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INSPECT THE BASKETS!
So many of our newsletter readers have attended one of my training or speaking events in the past and have heard me discuss the importance of regularly inspecting the baskets. This is an activity, that if done at least monthly, will in it’s own right add increased business to your bottom line. So, let’s take a look.
Every sales professional should be maintaining three baskets of business:
- Prospects
- Customers
- Clients
Prospects are people/firms that aren’t currently doing business with us, but we sure wish they were. Customers are those firms/people who buy from us occasionally but not regularly. Clients are the very best-those people/firms that do business with us regularly and ongoing. The Sales Professional’s goal should be to build a clientele. We then call this working smarter, not harder. In fact, the top sales performers tend to work with less people and trade off of their relationships.
So, back to inspecting the baskets. For a starter, each sales person should identify the top twenty in each of the three baskets and inspect what stands in the way of winning over their business, and what actions are being taken to winning them over. Once we are solidly reviewing the Top Twenty, we suggest adding another twenty, and so forth. Over the years, what we have experienced is the age old things that get measured, get done. Do this on a regular basis, and watch your business grow!
If you know of anyone who you believe would benefit from receiving our newsletter on a regular basis, we’d appreciate you forwarding this issue along to them. One job of today’s sales professional is to help others in their business. We thank you in advance for doing so.
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WHO ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?
Last month we announced a strategic alliance with BlueChip Solutions, a firm specializing in finding and landing top sales professionals. Since finding this talent is one of our management readers’ greater challenges, CEO/founder Joe Miller has agreed to contribute to our newsletter some suggestions in this critical area. This month he shares his thoughts on “The Horse”.
The Horse
The famous racehorses Smarty Jones, Spectacular Bid, Alysheba and Real Quiet all have three things in common. The obvious connection is that they all were supposed to win the impossible Triple Crown and they all lost at Belmont. They all had to be whipped to run and win. All of them were whipped wrong in the Belmont, causing them to lose. Sorry for Stewart Elliot, Ronnie Franklin, Chris McCarran and Kent Desormeaux (the Jockeys who messed up the ride) and sorry to the fabulous horses. At the end of the race it takes more than just raw talent and passion. It also takes proper riding to win the race.
And so it is with salespeople. There are plenty of salespeople out there that have passion. There are even more out there that have talent and potential. Still yet, there are even more who start out great and die off after six months. Combine it all together and you have a salesperson who has great skills, awesome desire and attitude, is great with people and building relationships, starts out like a ball of fire and then 6-12 months later, they get comfortable and slow down. In the sales world, this is called a Horse.
Horses are great salespeople, and when properly managed, will deliver great results. As a manager, if you keep the salesperson on a tight rope by tracking their behaviors in detail, you will know exactly when to apply the whip and when to back off. If you keep them positively motivated, they will sell their heart out for you. A Horse needs to be trained regularly and always needs to be given larger and larger challenges to conquer. The combination of Horse and Rider (manager) will lead to victory or defeat.
The shame with sales Horses and racehorses is the same. If they fail after a great start they usually get put out to pasture or stud. Look carefully at your sales team and identify the Horses. If you are hiring a new salesperson and realize they are a Horse, you must manage them properly, immediately, in order to bring in the business you expect from them. There’s nothing harder than breaking a horse with bad habits. And, as losing jockey Stewart Elliot can tell you, you need to ride the Horse properly to get them to win.
For more information on landing sales pros for your company, please contact Jennifer Geiger, Chief Opportunity Officer, at 888-298-6868, or at Jennifer@jackdaly.net.
THE WORLD IS FLAT
Have you heard about it? The book, that is. Written by Thomas L. Friedman, it may be the best business book I’ve read in years. And, I write this to you while only halfway through the book! I chose not to wait, because I think the value is that important to get out to our database, particularly our CEO/business owners. When did it happen? How did it happen? And, how did so many of us miss it? As you read this book, you will come to realize how very small the world has become, what it means to you and your business, and a wakeup call to each of us as far as business threats and opportunities. One of my business partners is fond of this expression: There is good news. There is bad news. And, there is no news. The former two he can deal with; the latter is the most troubling. The news is in this book, and I guarantee you that the news you will get on supply chains for services and manufacturing, the business paradigm shifting via China and India in the marketplace, and the globalization of businesses of all sizes will be invaluable. And, if just reading this passage causes you to believe this is more applicable to big business, you especially need to rush out and get the news.
E-MAIL STATIONERY
We have heard from many of you in our database with whom we have been in contact with this past month via email about our “new look emails”. What a simple, yet very effective way to get people to visit your website and at the same time enhance your professional look and brand. Consistency is always the key. The company suppling us with our great new look is Stationerycentral.com. You can visit their website or click on the link below to see what terrific web-based vehicles they have to offer. http://www.stationerycentral.com/?aff=10
OLDIES but GOODIES
For the past 6 years we have historically produced a newletter from Professional Sales Coach, Inc. With this Daly News newsletter as replacement, we wanted to remind our readers of a feature each month pulled from the archives which continues to be content rich. Professionalism requires life long learning.
Are You A Sales Professional?
Several tips that separate the Pros-from
all the other Joes
by Jack Daly
Put this dynamic guide in the hands of your salespeople and give them a road map for improvement.Relationship selling means different things to different people. However, on this we should all be able to agree: successful career development depends upon how well we strengthen continuing business relationships with our customers.
Some sales people have built numerous valuable business relationships over five years. Others have been in the business for one year five times -they do deals, but don’t establish strong professional relationships with their referral sources.
A very insightful measure into your success as a sales rep is how many “clients” you have developed. We define a client as someone who gives you, on a regular basis, 50 percent or more – if not all – of his or her business. In essence, you are the partner of that business source.
Superstar sales people tell us that 80 percent of their business regularly comes from a few accounts. Others may envy their steady stream of referrals, but aren’t willing to discipline themselves to build strong business relationships.
Measure your activities against the standards and adjust your work efforts to build a more satisfying and profitable career.
THE RULES OF SELLING
- Self renewal required
- Personal and professional vision
- Total quality management
- Invest in yourself
- See fewer people
- Transfer of trust
- Value-added partnerships
- Recognize support staff
- Be your own sales leader
- Career growth
1. SELF-RENEWAL describes the constant search for ways to improve your productivity. Productivity means becoming better, smarted and faster – a true professional. What are you doing to sharpen your axe?
A professional sales person is someone who:
- builds a continuing relationship with regular clients
- gets business from a customer who is already committed tosomeone else
- helps his or her business sources to reach their full potential
- constantly upgrades his or her clientele
2. TO BECOME A SUPERSTAR, or to reach the success level of your dreams, you must define your PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL VISION of your future.
Focus precedes success, so define your long-term goals, and then focus on them. Where we are now and where we want to be usually arte two different places. To close that gap, we begin by creating – in writing – our vision of the future.
3. QUALITY MANAGEMENT for any company starts with the sales force. Our company can only work with the business which we, as sales reps, provide it. Therefore it is incumbent upon us to seek quality business from quality sources.
Top sellers have done their homework. They know their products, services, and their company’s standards for clients. After targeting qualified prospects, they use proven methods of removing indifference and uncovering needs. They practice “if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me.”
If every salesperson could do his or her job correctly, order-processing delays would lesson considerably. We waste time and lose business because of poor quality management at the outset.
4. AS A SALES REP we are the CEO of our own business. The more our income comes from commissions, the more this is true. As the CEO of our company, we must perform a number of leadership activities.
One requirement for any chief executive is to invest capital in the business so profitable growth cam occur. So if a portable phone would increase your business, invest in it. If using a computer for preparing marketing material, storing your database, and updating status reports would help you – invest in the hardware and software.
If and educational training program would improve your professional skills, then invest in it. Don’t wait for your company to provide you with the success tools – MAKE THE INVESTMENT IN YOURSELF and reap the rewards!
5. MOST SELLERS CALL on too many prospects. In our belief, the assignment of a geographic territory to a professional salesperson promotes this misguided practice.
We believe you should target a limited number of top-quality account prospects, and then focus all call activity on this target list. A list would have more prospects for anew salesperson and fewer for a high producer with a strong referral base.
The goal of every sales rep should be to build a limited clientele of high-producing business sources. Concentrating your service – and helping these sources be successful – will produce far better results than trying to cover a large territory will.
In addition, focusing your efforts demands considerably less energy. You’re less likely to run yourself into both creative and physical exhaustion. Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch the basket.
Since focus precedes success, every salesperson should have at his or her fingertips a written target list of those you intend to do business with in the next six months. This list needs to be researched in order to be assured that these are prospects who will improve your clientele.
Every seller – no matter how successful – should add at least one new client per quarter. Anyone who’s not is living off his own fat.
We must constantly upgrade and reduce the number of our business sources until we work only with the highest-producing sources available. Once we have a committed clientele, we have a sales career rather than a job, and the rewards will be outstanding.
Professional sales reps are confident. Part of this comes from knowing their existing clientele will provide enough orders each month for them to be successful. They are able to perform as valuable consultants then, rather than being product pushers.
If you want to do more business SEE FEWER PEOPLE. Don’t reduce your call activity, but focus on high producers.
All top resources of business are already committed to someone else. But we can out-professional and out-position our competition, because every business source is looking for a sales person who adds more value.
6. Selling is the TRANSFER OF TRUST. If we analyze why prospects do business with a salesperson, the bottom line is trust. A trusting relationship has first been built between them.
So if you commit to initiate business from a new source you must first create a sense of trust. The primary reason customers do not use our services is their fear of making a bad decision.
It is easier to continue using someone else – even if they are not completely satisfied with the relationship – than it is to risk making a mistake. Dealing with a known is always more comfortable than risking the unknown.
Despite this reluctance to change sales reps, it is our experience that every customer will consider a new business relationship if we prove our value.
How to gain the attention of an attractive new business source is the art of selling. The most difficult objection that we face each day is indifference.
Remember that we don’t really sell our products or services to a prospect. Prospects buy our services because they trust that doing business with us is in their best interest.
It may be a subtle difference in concept, but the difference in results is very substantial, if practiced in field call activity. We want to develop direct relationships, not emphasize individual transactions. By doing so, our chances of handling all of our client’s orders increases.
7. A VALUE-ADDED PARTNERSHIP is a business relationship in which each partner receives more than expected.
The dictionary describes synergism as an action of two or more which achieves an effect of which each is each is individually incapable. To achievethis relationship each partner must think like the other – be empathic – and strive to find ways to assist his partner in being more successful.
Help your partners be more successful and no competition will ever take them away from you. In fact, we would be more successful if we would spend more time thinking of how to help our clients, and less time pushing product.
You can invest time to do this when you are serving only a limited number of business sources. As a salesperson we can contribute to our client partners:
- Promotional handouts which will help them resell your product
- Product information
- Leads which have contacted you directly
- Financing options
- Follow-up material to insure your clients and their customers are satisfied and understand
- how to use and care for the product, and to ask for referrals
- Co-op advertising
- Encouragement
- Friendship
As clients they can contribute to us as our business partner:
- All their business – that we can do
- Prompt payment of accounts
- Less demands for service
- Regular customer feedback
- Encouragement
- Friendship
- Presenting our product or service enthusiastically to the end user, or to decision makers in their firm
Most superstars report that working with their client partner is both easier and more mutually supportive than is dealing with someone they don’t know as well. Building lasting relationships is worth the initial time investment.
8. NO DISCUSSION of value-added partnerships would be complete without consideration of our partnership with our INSIDE SUPPORT STAFF. Frequently they are the unsung, unrecognized heroes of the day-to-day sales process.
As salespeople we bring in the business but our order processing, shipping, technical support, and billing departments make it happen. Without our team we are held back at best, and ineffective at the worst.
Nothing will do more to promote this teamwork than our recognition of their contributions and understanding of their problems.
We cause many of their problems by being overly demanding – by dropping it on them and telephoning them at all times – and by presenting a superior attitude. These things we can resolve by being courteous, building trust, and saying “thank you!”
9. FREQUENTLY WE RIDE SHOT GUN with sales reps for part of a day or visit with them about their work operations. In almost every case the salesperson knows what he or she should be doing differently
“Nothing is impossible unless you have to do it yourself.” But self discipline can be defined as: Doing what we should be doing, when we should be doing it, when we don’t want to do it!
At the beginning of each year we must step outside our daily activities to examine the past year. We should know how we spent our time and the results of each time investment. We should determine what went right and what went wrong. We should find out what changes would be helpful.
Success is achieved one step at a time. Success is evaluating past performance. Success is accepting personal responsibility. Success is remembering that – “if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me.”
In summary, we should BE OUR OWN SALES LEADER, as well as CEO of our business. And then act on our own advice.
10. MAXIMIZED CAREER GROWTH starts with what we believe. Belief is the guiding factor, principle, passion, and faith that provides direction in life.
We act in accordance with our beliefs. Commitment and a passion for what we do comes from a strong belief in our personal self worth, our value to others, and a clear vision of our future.
We are all capable of so much more. None of us know our true potential, yet we all know that we haven’t approached it. Our basic problems are lack of focus and an unwillingness to take on risk.
To help our growth, our business must have a written action plan. Progress on our plan must be reported to a mentor at least quarterly. But we also must analyze our results, knowing that we alone are responsible for whatever is achieved or not achieved.
Our Success Model suggests that the more we achieve, the stronger our beliefs will become. Powerful beliefs increase our potential. The greater our potential, the better we define our vision of the future. And the more complete our plan, the more successful are our results. Since focus precedes success, may we wish you –
GREAT TARGETING! |
