Alliance Science

Selling vs. Negotiating

What's the difference between Selling and Negotiating?

• Selling is when the prospect buys with your terms and your price
• Negotiating is when you modify your terms and/or price or offering to make the sale

What are you better at, selling or negotiating?

Each Sales Professional Must Promote Her Own Brand

Writers do it; Actors do it; Radio hosts do it -- Are you doing it?

Many thanks for the gift and inspiration of Li Evans, who interviewed a produced content for guests of Blog Potomac, Washington DC's first blogger round-up and unconference. 

Whether you're and account manager, inside sales, part of sales team, or sales support, your company will benefit from the power of your personal brand.

What are you doing to build your credibility, visibility and even celebrity using the communication tools available on the world wide web, today?

What do You do 10 minutes after a Meeting?

How long do you wait before you next contact a prospect, business partner or acquaintance and how?

Sounds like the question, "how long do you wait to call after the first date?"  In a way, it's the same question, although if you're properly controlling the process, before you leave the meeting, you agree to a specific next step and never a "think about it." 

More specifically, when is the optimal time to communicate, "thank you"?

10 minutes after you meet. 

Yep, 10 minutes.  It's especially important after you've met with prospects or clients.  The fact is, right after you meet with a service provider is when you have questions or concerns.  Doubt it?  Pay attention to what you're thinking about just after a meeting and write down the questions you're asking.  This is happening with your customers, too.

The good news is you have a few ways to communicate this.  The best way to know the best and easiest way to say thank you is to ask during your consultation, "which communication medium do you prefer; email, telephone, mail?"  Make sure you have their cell phone, text them if they prefer email; call them if they like the telephone.

Bonus practice:

During your consultation assure your prospect that, "there's no dumb questions."  Now, when you call within 10 minutes of parting, you can say, "Just a quick call to thank you for taking the time to meet with me.  I'm looking forward to working with you.  Is there any question I can answer which you may have just thought of since we left each other?  Remember, there's no dumb questions." 

This is especially important if you've met with more than one person.  There's always a conversation just after a meeting.  There's always questions.

An immediate, "thank you," impresses new networking partners, too.  And don't forget the power of the hand addressed, hand written, personal note card.  It always gets opened and read.

What's your best practice on follow-up? 

Photo credit:  Todd Hryckowian

What are You Reading?

Inspired by the picture of what Jason Womack's reading, here's a picutre of the stack of books currently on my bed-side table. 

What are you learning?

More importantly, how is it influencing your selling behaviors?

 

Blog Potomac: As a Sales Professional, are you Part of the Conversation?

Potomac Blog was the Washington DC, Metropolitan area's first collective attempt to bring Social Media experts under one roof for an unconference.

Initiator, organizer, champion and MC, Geoff Livingston, proudly announces Blog Potomac a success, as I agree. Largely an audience of marketing professionals with a healthy attendance of PR and communications professionals, the event was an excellent inside look at how the "other" communication disciplines -- PR, Advertising, Marketing, Branding -- use New Media to create dialog with the prospect and customer. As a representative from the Sales camp, I walked away with the question, "aside from having a social networking account, how much does the focused field rep need to understand and use the plethora of Web 2.0 communication and media organizational tools becoming available every day?  Here's a small sampling of the techie tools post-lunch keynote, Frank Gruber, professed to love and often uses:

Gmail - AOL Mail - Remember the Milk - AIM Instant Messenger - AwayFind - AwayFind details
Facebook - Twitter - Flickr - TubeMogul - Viddler - Blip.tv - YouTube - eyespot - Typepad - WordPress - Tumblr - Evernote - Mixx - Digg -Delicious - StumbleUpon - Shareaholic - SiteMeter - FeedBurner - Google Analytics - myAOL - FeedHub - AideRSS - Summize - Google Alerts - Filtrbox - Lijit - SocialThing - MyBlogLog - FriendFeed - TwitterFeed - Dopplr - Tripit - Basecamp -Quicken Online

If you're a committed Sales Professional, you are accountable for public relations, branding, marketing, advertising and customer service, whether or not they are another's responsibility.

Social media tools are about engaging in the conversation with your public.  They're having it with or without you. 

Yes, it can be overwhelming.  So, to get started, here's a couple of suggestions, opinions and observable options:

• Start reading about Social Media and Social Networking to understand the fundamentals -- if you're lost, use Google Reader and subscribe to Alliance Science
• At least join LinkedIn and use it (Facebook is becoming popular to the selling professional, too)
• You're responsible for your brand and building your credibility as an expert -- consider blogging if you can keep up with the responsibility of research and content creation at least once a week.
• Ask the most successful Sales Professionals you know how they're embracing Web 2.0 (there, I said it).  If they're not, find out who is and ask them what they're doing.

If you're not growing as a sales professional, you're dying.  The worse part -- you won't know it until you're dust.

Photo Credit:  Jared Goralnick

Be Careful on How you Disengage

Break-ups can be hard -- make sure you do it right.

It's OK to fire a prospect, client or a networking referral partner -- just make sure do it correctly.  You never know what the future has in store for you and the other party.  You may encounter them again so make sure you can greet with them with a confident smile.

• Nurture, nurture, nurture.  Remember, no one likes feeling rejected.  It's important to be kind and empathetic.  Don't disengage in an email.  Have more couth, courage and business-smarts than to email a "Dear John" letter. 
  
• Get the other person to disengage.  If it's not working out, you owe it to the other person and yourself to decide together.  Have the courage to bring up your objections and allow the other person the chance to fix the issues or decide to withdraw.  Whether or not your mind is made up and there's little chance to move forward, put your ego in the passenger seat and allow the other person to participate.  This approach is actually easier and less risky than the quick and easy, take-flight alternative and will diffuse potentially dangerous confusion or resentment.
  
• Always leave the door open.  People change.  Situations change.  Impressions change.  Relationships change.  Insensitive or brisk break-ups burn bridges.  So sketch a possible future with your personally delivered final words.  You never know, the future with that person may surprise you. 

Photo credit:  putitonashirt

How to Internalize Sales Training

The stakes are huge for Salespeople.

• Blow a sale and feel bad for a day; do it 30% more often than your colleague and lose your bonus, promotion or job
• Convert 10% of your leads and waste 90% of your valuable, irreplaceable time; work with better qualified prospects and convert 20% of your leads and double your income
• Trade a 2 to 6 hours a week to set 3 to 4 prospect appointments a week; properly leverage each appointment into 2 to 3 more powerful appointments with ideal prospects without spending 4 to 18 hours more of your time and double to triple your income

Your competition is mediocrity.

Most professionals in careers outside of Sales are expected to develop themselves through reading and extracurricular training.  In general, sales is the least educated profession as it pertains to best practices and ongoing professional development.  "Sales Training" often starts and stops at company delivered technical product training and the tricks of the trade with perhaps some company-built sales process.  Most sales people spend more money on clothes and cars than on their most important asset -- their selves, as in self-development.

Engage in long-term, at least weekly, on-going, community supported sales training.

How to learn in Sales Training:

1. Before you start, decide that you are going to change.   After each lesson, decide what you are going to do differently and implement the change during the work week. 
2. Take copious notes during instruction.  Read.  Journal.
3. Teach others what you learn.  Share with others what you read.  Tell the world what you are going to do after each lesson, then report back to your peers what you've done.

How are you going to give it away?  It's in passing it forward (it's not "giving back" -- did you "take it" from someone else?) that you truly learn.  What are you learning today?

What do you Mean, You're NOT Going to Tell me What you Do, First?

This week I struggled at Wimp Junction

You know, the place where you're asked to tell the prospect what you do or how you can help them before you know what they need and, most importantly, helped them discover what they want. 

Frankly, I was dealing with prospects who were not qualified for other reasons than not having enough motivating trouble.  In one instance, the prospect wasn't going to spend money he didn't have and in the instance I was dealing with someone who wasn't the decision maker she pretended to be.  Their demands that they must first understand what I do before I understand what they do and do not do were stifling, smothering smokescreens. 

In the first case, the prospect was justifying that his current plan of struggle and hard work was the right one and that there was "no magic bullet" that could dramatically improve his business.  He'd been "burned before" as he had paid a large amount of money for sales training that he then decided he wasn't going to learn after a month or so of a 3-month program.  In the second case, the prospect was quickly trying to figure out how to "sell" me to the real decision-makers as it made little personal impact on her income and only risked her credibility, even though she was "going to make the decision."

What I struggled with was a polite and nurturing way to communicate to increasingly frustrated prospects that they were wasting my time and theirs. 

So what I did was to give them a little of what they wanted. 

And that's where I wimped out.  I presented before they were qualified. 

Until the prospect is clear on what he wants and why he wants it and is committed to changing his current situation and has agreed on trading the necessary money, time and resources to making the change, you don't know if he's ready to buy.

So, what's the matter with telling your prospect what you can do for them, first?

How can you accurately solve your prospect's problems if he hasn't clearly agreed on what they are and sold you on his commitment to change them.  Why present a solution until you have a clear agreement on his decision making process?  Who else will need to agree and what are their motivations and how will change affect or not effect them? 

You've got one shot to keep their attention at every moment.  Most people don't know what they need and why they want it.  They're conditioned by not-so-great salespeople to listen to features and benefits and secretly and singly decide if it's a match to what they think they want.  This often results in a lot of WASTED time and resources spent by the salesperson.

Other than keeping you busy, what's your cost of spending time with an unqualified prospect?

How do you work with only qualified prospects and, when you do, what's your success rate with the fewer prospects to whom you do show your goodies?

Four More Different Words

Create Powerful Client Networks

Sage Seth Godin says you or your company "have the opportunity to create value by connecting their clients to each other."  This idea is the most powerful underpinning of Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing.  In fact, in addition to value for your clients, you have the chance to create a sales phenomenon if you're excellent.

Your entire business to include product and service design AND marketing plan should be built with this directive in mind.  In fact, your customer service system should be be embedded with this philosophy.

Word-of-Mouth marketing and Social Media consultant Jeremy Epstein cements the point:

Create an environment (aka a platform) where folks can learn from each other and your position as Social Object is strengthened, which is exactly what you want.

Sales professionals (and/or their marketing colleagues) who believe referrals are the lifeblood of their business need to become Social Objects.  Yes, what you learned in high school is right -- it's a popularity contest and it's cool to be different.

Photo credit:  Gaping Void -- More thoughts on Social Objects

So how do you become a Social Object?

Besides the now obvious combination of traditional and Web 2.0 (there, I said it) vehicles such as write a book, write articles, hold a seminar, blog, exploit LinkedIn and Facebook, how can you create value for with your prospects or customers?

• Create a monthly or weekly public event featuring a different client each time. 
• Celebrate a personal victory or achievement for your client to which their friends, family members and clients are invited
• Hold a case study review of your top clients inviting their clients to participate
• Throw a surprise party for your client (How do you do that? Stay tuned)

So, please comment, how do you turn your client into a Social Object?

Four Different Words

Unique service; deliver differently.

I go to Starbucks because I'm part of a large demographic who feels rich when they spend a relatively small amount of money on a lifestyle luxury to receive a consistently stronger cup of coffee in an easy to find meeting place.  I keep coming back because they manned-up and replaced my prescription eye-wear when it was accidentally misplaced by one of the store's management a few years ago.

People talk about you when they are surprisingly delighted.  Do more than your customer expects and they will talk about you.

Solve a problem or fulfill a desire better than the rest of the marketplace.

Find out what customers expect and then come to agreement and publicize what they can expect.

Tell a story people enjoy believing and then make it necessary for them to be a part of it.