Sales Blog with Sales Tips

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Over my last three sales tips posts I’ve talked about prospecting styles and prospecting personalities that don’t work in 2009. Let’s talk about one that does.

The Fourth Type.
In this final sales blog post of the series, I’m going to list the attributes of the 21st-Century-Prospector. This is the type of sales professional who gets results when prospecting, and does so in an efficient and consistent manner.

Sales Tips From The 21st-Century-Prospector.

1. Quality, not quantity. The two overriding objectives of prospecting are to gather information about your prospect and develop a relationship. You can’t have 100 close friends, nor can you realistically work 100 prospects for the same reasons.
2. The sales professional with the most information wins. The more you know about your prospect, the more likely you are to turn them into a customer.
3. Social networking. No, I’m not talking about those Chamber of Commerce meetings that are a waste of everyone’s time. Think about who goes to those, other sales professionals who are looking for leads. You might pick up some sales tips, but that’s not what you’re looking for. The 21st-Century-Prospector uses the plethora of social networking tools available on the Internet. LinkedIn and Jigsaw come to mind as two examples.
4. Be yourself. Don’t use scripts. Let the prospect see your personality. Use good open-ended questioning skills. Don’t forget to listen.
5. Goals, objectives, tactics. We know that mindless activity in prospecting has a poor ROI. We have to know our goal in prospecting (a commission target is a good starting point), the objectives that will support it and our prospecting tactics. In short, we need a detailed and well thought out plan.
6. Education. The prospecting rainmakers of 2009 find training resources beyond what their company provides. I’m talking about mentors both inside and outside your employer as an example; they can provide sales tips that are concrete and immediately applicable to your industry. One cautionary note however: select mentors that you can relate to. Saddling up to a sales professional with 20 years of experience and a $50,000,000 annual budget when you’re a new sales professional selling bricks doesn’t make sense. And by the way, give yourself a pat on the back for reading this sales blog. Your education comes from all kinds of sources.
7. Naive. Remember how naive you were when you first started in sales? Everything was possible. You hadn’t learned what you couldn’t do. You landed accounts that no one else could land. Why? You hadn’t been chained down by fear, cynicism and doubt. You were naive. Being naive is a good mindset when prospecting. It’s especially helpful when prospecting in our current economic situation.

Prospecting Sales Tips Summary.
I can sum up this four part sales blog series in just four sentences.

Know that the efficacy of banging on the phone with prospects culled from the Yellow Pages is not a good use of a sales professional’s time. Know that prospect lists from those lead list companies that provide moldy and dusty information are a joke (worse yet, you have to pay for those “leads”). Finally, know that prospecting is not a work of brute force. The 21st-Century-Prospector makes prospecting a work of finesse, thinking and creativity.

Further reading:

• What do I need from a prospect? Hint: relationship
• What do I need from a prospect? Hint: information
• The Foolishness of Scripting

To receive this sales blog by email click here to receive by RSS click here. ©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

In my last sales blog post I provided some sales tips for the Going-Through-The-Motions prospector. This style of prospecting focuses on the activities of prospecting and not the results. In today’s sales blog post, I’m going to talk about a third style of prospecting that is equally ineffective.

“There was also a time when doctors used leeches to cure the sick.”

Back To The Future.
The third type of prospecting style that seems to pervade many sales departments is what I call the “We’ve-Always-Done-It-That-Way” approach. This technique borrows from old-school sales training. You won’t have to look far to find a sales training article or sales blog that is full of these antiquated sales tips.

Here are some examples:

• Closing techniques from the 1950’s. “Think how good you’ll look to your boss after you’ve installed this product. Let’s get this order signed right now.”
• Sales is nothing but a numbers game perspective.
• The use of scripts in order to assure that precisely the right words are used with the prospect.
• The salesperson does all the talking with few questions directed at the prospect.
• The salesperson has one sales skill - talking about features and benefits.

The New Realities.
The truth is that sales concepts have changed dramatically over the last 15 years. We have seen most of those changes in the last ten years with the Internet being the greatest catalyst. What has changed and how do we adapt?

• Buyers have heard more cheesy closing techniques than you know. They’re immune to them and turned off by this kind of manipulation. We have to be straightforward and transparent with prospects.
• Sales is not just a numbers game anymore. We have to segment our market and know exactly the kind of prospect we want to pursue. More time spent on fewer qualified prospects yields much better results than the old “dialing and smiling ’til it hurts” model.
• Increasingly, companies want to partner with fewer suppliers. Partnerships require a relationship. Prospects want to get to know you as much as they want to know your company. This isn’t accomplished with sales scripts.
• Prospects want us to know something about their business before we contact them. Additionally, we should be prepared to ask them focused open-ended questions to learn more about them.
• Features and benefits are something we need to know about our products. We call this value added selling today. However, we need to be able to take this concept beyond just our products and services and apply it to ourselves and the company we represent.

Sales Blog Epilogue.
We’ve-Always-Done-It-That-Way prospecting was fine in its day. It’s all the sales community knew at the time. There was also a time when doctors used leeches to cure the sick. They didn’t know any better either, but most have stopped…I hope.

Stay tuned for my fourth and final sales blog post in this series where I’ll cover one more type of sales prospecting style.

Further reading:

• The Incredible Importance of Open Ended Questions

To receive these sales tips by email click here to receive by RSS click here. ©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

My last sales blog post was part 1 of a 4 part series on prospecting styles where I discussed and provided sales tips on the “Hope-And-A-Prayer Prospector.” There are four types of prospecting personalities and we use all four at one time or another. However, we tend to gravitate toward one style. I’d like to now introduce you to the second type of prospector.

“Don’t allow your sales manager…to force you to grind through endless and worthless lead lists.”

Confusion Reigns.
The second type of prospector is the “Going-Through-The-Motions Prospector.” The sales professional who has this as their predominant style is confused. They’ve confused activity with results and tasks with objectives.

These folks tend to view prospecting as an end unto itself, and we’re all guilty of at least occasionally prospecting in this manner. Their goal is prospecting instead of creating new customers who buy products and services. Just the labors of prospecting give them a feeling of accomplishment.

Why This Is Bad.
There are several things about this style that can get you in trouble:

• Prospecting activity does not pay commission at most companies, no matter how much you’re doing.
• It can take your focus off the real goal which is to create more business.
• It creates a false sense of accomplishment.
• Your sales relationship skills can suffer because you’ve turned prospecting into a numbers game where all that’s being gained is activity.

Sales managers are frequently guilty of enabling this type of prospecting style, by the way. The louder a sales manager screams, “Sales is just a numbers game,” the more likely he or she will be encouraging this prospecting-activity-is-everything mindset.

Sales Blog Tips For Breaking Out Of This Rut.
It’s easy to extinguish this prospecting style by getting into the following habits:

• Research your prospects before contacting them, which will make you more effective when talking with them. It will also help you to see them as more than just another entry on a cold call list.
• Carefully monitor your closing ratio (new accounts divided by prospects contacted) and compare your result with other sales professionals in your office.
• This is subtle but important. See your intention when prospecting as acquiring new customers and nothing else.
• Don’t allow your sales manager or others to force you to grind through endless and worthless lead lists.
• Take responsibility for generating your own leads. This will take more time, but you’ll end up with better quality prospects and you’ll have ownership of the entire process.

Stay tuned for the third type of prospecting style in my next sales tips blog post.

Further reading:

• The Best Kinds of Leads for Prospecting
• Contrary to popular opinion, sales is NOT just a numbers game.

To receive this sales blog by email <click here> to receive by RSS <click here>. ©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

We hear the following worn out sales tip all the time. Be professional. When the pursuit of professional behavior blocks the expression of our personality, it can hurt our sales.

“Don’t you get it? These…are part of your unique formula.”

A Story About “Professionalism”
Many years ago I was having lunch with one of the top sales professionals in our organization. His name was Kyle and I was his sales manager. We were having a nice lunch and were discussing sales tips that both of us could use to improve our performance. Please keep in mind that Kyle was a consistent top 10 performer in a very large sales organization.

Our lunch was going smoothly until he said, “I need to work on talking more slowly. I think I come across a little hyperactive to my customers. I just need to tone things down. I’m not professional enough.”

Our Inherent Value
I instantly put my fork down, leaned over the table and said to him, “Kyle, no one will ever accuse you of having low energy, that’s for sure. You definitely don’t waste any time getting your thoughts out either. It’s those things about you that cause people to like you and do business with you. There are millions of low energy, slow talking sales sluggards out there. Why would you want to look and sound like them? Don’t change anything; it will only come across as disingenuous anyway. Don’t you get it? These attributes of yours are part of your unique formula.”

Our Foundation
Our core personality is what makes our sales skills work in the first place. It’s the foundation from which our sales capabilities grow. We’ve all seen people in sales who had outstanding sales skills but sadly had been subjected to a “personality bypass” at an early age. Their successes were usually few. We want to act professionally, of course, but not to the point of masking our individuality and character.

A sales tip to sales managers reading this - please don’t try to change the personalities of sales professionals. It’s not possible. It will only damage relationships with them and will hinder any sales skills training efforts.

Kyle understood my message and has thanked me a dozen times for what I said to him that day. He was promoted into sales management and to this day has fortunately not changed his unique personality. He still talks fast, and we love him for it.

Further reading: What’s the difference between crazy and genius in sales? Results.

To receive this sales tips blog by email <click here> to receive by RSS <click here>. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer