Management Tips

How do you describe your ideal prospect?

September 25, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

Identifying your prospect is critical if you are to grow your book of business rapidly and efficiently. When I ask salespeople to describe their ideal prospect, I often get vague answer s or answers which are not very useful. They say things like “I sell widgets to small and medium sized companies in the Midwest.” Or they say “I work with people with a net worth of $10 million and up to get them a better return”. How can I refer to either of these people? I don’t know what kind of company uses widgets or who in the company buys them or who my friend wants to be introduced to. And how am I supposed to know what someone’s net worth is?

Every salesperson should identify their typical ideal prospect in writing. The ideal prospect is a company who values your opinion, uses a full range of your products and pays you a fair price. Your description should include:

Problems that you solve for this type of company.

What the general demographic characteristics are.

Who you need to make contact with.

It is important to describe in some detail what problems you solve for this type of company because problems are what will cause the prospect to buy from you. It also allows them to relate better to what you do. This will be important in many different situations. If someone asks you what you do you should say “We work with Presidents of small to medium sized companies who are struggling with how to reduce their energy bills.” The person asking the question can relate to that. They might even say, “Hey my uncle runs a company and they are always complaining about the energy bills.” However, if you were to say “We perform energy audits. Our expertise is in Thermodynamics and heat transfer calculations.” No one would have any idea what you actually do. And, more importantly, would have no idea who to refer to you. They would probably say something like “that sounds interesting.”

If you start thinking in terms of what problems you solve rather than what you actually do, you will find that your conversations with prospect go easier, your referral sources will have a better idea of who to refer you to, and it will be easier to find the prospects that you need to fill up your pipeline.

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. Get his weekly 1-minute video sales tips and some free sales training www.optimalsalesperson.net

Filed Under: Management Tips, Prospecting

Get Rejected – It’s Good For Sales

September 23, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

Fear of rejection is one of the most common weaknesses among salespeople and it is a major reason people give for avoiding the selling profession altogether. It is closely related to what psychologists call the abandonment fear. Abandonment fear is a primal response all humans have to some degree. In ancient and pre-historic times if you were abandoned or rejected by your community you most likely starved to death or lost the protection from predators that the community afforded. But that fear is misplaced in the modern day salesperson. Nobody starves to death or is eaten by a saber-toothed tiger because a prospect decided not to buy from them.

Salespeople who fear rejection make fewer sales calls because they spend a lot of time working up the courage to make the call. Then, if they are not successful, they spend time recovering from the experience. They take a break. They analyze what just happened. They rationalize the situation. They blame themselves. They blame the company or outside factors like the economy the government or the Federal Reserve Bank. Eventually they make another call, usually with lowered expectations and the ensuing unhappy result. They repeat this over and over expending vast amount of emotional energy in the process.

Salespeople without fear of rejection make one call after the other with little or no downtime between calls. They realize that the prospect’s decision not to buy from them or to talk to them or to meet with them is not personal. The prospect may be busy or not have a need. What seems like rejection may be due to any one of several other factors. But it is not an attack on the salesperson. They are not going to starve because this one person could not see the benefit of doing business with or talking to them. They know that there are other prospects right around the corner to talk to. They also know that outside factors have little to do with their overall success. Sure the economy, the government and even their own company create situations they have to deal with. But they adjust their approach and go on selling and succeeding anyway. They also realize that sometimes they make a mistake in their approach or they miss cues that the prospect gives them and they lose an opportunity to business due to their own failure in that instance. But they realize the mistake and move on trying not to make that mistake again. They know that no one is perfect – not even them.

So the lesson for today is to increase the amount of rejection you experience. If you do, your sales will increase dramatically and the rejection isn’t about you anway. Watch this video to understand more about how that works.

To get more sales tips click here to sign up for the free OPTMAL SELLING™ weekly video sales tip.

Dan Caramanico is a salesforce development expert and he is the author of Attributes of The Optimal Salesperson® One of Selling power’s top ten books for 2010 and Optimal Selling, Sales Conversations of the Optimal Salesperson.

Filed Under: Management Tips, Need for Approval

Do The Work

September 16, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

The title of this article sounds like direction your parents or your teachers or your boss might have given you. It goes right along with the advice to work hard and keep your nose to the grindstone. Of course, when you matured a little they revised the advice to work “smart” not hard and use your head. All of that is good advice, but it is not the kind of work that I am talking about. The most successful salespeople work optimally. The Optimal Salesperson® is motivated to put energy into the right area. They develop the key attributes in themselves, which will allow them to excel in their field and meet their personal goals. Those key attributes allow them to achieve a state of effortless high performance. To illustrate, let me describe two different people, the Optimal Salesperson® earning at the top of the profession and the typical average salesperson who is not starving but not struggling and not meeting his goals.

Hard Working Harry – Harry is a very hard worker but he is missing some of the key attributes of the Optimal Salesperson. He gets up every day and makes thirty cold calls. He talks to anyone who will listen and books 8 appointments per week with prospects too low in the hierarchy to make a decision to spend money. When he visits his prospect, he is the picture of the professional salesperson. He asks a few need based questions and gives his presentation in a professional manner. He generates 5 opportunities requiring proposals and 3 people want him to follow-up in a month or so. Harry agrees to all of that even though the prospects won’t tell him what they want to spend exactly, or if a decision will ever be made. He closes 15% of his proposals and his profit margin is thin. He doesn’t get many referrals because he is afraid to ask. Harry is working 60 hours per week and he gets by … barely. His head is always on the chopping block, but management keeps him around because of his work ethic and they think that eventually the hard work will pay off.

Optimal Olivia – Olivia is the Optimal Salesperson®.She earns four times what Harry earns. She makes no cold calls, she doesn’t call on people who have no authority to spend money and is a trusted advisor to the C-suite of her target market. She is constantly introduced from one decision maker to the next. She only writes four proposals per month, but closes virtually every one. She doesn’t really make presentations but rather has a conversation about the challenges facing the senior executives she meets with. Then she explains (sometimes with the aid of a PowerPoint and sometimes not) Her profit margins are high and she always knows what clients want to spend and the time frame for the prospect’s decision. She sees all of her kid’s soccer games and management leaves her alone and wishes they had four more like her.

The Difference – If you ask Harry, he would tell you that Olivia gets the best accounts, has the best territory, is just lucky or was endowed with some magical list of contacts. The truth is that Olivia started from the same place as Harry. She was afraid to ask for a referral. She lived by the PowerPoint presentation and she had a low closing rate, low profit margins and called on the wrong people. However, somewhere along the line Olivia came to understand that the problems she was facing were all of her own making.

She Worked Hard In a Different Way – Olivia became The Optimal Salesperson® through hard work.Rather than just put her head down and make more calls in the same ineffective manner, she figured out how her beliefs were getting in her way. She did the emotional work to face her fear of calling at the top. Once she became comfortable with that, she worked on discussing money with prospects. Once she overcame that discomfort, she worked on her fear of asking for a referral. Harry on the other hand never wanted to face the inner fears that were getting in his way. He put his head down and worked harder at what he was doing. Olivia learned that if you put your effort into understanding how your belief systems are defeating you and then work hard to change them, selling becomes easy. Harry never wanted to do the hard work of facing his inner fears so he is doomed to a lifetime of working hard at sales.

Dan Caramanico is a sales development expert and is president of Caramanico Maguire Associates, Inc. If you want to learn more about self-limiting beliefs and the key attributes of the Optimal Salesperson® go to www.optimalsalesperson.net

Filed Under: Management Tips, Sales Activity

4 Things Top Salespeople Do Every Week

September 9, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

The Optimal Salesperson® has a blast on a day to day basis. Sure there is some drudgery involved. I mean who really likes writing proposals or filling out forms to prepare quotes? Then there are a few management reports and the odd internal meeting or two. But you should be having fun every day. You meet new and interesting people regularly, you help people solve problems, you are not trapped behind a desk, you are your own boss most of the time, you have control of your own destiny, you make a lot of money and you can usually find a way to see your kid’s soccer games. If you are not having fun, then you are doing something wrong. But amid the crush of daily activity, many salespeople forget some very important things that need to be done regularly to get to the top and stay there. Most salespeople will follow up on leads they receive and prospects in their pipeline, and all salespeople will respond to urgent requests from clients and management. But here are four things top producers make sure they do on at least a weekly basis which mediocre salespeople ignore.

Connect With Goals and Purpose – It’s easy to forget why you are doing what you do. As much fun as sales can be, it still requires tremendous amounts of emotional energy on a daily basis to overcome internal obstacles and fight through personal barriers to get the job done. The work just doesn’t come to you, you have to go and get it. It’s easy to become distracted and demoralized. You should review your goals at least weekly to remind yourself why you are working and what your priorities are. It will keep you motivated, on track and happy.
Improve Skills – The Optimal Salesperson® constantly strives to get better. They know what skills need improvement and they work on them. They take classes, they study and they practice. They also know what internal obstacles are holding them back and they put out the energy to try to overcome those obstacles.
Prospect – The Optimal Salesperson® prospects consistently and relentlessly. The secret to sales success is consistent weekly prospecting; not wild periods of activity interspersed with long periods of doing nothing. You should know how much prospecting you need to do on a weekly basis and never let a week go by without doing it.
Track Sales Activity – Top salespeople keep track of how much sales activity they do on a daily basis and they report it … even if they only report it to themselves. Accountants, Engineers, bakers and even day laborers know how much work they have to do in a given time period. They know how much they have done and they know how much they have left to do. Should you do any less? If you are not tracking it you are probably not doing it!

If you add these four important activities to your weekly routine you will find yourself more motivated and less distracted. You will have more money and be happier. And as an added bonus … you will probably see more of your kid’s soccer games.

Filed Under: Management Tips, Sales Process

Salesperson Time Waster #1 – Following up

May 31, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

Ninety five percent of time salespeople spend following up is a colossal waste of time. I know, I know!! Many of you reading this article are saying “is he crazy”? “Persistence in following up is one of my greatest assets. I never give up and a few of my clients bought from me just because of that persistence.” In fact the sales literature is filled with stirring examples of the indefatigable salesperson dogging a prospect until they finally give in and buy something. These make great inspirational stories, but I wouldn’t want to build a career on that strategy. It wastes too much of your valuable time and will wear you out before you can make any real money. The top salespeople don’t need to follow up because they close the business now and no follow up is needed. Or they determine that there is no real need to follow up because there is no business to be had from that prospect. Again no follow up is needed. Here are some reasons salespeople waste time following up:

Happy ears – The sales person hears what they want to hear. The prospect gives them some faint praise about their presentation and the salesperson interprets through his happy ear filter that they love the product and will buy it. He becomes so excited that he agrees to get back to the prospect with more information. He fails to understand that the prospect is just being nice and there is no compelling reason to buy. The prospect is giving them an indirect message that they are not interested enough to buy but the salesperson can’t take a hint.
Not qualifying hard enough – The salesperson mistakes passing interest for a compelling reason to buy or they fail to establish that the prospect has enough money to afford the product or service. The prospect puts them off for a month or two as a way to avoid saying no and the salesperson starts a long follow up sequence that will eventually lead nowhere.

There plenty of examples that are similar to the two given here but they are all fairly similar and spring from the salesperson not being able to distinguish a real prospect from one who is just interested or too weak to tell you the truth.

So what is the remedy? It is simple really. Make the prospect prove to you that they have a compelling reason to move forward and have the ability and desire to consummate a deal if you get that far. Make sure that if they are not buying today, that you end the first meeting with a specific action that will take place at a specific point in time in the future. However, the most important asset you can have to avoid wasting time is a firm belief that your time is valuable and that you shouldn’t waste it on unqualified prospects. That belief and an effective selling process will let you end pursuits as soon as they lose the compelling reason to buy or more importantly not begin long follow up sequences with prospects who are too nice to tell you no.

Related Video

Filed Under: Management Tips, Sales Activity

Are You Attacking Your Prospects?

May 29, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

Have you ever been in a conversation with a prospect when all of a sudden (or so it seems) they get defensive? Have you ever been cruising right along with a prospect then suddenly they clam up and become guarded about what they tell you? The chances are that whatever you were saying or doing looks like an attack to the prospect. There are several ways this might happen. I will discuss the top three. If you avoid these three pitfalls your prospect will not be as likely to fight you and will be more open to what you have to say.

Don’t be condescending. This can happen when you have a lot of experience or when you have much more knowledge than the prospect. Inadvertently you can begin to talk down to the prospect, or preach to the prospect or take a didactic stance with the prospect. When the prospect senses this, he or she feels like you are putting them down. This is true even if you are not trying to do so. Many times it is your tonality that communicates to the prospect what they are feeling. To protect against this, you can take a deferential stance which will give the prospect the idea that you hold them in a position as high as or higher than your own, and will almost automatically get your tonality right. Of course your belief has to be consistent with that stance or you will sound phony which is a whole other problem.
Don’t be arrogant. Arrogance will always cause a hostile environment. The prospect will either fight you or clam up. Most people don’t set out to be arrogant on a sales call. But when they are insecure or feel like they need to prove themselves, they come across that way. Be humble and you will not attract undue resistance. Have the humility to realize that though you are an expert in your field you are a rank amateur in what the prospect’s problems are and how she feels about them. You can’t hide arrogance it comes through your tonality and body language loud and clear.
Don’t use jargon and Buzz words. Of course every field has its own particular language. But you should be careful not to assume that the prospect understands it all. It may make you feel like the expert when you use big words, technical language or insider terminology but it will make the prospect feels stupid if they do not understand. They won’t tell you they don’t understand they will either stop interacting or go on the offensive. The worst part is they may not remember what you said but they will remember that they did not feel good when you were talking and mark you as someone to avoid. This may all be just a vague feeling on their part , but it will color every other interaction you have with them.

Be careful how you speak with a prospect you may be telling them more than you think.

When Should You Quote?

May 27, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

I believe that the prospect has to earn the right to get a proposal from the salesperson. The Optimal Salesperson® will only write a proposal to a prospect who has completely met all of the elements to be considered a qualified prospect. Most salespeople spend entirely too much time writing proposals. They do a cursory job of qualifying the prospect and then they either volunteer to write a proposal or are asked to write one which they eagerly agree to do.

There are several possible factors which can cause this to happen.

The salesperson does not have or does not use an effective sales process
The salesperson knows how to qualify a prospect but is unskilled at executing the process
The salesperson has a belief that they must quote when asked
The salesperson has a fear of rejection so they won’t ask the tough questions
The salesperson believes that they can’t win if they don’t quote so they quote everything that moves.
The salesperson thinks that writing proposals with low probability is a good way to avoid prospecting which they hate worse than writing proposals.

In this article I would like to address items 1 and 2 in the list above. Only about 15% of the salespeople we test admit to using any sales process at all. One large company I worked with had a documented sales process that management swore was being used extensively. I could not find any evidence that the salespeople actually used it when I debriefed the sales team on various sales opportunities. Most salespeople just “wing it” and default to presenting features and benefits and then hoping for the best. An effective sales process will be centered on the prospect and include a detailed criteria for what constitutes qualified prospect. So when do I believe you should quote? You should only quote or propose when all three of the following criteria are met:

The prospect has a compelling reason to proceed and we understand what it is from an in depth discussion with the prospect. We must understand the personal pain of each of the decision makers. Reading about it in the RFP does not count.
We have had a detailed discussion about money with the prospect and enough has been found to execute the project.
The prospect has agreed to make a decision upon delivery (or shortly thereafter) of the quote or proposal.

If you don’t have at least this much information you don’t have a qualified prospect and you should not quote the project.

Related Video

Filed Under: Management Tips, Money

What Are Your Hidden Weaknesses?

May 25, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

We all have hidden weaknesses. These are obstacles that we are probably not aware of but that affect us in a big way when we are in front of a prospect. They are not obvious to those around us and they don’t show up on an interview. So what are they? They take many forms but the most common is a belief we may have about the way things are in the world or the way things work in our industry or in sales in general. For example if you believe that you have to call on purchasing agents first before you can contact the end user of your product then that belief will affect your ability to sell and learning sales techniques to help you deal with the end user will be of no help. Maybe you believe that it is ok for the prospect to think about your proposal for a few days even after they committed to making a decision when you delivered it. If that is true, then you will have a low closing rate and closing techniques will be useless until you overcome that self-limiting belief.

Sometimes hidden weaknesses are more psychological. For example if you have a strong need for approval from people then you will shy away from using techniques that you believe might jeopardize your relationship. You will avoid asking any question or making any statement which you perceive to be aggressive because the prospect may not approve and you need the approval.

So how do we know what our weaknesses are if they are “hidden”. Well you can contact me and we can test you for them. But another way is to pay attention to what you do or say and what avoid doing or saying. Ask yourself why you are doing it or saying it. then ask why that is important and then try to compare what you are doing to what the more successful people are doing. Ask yourself what would happen if I tried something different. Listen to your self-talk. What you are saying to yourself will go a long way to identifying your hidden weaknesses. The good news is that if you are able to identify and overcome just one there will be a quantum leap in your sales effectiveness. This video will help explain.

To get more sales tips click here to sign up for the free OPTMAL SELLING™ weekly video sales tip.

Filed Under: Management Tips, Self Limiting Beliefs

Optimal Selling – A Compelling Business Resource

May 23, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

The “Make-The-Sale” series, by Dan Caramanico and Marie Maguire, is an outstanding way for salespeople to learn what the difference is between ‘good’ sales techniques and ‘bad’ in this new business world. With this guide, readers will be able to study the ins and outs of the conversations had by an Optimal Salesperson when they ‘hunt’ for their customer’s reasons for buying a product and/or service.

As we know, we’re in an economic upheaval that has just begun to show signs of balancing out. What may come in the future is anyone’s guess. Our society is very much a technologically based realm where consumers head to a keyboard instead of an office when it comes to purchasing products. But, salespeople are necessary! And being a great one – an optimal one – is the key to success.

Opening with “Quincy,” a man who is a literal quoting machine, businesspeople see that even though he can quote like a fiend, research a prospect to the extreme, and find referrals in an instant, he still suffers extremely low production. Hence, he is the man for the preliminaries, but when it comes to selling the product and closing the deal, he is at a loss.

This book literally walks the steps and offers the key techniques on how to understand when a buyer actually NEEDS to buy! Unlike other business books, this goes beyond the norm because the writers have not simply generalized the situation. Such as, they do not simply say all salespeople are the same and by simply doing “this,” you’ll have your dream job, fancy house, etc.. What they do offer are crystal-clear examples that can be used by various backgrounds and attitudes of current and future salespeople. Everything from being able to read a prospect’s body language to being able to take note of the little things that appear in conversations in order to discover what a prospect’s long term problem may be – this book has it all.

Like a sleuth finding the clues to the mystery of what their clients need, this book instructs a salesperson on how to anticipate the need and then ask direct questions – the hard questions – so that the buyer knows they completely understand the issues and want to help…not just make the sale.

This title in the “Make-The-Sales” series will have the business world opening their eyes to the ‘right’ way when it comes to producing successful sales.

http://www.amazon.com/Optimal-Selling-Make—Sales-ebook/dp/B0083AAZYA/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350069929&sr=1-7&keywords=optimal+selling

Filed Under: Management Tips, Sales Technique

Keeping Your Sales Priorities Straight

May 21, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

Keeping your sales priorities straight is both simple and difficult. It should be obvious what we spend our time on but it must be difficult because so many salespeople spend time on the wrong things. Recently a client hired a salesperson that had great promise. He had all of the skills to be successful. He had and empowering belief system and he knew the industry. Yet, he was terminated within a year. What happened? He didn’t fail for lack of hard work. He didn’t fail because he couldn’t fit in with the corporate culture. He didn’t fail because he didn’t know how to sell or hadn’t been successful in the past. He didn’t fail because of the economy. They are in a growth sector. He didn’t fail because the company was impatient. He failed because on a daily basis he had his priorities mixed up.

He is (or should I say was) in a business with a three month sales cycle and an average sale that should be around $$40,000 to $50,000. He had personal goals that he could attain if he sold one of those per month. If he had done that, the company would have been ecstatic and he would still have a job. His first few weeks in the field he wanted to make a good impression and get a few quick hits. So he chased the first few projects that crossed his path. The problem is they happened to be $10,000 deals without too much urgency to close. Chasing these unqualified prospects cost John valuable time. Of the four he pursued only one closed and that took four months. So at the four month mark he had one small sale and an anemic pipeline. Now his focus changed. Instead of a quick hit he needed to show a growing pipeline so he focused on the wrong thing again. This time he went after the right sized projects but he didn’t care whether they were qualified or not he just wanted them in his pipeline to show management he was making progress. So six months in, he has a pipeline bloated with prospects that will never close and he is starting to attract some adult supervision from his manager. More meetings meant more time away from prospecting. At this point he was doomed and it was only a matter of time.

John had his priorities mixed up on a daily basis. His manager and the company were not expecting a sale for the first 4 months. One month for training and tree months to build the pipeline and close his first deal. John was interested in being a hero in the first few months and forgot about a few things. He forgot about his income goals and focused on the psychic goal of being the star. He forgot about the target prospect and allowed himself to be distracted by the promise of a quick hit. Then when he got behind, he forgot everything he knew and went into panic mode which is never good. What he should have done is keep his focus on his personal goals and his selling process and his target prospect. If he had only done those three things he would never have gotten off track. This video will help explain.

Filed Under: Management Tips, Motivation