Archives for May 2019

Pain is not enough to get a sale. The prospect must also have some urgency to fix the pain. If you don’t know when the prospect needs the problem fixed, you have not really gotten the prospect to share a compelling reason to buy. You have just identified a problem. As any homeowner knows, there are many things that are annoying around a house and “need” to be fixed. But the average homeowner does not fix everything as soon as it becomes known that it is not exactly as it should be. You can tolerate a leaky faucet even though it is annoying, and it is costing you money. There is no urgency to fix that especially if you are not skilled with certain tools. However, if a pipe bursts and water is spewing everywhere, there is urgency to do something about it immediately. So, when you are on a sales call do not be satisfied with uncovering the problem or pain. Make sure you determine whether the prospect has enough urgency to solve the problem before you count it as qualified.

If you have a sales question you would like to discuss follow the link to schedule a call:
https://calendly.com/dancaramanico/callwithdan

Salespeople give up too soon when trying to connect with a prospect by phone. The latest research says that it takes 16 attempts to reach a prospect. Unfortunately, salespeople on average quit trying after 4 attempts. The problem is that 20 years ago when you could reach someone with 3 or 4 attempts on average the prospect was stationary. If they were working, they had to be in their office and had a phone on their desk and a gatekeeper trying to keep you from getting to them. A skilled salesperson could defeat the gatekeeper and get to the target prospect quite easily. However, the modern executive is mobile. They can work from anywhere and their phone tells them who is calling and with the push of a button they can ignore the call. Its hard to defeat that. We have many other ways to track them down in today’s world. We can message them on 3 or 4 different ways and we can connect via Linkedin etc. But telephone prospecting is not dead. It is still the way that you have the most control over. So the lesson is don’t give up. Keep trying. Take different angles of attack and eventually you will connect.

If you have a sales question you would like to discuss follow the link to schedule a call:
https://calendly.com/dancaramanico/callwithdan

Sales goals are good to have but they are not enough. The problem is that sales are not something you can commit to since you do not have control over closing a sale. However, what you do have control over is your activity. You can control picking up the phone or asking for a referral or going to a networking meeting. So, you must convert your sales goal into an activity goal. This is relatively easy if you have been tracking your activity since you have all the metrics. My unscientific eyeball average estimate is that fewer than 10% of sales people track their sales activity on day to day basis. If you are one of the 90% who don’t, you can still translate your sales goal into an activity goal by guessing at the conversion ratios. Then you start tracking your activity and you will soon know your ratios and you can adjust accordingly. The key idea here is to convert your sales goal into an activity goal and then hold yourself accountable to doing the activity. Do that and the sales will follow.

Old clients can be hidden nuggets of gold in your database. Or they can become like ghosts … hidden and unseen. Be a ghost-buster. Call those old clients just to catch up. You don’t have to ask if they need to buy anything. Just catch-up on what is going on at the company. There will be personnel changes, changes processes, new products, etc. gathering information may yield some new pain that has arisen that you might be able to help with. This sales tip is not any more complicated than that. Call them. Talk to them. Stuff will happen. It is better than making cold calls and it is a great way to bust out of a slump and get the ball rolling again.

Analyzing risk is an important element of assessing the prospects compelling reason to buy. It is often a negative factor meaning that the more risk there is from the client’s perspective the lower the possibility that they will buy from you. Risk is often a personal pain. Prospects may think “I can’t afford to make a mistake.” Or they may think that it “is wise to take the safe choice”. Many times, they will not know how to articulate the risk and they may not even be aware of their own fear. But the risk is there none the less. The job of the salesperson is to ask about it and force the discussion even if the prospect does not want to discuss it. So, the lesson is to analyze the risk yourself and get the prospect to discuss it even if the prospect tries to avoid it. And it goes without saying that sometimes the risk factor works in your favor, especially if you are the name brand or the incumbent. If that is the case you should be able to command a higher price … but that is the topic for another video.