When baseball players are in a slump, they go back to basics. They shorten their stroke; they focus on making contact instead of over swinging; and they take extra batting practice. Salespeople should do the same. Go back to the basics. Work on near term deals instead of “home runs”. Make contact by prospecting consistently and patiently, don’t rush through the calls. And make extra calls. The calls that don’t work are like batting practice.
Don’t Get Trapped
October 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The prospecting goal for the optimal salesperson is to develop a business relationship with the key decision maker in the organization. Such an individual is often a senior manager or officer. For many sales people, calling on such a person can be intimidating. Therefore, they take the easier approach – make connections with people in the lower ranks of the company. A salesperson can feel they are doing a good job making such new connections. They can report back to their sales manager that they have a “lead” with John Doe at XYZ Corporation. However, John Doe has little clout in the organization. He himself has a tough time getting an audience with officers.
What has the sales person really gained? Nothing. If anything, he has empowered John Doe to demonstrate authority he wouldn’t normally enjoy. John might make it all the more difficult for you to make higher connections in the organization. Even if he doesn’t take such a step, the salesperson now has an awkward situation – how do you go beyond John to reach the higher ranks of the organization without offending John, making him feel inferior? There is a simple solution. Call on the top people in the organization. If they are too busy, they will defer you to a lower level individual, giving the salesperson a valued endorsement and authority. Optimal Salespeople, go for the top and then work your way down in the organization.
Rejection is a Good thing
October 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
No one likes it but rejection can be viewed as a positive occurrence. To have someone tell you NO is far better than to have them string you along, wasting your time, with no intention to buy. Even if you closing rate is as high as 50%, you need as many rejections as you do sales. If you are making cold calls, you might need 20 or 30 rejections to get an appointment. To view 20 rejections on the way to a sale as a negative would be like a gold prospector thinking that the 3 months of digging before he finds a vein of gold as a waste of time. And as for fear of rejection … it doesn’t make sense. Watch this one-minute video to find out why.
Ditch the Pitch
October 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment
What are your standards?
October 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Optimal Salespeople respect their time and resources. There are always more sales activities to get done and prospective customers to be approached than there are hours in the day. Time management is essential to an Optimal Salesperson. Your time is, therefore, very valuable, not only to you but also to the prospective customers who will do business with you. Qualified prospects respect your time and earn your attention by sharing valuable information with you, such as their pain and compelling reason, their urgency, and their budget. If a prospect simply wants to listen to your sales pitch, they are a time waster for you. Enforce prospecting standards. It’s important – for your success and for the success of the prospects who really want to do business with you. What are your standards?
The Biggest Obstacle To Achieving Goals
October 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Most people don’t achieve goals because they trade what they want most for what they want now. Ursula wanted a lifestyle that included a boat and a shore house with a dock. Therefore, she traded time off for hours in sales training. In addition, she traded in some old beliefs for some new empowering ones. She expended lots of time and emotional energy to affect that trade. Now, she spends weekends on her boat. Mike had a similar dream, but he would not trade his comfortable method of selling for a more effective one. He held on to his need to have people like him. He would not get out of his comfort zone to ask a tough question. Mike traded what he wanted most, a house in the mountains, for what he wanted now, comfort on sales calls. It was not a conscious decision.
Personal growth is Simple … And Complex
October 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment
On one hand, personal growth is a complicated process. On the other, it is simple. Before growth occurs, it looks complicated and almost impossible. After growth has happened, it looks simple and you wonder what took you so long. The reason is that before growth occurs you are staring at many variables and many ways you could possibly go. When growth has occurred you look back and only see the one path that took you to success and ignore the others paths you tried which led nowhere. So how do you pick out the one path that will get you there? The best way is to find someone who has travelled the road before you and get him or her to point out the way. The hard part is picking the right mentor and then the really hard part is to follow their instructions and not try to find an easier path. It may look easier… but it rarely is. If you have the right mentor, they have been there, they know. Listen and follow in their footsteps. It is rarely a straight line.
Why Your Brain Needs More Downtime
October 21, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Every now and then during the workweek—usually around three in the afternoon—a familiar ache begins to saturate my forehead and pool in my temples. The glare of my computer screen appears to suddenly intensify. My eyes trace the contour of the same sentence two or three times, yet I fail to extract its meaning. Even if I began the day undaunted, getting through my ever growing list of stories to write and edit, e-mails to send and respond to, and documents to read now seems as futile as scaling a mountain that continuously thrusts new stone skyward. There is so much more to do—so much work I genuinely enjoy—but my brain is telling me to stop. It’s full. It needs some downtime.
Click here to read the rest of this Ferris Jabr article.
Avoiding the Pipeline Bloat
October 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Your forecasts are unreliable. Deals look good and then stall. You seem to be wasting a lot of time with prospects who don’t ever make a decision. You have lots of prospects but still struggle to hit your numbers every month. If this describes you, then you may be suffering from a common sales malady known as pipeline bloat. This is a chronic condition among salespeople who do not qualify prospects properly or fully. Here’s a typical scenario. The prospect responds to some marketing material and the salesperson calls to follow up. The prospect says that they have an interest in the product and asks for some information. The salesperson gives some information and skillfully gets an appointment to visit the prospect. The salesperson researches the company online and discovers that they fit their ideal demographic perfectly. The salesperson meets the prospect and discovers what they are looking for and shows them the product. The prospect is excited by the product and indicates he is very interested indicates he has authority to buy just has to ”check with the boss” and requests a proposal. The salesperson emails the proposal and notes in his calendar to follow up in a few days and updates his pipeline indicating a nice sale this month. Two months and 15 phone calls later it still hasn’t closed. The prospect is not quite as excited but still interested. Two months after that the project dies.
This could all have been avoided if the salesperson had done a better job of qualifying up front. Resist the urge to write a proposal until you have uncovered a compelling reason to buy. You need to know more than just what they want. You must know why it is important to them. What problem does it solve? What happens if the problem doesn’t get solved? What have they tried in the past? Why did that not work? When do they need it and why is that date important? Whose life will be affected and how will it be affected if they don’t fix the problem? There are many more questions but you get the idea. Don’t fall for the prospect’s excitement. Of course qualification is not complete until we know how much they want to spend and what the decision process is and when the decisions will be made. Spend more time in the qualification process and you will end up writing fewer proposals because most won’t qualify for one. But you will write more business. You will waste less time with unqualified prospects. You will do less chasing. Your forecasts will be more accurate and you will get rid of pipeline bloat forever.
Get more sales tips by signing up for the free OPTMAL SELLING™ weekly video sales tip. Click here for more information.
Dan Caramanico is a salesforce development expert and he is the author of The Optimal Salesperson® One of Selling power’s top ten books for 2010 and Optimal Selling, Sales Conversations of the Optimal Salesperson.
Stop Making Excuses
October 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Optimal Salespeople do not make excuses. They do not consider themselves a victim of circumstances, a consideration which leads to inaction. They do not blame the economy, the sales support team, the competition, or any other factor. They discover what is good about whatever the situation is and they generate sales. They look for whatever opportunities present themselves and they take advantage of them and close sales. Stop making excuses and increase your business. Take responsibility, make a plan, and take action.
