What Will Define You?

In 2007, what habits and traits will define you as a sales professional?

More than the training you receive and the team you work with, your habits and traits will define your success this coming year, like they always have. You may find new tools. You may inherit a new sales manager. You may change companies or receive a promotion. In the short term, these events may make things easier for you to achieve your personal goals. But…

…they won’t define you.

So, how what habits and traits will define you in 2007? Persistence? Confidence? Grit? Energy? Enthusiasm? Steadiness? Diligence? Creativity?

Better to have a vision of who you are and what you will accomplish, and a plan to get where you want to go, than to simply let it play out this year.

How to Keep an Eye on Your Competition

The message is this: if you’re not up-to-speed on what your competitors are doing, you’re reacting way too late.

The best way to stay close to the latest real-world information is to continually stay close to your existing clients and your competition’s efforts to sway them away from you. But there are also two great tools I’d like to highlight for helping as well.

One is Google Alerts. I’ve posted about this service previously, but in a message about pre-appointment research. You can use this just as effectively to track news, blogs, and other sites’ references to your competitors. It’s crazy not to set one of these up–it’s simple, as unobtrusive as you want it to be, and if you set up the search correctly, spot-on in terms of relevance.

The other service is Competitious, which I’ve not mentioned here before. Competitious is a free online tool that lets you easily track news and information on your competitors, compare features and services, share and discuss any information you pull into the system with others on your team.

Competitious’ emerging service is pretty powerful whether you’re a resourceful sales professional or sales manager looking for ways to stay on top of your foes. You can customize all sorts of information in the system, and your team can add whatever bits and pieces they’d like.

Very powerful stuff in the making here. Besides visiting their site, you can learn more about them here, here and here. Check them out as you look ahead to 2007…

Reasons For Not Making Quota

Did you make quota this year?

If no, don’t use the reasons below, they’re pathetic, they’re beneath you, they’re not becoming of a sales professional, and sales managers shake their heads in disbelief whenever they hear them.

• My quota was unfair. It didn’t take into consideration my specific circumstances. When I think my quota’s a little unfair, it’s hard to get motivated to try.
• My quota was too aggressive. My territory’s unique; it’s unlike any other territory in our company. No one else has the challenges I do.
• I didn’t get enough training. I waited and waited but no one trained me to be better at my job.
• I lost a client I couldn’t have possibly foreseen.
• My biggest client’s business was soft (but they expect to rebound next year!).
• I didn’t get the support I need. My pricing department/marketing department/engineering department/special order department/manufacturing/boss didn’t come through like they should have.
• I lost time in the last month due to that regional meeting we had to attend. That really hurt, I had several deals that needed my attention.
• There’s too much change going on around here. Seems like some policy or procedure is always being revised.
• I haven’t heard back on those deals I was hoping to close at the end of the year. I’m pretty sure we’ll get them early next year, but you know how it goes.

And possibly the worst reason for not making quota: “I missed? By how much?”

Heard any far-fetched reasons this year? I want to hear about them, feel free to send them via email or the form below.

Is an Online Act-Killer Emerging?

Another online tool I’ve recently discovered is Oprius Software’s Foundations product. In my opinion, it is flat-out an online Act-killer.

I recently posted about GrandCentral’s emerging unified messaging-like service. Much like them, Oprius has a few things to straighten out, about Foundations, but there’s much to like, too.

Read the full post

Mythical Decision-Influencers

We all have such high opinions of ourselves. Yet, many people are decision-influencers in their mind only.

Think about your objective as a sales professional–to make a good, profitable sale…as quickly as possible. The fact is, there are people whose opinions are sought out and you need to build at least a working rapport with, and those who are involved as a courtesy only. Spending too much time with the latter will reduce or kill your chances of meeting your objective. These people are low-ROI impostors.

Be observant. Watch interaction with the final decision-maker. Gauge the rapport people have. Monitor how often they are asked for details and technical specifications, or for their opinion in general. What’s their body language or interpersonal style when around the decision-maker–confident or shy? Hesitant or assertive? Comfortable or distanced?

It’s important that you sort out the low-ROI impostors from the high-ROI influencers as quickly as possible during complex sales to keep you on track and focused on the right people.

GrandCentral for Managing Calls

Do you have one local phone number to give out to friends, family, prospects and clients? Some sales professionals do. How about one consolidated voicemail box for your cell, home and home office calls? How about an anti-spam-like (or all out blocking) filter for handling unwanted calls?

And how about all of this, with the ability to save voicemails for an unlimited amount of time, after adding your own notes?

I’ve been testing a free service called GrandCentral for a little while now to do these things and more, and while it’s not the be-all, end-all, it’s solid. (Unnecessary disclaimer: I am offering GrandCentral as a sales tool for you to check out; I have no vested interest.) Read the full post

11 More Bad Behaviors of Sales Reps

If you missed the previous rant, read it too!

• Bad-mouthing your client’s employees (ignoring a personal or family relationship that could exist).
• Selling out your company’s employees to prop yourself up (which has the opposite effect).
• Thinking too much about the order, not the account.
• Wearing terribly out-of-date clothing that detracts from you and your message.
• One-upping your contact by following their stories with your own tales of woe, success, frustration, or social observations.
• Alienating buyers by reminding them that they are much younger or older than you.
• Over-reliance upon email as your primary or only form of communication.
• Talking about your personal struggles. You bring people down emotionally and physically when you load them up with your burdens.
• Calling to “check in.” This offers the client no value and wastes their time.
• Sign of apathy #1: Disregarding or downplaying what your client tells you as not important, not informed, or not enlightened.
• Sign of apathy #2: Making your lack of interest and concern an outward expression. This includes saying things such as “I don’t know and I don’t care…“

7 Simple Tips for More Effective Sales Calls

Another great guest-post by Mike Sigers at Simplenomics.com.

Here’s the thing I’m running into with many tier 2 sales professionals (by “tier 2″ I mean those who are early or mid-career who are selling less than $1MM per year, in high activity industries), too many don’t really sharpen their skills. They don’t think through what they want to happen or what could happen on sales calls. They don’t approach their visits as though they’re a professional.

They apply blue-collar thinking, if you will. But let’s get to Mike’s content…

7 Simple Tips for More Effective Sales Calls

1. Decide on the objective of the sales call. Making a sale in not reason enough. Asking for the order too early is as bad as not asking. Just like in building a home, the foundation you lay is the most important part of the sales equation.

2. Review all known facts about the prospect. Who else do they buy from ? Have they announced any new products lately ? Any new clients ? Any news releases of any kind?

3. List all the benefits that are available to those that use your product. Make sure to solve all of your prospects problems with your solution.

4. Focus on the selling points that evolve from all of the benefits in #3. Write them down, in the sequence that they are likely to come up. Know this list inside and out and don’t be afraid to let the prospect see the list. He’ll see that you were thinking about his business.

5. Assemble a file that includes spec sheets, photos, testimonials, test data, etc. Use it to support your sales story. Make the prospect aware of your desire to help his business.

6. Make a list of all possible objections to the sale. Have at least 2 solutions for each one. Add to the list every time you make a call on a prospect in this same field.

7. Write out a pre-closing summary. Then write another one, then a third one. Be ready for every possible conclusion to this meeting.

How Mentally Tough Are You?

Another sister site to justsell.com was launched this year by Sam Parker and his associates at MaxPitch Media. What a great, quick rundown it is on what it means to be mentally tough in the sales profession. Check it out at http://www.salestough.com.

Pipelinedeals: Another Step Forward

If you read Salesteamtools.com often, you know I love the powerful simplicity of Pipelinedeals.com. I love it because it gives you everything you need to manage and share the prospects in your pipeline easily and online, and nothing that you don’t need.

Yet again, Nick and his team have made a subtle but huge improvement in functionality that you can read more about here. Simply put, it allows you to update your deal summaries, status, revenue potential, stage, and the anticipated close date from within one screen–the report screen, if you can believe it.

This means that not only can you easily update each deal with one click from one screen, it’s the same screen you would print in portrait or landscape mode to submit to a sales manager. Beautiful. Simple. Powerful.

If you haven’t investigated Pipelinedeals.com, it’s a must. I’ve been using and testing the features of this system for a few months now, and they’re stellar. Check them out.

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