Sales Playmakers!
Written by Tibor Shanto, Renbor Sales Solutions
[Contributing Author]
From the World Cup to Monday morning quarterbacks, I wonder… “What can I take away to help me sell better?” It’s the reinforcement that best practices are worth reviewing and committing to.
It’s about set plays for moving the ball downfield and capitalizing on new opportunities. Everyone knows their role, where to be, and what to do!
I Want to Do It My Way
It’s interesting that some sales people will go out of their way to avoid the “set play” approach. When you ask why, you get a range of reasons, from “I want the conversation to be natural and not contrived,” to “It takes away from my inherent skills and creativity.”
The Best Players Follow the Plan
We need a plan… a laid out strategy…. a playbook. We need to focus on executing, refining, and evolving the plan… and we absolutely have to follow it. A quarterback can’t just deviate from a Playbook just because they have inherent skills or talent.
Take It to the Next Level
Having a plan helps talented sales people reach even greater levels of success! Set up the play. Discover and develop mutual value. It not only develops the sale, it speeds up your sales cycle, engages the buyer, and keeps them invested in the process.
It Comes With Experience
Set plays are crucial in recurring situations. They allow you respond quickly and maintain the flow and direction of the sale. It makes for a very professional experience.
It’s a Team Effort
Creating and implementing set plays is not difficult. Get with your manager and your teammates to review common situations. Develop a set of questions that facilitate the discovery process. Find ways to keep the sale going in the right direction. Pinpoint specific topics that highlight your understanding of the buyer and your ability to demonstrate the value.
Results-Driven Words (Part 4 of 10)
Written by Hal Alpiar
[Contributing Author]
Word Vigilance
is the Price of Making Sales
It is NOT true in selling that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” People buy words. Words paint pictures that conjure up images people want to believe about the products and services they purchase. Even artists know this; they use words to sell their work.
It’s the difference between giving a child an outlined or paint-by-the-numbers coloring book…or a blank pad! One stifles creative expression. The other encourages it.
Have you ever heard a song and liked it, and then saw the video on TV that didn’t match what was in your head? You perhaps imagined great mountain and seashore scenery, but instead the TV version dished out snakes, pitbulls and a burning bedroom?
You had put your creativity to work and liked what you imagined. Then along came someone else’s idea of what the same thing was about, and bang! . . . a collision that made you dislike the song, an image conflict that changed your mind.
Product demonstrations are great tools, and charts that itemize all the benefits of various services are great tools. But –in the end— what will make the difference in a sale are:
- the words that are used
- how the words are used
- and who uses the words
If you are the one using the words, and you’ve got your act buttoned up, but the words are somehow not right and/or the ways that you are using them puts the emPHAsis on the wrong SylLABle, you will not make the sale. Period.
Only you can know which words to emphasize and which parts of those words to emphasize. Because only you know whether your product or service is THE best or ONE of the best and whether it can deliver REAL peace of mind, or real PEACE of mind or real peace of MIND.
Where you shine the light
is where prospects will look.
Ever looked in the mirror after a failed sales attempt and thought to yourself that you should have your head examined? Well, hey, who am I to say? Maybe you should. But odds are that your head is fine (does it rattle?). Like trying to play poker with Uno or Monopoly cards, you may simply not be using the right decks of words.
Here’s a brain drain exercise for you: Can you write your entire sales pitch on the back of a business card? Try it! Then try using what you write with your grandmother or your closest 7 year-old, or someone next to you on the bus, train, plane, or subway (Well, okay, maybe not the subway!). Do they get it?
What do you end up with? (Yeah, a headache maybe.) No, get serious here for a minute, what you end up with is the nuts-and-bolts-bread-and-butter-meat-and-potatoes message that says who you are, what you sell, what great benefits your product or service delivers, and how easy you’re going to make it for me to be your customer.
So the secret to sales success is to just utter a dozen or two great words? Hardly. The secret to great sales success is you and the ways you choose to represent yourself and your company or profession or cause. Having a dozen or two great words to use will help you help your prospect to sell herself.
Be vigilant about having the right sets of words to build the bridge from products and services to customer benefits. Be vigilant about using that bridge and those words consistently and enthusiastically. The rest (the features and all the purchase decision support points) is fluff. Customers need it to justify decisions to friends, families, co-workers, and bosses. But the words that touch emotional motives are what sell!
What are your best words?
How, when, and where do you use them?
True Strength
“Anyone can give up, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that’s true strength.” -Unknown
5 Ways to Make the Phone Work for You!
Written by Silvia Quintanilla, CEO, Industry Gems
[Contributing Author]
Are salespeople shying further away from using the phone?
Salespeople seem to be “hiding” behind emails when prospecting. Use this trend to your advantage! You could try a new (or rather old) way to break away from the crowd.
Here’s a list of 5 Ways to Make the Phone Work for You…
- Immediate Results – If your prospect picks up, do your best to engage in just a few minutes of dialog with them… even if it’s just 2 minutes. Use that valuable time to gather key information. There’s more to learn from conversation than you could ever discover through email.
- Phone Preference – Some prospects still prefer the phone over email. You could send 100 emails to a “non-email” person, and they will never respond. But catch them on the phone, and you have their full attention!
- Personable – With all the automated email campaigns going around, it makes a big difference when you hear someone’s voice. Don’t be just an email address. Be a real person that can demonstrate value. Even when you leave voice mail, you plant seeds and begin to establish that person-to-person experience.
- Be Different – Your prospect may be getting as many as 10-20 “cold”… unoriginal emails a day. What do you think they are doing? …Delete… Delete… Delete. Craft a targeted phone script that will capture the decision maker’s attention.
- Get Commitment – Get your prospect to commit to a next step. Even if they aren’t ready to move forward right now, you can set up a time to talk in the near future.
The phone still works. We have to focus on getting better at it. Apply the concepts in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. He reminds us that it takes about 10,000 hours to develop true mastery at something. Examples he provides include professional musicians (The Beatles), programmers (Bill Gates), and chess players (Bobby Fischer).
“The people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder”. -Malcolm Gladwell
So, if you’re not that good on the phone now, that’s okay. Gladwell gives us hope that practice does indeed make perfect. The next time you’re about to reach out to your prospect, stop and think if the phone might be the better way to communicate this time.
Don’t Be Fooled by the “Halfway Mark”
Written by Tibor Shanto, Renbor Sales Solutions
[Contributing Author]
People like to share ideas triggered by the holidays… start of year advice, end of year advice, summer time advice, the list goes on… We are in the first week of July, and here come the posts about… “Halfway There,” “Halftime,” and other similar titles popping up in our email box.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of these pieces are good… they contain solid insights and techniques, but I think many miss a key point that raises questions about the relevance of their content as it applies to sales.
While the calendar shows July 1 as the start of the second half of the year, the reality is most sales people crossed the halfway mark some time ago. The halfway point is tied directly to their sales cycle. If a rep has a 60 day sales cycle, their halftime came in May. If they have a 90 day cycle, they past the halfway point in April!
Let’s use the 90 cycle as the benchmark for the rest of this post…
The articles we are reading ignore the reality of timing. If it takes an average of 90 days to close a deal, those I engage in July will likely close in October. As we get deeper into the year, most of the prospects I engage in October and the months following won’t close until 2011.
Most quotas are based on a calendar year, so having a great prospect in October is great, but the revenue won’t flow until January (especially if you allow for the impact of Thanksgiving and Christmas).
Look at your calendar and your quota? How close are you to achieving your year-end goals? Don’t get caught up believing in halfway marks that past 3 months ago. The good news is you still have a little time to play catch up… AND depending you on your sales cycle, you can use the end of this year to get a jump-start on 2011!
Get your copy of Tibor’s FREE eBook What’s in Your Pipeline?
Results-Driven Words (Part 3 of 10)
Written by Hal Alpiar
[Contributing Author]
Lighting Up Sales Leads
With Sparklers
Results-driven words that “SPARKLE” can generate sales leads in a wide variety of ways.
Sales lead generation tools include: professional, trade, and industrial show displays; online and traditional news releases; targeted and mass email blasts; targeted telemarketing; sponsored events; social media and blog postings; radio and TV commercials; website banners; airplane banners; outdoor billboards and transit posters; yellow-page and newspaper ads, consumer/trade/professional and specialty turn-key magazines; magazine space and classified ads; premium and promotional merchandising; brochures, circulars, flyers, letters, postcards, direct mail packages; publication inserts; and a myriad of “buzz” (word-of-mouth) marketing methods.
Using any of these methods effectively means relying on SPARKLE – high-impact, high-energy words that trigger emotional buying motives and that focus on the benefits to the consumer instead of on “how great we are.”
Your SPARKLE words should always include some kind of specific, value-perceived offer . . . something your prospective sales leads (individuals or organizations) can get in return for responding to your marketing message, along with a description of what step or steps need to be taken in order to “cash in” on the offer.
You can never give a prospect
too many ways to respond.
- Marketing that includes, for example, a Tollfree phone number does better than marketing that does not.
- Marketing that provides a Tollfree number plus a BRC (Business Reply Card) outperforms those offers that include a phone number alone.
- Marketing that offers a Tollfree number plus a BRC, plus a specific click-to website address or landing page will outperform those with just one or two options.
- Marketing that also includes a coupon of some kind will do best of all.
Why? Your prospect has more ways to respond; the easier you make it for that to happen, the more you increase the likelihood that it will.
Ever wonder why magazines will have “tip-in” subscription cards bound into the stapled fold area, PLUS insert cards that fall out when you open it, PLUS perhaps a page of perforated subscription order cards, PLUS an 800 phone number AND a website URL shown . . . in EVERY ISSUE!?
And, in between issues, they’ll mail out subscription solicitation letters with BRCs and Tollfree numbers and website URLs that offer early subscription renewal discounts, premiums, and promotional merchandise.
They do indeed know what they’re doing and they have tons of subscription order research to support the “overkill” methods they use. Direct mail envelopes always seem jammed with material. They are. The rule of direct mail copy is “The more you tell, the more you sell.”
Also, when you’re using direct mail, a first class stamp covers the cost for mailing the weight equivalent of five pieces of paper. Why put just one page in the envelope when you’re paying for more? Consider adding a flyer, business cards, paperclip, coupon.
Remember when the only thing that’s overkill is the number of reply options you make available, you will never be accused of “hounding” prospects; you are simply making it extremely easy to respond.
Q. What kinds of words SPARKLE ???
A. Words that speak volumes. A. Words with an attitude.
A. Words that paint pictures. A. Words that are upbeat.
A. Words that challenge. A. Words that suggest opportunity.
A. Words that inform, educate, and entertain.
“Sparkle” is one. “Free” is another. “New”; “Poof!”; “Psssssst!”; “Love”; “Puppies”; “Sunshine”; “Now”; “Guaranteed”; “One-of-a-kind”; “Toddler”; “Rugged”; “Sexy”; “Patriotic”; “Easy”; and “Sizzle”; are some other examples. More great words that conjure up images will be loaded into upcoming posts in this series.
Some parting thoughts to combine with the magic words you weave:
- Repetition sells! Repetition sells! Repetition sells! Repetiti…..
- When your lead generation efforts ask questions, be sure to listen carefully to the answers.
- Always test whatever you write before you get to the launch pad. (More on this in upcoming series posts.)
- Avoid ANY words that need to be explained to ANY one!
-
Consider all the ways others might interpret your message and don’t say anything you’ll be sorry for later, or not be able to deliver as promised.
The Way of the Leader
“Most leaders spend time trying to get others to think highly of them, when instead they should try to get their people to think more highly of themselves.
It’s wonderful when the people believe in their leader. It’s more wonderful when the leader believes in their people!
You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.”
— Booker T. Washington