The power of using someone’s name

Posted on April 18, 2013 by admin

Why is it that when someone uses our name, we instantly jump to attention, our ears prick up, our antennae switches to high alert, and we pay a bit more attention? It’s because it’s the one thing that we totally associate with ourselves and no one else.

Yes there are many people with the same first name as you in the world, but when someone actually says the word in your vicinity, you instantly respond and pay more attention – they are talking to you.

Last week, I dropped my car off with the valet at the airport to get it cleaned whilst I was away for the day. Nothing special there, but when I approached the kiosk and handed my keys over, the gentleman behind the desk asked, “hi, can I take your business card please?” I handed over my card, and he said “thank you Linda, and how is Blue Banana treating you today?” Huh, my name! Instantly I thought “how on earth does he know, and how cool is that?” Of course, my business card followed by my Visa card gave him all the information he needed, but because so few people take the time and effort to actually use your name, it really stood out for me, he made me feel important, not just another number at the deli counter of life.

The taxi driver on the same day greeted me by name as the firm I was working with that day had booked him and filled him in with my name and where I was going. Nothing new there, but after we chatted during the journey, he wished me a safe flight home and once again used my name at the end in farewell. Nice.

People like to feel important; it’s human nature and by using someone’s name at the right time and in the right manner, it goes a long way to achieving this. It’s easy to do, and yet so few of us do it.

I was waiting in the reception area of a possible client recently, and noticed another chap waiting too. A staff member came out, approached the chap and inquired “Andrew?” “Paul” came the reply, and off they went together. At no time did the staff member apologize for getting his name wrong, and poor old Paul must have been thinking “if he can’t be bothered to get my name right, my interview / pitch is doomed from the start, I may as well leave now!” That’s an insult in anyone’s book.

So how can you use someone’s name just a little more and make them feel important?

Here are some everyday examples of how you can do just that:

Jot down the telephone callers name as soon as they introduce themselves and say “hello (insert name here)”. Make sure you say good-bye (insert name here) at the end of the call, even if it’s a telephone marketer that has interrupted you.

Use it at the beginning of your email rather than just launching into your message.

Why not add it into the beginning greeting of your text? With predictive text and an ample keypad, many people don’t use text language anymore, but full and proper words.

Replying to tweets or comments, you are still communicating person to person, just virtually so use their name here too.

Use the person’s name that you have just met by saying “hello (insert name here) good to meet you”. Saying it quickly after they have introduced themselves is a great way of remembering it.

So stand out a little from the crowd and be remembered because you remembered to use their name. It’s the single thing we all so love the sound of.

How do you use people’s names easily, do you have any comments to add?

Client said I was Priced too High, how do I Save the Deal?

Posted on October 17, 2012 by admin

What do you do when your client tells you that your proposal is twice the price of your nearest competitor? My client just called me and told me that my quote was 2X more expensive than the highest bid received from other companies. What do I do next?

First, don’t panic.

At least your client is talking to you. They could have just as easily thrown your proposal in the trash and never contacted you.

This could just be a ploy by your client to get you to lower your price or it could be a legitimate question about why your price is so high. Either way, your next move is to contact the client as soon as possible.

Your client is theoretically trying to make the best decision possible for their business and that is how you should approach this problem as well. Be a resource to truly help them figure out the best course of action.

If your price is 2X your nearest competitor, either:

A. You misunderstood the requirements.

B. Everyone misunderstood the requirements except you.

C. You are offering something of additional value that your competitors are not offering.

D. You are priced too high for your market.

If you have a great relationship with your client, I would ask to meet with them and help them compare the competitors proposal to your own to make sure it is a fair comparison.

I would do the following:

1. Review the specific issues that the client said was important to have addressed in the proposal. If you can get the client to rank the issues in order of importance, that would be even better. (See point #8.)

Doing this exercise should tell you if you and your client are in agreement on what all of their issues are that should be addressed in the proposal and help you identify if the problem with your client is A, B or C above.

2. If you have a unique service or offering that would be of value to your client that your competitor is not capable of matching, you can try to get that service included on the “important issues to address” list, though you should have done this the first time around. I would just say make sure you keep your clients best interests in mind when making this decision.

3. Once you are certain you and your client are in agreement on what issues need to be addressed in the proposal, ask to review the quotes.

4. Compare your quote and the competitors quote to the ranked list of issues and point out the specific spots where the proposals differ from each other or the list.

5. If you have addressed issues in your proposal not on the list or that the client does not want it is up to you to offer to remove the item or convince the client that they need it and to pay the additional cost associated with it.

6. If your proposal has addressed everything on the list, but your competitors proposal has not, ask the client if the item the competitor left off is important. If it is important, the competitor needs to add it, if it is not truly important, take that item off your proposal and adjust the price accordingly.

7. If your competitor has offered a very low price to get the business that you do not think they can honor, explain your concern to the customer and offer a fixed price or a guarantee to meet the price you quoted to eliminate the advantage such a tactic might give your competitor.

8. If the client did rank their issues in order of importance and price seems to be their ultimate concern, you might offer to remove the lowest ranking issues from the proposal and reduce your price accordingly.

9. OPTION: Offer up a discount/rebate or refund if you are wrong. You could offer to charge a lower rate if your actual costs are lower than what you are predicting in your proposal.

Good luck!

Why Your Sales Manager Wants You to Make More Calls

Posted on September 6, 2012 by admin

Short answer: Because you aren’t making enough calls.

It’s true that there is a difference between efficiency and effectiveness. It’s also true that way too many sales managers demand efficiency because it’s easier than helping their salespeople improve their effectiveness. But just like all sales problems aren’t efficiency problems that need to be solved with more activity, not all sales problems are effectiveness problems either.

Sometimes the reason your sales manager wants you to make more calls is because you need to make more calls.

You Tried It Your Way

Most of the time sales managers wait far too long to diagnose an efficiency problem. They want to allow the salesperson to do whatever works for them. If the salesperson is effective prospecting their own way, most sales managers want to support them. As long as what they are doing is working.

It’s when the email marketing, the social selling, and the waiting have produced no pipeline to speak of that sales managers start to ratchet up the pressure. When your approach isn’t working, it’s time to try another approach.

How Many Calls Is Enough?

I know a salesperson that can book four or five calls out of ten. She’s just that good. If you were new to sales, watching her would make you believe that prospecting is easy. You might allow yourself to believe that you can make a few calls and wildly succeed too. But you would be wrong.

You need to do whatever amount of prospecting that you need to do to build your pipeline. It’s personal to you. You might need to do much more than someone else, even someone in the same job, in the same company, with the same goals. If you are really effective, you might need to make far fewer calls than your peers. But if you aren’t effective, you just have to grind away and do the work. For now anyway.

Your Sales Manager Is Right . . . Now

Your sales manager is right. The right remedy for what is ailing you is more activity when you aren’t doing enough to give yourself a fighting chance.

But your sales manager doesn’t have to be right forever. Here’s the truth: The more calls you make, the more effective you become. If you make a lot of calls, you get better fast. If you never make the number of calls you need to improve, it will take you forever to build any real competence. Let’s say it takes 1,000 calls to improve one level (whatever that might mean). You can make those calls in a month or two, or you can make those calls in a year or two. But the sooner you make those calls, the sooner you can succeed in sales making fewer calls.

For now, give an increase in activity a chance, and give yourself a fighting chance. Just make more calls.

Questions

When is more activity the right answer to low sales numbers and a weak pipeline?

When is it time to give up a prospecting approach that isn’t working and try something new (or old)?

Why can some salespeople produce better results with their peers with less activity?

What’s the fastest way to improve your effectiveness at some task?

What is your prospect thinking?

Posted on August 27, 2012 by admin

Selling has become more difficult and challenging in recent years. However, if you think it’s tough to sell, try being a corporate decision maker.

Anyone who is responsible for making buying decisions experiences stress when they are faced with these decisions. Even if they like your product or service they will have questions and concerns about making a decision.

The problem is that many of these questions will NEVER be verbally expressed.

Here are just a few of the possible concerns and questions that occupy their mind space during your sales conversation.

1. How can this sales person or his company help me?

2. What’s in it for me? How will I personally benefit?

3. What happens if the company fails to execute or deliver what this sales person says they will do?

4. Are the claims about this product accurate?

5. How will this decision affect me and my position?

6. I’ve heard other sales people say that before, why should I believe this person?

7. What will happen if I do nothing?

8. How hard am I going to have to fight to get approval for this? Is it worth the fight?

9. Who is going to challenge me and oppose this decision?

10. How will this decision affect my boss’s perception of me?

11. What will my boss think about this decision?

12. We tried something like this before and it didn’t work; why should I consider it again?

13. How difficult is it going to be to implement this solution?

14. Is it worth the headache and hassle to make the change or is it simpler just to deal with the status quo?

15. Is the problem really big enough?

16. How much is this going to cost in terms of soft costs such as people, time, meetings, etc.?

17. What hasn’t the sales person told me?

18. What hidden costs haven’t been factored into this solution?

Not every decision maker is going to have ALL of these questions running through their head but I guarantee that ALL of your prospects will have several questions or concerns at the very least.

That means it is critical that you find out what questions your prospect has on their mind.

Unless you uncover AND deal with these questions and concerns, it is unlikely that your prospect will actually make an affirmative buying decision.

The next time you’re talking to a prospect about your offering think about the questions running through their head and figure out how you will deal with those concerns.

Are you winging it?

Posted on August 24, 2012 by admin

190

1 The other day I was reading an excellent blog post about the effectiveness of Steve Jobs’ presentations. The writer accurately suggested that part of Jobs’ success was the visual component because he knew exactly how to create a compelling presentation on Keynote (Apple’s version of PowerPoint).

A reader of the blog commented with the following statement…

“I have a presentation tomorrow morning to a group of new employees at our company. I have given it once before, about 3-4 months ago. I worked for a while on it them, and it went well. So I was going to wing it this time. But after reading this, I spent a few minutes reviewing it to ensure I bring the enthusiasm to it that our new employees deserve.”

Yikes!

Just because you delivered a presentation ONCE, several months ago doesn’t mean you should wing it. I don’t believe you should EVER deliver any type of presentation without first rehearsing it. And spending a few minutes reviewing does not count as rehearsal!

When a company hires me to deliver a keynote speech at a conference or sales meeting, I run through my presentation up to ten times prior to the actual day of the conference. I don’t memorize every word but I do make sure that all of the points flow properly together and that I remember the key points and examples I want to make.

Sales presentations deserve the same attention

Rehearsal helps to ensure that your presentation flows logically from one point to the next. You can ensure that the key points are properly addressed.

As you practice you can think of potential objections and address them directly in your presentation. You can also time your presentation to make sure that you finish ahead of schedule

Rehearsal also gives you the opportunity to run through your slide deck and update any slides that are outdated or no longer relevant.

Recipe for disaster

Winging a sales presentation is a recipe for disaster, regardless of how experienced you are.

I have conducted countless sales meetings and still make sure that I run through my presentation a few times beforehand to ensure that I am prepared.

But…I learned this the hard way…

Last year I was invited to conduct a sales presentation for several days of sales training. Because I knew the company and the people and had worked with them before, I didn’t rehearse my presentation. I figured I could wing it.

BIG mistake!

Shortly after I began I noticed a typo on one of the slides. Then, someone asked me a question I hadn’t anticipated (although I should have) and I faltered in my response. When I left their office I couldn’t help but shake my head at my poor performance.

Don’t wing it

The next time you catch yourself thinking, “I’ve done that presentation before so I can wing it” remember that your prospects deserve more. Plus, you also give a competitor who doesn’t wing it a better chance to capture that sales opportunity.

How to Succeed at Cold calling

Posted on August 21, 2012 by admin

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post called, “How to Waste Your Time When Cold Calling.” It sparked some conversation and several people asked me what they CAN do to improve their cold calling efforts.

So, here are 9 things you can do that will help you achieve better results when making cold calls. Please note that this is for B2B sales situation and not mass calls in a business-to-consumer setting.

1. Target your cold calls

The first and most important way to succeed at cold calling is to use a targeted list. Flipping through the telephone book or picking up the telephone to dial for dollars is not an effective way to prospect via telephone.

People who achieve the best results use a carefully targeted list of companies who have used or need their product, service or solution. Ask any cold calling expert and they will tell you that the quality of your list with have a direct impact on your results.

2. Research before you cold call

Once you have a good list of companies to contact, you need to do a bit of research. This research will help you determine the best approach to take and how to capture your contact’s attention.

For example, as a sales trainer, if I learned that a company recently downsized their sales team, I would use this information to craft my opening.

3. Refine your cold call opening

Your opening needs to be short, concise and to the point while also demonstrating how your prospect might benefit from your offering.

If we use my example from the previous point, my opening might sound something like, “Mr. Jones, Kelley Robertson from Fearless Selling calling. I read in the national paper that you just laid-off one-third of your sales force. Our research has shown that companies often experience an immediate decline in morale when this happens and their sales suffer as a result. What’s your experience been so far?”

The key is to open quickly and keep your opening as short as possible…ideally no longer than 20-25 seconds at a slightly-slower-than-normal pace.

4. Avoid the pitch

If you noticed, I didn’t immediately launch into a pitch about my services or what I do. Instead, I gave my opening and followed it by a question.

Now, the chances are my prospect will ask, “What do you do?” or “Who are you?” or something similar before answering my question.

Don’t get tricked into talking about yourself yet!

Instead, give a brief reply and ask your question again.

“I specialize in helping companies keep their sales team motivated and up-to-date with the latest selling strategies. When I saw that you had downsized I thought it would be appropriate to contact you. How has your team’s morale been since the lay-offs?”

5. Speak slower during your cold call

Most of the sales people who call my office tend to speak to quickly and they also change their tone while calling.

When you slow down your pace you come across more natural and your tone will become more conversational. Plus, it makes it much easier for your prospect to understand you.

6. Engage them

One of the keys to cold calling is to engage people in a conversation and the most effective way to achieve that is to ask questions.

However, you need to lead into your questions and start with softer questions. You can’t open a conversation by asking, “So, what are the three biggest challenges you face right now?”

You need to demonstrate to your prospect that having a conversation with you will be worth their time.

7. “Send me information”

Many prospects will say, “Send me information” in an effort to end the call. However, before you agree to this, you need to ask at least one more question.

Sending generic information will not close a deal for you so I suggest that you say, “I’d be more than happy to send you information. What exactly do you need to see?”

8. Use a referral

It is much more effective to connect with a prospect if you both know someone in common. Whenever possible, use your existing network to connect with new prospects.

It’s all about the numbers

Regardless of how you slice or dice it, cold calling is a numbers game. Recognize that the majority of calls you make will NOT result in a sale.

9. Start cold calling immediately

Very few sales people enjoy cold calling so they procrastinate and work on other tasks.

However, it is much more effective to get started first thing in the morning because it creates momentum and gets the unpleasant task out of the way.

Set a goal of making a certain number of calls or booking a specific number of appointments and don’t quit until you achieve that goal. If you’re new at this, set small, attainable goals and gradually work your way towards larger, more challenging targets.

Cold calling is still an effective way to generate new sales leads and revenues. Use the ideas in this post to improve your results and stop wasting your time.

Faking it?

Posted on August 16, 2012 by admin

You have probably heard the saying, “Fake it until you make it.” This expression suggests that you should fake something until it actually happens or comes true.

I don’t disagree with this…at least not for some things…

There have been times that I have been sick on the day of a presentation and I kept telling myself, “I feel great. I feel great. I feel great.” And when it came time to deliver my speech, I did feel better.

I have experienced days when I was wasn’t feeling tremendously confident but I changed my body positioning and tone of voice, and a little while later, my confidence level improved.

However, sometimes faking it isn’t the best approach.

A few days ago, my wife and I were taking a walk through our neighborhood and we came across a property whose owner had replaced the grass on his front yard with artificial turf.

That’s right…artificial turf!

I’m not sure what his rationale was but replacing real grass with fake grass just didn’t work. His lawn stood out—and not in a good way!

Unfortunately, some sales people still think that faking it is an effective sales strategy.

In my profession as a sales trainer, I have encountered sales people who say, “If you don’t know the answer to someone’s question, just fake it” or “Baffle them with B.S.” or “Tell them what they want to hear” or even “They don’t know so it doesn’t matter what I tell them.”

I once heard someone say, “If you never lie to a prospect you will never have to remember what you said.”

I think that’s wise advice.

It may be tempting to pretend that you know something, but in the long run, your prospects will find out that you don’t. It is much more effective to say, “I’m not sure about that, let me find out and I’ll get back to you.”

Faking it can be a great way to improve your mental outlook or break out of a slump. But it is not an effective approach to use when engaged in sales conversations with your prospects and customers.

via Blog | Fearless Selling Kelley Robertson – Part 2.

How to Turn a Relationship Into a Sale

Posted on August 14, 2012 by admin

Sales teams that focus on relationships quickly learn the value of providing personal and professional value to clients rather than focusing solely on the sale.

The impact of relationship building with your customers may surprise you. Ferrazzi Greenlight’s study of 16 Global Account Teams (PDF) showed that these strategic, relationship-focused teams grew their accounts at least twice as fast as regular transactionally-focused account teams. This happened despite the fact that the relationship-focused teams worked on the company’s largest, most mature accounts — the most difficult to expand rapidly because they were already so large.

Why? People do business with people they know and like. And people like people who focus on their success. That means a sales call is a success if it advances your customers’ cause and builds the relationship, not just if it closes a transaction.

This won’t be news to most salespeople, who excel at building relationships. What can be hard for many sales people is turning the ongoing conversation of a relationship into a transaction.

The good news is that transactions often happen as a matter of course when sales teams focus on building great relationships with generosity.

Generosity Without Expectations of Tit for Tat

One of the things I advise salespeople to do is to be prepared with five packets of generosity and no expectations. Do the homework required to go into each meeting with a list of five ways to make the person you’re meeting successful. That’s what’s going to arrest people’s attention and make them willing to develop a closer relationship with you.

What kind of homework? I’m not talking about the usual research on the company and its need for what you’re selling. Research the person! You’re looking for personal reasons to care. Find a way to introduce something that leverages your shared interests. Failing that, fall back to some deeply-held personal interests of your own. Talking about them will make you human, not just a sales person pushing a service or a widget.

The End of Relationship Selling

Posted on August 13, 2012 by admin

I am not going to sugarcoat this, and I am not going to be polite.

All of this talk about the end of relationship selling is pure, unadulterated hogwash. While those that declare relationship selling to be dead shout louder, ignore their words. They couldn’t be more wrong.

You will hurt yourself and your sales by believing and acting on this horrid and horrible idea. Relationships are an essential part of winning an opportunity. They are also the biggest part of retaining your clients.

Where the Critics Are Right (and Wrong)

There are two reasons that the critics bash relationship selling.

The first reason critics bash relationship selling is that too many sales people believe that a warm, friendly relationship is enough to win and sustain client relationships. The critics are correct; it isn’t enough. Your relationship must be built on the firm foundation of your ability to continually create value for your client.

The critics mistakenly suggest that relationships and value creation are mutually exclusive. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that the stronger your relationship, the greater the likelihood that you will be trusted to sell the ideas that create value, especially the big ideas that lead your client.

The second reason the critics are crooked on relationships is because so many salespeople avoid the necessary conflict that accompanies selling. These salespeople are conflict averse. And again the critics are correct.

But the critics of relationship selling make the mistake of believing that a warm relationship and an ability to deal effectively with conflict are mutually exclusive, that they can’t exist in the same body at the same time. But relationships and conflict aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, a strong relationship improves the odds of a conflict being successfully resolved. Wouldn’t you want a strong relationship going into a conflict? Wouldn’t you want to have a relationship that could withstand a nasty issue?

What Is and What Isn’t a Relationship

A personal friendship is a surely a relationship, but it doesn’t rise to the level of an effective sales relationship. Your warm, friendly, personal relationship must be coupled with an equal or greater amount of value creation.

If your personal relationship means that you can’t effectively manage the conflicts that accompany selling, then you don’t have an effective sales relationship. One who can’t deal with conflict in sales is an order-taker.

An effective selling relationship is personal, professional, value creating, and built on trust. If you would be a trusted advisor, you are going to have to deal with conflict, and you are going to have to have the relationships to withstand those conflicts. If you are going to be a Level Four Value Creator, you are going to need the relationships that allow you to act as part of your client’s management team, and your clients don’t want people on their team with whom they don’t have great relationships.

You can make a lot of mistakes and still win in sales. Believing that you can go without relationships isn’t one of them. In a time when so many people are behaving like sales is transactional, swim against the current and build the deep relationships that success is built on.

All things being equal, relationships win. All things being unequal, relationships still probably win.

Questions

Are your relationships important to selling effectively?

Can you have a personal, warm, friendly relationship with your client and still sell effectively? Can you have that relationship and still create value?

Do your relationships enable you to effectively deal with conflict, or do they cause you to avoid conflict?

At the time of your dream client’s decision, would you rather have a strong personal and professional relationship, or would you rather just try to sell the value you create?

Have you ever lost a deal that you should have won because your competitor had the relationship? Have you ever won a deal that you should have lost because your competitor had a strong relationship?

4 Tips for Effective Pre-Call Sales Planning

Posted on August 6, 2012 by admin

Stymied about what to say when you contact a prospect?

It’s especially tough if you feel like you don’t know enough about their organization to craft a relevant message. Recently, Katrina wrote to me about her frustration with pre-call sales planning:

“In your books, you talk about the importance of doing research prior to contacting a prospect. I’m having a hard time with that. I sell to marketing departments. But since companies don’t share that information publicly, it’s really tough to find out what issues they have. What should I do?”

She’s right. It’s virtually impossible to find that kind of information online. Companies don’t want to have their problems exposed to the public unless absolutely necessary.

4 Tips for Pre-Call Sales Planning

If you consistently sell to the same decision makers, make assumptions. Assume that they have similar objectives and face similar challenges as your existing clients. For example, most marketers today are under intense pressure to bring in more high quality leads or to justify their marketing spend. My Buyer’s Matrix is an excellent tool to help you outline the challenges your prospect is facing. (Click here to download it for free.)

If you typically sell to certain industries, immerse yourself in them. Join their associations, attend their meetings, get their newsletters and dig into their websites. Another great resource for learning more is via LinkedIn groups. You’ll find groups focused on certain industries as well as job positions. Personally, I belong to groups for VP’s of Sales just so I can keep up-to-date.

Prep some questions ahead of time to ensure you learn what’s top-of-mind for your prospect. Use your assumptions and what you’ve learned in your immersion as a starting point. When you actually meet with prospects you’ll want to find out their perspectives on these important topics.

Don’t be afraid of not knowing everything. No one expects it. They just want you to be knowledgeable and show you’ve done your homework.

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