Sales Laundry

Posts Tagged ‘Improving Sales Results’

 

 

Relatively recently I was working with a technology provider and found myself analyzing the hoops they made their customers jump through to make a purchase.

 There were three different multipage documents requiring initials or a signature on each page.  The customer had to sign the original, fax a copy back to the office and mail the original copy, preferably via FedEx at their own expense, so the paperwork loop could be closed and the annoying “where is your paperwork?” phone calls could be avoided.

 

 

 If someone has elected to give you money in exchange for your product, why not make it as easy as possible to make the purchase?

 Why does it take 30 days, 60+ pages of paper, countless initials and signatures to buy a house that can’t move, and only a day or two to buy an equally expensive car that could be stolen, parked in a shipping container, and sent to around the world to parts unknown?

 Car dealerships are not without their own hoops, with haggling back and forth with the Sales Manager via the sales guy, getting points added on used car financing, warranties, rust protection, pin striping, etc.  It does not have to be that difficult but it is, because the end of the transaction is where the dealership has maximum leverage.

 In an attempt to keep theft down and maximize opportunities for warranty sales, Circuit City created customer choke points in their stores, making it difficult for the customer to purchase their merchandise and get out at busy times.  Prior to their final incarnation, Circuit City sales transactions were always limited to the number of employees on the floor with time wasted between transactions because customers had no tolerance to queue up and wait at Circuit City as they had been conditioned to do at grocery stores, Wal-Mart or Best Buy.

 Look at the actual mechanics involved in how your customer places his or her order with you.  Is it overly complicated?  If buying your product is tougher than necessary you give your competitor a simple way to improve over your service in a way that is meaningful to the customer.  Could you make the process friendlier and thus incent your customer to come back and buy from you more frequently?

 Need an idea to get you thinking?  Look at how we buy books.

 Book Store – Drive, park, walk in, find section, hopefully find the book, wait in line, listen to the rewards program card speech, buy the book, walk to the car, drive home.

 Amazon.com. Type in the name of the book, hit the 1-click order button. = easy.

Want another one?  Look at what Domino’s is doing to simplify the buying process.

I got this email today from one of the LinkedIn groups I am associated with trying to sell me outsourced services for my business.  I opened it up, read the first three lines and deleted it.

 Then I decided to pull it back out and see if I could improve on the efforts of the original sales person and make a sales lesson out of it.  I am ignoring the spelling/gramatical mistakes as I am not an English teacher, I am a VP of Business Development.  The names have been changed to protect the sales or marketing knucklehead that wrote it. 

 

The Original – feel free to skip ahead as I could not get past the first 3 lines of this email on my first pass.

 HEADLINE: For Possible Business Collaboration / Oppurtunities

 Dear Mr.Val, 

I represent ABC Company, an offshore based services outsourcing Organization. We help our world-wide clients with our outsourced services such as;

Global HR Services – All Technologies, All Business Domains, All Business skills, At all levels of expertise & Knowledge.
- Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO),
- Worldwide Contractor staffing – Offshore/Remotely working resources/Onsite resources
- Online/Remote/Onsite Training & Development -Technology & non Technology training, e-learning courses development & Administration, Monitoring & Managing Training needs etc.
- Payroll Processing
- Employee records maintenance, & verifications
- Travel &, Accommodation
- HR policies & strategies
- Market /Competitor research
- Employees Compensation & Benefits
- Performance Appraisals processing, Administration & Management.

In addition, ABC Company helps worldwide organizations in the following areas;
1. Information Technology services (IT solutions development, customization, integration, Migration, upgrading, Implementation, Maintenance, Support etc. – All Technologies & Business Domains

2. Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO services – (a) Engineering – Mechanical, Civil, Architectural, structural b) Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO – all skills) c) Technical Writing & Communications d) Remote infrastructure Management (RIM – Monitoring & Managing any IT resources remotely, Technical Help desk, Systems & Database Administration, support, e) Animation, 2D, 3D modeling etc.)

3. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO – Document processing, Data entry, help desk, Data analytics, Data/market/IP research, Billing, verifications, Transcriptions etc, Outbound/Inbound Calling services etc – All Business domains and skills)

4. Bioinformatics (Contract/Collaborative Research & Development, Consulting, Life Sciences Software Applications & Tools, Data Mining/Data Analysis, Data & Applications Integration. Clinical Trial I/Medical informatics, LIMS, Internet/Intranet Applications, Multimedia & Virtual Reality Applications, Education & Training)

We have seen the following benefits accruing to our clients from our services;

1. We have a large team of highly qualified, experienced, talented, efficient, young and enthusiastic resources to support your organization in any of the areas shown above.
2. Our teams work as an extended team of onsite teams of our customers, thereby adding more strength and bandwidth and increase your teams’ skills and servicing capabilities.
3. Our resources can work on a 24x7x365 basis; our turn-around time for our service is very short. In most cases, the output will be in your inbox when you reach office the next day morning
4. We help our customers in cost savings of as much as 30-60% on case to case basis
5. We can provide our resources in good numbers at a short notice, and quickly ramp-up to meet your business needs.
6. Our clients save the hassles of constantly searching around for resources, every time, a task needs to be accomplished.
7. Our teams bring to the table, a very strong technical & English Communication (verbal & written) skills, highly professional & helping attitude, business ethics, services delivery expertise & commitment

I would be very glad to know, if ABC Company can be of any help and support to your organization or any of your client organizations, in any of the areas shown above please. I appreciate your time.

My Version

HEADLINE:  Are You Running Your Business or is Your Business Burying You?

 ABC Company helped me save my business!  ABC helped me identify why my operations costs were increasing even as our sales were slowing down.  ABC handles the backend of my operation so I can focus on bringing in new sales.

 Jay Richards, JR Enterprises (VIDEO CLIP:  Jay talks about ABC Company)

 Val,

Imagine I gave you a magic wand that let you eliminate every aspect of your business that you don’t enjoy, or that just seems to take your focus away from the things you feel you need to be doing.

 How much better would your business be if you enjoyed everything you did and had the time to focus on growing your business?

 What could you do if all of that extra weight was lifted off your shoulders?

 My name is Val King and I specialize in helping guys like you offload all the excessive weight that keeps your business from soaring.

 It is not magic, though, it’s our business. 

 Here are the Top 5 things our customers typically ask us to offload for them.

 Human Resources.

Payroll.

Insurance & Benefits Programs.

IT Services & Help Desk.

Billing & Collections.

Call me at 800-xxx-xxxx and let’s identify the Top 5 things weighing down your business.

If it makes sense, I will offload your Top 5 list for Free for a few weeks so you can experience our brand of magic and experience the impact you can have on your business once that excess weight is gone.

Val 

 ABC Company manages all of the time consuming aspects of my business that I hated.  Our business is growing again and I spend my days doing what I love.  Thanks ABC.

 Dave Johnson, Johnson Medical (VIDEO CLIP:  Dave talks about ABC Company)

LESSONS LEARNED

The original email reads like a laundry list, these guys are into everything from 3d animation to Life Sciences and Bioinformatics.  They list a lot of capabilities but this sales guy has no idea what my problems are, so he just lists everything they do in this email to make sure they cover every sales base possible.

LESSON:  Research your customer and avoid firing a shotgun email like this one.  Narrow your focus to what you are absolutely best at. 

The intent of this extensive list of services is to show me that they can help me in many different areas of my business with a huge stack of sales offerings and services.  However, I read this feeling that they could not possibly do all of this well.  I have no way of knowing which sales offering is their strongest, nor do I want to take the necessary time it would take to figure it out, so my instinct is to hit the delete key.

LESSON:  Avoid the temptation to send out a laundry list disguised as a marketing email.  It weakens your message and erodes some of your credibility.

The original email establishes no credibility for this company.  I have never heard of them and the only person telling me how great they are is the sales guy.

LESSON:  If the only person saying your company is good is the sales person then no one is saying anything good about your company as far as I am concerned as a customer.  Use legitimate references I can call or for a bigger bang for the buck, use video references I can watch.

There is no tie to what any of these services do for me, the guy that is supposed to pay for this fabulous service.  The sales professional should paint some sort of picture of how my life as the business owner or how my company might be better if I just offload this stuff to them.

LESSON:  It is your job as the salesperson or as the organization sending the email to explain to me how I will benefit from your product.  If you don’t make that connection, don’t expect me to respond.

There is too much text in this flippin’ email (and probably this post.)  The text is small, there are acronyms all over the place (RPO, KPO, LPO, RIM, and LIMS.)

LESSON:  Be as short and concise as possible as you are imposing on my time with your email and use language that is plain and free from industry jargon.

They use the work “all” eight times in the email.  Example:  ”Global HR – ALL Technologies, ALL Business Skills, at ALL levels of experience and knowledge”

LESSON:  Horsefeathers.  I don’t believe it.  I will delete it.  

There are 7 stated benefits for me the customer.  Some are ridiculous adjective fests…

Benefit 1:  Large team that is highly qualified, experienced, talented, effiecient, enthusiastic and as if that was not enough they are also described as being young.  I don’t know about you, but I feel better already. 

Some are not benefits to me at all; they are minimum standards like…

Benefit 7:  Our teams bring very strong technical and English communication skills.  

LESSON:  It is only a benefit if it benefits me.  Write your email as if you are standing in my shoes, not trying to talk me out of them.

This was the closing line.  “I would be very glad to know if ABC Company can be of any help and support to your organization…in any of the areas shown above…  I appreciate your time.”

When I read this closing line what I get out of this email and what the salesman wants me to get out of this email are clearly two different things.  I am sure the salesman would like me to look at the list like some sort of ala carte menu, make a few selections and get back to him so he can work up a quote.

What I read is that the salesman at ABC Company is too lazy to figure out what my business is or what I do all day.  He has effectively hit me with a list of SIC codes and a Scan-Tron asking me to color in the little circle next to my selection with a #2 pencil and get back to him.

LESSON:  Figure out what I need to buy before you try to sell me something.  It seems to work better that way.  If you are going to be lazy and not do the research then don’t send the email at all.

 

Got a suggestion of your own to improve on my improvement?  See another lesson here worth covering?  Add a comment.

“Cleaverly disguided” photo – courtesy of  http://rlv.zcache.com

“English photo” courtesy of - http://www.flickr.com/photos/40741986@N00/399082864

“2 shoes” photo – courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/conqenator/2952567054/ 

 

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:  Help!  I am marketing a new sports bat training device through independent sales reps, sales are improving, but slowly, and I need to speed up the process.  Any suggestions?

  

A:  Congratulations on getting from patent to production.  That is no small accomplishment. 

It sounds like sales are happening, but each sale is happening in a vacuum, and not having much of an impact on overall sales velocity. 

Pick a niche in your target market. Maybe it is college baseball, high school baseball, or pro, maybe it is rehab facilities, or possibly coaches, and put your available resources toward owning that niche (ala Crossing the Chasm) to begin to create some leverage out of each sale, that will make the next sale just a little bit easier. 

That should start to give you the multiplier on existing sales you are looking for. 

The next key is finding the right individuals in your selected niche that can add another multiplier to your existing sales with their credibility and influence. 

Look at that niche market and find the people who have influence over the potential customers in that niche. Instead of focusing your sales on anyone that will buy one, focus on the handful of guys that carry enough influence to multiply the leverage benefit of each individual sale. 

Where do you find these guys? Look at trade organizations, governing organizations, boards of directors and consultants for major baseball sporting goods manufacturers. Or it could be as simple as finding that old guy that everybody knows who has been around the game forever and knows everybody who is or was anybody in the game. Look to one of the statesmen of the game along the lines of the late Buck O’Neil as a fine example. 

I would also look to entrepreneurial ex-baseball players with hall of fame reputations. Look for the guys that are out of the game, have the contacts you need and are building business empires of their own. Nolan Ryan is one that comes to mind. 

I had to make a lot of assumptions here, but I hope that helps. 

As a young boy my mom would occasionally pick me up after school and take me back to her work until she was done for the day.

I looked forward to those days because once we got to her work I got to walk across the street to what was then a Ben Franklin store and pick out a new Hot Wheels car for $1.24 of my hard earned allowance and head back to moms office to burn some toy rubber.

When it came time to get something to drink, though, I had a lot of choices. I could get a can out of the Coke machine in the office, I could walk back across the street to Ben Franklin or I could walk to a nearby gas station.

Even though the same brand of soft drink was much closer and priced about the same, one being only a few steps away, almost without fail I chose the gas station as the place to make my drink purchase.

Why? Because the old man that owned that gas station found a way to add value to a commodity product like a soft drink that made his place of business my first choice.

The Coke was canned so he could not tinker with the formula, the quantity was the same, 12 ounces, and he did not treat me any better or worse than any other adult.

So what did he do different?

One thing. He kept his refrigerators set just right to keep the Coke as cold as possible, forming little ice crystals inside the can. A Coke from his refrigerator was worth the walk.

Are you selling a product that is fast becoming a commodity like a can of Coke? Are you selling your product like the commodity it is, or have you figured out a way to add your own spin?

If I could buy your product from three locations within walking distance, what are you doing different to make me choose you?

Think about it.

What I do not know is how I figured out the refrigerators were so cold at the old mans gas station to begin with. If you have found a way to add value to a commodity product, how are you informing customers about the difference?

Have you found a way to add value to a commodity that is giving you an advantage in the market? Tell me about it.

What is your competitive advantage?

I love that question because it gives me an immediate understanding of a sales reps grasp of their own offerings and provides a small perspective into their understanding of their competitors.

The answer to that question can be key in some cases in determining the reasons for the success or failure of an individual sales rep or an entire sales team.

Let’s take an example from the oft in the news automobile industry. I will qualify all of this by saying I do not and have not ever sold cars. This is an example to illustrate a point.

If I only sold new Ford F150 pickups I would consider it critical to my success to understand everything I could about feature packages, engine choices, trim levels and available options so I could match the needs of my prospective client with the best combination of features that would serve his needs and what I had on the lot.

I would also want to understand what I had in inventory, what my competitors have, and what I could get my hands on in a reasonable amount of time to satisfy a customer request.

Next, for me, would be to talk to my service department and get an understanding of the vehicle from a service perspective. What parts tend to break more often? What should my client keep an eye on to avoid costly repairs? Are there any specific problems with certain engines, transmissions or trim levels?

I would also study the commercials to understand what the Ford marketing department is hanging its hat on when trying to entice the consumer to buy their trucks. Where it makes sense, I would blend their message with mine to leverage the ground work Ford has already done.

I would also need to know why my new F150 and the depreciation it would take as soon as it rolled off the lot was a better value for my customer than last years model, or any other used Ford truck still on the road. If I only sell new Ford trucks then a used Ford F150 is every bit as strong a competitor as a Chevrolet, Toyota, Nissan or GMC.

Where, when and why is my new F150 a better value than my competitors’ vehicles. To understand that, I would need as much knowledge about my competitors new trucks as I know about my own, including their used models as well.

Amassing and internalizing all of this information amounts to what could be a strong value add for my prospective truck customer. Even the ones showing up fully armed with internet research.

The more information I have at my disposal to answer questions and eliminate the need for my client to go look somewhere else, the more likely I am to sell a truck.

There are several other factors that go into being a successful rep that I glossed over. Here I am speaking specifically about leveraging what you know into dough.

I ask again, what is your competitive advantage?

Why should I buy your product over your competitors? What value do YOU bring as the representative? Why should I buy my widget from you instead of number one sales guy Dave over there?

Make it easy for me to buy, help me understand the value you bring, and why I should buy from you vs. your competitor and odds are, assuming I believe you and recognize your value, I will buy from you, all other things being equal.

Chinese general Sun Tzu, living some 2,400 years ago, give or take, put it a little differently…

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
- Sun Tzu

Or perhaps more concisely put…

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
- Sun-Tzu

image provided by theblogentrepreneur.com

Several years ago, on one of my account calls I got an opportunity to tour the Kansas City General Motors plant. Trains brought raw steel in one end of the plant and through a maze of conveyors, yellow robots, and factory workers 95 new cars an hour rolled out the other end.

To me there are a lot of similarities between a manufacturing facility and a sales organization. Just like an assembly line, sales is a process that takes time to ramp up, to develop skills, time to develop relationships, and time to begin to deliver forecasted business.

From a standing start it can be painful to get sales teams in place and productive, but once the momentum turns in your favor a seasoned sales team can be a revenue generating fire hose. Just point, hang on, and let err rip!

For every management team out there with a sales cycle of any length, look at your sales team as a manufacturing facility and each rep as a little sales factory.

Sales factories do not need typically need much in the way of resources to be successful, but with some attention in some key areas, efficiency can be dramatically increased.

1. Sales needs raw materials in the form of leads. You can ask the sales factories to generate their own leads but understand that time unloading the train cars means less time being spent sending products out the door.

2. Tie marketing resources directly to sales efforts. Build email, direct mail, web, client testimonial videos and any other form of make sense marketing that will help the sales factories churn out revenue. The key here is to make sure the marketing message and the message the sales team is sending is at the very least the same and hopefully wildly complimentary of one another.

It would be a mistake to think of every marketing dollar spent as a dollar wasted. Marketing and advertising expenses, in some instances, can be directly offset by a reduction in the real cost of acquiring a new client by the sales department.

3. Analyze the activities of your sales team. Identify the non/low revenue generating activities that can be eliminated, ones that can be retasked to a more cost effective sales resource, or automated altogether.

For example, in one sales organization I noticed we were spending $27 on every email being sent by one particular rep.

Each email was extensively thought out with key phrases chosen beautifully but it was taking him over 30 minutes to craft each unique email.

Taking a step back and looking across the entire team, I found we were massively duplicating our efforts crafting emails. The messages were unique to the rep writing them, off message, and collectively eating 20% of almost every sales day, touching a painfully small portion of the market base.

The solution was to look at our outgoing emails, evaluate what the team was spending 80% of their time trying to communicate and crafting a variety of templates that were on message, could be personalized, and met with the approval of the sales team. Simple stuff, but that move effectively added half a sales rep to the team in terms of time and sales for nothing.

Look at your sales organization like it is an assembly line; make sure that internal processes and or inadvertent obstacles are not impacting your sales team’s acquisition of leads or the sales they are cranking out.

The last and most important thing I can say is do not do this in a vacuum.

Engage your sales team, solicit their feedback. Effective ways to get more sales are in their best interest as well. 

 

When I began my career in sales I did not know a whole lot about anything, but in the process of refining my sales skills I learned a little bit about a lot of things.

 

As part of the rapport building, or the getting to know one another phase in any sales process I always found myself asking about the interests of the person I was talking to based on what was on display around their office.

 I have participated in sales training seminars and events over the years where they equate this practice with greasy slime ball sales guys.

 

I have never received any negative responses from my prospects or client base and I think it was because I was truly interested in what they were up to. 

 Some view this small talk as a necessary evil to be endured until there is an opportunity to whack the prospect over the head with the latest whiz bang features built into their products.

 

I have learned over the years that the more I understand how and what a prospect or client thinks about the better I am at helping them arrive at solutions that work (both politically and technically.) 

I call the process 360 Prospecting as in understanding the 360 degrees that make up a potential customer.

 

As my degree of understanding a given prospect increases, so does my likelihood of closing the prospective deal, and the less likely the prospect will do a 180 and leave me with a big ol’ bag of nothing.

 Try it yourself.  Learn something new about every client or prospect you meet.  Best case you close a few more deals, learn a few funny stories, and will be much more fun at parties.  Worst case the meeting ends and you realize you have done nothing go over the features and benefits of your best Ronco Pocket Fisherman stories.