Sales & Marketing Performance Center
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The Ten Commandments For Shortening Your Sales Cycle (Over Time)
I spend a good percentage of my time selling. I also teach selling to professional service providers. And one issue that comes up time after time is, "How do I get prospects to buy faster? Why don't people respond to my proposals, my calls, my emails, or me? How do I shorten the sales cycle?" My flip answer, "Have more in the pipeline at all times, so the sales cycle just seems shorter."
Four Tips for Tech-Enabled Prospecting
With so many new options to communicate, why does it seem harder to connect with and secure appointments with prospects? Even when you use modern technology to reach prospects and schedule appointments, be sure you apply some fundamentals that have proven successful in the past. Here are a few reminders of Dos and Don'ts for contacting prospects in order to schedule time...
SALES LEAD GENERATION: DOES YELLING HELP?
In marketing professional and consulting services, when the leads aren't coming in like they're supposed to, the Managing Partner just yells louder, "DO SOME MARKETING." This would be funny if 1) it was someone else doing the yelling (it is usually us), 2) we didn't need the revenue sooner rather than later, and 3) we weren't frustrated because we know that, no matter how loud we yell, no new clients are going to walk in the door as a result.
Don't Complain - Create!
Many sales professionals get caught up with negative headlines and stories- but you don't have to be one of them. Take advantage of the many prospects still searching for solutions. You can start by filling your funnel with qualified sales opportunities.
The Dumbbells Cut Back...The Smart People Don't: The Upside Of Recession
The market drops 370 points in a single day, corporate earnings disappoint and housing prices continue to sink. We are in uncertain economic times. We may be in a recession right now, or could slip into one next week... or next month.
Steer Clear of Last-Minute Price Arguments
You've invested months with your account and are about ready to close. But even after all of your hard work, your customer wants a price reduction before signing.
Forgotten Leads: How to Find a Treasure Trove of Leads Hidden Within Your Firm
The challenge I hear more than any other from professional services marketers, leaders, and business developers alike sounds something like this: "We need more leads! When I get in front of a prospect I am able to hit a homerun with 50% of them. What I need is more at bats."
Get Prospects to Help You Sell
In today's tough selling environment, it can feel like you're fighting the current by yourself. But securing help from key influences within the company you're selling to can help you advance the sale. Those who have influence in their company's buying process will support your solution when they feel it accomplishes something for them personally. Your challenge is to learn what each buyer within the sale would consider a personal win and convince them how your solution helps them achieve this.
Fighting for Resources: Securing the Help You Need to Win
Top-performing salespeople are often made from the same stuff legends are made of. But you don't have to shoot lightning bolts from the sky or slay two-headed monsters to be seen as a hero in the sales arena. One of the main things that differentiate top-performers from the rest is their ability to secure additional resources from within their organization.
Find the Floating Decision Maker
The person who has the final say in the buying process is not the same in every sale — they "float" throughout an organization. To correctly identify this critical player in the buying process, ask yourself how the sale is likely to be perceived in terms of these four variables.
GIT R DONE: Executing Your Lead Generation Plan
Question: On a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being "always" and 5 being "never", how often do you stick to project schedules and keep commitments you make to clients? I'm guessing that most of you would give yourself a 1 (or a 2). Of course you make commitments and keep them. What kind of professional would you be if you didn't? (I don't know about you, but many a service provider has made commitments to me and not kept them. A topic for another time...)
Two Practices For One Great Outcome: Winning Results
Ever wonder how swimming phenomenon Michael Phelps managed to rack up 14 Olympic gold medals thus far in his career? Discipline. Likewise, top-performing salespeople know that the best results come from a disciplined approach designed to keep their sales funnel full at all times.
The Three Rs Of Service Branding: Reach, Recognition, And Reputation
Think about your most recent branding campaign. Were your television ads as successful as you'd like them to be? Perhaps the billboards didn't create the recognition that you were looking for, but your online ads on Yahoo! and AOL worked quite well. Did you pick the right professional athlete to represent your firm's services?
Do You Know What Your Customers Want?
Examine each sale not only from your own perspective, but from your customer's point of view. Figure out how urgent their issue is to them. You really can't prioritize an existing opportunity if you don't know the client's concept — what they're trying to fix, accomplish or avoid.
Get In Step with Your Customer's Buying Process
In the sales arena, as on the dance floor, misperception can really put a salesperson off beat. Like any dance, navigating through a sale depends on how well the two parties understand each other.
Staying Top of Mind (Without Being a Pain In The Neck)
Think about your most recent branding campaign. Were your television ads as successful as you'd like them to be? Perhaps the billboards didn't create the recognition that you were looking for, but your online ads on Yahoo! and AOL worked quite well. Did you pick the right professional athlete to represent your firm's services? If you're reading this far, and you work at most service businesses, you probably think I'm nuts. You don't do any of this.
Power of the Marketing Pyramid
"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." - George Orwell, Animal Farm (1956)
Imagine this scenario: you are at a professional services firm that has just come off a fairly good year of growing revenue and profits. You want to continue this growth going into the coming year and have decided you are finally going to take some of these profits and invest in marketing.
Wildly Worried or Happily Coasting?
Many people are closely in tune with the aches and pains of their body, knowing when a doctor's visit is necessary and when chicken soup and cough medicine will suffice. Speculating what condition your body is in based on the symptoms helps you take the proper course of action to get relief.
From Poor to Perfect: Launching a CRM
Everyone in the office is talking about it. Excitement, nervousness - when is it going to happen? "I heard next week." "No, it's going to be after the holiday." You enjoy the buzz. After all, it's all about your project: you're bringing the firm from that old, crummy, quirky database program to the shiny, brand new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application.
Client Relationships That Produce Results
No doubt you know the features of your product like the back of your hand. But beyond the bells and whistles, the low price, or your fancy suit, the fact remains that customers make the decision to buy based on what they believe your product will do for them.
Cold Calling Works: You Just Do It Wrong
Just those two words together — cold calling — put many people far away from warm and happy. Given that it's so much fun for so many people, and that I have heard a number of times recently that the last nail has been banged into the cold calling coffin, why is cold calling still even on our radar screens?
Because it works.
Got Marketing? Align for enhanced Results
A sales cycle can be a lot like putting together a puzzle, except you don't know what the final picture will look like. Sales and marketing departments provide individual value, but aligning your sales perspective with their marketing view can generate a better visual.
23 Questions You Should Ask When Building Your Marketing Strategy
Ask 10 professional service firms to see their marketing strategies and you will get an interesting mix of answers. You might get a fifty page document that would get an "A" in any business school class.
Sharpen Your Customer Focus Efforts
Are you truly customer-focused in your selling activities? Answer True or False to the following questions to evaluate whether or not you are taking advantage of all of your opportunities to be customer-focused.
Boost Your Close Rates with a Joint Venture Approach
As a sales professional, you have likely walked away from a lost sale wondering what went wrong. Your inability to understand why they didn't choose your solution may have led you to blame the price or assume that your competition had an unfair advantage.
80 Percent Syndrome: The Harmful Habit That's Hindering Your Sales
Working in a complex selling environment means that competition is high and your sale relies on the approval of multiple decision makers. In this environment, it is likely that customers already have a description of your product from your website or your competitors and may even have people on their team rooting for the other side.
Establishing Key Business Relationships through Online Social Networking
Social networking is a familiar business practice for most sales professionals, and with the exception of being technology based, online social networking isn't much different. The critical difference between online and off, however, is how much easier it is to connect with total strangers.
Building Credibility with New Clients
How do you transfer credibility from your previous job to your new one? And, what are the steps to establish yourself from the ground up? If you inherit clients when you change jobs, it's important to start building your credibility and effectively pick up where someone else left off.
Boost Win-rates Through Better Deal Management
The deal in your pipeline was huge and considerable time and resources were devoted to bring it to close — yet it fizzled out and fell through in the end. To make matters worse, this seems to be a trend, and everyone from the sales rep to the executive suite wants to know why.
Avoid Year-end Panic with Deal Reviews
The fiscal year-end can be one of the most trying times of the year for sales professionals as they evaluate their ability to hit their numbers in the remaining months. If you're scrambling to make those forecasted numbers, take a deep breath — meeting those goals does not have to put you in a panic.
Generating Repeat Business
The biggest sale you make with a customer won't be the first one. In fact, it's usually after the third or fourth sale that takes place until you have earned the customer's trust. That's why it's essential to follow up with customers after each sale to ensure that they're satisfied with the transaction.
Finding New Sales Prospects
Prospecting is crucial to small business survival. In order to grow, your small business will need to expand its customer base. But even loyal customers eventually use other suppliers, so you'll have to acquire new business in order to maintain the status quo. That means expanding your sales prospects.
Get the Most From Your Direct Mail Campaign
It's not difficult to use the US Postal Service as a sales vehicle. All you need is a printer, some postage, and a little elbow grease. But extracting maximum value from your mail campaign can be a little more difficult.
Secrets of Successful Market-Research Studies
Whether your goal is to expand into new markets, introduce a new product or service, or gauge customer reactions, even the smallest businesses can benefit from a simple but well-planned market-research study.
