you meet at an event that you would really like to get to know better, invite them all to join you for dinner/drinks after the event to continue the conversation.

“Networking” does not have to be a negative experience that leaves you feeling like you just ate a four pound bag of French fries.  It can be a very rewarding experience to know that someone is better off in some small way because of your selfless actions.  I would sum it up this way:

“Listen and give and you will get more than you gave.”

There are some fantastic thought leaders on the topic of networking I urge you to explore.

Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Eat Alone and current NY Times best seller Who’s Got Your Back is a great resource.  You can also tap into the Never Eat Alone LinkedIn group, of which I am a member, as well.

Andy Lopata, which someone in my network pointed out to me, also known as “Mr. Network” in the UK and author of two books on the subject of networking, Building a Business on Bacon and Eggs and …and Death Came Third! You can catch more good stuff from Andy’s blog Connecting is Not Enough.

Image courtesy of http://www.marriedtothesea.com

As many of you know, last week, AlchemyEngine/I offered five free sales consulting sessions to everyone that has supported SalesLaundry in some way since its launch.  Many of you decided to take me up on the offer and by the weekend all of the slots were filled.  Thank you for the great response.

True to my word, I spent the majority of this week fulfilling all but one of those commitments which has yet to be scheduled, and have met some truly exceptional people in the process.  I am not sure what everyone else got out of the calls but I got charged up and inspired after every one of them and found myself making improvements in my own process and going through my contacts working diligently to find connections that would be meaningful and mutually beneficial for everyone involved.

I just wanted to thank all of you because as is almost always the case, I think I got back far more than I gave.

I did notice one common theme among a few of the calls and that was a desire to improve and grow the networks of people we work with and call prospects and customers.  To that end I have pushed everything else off my desk and am starting on an article tonight on the topic of how to grow and strengthen our networks to help in that area.

If you did not get an opportunity to participate in this promotion, send me an email: val {at} saleslaundry.com or signup to receive SalesLaundry updates via email if you have not already.

Thanks again.