Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Dec 28, 2009 @ 07:00 AM
OK, we've got only 3 1/2 days this week to close business for the year end. In our
telesales training courses we cover a number of sales techniques to remember when we need to close business. The following techniques appeared in my blog articles this year, and all of them can be put to great use this week. Here they are in synopsis form, along with the blog article that explains each of them in greater detail:
1) Negotiate intelligently and portray price drops --- if you use them --- wisely. There's a reason my post on price negotiation techniques is the best-read on my blog. Too many reps don't use intelligent price negotiation strategies and leave money on the table, or don't get the order at all:
www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/7413/5-Most-Common-Price-Negotiation-Mistakes2) Close on the first call, budget money may get re-allocated this week. Many prospects have year-end money to spend, but they won't necessarily tell you that unless you ask. When I was a purchasing agent years ago, I always had year-end money that had been re-allocated from another budget source. Be sure to call back folks that didn'y buy earlier in the year. They may have additional budget this week:
http://www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/9840/One-call-close-on-the-first-call-if-you-don-t-the-prospect-may-not-return-your-second-call3) Drill down to uncover the financial reasons it makes sense for your prospect to buy now. You can use a quick financial model to prove that delaying the order will cost your prospect in financial terms:
www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/10732/How-do-I-get-my-PO-in-faster4) Ask for additional needs through upselling. Don't shortchange yourself just because you're happy to get a small order. Tell your prospects about "the next best thing and they may increase the size of your order:
www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/9101/Upselling-Don-t-forget-to-ask-for-The-Next-Best-Thing 5) Be careful that you're not being "shopped" by savvy buyers, and remember to "call high." OK, I know you don't view your unique high-tech solution as a commodity, but probably your buyer does, and has more than one solution in mind. On inbound calls, be wary that a decision may have already been made to go with a competitor. But that doesn't mean you can't unlock it and get the business:
www.alextrain.com/inside-sales-telesales-tips-blog/bid/5564/RFP-Hazards-Are-you-being-shopped-by-Purchasing-Agents-Here-s-how-to-fix-it Today's post is short because you've got to be out there selling, but these are 5 powerful tools that you can --- and should --- use this week. Add them to your Best Practices Playbook and have a great year-end.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Dec 14, 2009 @ 12:09 PM
Today's post may alarm you, but hang in there, as what I'm discussing today could one day --- if it goes far enough --- affect everyone reading this post, individual sale reps as well as sales managers. The story I'm going to tell is right out of Monty Python, but it happened just last week to a great candidate that wants to be in inside sales, and has all the tools to be making six figures within a very short time. Here's a little background. Read along and see if you're as concerned for hiring practices our industry as I am:
Two weeks ago, I recommended a great candidate for an inside sales lead development position to a company whose inside sales manager I know and like. This candidate had sterling references from execs in the hospitality industry, and a history for getting repeat business out of customers that could be difficult. He's great on the phone, and he'll be a successful inside sales rep making six figures pretty soon. As an inside sales trainer for 20 years, I've got a good track record for finding talented people out of our industry and bringing them in to be successful sales reps, so this was going to be another winner (and I've had a bunch).
So I called my friend, an inside sales manager who is trying to hire a rep for a company he's just started working with, told him about the candidate, and he was enthused. He said the candidate had to talk to HR first, and the HR specialist loved my candidate after talking with him. Then the HR specialist told the candidate that he'd have to take an online personality test (they called it a "sales aptitude test." And he "failed." The test claimed he couldn't deal with challenging people (I've known the candidate for some time, and this is 180 degrees wrong.)
My pal the Telesales manager wasn't allowed to talk to the candidate, as he'd been vetted out. So the manager's opinion on the candidate was worthless, as was the HR specialist's. The opinions of all personnel in the company responsible for hiring were overridden by a testing company, obviously hired by upper-level management. Incidentally, the position was for high tech inside sales in the Silicon Valley. The testing company was located thousands of miles away, and their website indicates they specialize in testing people for a number of industries, none of them high tech.
I believe this process is potentially dangerous to our high tech telesales industry, for the following reasons:
1) If personality tests had any merit at all, we'd be giving them to elementary school kids as predictors of who's going to end up being a career criminal. Then we'd provide remedial education. Then we'd have no more violent criminals. But we know such tests aren't adequate predictors, probably to the chagrin of the multimillion dollar test industry, who wishes they could prove them effective.
2) The Inside Sales manager asked for the test to be re-evaluated, so The World's Greatest Psychologists reinterpreted his answers. Politically as well as professionally, they can't change a result, can they? If they did, it would indicate the test wasn't valid to begin with.
3) A question that most be the most disconcerting: what kind of database is storing the "failed" questionnaire of the candidate? Who has access to it? Will it be used whenever another client of the testing company has the same candidate targeting a sales position within the new company? If so, the candidate will be discarded because there will already be a personality test on record. This "test" will probably be alive in a database in perpetuity. I'm sure the testing company would deny it keeps old tests. Is that really believable?
4) If a company adopts this "personality testing" concept, why not just do away with my HR department altogether? Why would a company need HR, when their judgment is valued so little that they can't override a personnel decision made by an outsourced company using computerized test made my supposed psychological sales "experts"? Why not just vet the candidate using a personality test, then let the Legal department handle pre and post-hiring issues?
Bottom line, the candidate loses, the company loses a good candidate, and because their opinions are worthless, the Inside Sales Manager and the HR specialist lose, too.
So I'm recommending that none of you reading this post EVER take a personality test. You might "lose," so you won't get the job, and your failed test will sit in a testing company's database, ticking away like a time bomb where it can be accessed by another potential company that may be thinking of hiring you. And you may never even know this occurred, because it will be hidden from you.
You can't test adults for what it takes to be successful inside sales reps. There are simply too many important variables, and they all change radically depending on the sales situation (one example: price negotiation techniques). Desire and intrinsic motivation can't be tested for. But a good inside sales manager can figure them out pretty quickly and have a real discussion with a candidate, using his or her expertise and experience within the industry, and candidate references (read my post 20 Characteristics of a Superior Inside Salesperson if you'd like to know what I'd look for in the interview process).
So if you're a sales exec or inside sales manager, challenge anyone in your company that tries to convince you that personality tests are meaningful predictors of sales success, because you'll be acing yourself out of being able to bring in good candidates that you know will be successful, based on your expertise and telesales savvy. And if you're a rep, avoid companies that insist you take a test as part of the hiring process: you don't want your name sitting in a database somewhere, describing your "personality." And add skepticism of the "personality testing" industry to your Best Practices playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Dec 07, 2009 @ 12:09 PM
I'd imagine most readers of my blog have at least developed a profile on the business networking website LinkedIn. But if you're not using it as an important part of your daily sales process, you could be losing sales. If you work a territory, you'd be surprised at how many of your prospects will know customers of yours. In the past we all found this out by accident, guesswork, and careful questioning. Today, the LinkedIn tool does a lot of it for us.
In my telesales training classes, I cover several of the free online Sales 2.0 tools that are becoming increasingly more important, and I'm coming to think LinkedIn (LI) is the best. Let me give you one real world example of how it can be used "out of the box," then discuss what you can do to ensure that you're working at optimum with LI.
Case Study: A network solutions provider
One of my sales training customers had been trying for months to get into a large prospect, to no avail. In a coaching session, we determined that he'd call a CIO at the company, someone that wasn't in the lead database. We found that person's name on Hoover's. Before he called that exec, he checked out his LinkedIn profile. Guess what! He knew one of our company's regional managers while that manager was employed in a previous company, working another territory. My rep made a quick call to the out-of-territory Regional Manager, and found out that he'd had a great relationship with that CIO. My rep was then able to make the call, and had a conversation. Without LinkedIn, the CIO might never have taken the call.
So let's investigate how to get LinkedIn working at optimum for you. Here are 6 great ways to get going for you right now:
1) Make sure your profile is as good as you can get it, detailing your professional background and successful accomplishments. These is essentially your résumé, and believe me, your prospects will occasionally look at it to get an idea of who you are before they trust you enough to buy from you. Additionally, if you're ever looking for another inside sales position, your potential new company will look at your LI profile before they bother with your actual résumé. Don't gloss over this important step.
2) Send a LinkedIn invitation to professional people colleagues you know well, or with whom you've had a business relationship, so you can link together. These would include your fellow Inside and Field salespeople, and all sales management within your company.
3) Call your customers that you have a working relationship with, have a conversation, then tell them you'd like to LinkIn to them. The best time to do this is right after the conversation. Caution! If you don't call first, they may perceive you as being too pushy, and won't accept the invitation. Besides, by calling them, you may also find other opportunities within his or her company that you didn't know about. If so, you've increased your sales.
4) When your invitation has been accepted, take a look at your invitee's connections. They may include people working at a company that you're trying to work with. If so, consider whether it might be worth calling your contact and asking how well he or she knows that person. If that's the case, you may get a reference!
5) When making a first time call to a prospect, especially to an exec or manager, take 30 seconds up from to check out his or her LI profile. You may discover you have mutual business associates or interests. Those can prove to be the best ice-breakers you'll ever have (see Case Study above).
6) This one's just a quick cautionary tip. Invitations from unknowns don't often result in links, and can be perceived as LinkedIn spam. Only invite people you really know. I get invitations from people I've never talked to, and I won't LinkIn to them. Most others won't either. There are other social networking sites that are great for popularity contests, but LinkedIn isn't: it's a business tool. If there's someone you'd like to know and LinkIn to, please call and say hello first.
I always check out someone's LI profile now before I call him or her. It takes hardly any time at all, and it's a great ice-breaker to spend thirty seconds or so at the beginning the call to talk about mutual acquaintances or interests. So if you're not doing all of this right now, start today. It's a great way to communicate better with your prospects, and you'll increase sales, too. And add using LinkedIn effectively and efficiently to your Best Practices Playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Tue, Dec 01, 2009 @ 10:00 AM
Success can be measured in a number of different ways. This year we can another great year in the telesales training business, but I measured our success in another way this year, too. We helped a whole bunch of people get hired.
Inside Sales Execs and Reps that have taken my courses know I'll always help them when they're looking. We even helped place several people that weren't involved in my classes, because they had stellar referrals from people that did. The secret is we're not a recruitment firm, and don't charge anything for placement calls, so companies will always talk to me.
We went beyond just making calls, reviewing and occasionally fine-tuning résumés, getting them to have more robust profiles on LinkedIn, you name it, we did it. The high tech telesales world is skewed when great people aren't working. Reps who have never been under quota were laid off this year. Sales execs with proven track records went months without a position. The last couple of months have been pretty successful for us, in terms of getting great people placed.
I told you that story so I can tell this one. All of the above I did by telephone. But several weeks ago I attended a conference, and met a young man, an associate of a friend of mine. When I shook hands with him, it was like shaking an eel, it was that limp and fishy. It gave me a cold shudder, and for the life of me, I can't remember anything he said. But I do remember that handshake!
It wasn't my place to do any on-the-spot mentoring. But I figured that fellow will close a lot of doors before they have a chance to get opened, and until he fixes it, he'll be aced out in the job market. Handshakes aren't trivial in Western countries. People tend to form snap judgments on introductory handshakes. Firm handshakes are the gold standard of introductions. They don't need to be bone-crushers, but they have to have substance. With all the terrific books on interpersonal skills out there, it still surprises me that some people just don't have the handshake bit down yet. While we're for the most part telesales people, we still meet occasional customers and prospects. And we shake hands with our fellow employees all the time.
So here's the bottom line. I'll bet all the readers of my blog have handshaking down to an art. But you probably have friends and colleagues that don't. In this volatile business climate, people need all the help they can get. It's tough enough to get hired if one has all the tools and great recommendations, and a poor handshake could scotch everything. So do a favor for your weak-handshaked friends. You're a friend, so you can tell them. Or you're a manager, and you can do some mentoring. Or even easier yet, point them to this blog post.