Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Oct 27, 2008 @ 12:01 AM
I got a call from Eileen the other day, concerned because her month was ending and she hadn't yet met her sales quota. She wanted to know what I'd suggest to accelerate the sales process. It turned out she had several prospects on 90 day product evaluations and they weren't scheduled to be up for two more months. In fact, 90 days was her company's standard evaluation policy. And because of that policy, many sales were delayed two months beyond what they would be if the company instead only offered 30 day evals. Let's do a little probing into the issue, and come up with a better way to increase sales faster.
Whether you call them evaluations, pilots, or proofs of concept, the idea is to let the prospect "try and buy." It's a great closing technique, because sometimes prospects need to test user interface, ease of use, requirements compatibility, and other elements. We discuss closing by evaluation in our sales courses, too. But rarely does it take them more than 30 days to do it. In fact, they can usually do it in less than a week. Sure they'd love to take 90 days on an eval, because they get to use it free or can let it sit on the desk for a few weeks, no reason to buy!
There is no logical reason to offer a prospect a 90 day eval, even if your prospect needs to show it to others on the decision team. Instead, make it your (and your company's) policy to offer a 30 day eval as standard. If the prospect asks for more time after the 30 days is up, I usually will grant the prospect 48 more hours. I tell him or her that during that time, I can provide unlimited tech support and access to me (the same he or she gets in the 30 days, by the way). I also mention that evals are on allocation, and that since my company can realistically handle only a fixed number at a given time, extending my evals prevents other prospects from getting theirs in a timely fashion. This provides some urgency, and builds the value of my product in the mind of the prospect. If the prospect insists on more time beyond that, and I don't consider the additional time a valid request, I'll suggest stopping the eval and firing it up again at a future date closer to the time needed for implementation. This prevents the prospect from using my eval to finish a project then not buying it, even though it performed to spec.
I've already blogged on techniques to close an eval, and if you missed it, it's at www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/?Tag=Evaluations+%26+Demonstrations , and well worth visiting if you use evaluations as a closing strategy. Of course there are times when a prospect will need more than 30 days to see a product, but these should be the exception, not the rule. By shortening your eval time, you'll compress your sales cycle, add urgency to the sale, value to your product, and prevent prospects from using your product rent-free. Add the 30 day maximum evaluation period to your Best Practices playbook to reach your sales quota faster.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Thu, Oct 23, 2008 @ 02:53 AM
One of the most important elements in a successful sales call is having a clear, focused objective for the call. An example of an ineffective objective is "I'm just following up" on some event that occurred in the past, whether it's a previous conversation, a past-due service contract, or a call that a rep is placing to attempt to get more add-on business (known as upselling or cross-selling.) If "following up" is your objective, that's probably the verbiage you'd use to begin your call. A better objective is that you're calling to get a PO, to set up a meeting, or to get a current customer to standardize on your solution throughout the enterprise, to name a few. That way, you can begin your call by stating a powerful reason for your call. Let me give you an example, right from one of my coaching sessions.
Sean was a very smart junior sales rep, recently graduated from college, and his company sold sophisticated engineering software heavily used in the defense and avionics industries. His task was to call customer end-users to see if they needed any further licenses. His company thought this was a good way to get his feet wet before advancing to calling new prospects. Initially, he told me that he'd call individual engineers, tell them he was "following up," and ask if they needed anything else. Instead, we had a conversation about engineering in general, and discussed VPs of Engineering, and the reasons they preferred to standardize on engineering solutions, so that all of their engineers would be using common technology. So we decided that instead of calling individual engineers, we'd call the VP of Engineering for a Very Large Avionics company. And we'd call with the objective of standardization.
When he dialed, he got the executive admin for the VP of Engineering, introduced himself, and asked to speak to the VP about standardizing on his solution. The admin replied "He's in a meeting, I'll see if I can break him out of it." Sean was really sweating, because he realized that he was interrupting an important person's busy day, but we'd rehearsed what he was going to say, so he hung in there. The VP came to the phone, and Sean stated his case. He said the company was already a customer, and he wanted all of their engineers to use his solution. There was a brief pause, and the VP said "Well, we like your product, and we should probably be moving down that path. Tell me what we have to do to get started." And Sean was off to the races with the most successful call in his young career.
Notice that Sean didn't start his call with "Is this a good (or bad) time to talk?," "How are you today?," or "I'm just following up." Instead, he was professional, consultative, and stated his clear objective as the reason for his call in his opening. And he got exactly what he wanted. We teach this in our sales training classes as an important way to increase sales, but you can do it too from your own desk, right now. Always have a clear, sales-oriented objective for each call based on what you'd like to achieve as an outcome, begin your call by stating it, and add this sales technique to your Best Practices playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Oct 20, 2008 @ 03:00 AM
I got a great call last week from Paul, a subscriber to my blog. He called because he had a dilemma. Much of his selling is done through webinars, and his conversion rates weren't where he wanted them to be. We discussed what he was doing in terms of pre-qualifying, setting up the webinar, and following up. The call took nearly 45 minutes, because I realized that he was facing the same challenges that many of my clients face, namely that many webinars are geared to providing information rather than selling. The sales techniques for improving webinar sales success that I gave to him are now available to you, because I've written a webinar whitepaper that you can now download.
Delivering a Sales-oriented Webinar is a whitepaper that may very well change the way you deliver prospect-facing webinars. Much of the material is right from my inside sales training courses, including sales tips on questioning and closing skills, and quite a bit on presentation skills, time management, and attendee management, too. Topic areas addressed in the whitepaper include:
- Informational vs. Sales-oriented Webinars
- Pre-qualifying the Sales-oriented Webinar
- Setting up the Sales-oriented Webinar
- Delivering the Sales-oriented Webinar
- Fine-tuning the Webinar process
If you've ever been involved in presenting a webinar, this whitepaper is for you. It's full of great information you can use today, and it can be read in 5 minutes. After reading it, my guess is that you'll want the rest of your webinar team to read it as well. And I'll bet that your next webinar will be different. Download it today, and add it to your Best Practices playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Sun, Oct 12, 2008 @ 04:01 PM
There's a lot of decent literature, both online and in print, on how to become a successful salesperson. But there's a lot of poppycock, too. Some sales philosophy is caught up in New Age mysticism, and suggests applying practices for which there is no scientific basis. In one sales course I attended, the trainer insisted that we wear headphones with two earpieces. Why? Because we use both our left brains and right brains, she said, we had to have audio input in both ears in order to use both sides of our brains during a sales call (I guess that means during the previous 50 years, armed with only single-audio handsets, salespeople must have been pretty nonproductive.) On the other hand, some sales courses for technology salespeople are so technology-driven that they put them through a rigorous course in technical principles. In one such class, I, along with my sales colleagues, received a 500 page technical manual at the end of Friday's training session as "homework" for the weekend, and we were expected to have it down cold by Monday.
Today, I'd like to debunk two commonly held notions, one from each of these schools of thought, and in doing so, make your job easier, in lead qualification, price neogtiation, and closing sales. For one thing, you don't have to understand the concept of "personality types." For the other, you don't have to be an expert in the technology you're selling. Let's explore these, one-by-one.
1) Debunking myth #1: selling to a personality type has value
In the 1970s, a whole school of thought emerged that suggested there were four types of personalities that bought products and services. These were often characterized as "amiable," "dominant driver," "nurturing," etc. Entire sales training philosophies were based on these concepts, as if, by identifying with them, and crafting your sales discussions to them, you could gain primacy over your competitors by bonding better with each prospect's "personality type." You would be friendly with the amiable type, directive toward the dominant type, etc. What this type of simplistic theory ignores is that the same individual will be nurturing when trying to cadge a date, dominant when dealing with an insurance company over a cracked windshield, and amiable when playing cards with friends. What I've found, in my years of selling, is that prospects only care about what you can do for them, and it basically comes down to helping them make more money, or stop them from losing money. They don't care about your style of communication, but more about what you're asking or saying. Whether you're friendly or a bit stiff, all you have to do is have a meaningful conversation with them, understand their challenges, and prove that your solution meets their needs. If you ask good questions, put yourself in the shoes of the other guy or gal, and try to make his or her life better through your solution, you won't have to care about determining what kind of personality he or she has. One of the better inside sales reps I ever met was a fellow with clipped, direct sentences, very short on small talk. The prospects loved him (and I knew, because I coached him) because he listened to what they said, asked good questions, and didn't waste their time.
2) Debunking myth #2: you have to be an expert in your technology
There's a reason many companies don't ask engineers to become salespeople. Often (but not always) engineers are so in love with the technology that that's all they can talk about! And in doing so, they often ignore the human reasons people need their solutions. Back in 1986, I took a sales position at Atron, a small company that made debuggers for programmers writing in C language. The first day on the job, my boss, Perry Lynne, showed me how it worked. A bunch of "1s" and "0s" flashed all over the computer screen, and I couldn't tell what the damn stuff meant. "Perry," I said, "does this product really work, and are the customers happy?" He told me it did, and they were. I asked if I could have pre-sales tech support, and if so, I'd just like to get on the phone and sell it, and I could learn the technology later. So I started selling C debuggers the afternoon of my first day on the job. Soon I'd sold millions of dollars worth of them, and four years later, when my company was sold, I still didn't know how the product worked! But it did work, and we had thousands of happy customers that told us so. And I had great engineers to back me up, both pre-sale and post-sale. Technical questions were important, but I had my prospect fax them directly to my engineers (this was before the days of email). My specialty was in asking about the prospects' businesses, understanding how my product could improve their bottom lines, and making them more productive. The minutiae of the technology was my engineers' business, but selling was mine, and formed the core of my sales philosophy.
I've often said that successful selling is a lot about knowing what you don't have to know. Another way I've described it is being "intelligently ignorant." There are some fine details of engineering that frankly, I just don't need to know about. Successful selling is really about understanding your prospect's business and providing a solution that fits his or her needs. When you do, you won't have to concern yourself with what kind of personality he or she has, what he or she does on the weekend, or on the details of the technology that your presales engineers understand better than we in sales ever can. So I invite you to take charge of your sales situations, and concern yourself with helping your prospects. Leave their personalities to New Age gurus and the engineering to your presales techs. Instead, spend a bit of time understanding your prospect's business and how your solution can make his or her life better. And add this to your Best Practices playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Wed, Oct 08, 2008 @ 03:11 AM
Somewhat surprisingly, there are still some sales experts out there who don't believe inside sales reps should begin their sales processes by calling high, to the executive-level person. Why? They don't think the rep has "earned" it yet. That's total nonsense. I'll tell you why, and why it's really important that call high as early as possible.
Executives know about every high-level initiative within the company, but much of the time lower-level contacts don't. By starting your call with someone low on the chain, you risk spending a lot of time with the wrong person, when your competitor could already be selling above you, at the executive level. You could be losing the deal, and not know it. Here's a real case study, and it makes a powerful argument for calling high initially in the sales process.
A content management company selling to companies with websites got a lead from a programmer at New York City's Public Works Dept. The rep that received this lead was attending one of our sales training courses when he got the lead. As part of the coaching element, we suggested that instead of beginning with the programmer, we start with Rudy Giuliani, who was mayor of New York at the time. We ended up by talking with Giuliani's executive assistant. Guess what she told us? The ENTIRE city of New York was making a global website shift, and there was an initiative to buy a content management system for every website the city had! This was a huge deal, and Public Works was just a small portion. Giuliani's admin referred us to the city's CIO, who was heading up the initiative. The rep began the sales process there, and used the programmer's lead as a reason to call high. The CIO provided the roadmap for the entire city's web initiatives.
On the other hand, if the rep had started with the programmer at Public Works, he ran the risk of not finding out about the enterprise initiative that was already underway, probably wouldn't have gotten the name of the CIO as the sponsor, and may have kept the sale with the programmer, not wanting to go "over his head."
This situation was initiated with an inbound lead, but it doesn't always have to. You can do it on a flat-out cold call, too. One approach (and there are many) is to visit the prospect company's website, and see if the company is doing anything for which your product or service could be a solution. Cold call the exec, mention what you saw on the website, tell him or what you do, and ask if there is a current or future initiative to adopt a solution such as yours. Sound easy? It is.
Thousands of sales are lost every year because some reps are afraid to start high, or are trained not to. I don't want you to be among them. You can dramatically increase sales through superior telesales skills. Begin your sales process by calling high. And add it to your Best Practices playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Sat, Oct 04, 2008 @ 02:06 PM
I've long been a believer that the better you understand your prospect's business, the better solution you can provide. In doing so, you'll proactively deal with sales objections earlier in the sales process, understand important elements in the ROI sales process, and provide more effective and timely solutions. In terms of extrinsic value, you'll increase sales. Just as important, intrinsically you'll have more fun on the job by learning more about the world in which you live. I'm going to tell you two short stories that underscore this. In the first one, I didn't make a lot of extra money, but learned an important lesson. In the second, I made a bundle. They're both worth telling.
Story One: The headstone carver and the copier salesperson. I once sold photocopiers, a tough job, because all brands were pretty similar. The Royal brand copiers I sold were identical to those branded by Mita, Pitney-Bowes, and one or two the companies. They were all made by Konishiroku, so the only differentiators were the great customer service my company offered and the salesmanship of the rep. I was an indefatigable salesperson, working both the telephone and walking the beat by going door to door, business to business. Which is how I one day wandered into the California Monument Company, where owner Mike Brunetti carved headstones. As luck would have it, Mike needed a copier the day I walked in the door, and bought one pretty much on the spot, the latest model with advanced enlargement and reduction features. In those days, I never asked much about my customer's business, as copiers were copiers. Or so I thought. I always made it a point to do an onsite visit after installation to ensure my customers were happy. On my post-sale visit to Mike, I learned a lot about why it's important to ask about the customer's business. Mike insisted on showing me how he was using the copier, so I followed him into his office. There, he had a large collection of art books with beautiful designs of angels. "Before I had your copier, I had to hand draw everything, and prepare a stencil which I used for carving. With your copier, here's how I do it now," he said, and proceeded to put a piece of transparency in the copier. He used the enlargement feature to copy a small design from a book. He then removed the transparency and punched a number of small holes along the dark lines of the transparency. Then he laid the transparency on an uncarved headstone, sprinkled some black powder on the transparency, banged it two or three times with a rubber hammer, lifted the transparency off the stone, and voila, he had a perfect stencil right on the headstone. He then took a hammer and chisel, and began carving along the lines. My copier had become a unique tool in the headstone carving process. Mike was the only monument carver in my territory, so I couldn't do much vertical marketing, but I learned two things that day that I've never forgotten: Don't make assumptions about how the prospect will use your solution, and every prospect's business is interesting, has different challenges, and is well worth asking about.
Story Two: Making petroleum out of hamburgers. Fast-forwarding a few years, I was selling debuggers, software development tools that allowed software programmers to write better code. A large fast-food chain (I'll call them FFC, and I'll bet you've eaten there) was one of my prospects, and in my first call to them, I determined that their team needed 5 debuggers. By now, I always made a habit of asking about my prospect's business, so I asked what kind of code they were developing. My prospect told me that they were going to turn their finished code over to a large petroleum company, and I asked why. It turns out that they were working on a joint venture to locate FFCs on the premises of gas stations, and customers would pay at the pump for both food and gas. After filling up, they'd go to the drive-through lane at FFC, pick up their food, and be on their way. Fascinating! I asked my FFC prospect about the debuggers the petroleum company used. He didn't know, but gave me a contact name when I asked. Right away I called the petroleum company. It turns out that they were looking for debuggers, too! And I soon sold dozens to the petroleum company for use throughout the enterprise, in all of their lines of business, many more than I sold to FFC. If I hadn't asked my original FFC contact about his business, I might never have known about the petroleum company. My competitor might have gotten there before I did, and I would have lost the business before I ever knew it existed.
The moral of the story is what I teach in every one of my inside sales training courses. You always have to ask about your prospect's business, because you'll leave business on the table if you don't. You will also position yourself as a consultant with your prospect, and will build important rapport that your competitor may not. In doing so, you will build a knowledge base of how your customers use your product in the real world to improve their businesses, expand your vertical marketing capability, and increase sales, too. Add this to your Best Practices playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Wed, Oct 01, 2008 @ 03:05 AM
Most of my readers know I'm not a big fan of discounting, as I feel that much of the sales process is about building value for your product or service and linking it to the fair price for which you're selling it. But I got a call today from a reader that needed to discount to meet her numbers at the quarter's end, and she had a dilemma. Here's the situation:
Gayle's selling a transaction to an enterprise, and has already gotten agreement for a P.O. for the full amount. At the last minute, another division now wants the product too, and there's not enough in the budget to pay full price for the additional product as well. Gayle's VP of Sales has allowed her to give up to a 50% discount on the additional product, because he wants the additional revenue in this quarter's business. Gayle called us because she wants to ensure that her negotiation skills get her the order this month, but she's not sure of the proper process. Here it is:
- Re-emphasize the value of your product at its full price. You can provide lots of reasons, but some of them might include the money your company spent on R&D to build it and ongoing maintenance and support costs to ensure that the customer is taken care of whenever he or she needs assistance. Therefore, your pricing is fair, not exorbitant. Gayle has already done this, as she's already gotten part of the order at full price.
- If you are going to offer a discount, have what we call a "drop dead" date, beyond which the discount you're about to offer will no longer be valid. In Gayle's case, it should be September 30, by end of business day.
- Give the prospect a valid business reason that you're willing to discount, in this instance only. If you give a discount too easily, the buyer will suspect that you could have given more, and that you can do it all the time. I guarantee that the buyer keeps good notes, and will demand the discount again next quarter, or next year. In Gayle's case, I suggested that she tell the prospect that the company needs additional revenue to finish the slow Summer quarter, and that since the Fall quarter is always good, there will be no business reason to offer the discount again in December. The time to act is now.
- Tell the prospect why you cannot give the discount in the future. Again, a very understandable reason that you're discounting, from the prospect's perspective, is that Summer has been slower than usual. And as you suspect the economic situation will improve in 2009, you cannot anticipate that the discount will even be offered again following the Summer of 2009. You can also emphasize that your VP of Sales will in no way approve any discount beyond September 30 at close of business.
- Stand firm on your "drop dead" date. When the agreed upon window to get the discount is over, it's over. Your credibility for all future transactions with the prospect company rides on this, and you've got to stand firm. You can stand very firm if you did a good job on item #4 above. And you'll be surprised at how often the prospect finds additional funding once the deadline has passed, provided that the prospect really does need your solution.
- If you haven't gotten the order by noon of the last day and you can't reach your prospect, consider calling high, explaining that you're trying to save the company money (in Gayle's case it's $5,000), and that you need to talk to someone in the decision process to see if the PO is going to be generated, because in four hours, you'll have to add $5,000 to the price of the order. I guarantee you'll get action. There are great articles on this blog about calling high, so read them if you need additional tips on doing it.
So here we are at the end of the quarter, and Gayle now has her marching orders. If you've already offered a discount and forgot to provide a "drop dead" date, you should call back today and provide one. If you can't make the date on close of business of September 30, you can certainly make it on Friday's close of business, provided you've given a valid reason (see #3 above), such as business for the quarter is closing on Friday, as this business week is considered quarter's end.
Getting back to my original premise of not discounting in the first place, I'd encourage you to read my whitepaper on ROI selling. But if you have to discount, you now have a template for doing it that you'll find successful. It's what I teach in my inside sales courses and I encourage you to apply it today, and add it to your Best Practices playbook.