Secret Weapon For Competing On Price

There are recent opinions spreading around on the bad practice of competing solely on price. The problem of slashing prices to win deals comes from two sources:

1. Salespeople don’t understand how their company makes money (nor where it breaks-even) on clients.

2. Salespeople lack the sales training to properly handle premature price objections.

I’ve got thoughts on both of these, with a secret weapon at the end.

Read the full post

Microsoft Office Alternatives

Maybe it’s time to move away from the Microsoft Office suite.

Much like the online Act-killers out there, those online and off who would take down Microsoft’s behemoth Office have been increasingly successful rooting it out.

So if you need to get work done from home, but aren’t interested in shelling out the hundreds upon hundreds for the Office suite, there all sorts of other options out there, (check these search results if you really want to wade through them).

I’ve chosen three to share with you.

Read the full post

Don’t Remember, Write it Down

Don’t get cute when attending to client details.

In our neverending desire to appear to be “on the ball,” we too often hear what our clients tell us and try to commit it to memory. But if you’re managing dozens of client accounts with all of their various and multi-step todos and details, you’re destined to fail.

Write these things down. Keep a series of 3×5 note cards, pull out your planner or PDA, find something PERMANENT to jot your notes on, but don’t suggest to your client that you can remember it all. What happens if there are multiple issues to straighten out? What happens if another client calls the moment you walk out? What happens if some other distraction comes your way shortly after visiting?

You can drop the ball on something really important and lose clients. Those moments will be obvious to you. But it’s often the little things that alienate clients, drain their patience, erode our credibility with them, and ultimately lose the business. These we never fully appreciate and ignorantly chalk up to the competitor coming in and undercutting our price.

If you sell a commodity, or what’s perceived as a commodity. Be detail-minded when it matters. Show your clients you’re taking their requests and comments seriously by writing them down.

Get Past Your Halfway Moments

When pressure mounts, when the world says give up, or ease off the gas…what do you do?

We’ve all taken on tasks, projects, maybe even jobs or careers, that evolve into more complicated and difficult beasts than we initially expected or wanted. When this realization comes, you’ve reached a halfway moment, a moment where you could go either way: quit or push forward. Give up or solider on.

The popular, easier thing to do when your boss shows a rougher side is throw in the towel. You could reason that the grass is greener elsewhere. You could bounce to the next “fun” project or job. You could be one of those people that many of us shake our heads at — highly talented, but always getting hung up and sidetracked or totally derailed by the little things. Worse, you could be the one who gives up mentally, but is there physically.

Or you can remember the big picture. That life beats up all of us in different ways. That even if the grass is greener elsewhere, it’s still just grass. That people make mistakes. That things are always harder before they’re easy. That you’re not really building a career, you’re living a life.

In the sales profession this is more true than in any other. Halfway moments need not be mistakes that need recalled. They can be speed bumps, or dips, as Seth Godin calls them, that simply demand the best of us. Following the path of least resistance never produces greatness.

Focus on One Massive Improvement

People don’t want “slightly better” any more. Sorry. We don’t have time for it. If that’s what you sell, find a way to provide massive improvements.

Pick an area, maybe two, where you can significantly impact a customer’s or prospect’s business, with proof and testimonials, and you’ll have greater success than being slightly better in 6-7 areas.

Customers are suspicious of incremental gains. They’re too subtle and sensitive: change one variable, the gain goes away; one key person leaves the company, the gain goes away. If we’ve got to change processes, change equipment, change vendors, change packaging, for only slightly better results, we don’t see the effort as being worth it.

On the other hand, we’ll overhaul everything if we’re assured of a massive improvement. If we can be first in something because of the change…if we can save double-digit percentages in costs…if we can reduce headcount dramatically…if we can streamline in some other way to such a degree that our personal standing in our company is elevated…then, we’ll change.

They key is finding where you can apply true, measurable, massive improvements, and have the emotional data to back it up. It’s the difference between a decision-maker only saying “Interesting…” or “Hmm…” after your presentation vs. saying “Wow!”

Don’t Do What You Know You Shouldn’t Do

Isn’t this the most practical time management advice you can get? Of course, you can’t be ruled by the urgent tasks alone that are on your todo list, but you can’t get distracted by the unimportant diversions either.

25 Random Thoughts and Links on Selling

25 random thoughts on selling floating through my mind:

• Sales Training Camp does a phenomenal job with relevant, insightful teleseminars. The latest: Managing Your Pipeline.
• Thou shalt not covet specific prospects. Too many salespeople get fixed on winning specific accounts that they become emotionally attached. They hinge all their hopes and dreams on this…one…account. Here’s a health and wellness tip: don’t. Think instead about your overall pipeline’s quality.
• Know your value proposition cold. Don’t reinvent what you and your company do to help clients every time you’re in front of a new prospect. Get it nailed down, persuasively and colorfully, once and for all.
• Never interrupt your prospects or clients. Let them talk, even about the mundane stuff.
• Sell the “big picture,” not your products’ features. And make sure you’re talking to decision-makers who value that big picture…not the person who’s going to have to run it by the decision-maker.
• Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up. Never assume clients know you’re on top of things.
• Nobody wants to talk to someone who makes them feel lousy, but everyone wants a shot at someone who makes them feel good. — Warren Greshes.
• Every sales rep thinks they’re memorable because they’re funny or friendly. Those are likely not your differentiators, so you’ve got to bring more to the table than that.
• You’ll hear, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” all the time. But what about, “If it could be better, at least take a look.” Not as a catchy, but it may cause a prospect to think.
• How you sell isn’t nearly as important as why you sell. — Ron Willingham.
• Focus on things you can control.
• Things are never as bad as they seem. (Nor as perfect.)
• Don’t overly worry about being the nice salesperson. Be approachable, be on top of things, be respectful, be trustworthy.
• Respect your competition. Position them, but don’t badmouth them.
• Work via calendar, not drop-ins.
• Real appointments take place within the next 21 days. Anything beyond that isn’t really a scheduled appointment. It’s a hope.
• Play to your strengths. Be careful about taking on sales prospects where you’re going out on a shaky limb.
• Honesty earns respect.
• Timing alone will win you deals. Make enough contacts through cold calls, marketing, and networking to ensure you win those.
• Screen prospects out, don’t screen them in. Find reasons why a prospect would cause problems for your organization — don’t just chase the revenue potential.
• When you sell price you rent the business. When you sell value you own it. — Tim Connor.
• Listen to people with the purpose of understanding fully, not to create a response.
• Your comfort zone is your biggest obstacle and objection.
• Keep your sales manager up to date. Don’t be the one person on the team who’s not calling or checking in.
• Thousands of salespeople are going to sell more this year than they ever have before. Why not you?

Quick Comments, Quick Links

A few fast notes on recent, unrelated sales articles and posts floating around the Internet…

LocalPitch.com helps you establish a “referral profile” that you can then leverage to generate referrals and leads from satisfied customers and other local business owners.

If you’re a small business owner, and you’re personally immersed in your business, I don’t think this is necessary. The best referrals come from the mouths of your satisfied clients, face-to-face, which you then turn into another face-to-face meeting and a new client. I’m not convinced you need this service.

B2B Power Exchange, on the other hand, allows you to share leads with other sales and business professionals via face-to-face meetings. Primarily based on the West Coast right now, it’s a more focused version of the lead exchange groups we’ve all heard of or been a part of at some point.

I’ve not been too fond of these types of groups–too many participants look to get first, not give–but a more focused group may make such meetings more effective.

Finding Customers Who are Ready to Buy Now! is a teleseminar Jill Konrath is hosting on April 12. It’s an anti-high-activity workshop on prospecting appropriately for big companies with whom you can enjoy a shorter sales cycle.

Jill is simultaneously to-the-point, yet conversational, in style, so I’m certain this will be a great teleseminar to attend later this week.

Should You Leave a Voicemail? Bill Rice asks this question in a recent post at his blog titled, “Better Closer.” He makes good points on why you should, and a few thoughts on why you shouldn’t. My two cents: leave one, but don’t go in-between–either make an offer or make it a marketing call.

The argument against leaving voicemails is weak. If you’re going to block off time to make calls, don’t set yourself up to have to make 25% up to 100% additional calls later because you didn’t reach your desired contact.

Seven Easy Steps to Follow-up by Phone is an article posted by C.J. Hayden of Get Clients Now fame. She offers a nice list of things to keep in mind or do specifically as you prepare and make follow-up calls. Too often, she reminds us, we simply pick up the phone and start dialing. Mistake!

Important advice here from C.J., whether you’re on the phone a lot or a little as a sales professional. I can’t select a “favorite” to pull from her list, just read and heed.

Have a great Monday morning!

Own Your Time

Time management is a multibillion dollar industry. For good reason: we stink at it, we know it, and we think someone else always has “the system” that will finally help us master it. Consider the planners we buy, the PDAs, the software we install, the workshops we attend, the books we read.

Yet, after drinking them all in, we still complain about not having enough time in a day, or doing things when we get around to it, or that we have a lot on our plate. Worse, we let our families suffer while we work late on projects that could have been done earlier or are inconsequential.

I think the reason is that too many people, at least in our profession, avoid owning their time. I mean owning it in a complete way. They instead fly by the seat of their pants, allowing an hour here, 45 minutes there, to simply flit away without productivity. Before long, you’ve lost the equivalent of a day across just a five-day work week.

Increasingly, if you want success in sales, you better own your time, with specific daily, weekly, and/or monthly routines, at least minor victories each day, and the self-discipline to say no to distractions and interruptions.

Broadcast Your Message

If you’ve listened even once to SalesRepRadio, you the know quality of work that Dan Walker and his production team put together. Solid interviews each week, posted like clockwork every Monday mornings. Free.

Given that, you’ve got to take a look at a couple of his related offerings: SalesRepRadio To-Go, and Listen, Learn & Earn.

SalesRepRadio To-Go pulls together 2 years’ worth of how-to interviews with great sales consultants and trainers, pops them onto a 2GB USB flash drive you could use for other purposes as well, for only $249.

With Listen, Learn & Earn, you can deliver professional, custom audio messages to your reps or clients via a Flash-based player embedded in a web page. Listeners hear your message, submit their email address, and can respond to specific questions or give feedback only after having listened to the message completely. Test it by visiting the Listen, Learn & Earn page now.

I truly believe sales managers and executives need to find ways beyond the periodic corporate voicemail or conference call to get powerful, up-to-date, relevant messages out to their sales professionals. These tools hit the bullseye in that area.

Next Page »