Sales Laundry

Posts Tagged ‘Prospecting’

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:  What is the best way to keep a (commercial printing) salesperson engaged and motivated during these tough times?

  A:  A small dose of Progress taken daily can wipe out a whole room full of “it’s hopeless.” Retreat as needed.

 

I approach it like the old adage “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” 

I don’t want my team focused on the big picture Armageddon talk with all of the accompanying noise. Quite the opposite, I want them focused, and therefore engaged on what they need to do each day to keep methodically working toward their goal. 

One other thought.  How about creating some of your own print business?

 

I don’t know what objections your sales guys are getting, but I assume one of them is “we don’t have the money right now.”

 If you have several small businesses that don’t have the budget to print flyers or marketing materials, but need the exposure, maybe you can bring a different value add.

 Maybe you can solve a larger problem for your customer that will allow them to take advantage of your services.

 Maybe your sales guys, with a database full of local contacts, can help out the small business community by developing a single marketing piece that features a few companies that are not direct competitors and have a similar target market. 

 The result could be that the small business gets the marketing they need, at a price they can afford, you have a new unique product, your guys get paid, and you can keep the presses running.

 

My first official outside job as an account manager began with an immediate wake up call.  I was walked to my new cubicle and directed to have a seat. 

 “Here is your phone.”

 

My new boss looked at me, smiled, nodded his head and pointed to a standard beige 12 button hotel phone.

 “There are your leads.”

 

He said, pointing to a phone book.

 “Keep track of everything and write your proposals on that.  They should have it working later today.”

 He said, pointing to a PC on my desk.

 With that he was gone and my sales career as an account manager was launched.

 I had exactly no idea who I should call or for that matter what I should say if someone answered the phone, except that I was selling computer networking equipment and services.

 At that point I made the single smartest decision a young account manager can make. 

 I flipped the phone book open to a random page, found the first listing and started dialing.

 At that point, not realizing it, I made my first mistake as a young account manager as well.

 My random page selection had me cold calling bail bond companies to make my technology fortune.

 Several calls and an appointment or two later, I learned my first lesson, that bail bond companies were not part of our target market.

 The point is do not let the fear of failure or the fear of not having 100% of the details stop you from swinging for the fences.

 You ARE going to fail sometimes.  You ARE going to get asked a question you do not have an answer to.  If you are in this business any time at all, trust me on this, it is going to happen.

 Don’t fear failure, accept it.   Accept it not because I said it or because it is an old sales adage, accept it because it is as much a part of the business as the shoes on your feet.

 New guys call their mistakes failure and get all upset. 

 I call my mistakes experience.  I learn from them and leave the new guys asking “How did he know to do that?” the next time the scenario presents itself, as it almost always does, again. 

 

I have literally taught hundreds of people “how to sell” over the years, but I still find myself amazed because selling is one of the first things we put into practice as a baby.

 

Several years my very young daughter reminded me of that fact at a well placed moment in time when I thought I was a master sales trainer, having just helped a young man close a sale that only a few months before he and I both would have said was impossible.  I should clarify that in saying I gave some instruction, but he did the heavy lifting in front of the customer.

 

Arriving home, swelled with the pride of a father who just watched his son achieve his goal and feeling pretty good about myself my wife brought me back to earth by asking me to feed my little girl (and clean up after the food stopped flying.)

 

Knocked from my high horse, I set about putting my daughter in her high chair and inspecting the nights fare.  There was some sort of green glop next to some brown glop next to the only thing I recognized on the plate, which was apple sauce.

 

Ever the dutiful father, I scooped up some of the brown stuff, opened my mouth wide, trying to coax my daughter to do the same and inched the spoon forward.

 

She was smiley and happy to see her daddy.  She was hungry and ready to eat.  In went the spoon and a trained hand maneuver later the spoon was out, clean as a whistle and ready for another dose of the brown stuff.

 

My daughter’s face was telling a different story.  Her little face was scrunched up and then she was holding her mouth half open like she was undecided as to what to do with the glop in her mouth.  All the while she was looking at me like I had betrayed her or at the very least put a beat down on her favorite teddy.

 

Then, as quick as it went in, Pluuuaaahuha, it was out with amazing velocity and residing on me.

 

OK, that went well.

 

“Let’s try the green stuff.  Yeah, that looks yummy.” I said, or something like it I am sure as I crept ever closer with the spoon.

 

My daughter, now not so trusting, but hungry none the less, looked at me much more suspiciously and only half heartedly opened her mouth.

 

I saw my opening and took it.  In went the green stuff, but the spoon was barely out of her mouth when the green stuff, now mixed with baby slobber, came flying back out at a speed close to the sound barrier I am sure.  This time I jumped to safety and let my chair take the split pea carpet bombing intended for me.

 

Cleaning the chair up, I soldiered on, this time with the apple sauce.

 

My daughter looked at me with complete distrust in her eyes.  Nope, not going to open up, no way.  I had to resort to a face she loved to make her giggle, then, like lighting, I was in there with the spoon, back out and under the table waiting for the fruit fallout.

 

Then nothing.  Just baby noises.  Peaking out, she looked at me like “Hey Dad, how about some more of that stuff?” bouncing back and forth in her seat, visibly excited.

 

“Well, one more bite of apple sauce, that won’t hurt anybody.”  So, in went another bite of applesauce and more happy bouncing and happy baby clapping commenced.

 

I was a hero again, so I thought I would test that new goodwill with a quick shot of the brown stuff.

 

As soon as I got close with that spoon, the nose wrinkled and she started breathing in and out of her nose like a hand air pump filling up a bicycle tire.

 

It seems she had already equated brown with bad and it was the same for green I soon discovered, but yellow…

 

Yellow… big bright eyes, a smiley face, nearing hyperventilation. I realized my daughter was exhibiting a sales skill that Madison Avenue has mastered but that your average Joe Salesguy misses entirely.

 

The lesson?

 

Selling something is more often about what the person doing the buying is going to get out of it, not a feature set.  It is about explaining how they are going to feel or be better off if only they have your product.  Most of the time a new sales guy will simply and sheepishly rattle off a bunch of product features and smile awkwardly at the strange silence when he suddenly realizes he has nothing left to say.

 

Madison Avenue, or the commercials they come up with, rarely sell you on features of the product, almost all of the time is spent telling you how you are going to feel or by showing you images they want you to associate with the product/brand.

 

Coke doesn’t sell itself as brown sugar water with high fructose corn syrup, the message is you will be refreshed, you will be so happy you will want to buy a candle and stand on a hill somewhere singing “I would like to teach the world to sing.”

 

What I thought I had done such a good job teaching, my daughter demonstrated a mastery of while still filling up her Pampers with the “other” brown stuff.

 

My daughter’s version was a little more direct.

 

Brown stuff in, yuck, bad daddy, you should feel terrible for subjecting a defenseless baby to that yucky stuff.

 

Yellow stuff in, yea!  Happy baby, happy daddy, smiling, giggling, clapping, bouncing, all is right with the world and another fairy somewhere gets her wings or something like that.  I feel good.

 

What’s more amazing is she communicated that message without using a single word, just her facial expressions.  OK, and some projectile puree, but you could simply call that a very effective three slide PowerPoint presentation.

 

What happened?  How did that skill get lost in the shuffle of puberty? 

 

More importantly, which one are you?  The Baby or the Bonehead?  Are you selling based on a list of features, or are you selling based on the emotions, concerns, fears, wants and needs of your potential customer?

 

Think about it.  Visualize your product in a 1 minute commercial, how would the boys and girls on Madison Avenue spin your product to convey some sort of buying emotion?

 

If you come up with a commercial, leave me some feedback describing it.  I am still a student of sales, as it is a school you never seem to graduate from.

 

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.