7 Practical Tips to Increase Sales Productivity

          1. Stop doing data entry
          2. Start being social
          3. Let Chatter bring updates to you
          4. Make territory planning painless
          5. Plan on making a big deal
          6. Lead the way to more opportunities
          7. Gain insights with dashboards

7 Habits Of Highly Ineffective Teleprospectors

    
Over the years I've seen many talented teleprospectors struggle consistently to hit their goals. They could posses all the core skills necessary to be a top performer but the bad habits they develop can dictate the "ebb and flow" of their performance. 

There's a lengthy list I've encountered being in the trenches as long as I have, most of which you've likely seen me yammer on about in a blog here or there, but I figured it would make sense to narrow it down to the ones I see most often.   

Here are 7 of the most common habits that can have a negative impact on a teleprospectors performance:

1- Not setting your goals- All too often inside reps don't set specific call goals for themselves. If your call output is erratic, then the amount of opportunities you're going to uncover will be as well.

2- Not following a call plan- You need to follow a consistent strategy to communicate with your prospects. One call and one email once a week will not generate the response you're hoping for. Our research tells us that you need to touch them an average of 6 times before you generate a response. Following up a voicemail immediately with an email as well as suggesting a 5 minute outlook calendar invite should all be part of your strategy. 

3- No effort put into pre-call planning- Think before you dial. Our mindset should be "What am I looking to accomplish here?"  on each and every dial you make. Do a little research on your target company and if you have the time, look-up the Linked-in profile on your prospect. It's all about time management; if you're just blindly picking up the phone and dialing away to hit a call number then your results will most likely suffer.  

4- Not being resourceful- Just sticking with the same unresponsive name on your list will leave you spinning your wheels. Think about pressing zero # when you get a voicemail for the 3rd time in a row. This should route you back to an executive admin who could point you in a more appropriate direction. Most assume using admins is a dead end, but they can be our best assets.

5- They sound like they're reading from a script- The last thing you want to do is sound like a drone on the phone. We work with our reps to come up with a collective script that we are all comfortable with. This allows them to feel as if they've taken some ownership over the process and the messaging flows much more naturally.

6- Blaming their list- Unfortunately no list is perfect. Even the most reputable list vendors provide 70% accuracy at best on their lists, even if they say it's much higher. Being resourceful will solve any issue you have with a list.

7- Lack of resilience- Guess what, most people don't want to hear from you. You will get blown off. Remain focused and follow suggestions mentioned above and you will see a significant increase in your lead conversion rate.

We may all have fallen prey to at least one of the seven bad habits above. If you're in a rut, take a look at a few of the suggestions I've made above. I’m positive they can help! 

I've only touched the tip of the iceberg here. Does anyone have any other bad habits they want to share?

Henry Ford's Depression Busting Secret - Frank Rumbauskas

Untold millions of people lost every penny they had during the Great Depression.

Even most business and industrial leaders took a beating.

But -

Henry Ford passed through it unscathed. In fact his business even GREW.

What was his secret?

Well, it's no "secret" at all - in fact it's something we all know but usually don't follow through with.

It's the idea of giving our customers the best service possible, no matter what.

You probably think service means customer service, and if you do, you're wrong. There is SO MUCH more to it than that.

Here are a few key points of what creates good service, in Ford's view (besides what we already know as 'customer service'):

1. Delivering the best product possible at the lowest price.

2. Having easy and cheap access to service so that no one is ever broken down.

3. Avoiding selling to people who are not the ideal fit for the product.

It's that third point that most of us are guilty of.

Unfortunately few salespeople have any control over what kind of service our company gives (if you're a small business owner that's a different story).

But we do have TOTAL control over who we choose to sell to.

I remember years ago when I'd try to sell to anyone who would meet with me or even take my call, I'd have these huge sales months when I was doing nothing but picking up signed contracts & checks and it was so exhilarating to be so busy!

But then the following month I'd be buried up to my eyeballs in customer service issues.

Why?

Because I'd sold to people who were not a 100% ideal fit for my product, and it came to show when they realized they'd been "sold" and didn't really "buy."

After I'd started selling to people who WERE 100% perfect fits for my product, something changed.

All the endless customer service nonsense went away and people were a lot happier.

It's not that problems didn't happen - there were always billing issues and things like that with the company I worked for - but the customers were a lot more understanding and would just go and call the 800 number instead of screaming at me about it.

The best part is that those people not only resulted in plenty of repeat business, but also in a seemingly never-ending flood of referrals!

And there you have Ford's little depression-busting "secret."

Now that we're still in a recession, it's more important than ever to only sell to people who are really going to need and appreciate what you're offering.

Besides, if you ask me, that's the only ethical way to sell anyway.

Cold-Calling Trick: 16 Ways to Start a Conversation

The most effective way to open a conversation is to connect your call to one of these "trigger events." Here's how.

The purpose of a cold call is to have a conversation to determine whether a potential customer has the following two things:

• a need your offering can satisfy, and
• the money to purchase it.

That conversation can happen, though, only if you get through the customer's natural reluctance to speak with a stranger.

The easiest way to get through that reluctance is to have a reason you're calling, other than just the fact that you have something to sell.

For example, suppose you're selling an inventory control system. Here are two possible ways to begin the conversation:

• "I'm calling because I'm selling a great inventory control system that can save you money."
• "I'm calling because I understand that you just announced a new product line--and since that usually increases inventory costs, you may be looking to for a way to reduce those costs."

The second example is more likely to result in a conversation because it relates what you're selling to what's called a trigger event, a change in the way that a potential customer operates its business.

The following trigger events are all excellent conversation starters:

1. The company has opened a new factory or facility.

2. It is moving an existing facility to a new location.

3. It has hired a new executive.

4. It has lost an existing executive.

5. It has announced a layoff.

6. It has announced an expansion.

7. It has acquired a new major customer.

8. It has lost a major customer.

9. It has launched a new product line.

10. It has retired an existing product line.

11. It has updated a major existing product.

12. It is acquiring another company.

13. It is being acquired by another company.

14. It has announced a restructuring.

15. It has announced a new round of financing.

16. It has announced a change in ownership.

The trick to using trigger events is creating a reasonable link between the event and what you're selling. The more logical the link, the more likely that bringing up the trigger will result in a conversation.

Get Customers to Read Emails: 7 Tricks

Get Customers to Read Emails: 7 Tricks - Nice Read

The simple power of one a day

The simple power of one a day (from Seth Godin's Blog)

There are at least 200 working days a year. If you commit to doing a simple marketing item just once each day, at the end of the year you've built a mountain. Here are some things you might try (don't do them all, just one of these once a day would change things for you):

• Send a handwritten and personal thank you note to a customer
• Write a blog post about how someone is using your product or service
• Research and post a short article about how something in your industry works
• Introduce one colleague to another in a significant way that benefits both of them
• Read the first three chapters of a business or other how-to book
• Record a video that teaches your customers how to do something
• Teach at least one of your employees a new skill
• Go for a ten minute walk and come back with at least five written ideas on how to improve what you offer the world
• Change something on your website and record how it changes interactions
• Help a non-profit in a signficant way (make a fundraising call, do outreach)
• Write or substiantially edit a Wikipedia article
• Find out something you didn't know about one of your employees or customers or co-workers

Enough molehills is all you need to have a mountain.

A Confident Sales Person

An amazing salesperson will always beat an amazing product. You may only have the third-best product on the market, yet you can still beat out the competition and close deals with clients simply because you’re a better salesperson than your competitors. You may have an inferior technology, yet you can close a round of venture funding simply because investors believe in you more than they do the competition. A good company buys into the salesperson first. The product? That comes second.