Category archive for ‘Selling’
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My Best Closing Tactic
Getting people to laugh helped me close more deals than every other method combined. Steve and I were negotiating our first deal. He was pushing me to the wall for a big discount. First, I was unwilling to cut my price. Second; I didn’t need to, because he had already made the emotional commitment to buy, which was why he was pushing so hard.It got tense. You know the type of tense negotiations I’m talking about. This wasn’t a poker faced, behind the shades, all in Texas old ‘em negotiation. This was an in your face, blood on the wall, last man or woman standing deal.
Finding an opportunity to raise a smile seemed impossible, but Steve finally gave me the opening, “You have it and I want it, so let’s make this deal.”
Without hesitation and a smile I said, “Steve, having is better than wanting, and I have it and you want it.”
He had a hard time catching his breath and nearly laughed himself to tears. I knocked off less than 1% on a six figure sale and we did plenty of business together down the road.
A father and son team tried working me over on $60,000 piece of equipment we were dying to sell. The son offered me $48,235.61 or some hokey number very close to that. Our deals are rounded off to the nearest zero, so this smelled fishy.
“Do you mind if I ask how you came up with that number?”
“My dad told me to offer you that.”
“Do you mind if I speak with your dad?”
“That’s an interesting number” I chortled. “Do you mind telling me how you came up with it?”
“It sounded good to me” he laughed.
“Well, $60,000 sounds better to me.” We laughed. He then explained that he was teaching his son how to buy. We agreed that I would give his son a small discount and a feel-good moment. We settled at $57,000, which I was very happy to get. His son felt like a hero and his father appreciated the discount and my handling the situation with a good sense of humor.
Of all the closing tips, tricks, and manipulations, nothing works better than authentically making someone feel good. And the best way to do that is to put a smile on their face and a laugh in their belly. Joke telling isn’t the only way. Most often, when we’re in tight negotiations, there is something in the situation that is truly funny. Try not to take yourself and selling too seriously. When all else fails, self-deprecation works very well.
When you laugh, the world laughs with you, and so do your customers.
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Are You Selling to Phantom Buyers?
Imagine you’re running a retail shop. Twenty or thirty times a day, your front door opens and the entry bell rings “ding-ding.” You trace the path of depressions in the carpet and see products shuffled around your shelves. Most of these journeys through your store end with an invisible departure.
This is what internet marketing looks like. Marketers view internet analytics and see which landing pages are creating the best results. Marketers trace the navigation paths to see what material is being read and downloaded. But unless a visitor fills out a contact form, they are just an anonymous phantom. (more…)
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Marketing Creates Lousy Sales Presentations
Guest post By Mark Hunter
Too many marketing departments are still living in the 1990s with how they feel salespeople should be making presentations. Marketing departments are notorious for making slick presentations that do nothing but extol the virtues of how wonderful their company is. I call these “capabilities presentations.” Really they should be called “look at me – I think I’m perfect” presentations.
The reason they are lousy is because all they do is waste time and make people angry.
Why should any customer have to sit through a lousy presentation that does nothing but share stupid facts and information about the vendor – especially when it is nothing but old news? The main reason it’s old news to the customer is because they’ve already had a chance to see the very same information on the internet.
Today’s customer does not wake up in the morning looking forward to having their time wasted by salespeople. Customers have far more important things to worry about. One of the easiest ways customers are cutting down on the amount of time they spend with salespeople is by using the internet before they even meet with the salesperson.
Customers are using the internet to gather the information they want to know, including specific facts and general knowledge. The reason customers do this is because they feel it’s a better use of their time. (This alone is a sad comment about the perception customers have of salespeople, but that’s an entirely separate issue.)
If the customer is knowledgeable before the salesperson meets with them, then there’s no reason to waste anyone’s time with the boring presentation from marketing.
I’m not saying salespeople should assume the customer knows everything. On the contrary, the salesperson needs to now verify everything. It’s for this reason I’m a strong advocate of what I refer to as the “modular presentation.”
The modular presentation is comprised of many small presentations, with the premise that any single piece can be used by itself. The value of the modular style is it allows complete flexibility on the part of the salesperson. They’re able to focus on the parts the customer needs to hear, not on what they already know.
To make the modular style of presentation work, the salesperson must be highly skilled at being flexible in asking the customer questions and listening for their responses. In addition, for the modular style to work, the marketing department needs to be willing to let go and allow the salesperson to know what is best.
This in and of itself is the hardest part of the move, but in the end, it is essential. Failure to move away from the “capabilities presentation” and to the modular style will only result in upset salespeople, upset customers and lost sales. The choice then is really quite simple. Either marketing is going to remain in control or sales is going to have the flexibility they need to close sales and maximize profits.
Mark Hunter, “The Sales Hunter,” is a sales expert who speaks to thousands each year on how to increase their sales profitability. For more information, to receive a free weekly email sales tip, or to read his Sales Motivation Blog, visit www.TheSalesHunter.com. You can also follow him on www.Facebook.com/TheSalesHunter, www.Twitter.com/TheSalesHunter and www.LinkedIn.com/in/MarkHunter.
Reprinting of this article is welcomed as long as the following is included:
Mark Hunter, “The Sales Hunter,” www.TheSalesHunter.com, © 2011
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Pistachio Nuts and Sales Opportunities
Sally and I love pistachio nuts. We always race for the meaty ones bursting out of the shell. They’re the easiest, best tasting, and give the most for the least effort.
When the best picks are gone, we fish through the bowl and pick the promising nuts. They take a little more work for a little less meat.
Finally, only the tough nuts are left, the airtight sealed nuts that take more work. Out of desperation we may try cracking some to the disappointing hint of pistachio mixed with shell. -
Are You Selling Value Proposition or Cost Benefit?
Sally recently learned the difference between value proposition and cost benefit when one of her dance students did not return this fall. Jenny had been studying at her school for two years and was ready for a more advanced level. Sally told Jenny’s mother the exciting news and penciled her in the schedule after their conversation. But Jenny dropped out. (more…)
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It’s National Sales Day!
Back in the 80’s, I was fortunate enough to spend the evening with an icon in the machine tool industry at our monthly association meeting. Jay was an old school, NY sales pro in his 60’s. When I saw him, I told him I liked his tie. He immediately took it off, handed it to me, and invited me to sit with him. Jay turned to me and asked, “Do you know what day it is?” As I shrugged my shoulders he said, “National Sales Day”. As I pondered how that escaped me, he quickly asked, “Do you know what tomorrow is?” In New York harmony we both said, “National Sales Day”.
Barring Sundays, holidays, and vacations, every day is “National Sales Day.” The purpose of Sales Du Jour is to help you achieve your sales and marketing goals every day.
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Do You Know the Truth?
A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day.“In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.”
A voice from the back of the room piped, “Yeah, right.” – From the Houston Chronicle via Aristotle Bancale
Words + Inflexion = Real Meaning (more…)
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Landslide Review: The CRM/SFA for Sales Reps, Sales Managers, and Executives
Your search for a sales centric CRM that supports frontline salespeople and meets the needs of sales managers and executives may be over. Landslide was the 2010 Gold Medal Top Sales Awards Winner for good reason. A two hour demo with VP of Sales Eric Anderson made me a believer. Landslide won my confidence in fast implementation with the desired results. Solopreneurs to the enterprise can leverage this scalable solution to guide their sales with a robust set of sales process, marketing, and customer management tools.
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Sales process is the core of this easy to look at, user friendly SaaS CRM as it should be. The customizable screens are uncluttered and comfortable on the eyes. The simple, clean user interface presents your data informatively and painlessly. Everything is organized around the sales process to manage the flow in an intuitive way. The intelligent format makes for a short learning curve. The only reason I did not give look and feel 5 stars, is because I’m still waiting for a Star Trek, push button dashboard.
Sales Process Management 5 Stars
The heart of successful selling is in the process and Landslide proves they get it. Organizational, team, and individual sales funnels and pipelines can be quickly viewed from a clean graphical interface. The list view provides a quick snapshot of each opportunity’s progress with details just one click away.
Creation and customizing of your sales processes is very easy and does not require an IT person. Once you have mapped out your sales process and objectives for each stage, creation in Landslide is quick and easily modifiable. If you sell widgets, gidgets, and stidgets, you can create a different process for each product. If you do repeat business, you can create separate processes for new and existing accounts.
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The scoring method for objectives in each stage presents a realistic view of the pipeline, removing much of the guesswork from forecasting with more control for management. You create the set of objectives for each stage with numerical values of your choice, totaling 100% signifying when each stage is completed.
In addition to accurately measuring progress, individual and team strengths and weaknesses are readily exposed, adding a laser focus to target coaching and training needs, and improve and modify your sales processes.
Opportunity Management 5 Stars
Viewing and organizing opportunities and their details are fast and easy to read for the sales rep and management.
Opportunities are listed in a hierarchy with views of the entire sales force, sales teams, and individual reps. Team selling is supported with views of real time activities and progress that aids strategy and prevents duplication of efforts.
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This list view includes progress icons for status, activity, and red flags for hot opportunities. The list can be sorted in multiple ways such as confidence levels and sales stage. Filtering allows you to segregate opportunities types such as new and upsell. Data segmentation is easy with Lanslide’s “My List” function that allows the user to choose from multiple criteria as well as how the panels are displayed. Accessing contact info, activity, and progress details from the list is one click away.
Wondering if your prospects are reviewing the information you’re providing? Activity management eliminates the guesswork with triggers for content interaction that are communicated by email. I’ll cover this cool mechanism under lead management and email.
Lead Management 5 Stars
Landslide’s Lead Management manages leads from web or inception to close with life cycle reporting. Their lead development process includes scoring and customization for multiple segments that won me over.
They have a Web-to-Lead setup form to capture contact info from your choice of location on the internet. Fill out the form, the code is generated, and you insert it into the web page – voila! You can create multiple forms for different sources. You know where your web leads are coming from and which ones are generating the desired outcomes.
Lead distribution can be automated with round robin flow or manual selection. With one glance of your team’s pipeline, you can quickly determine who needs new leads. Sales opportunities are automatically created once lead process objectives are met. That’s automation working for you.
Monitoring Lead nurturing activity is established with interactive content libraries. You deposit content for each opportunity in micro sites specific to each opportunity. When the content is accessed directly from a micro site or an email marketing campaign, you are notified by instantly notified by email.
Post Sales Process utilizes the same module for creating sales processes. The continuity makes management and training consistent across the workforce. And like sales process creation, this is customizable with scored objectives you create.
Distribution of customer service and support requests can be automated or manually assigned. Each department has their own view as well as individual employee views. Sharing cases is available to increase interdepartmental communication for a better customer experience.
Standard email is included with an integrated email campaign platform. Send from company or individual accounts with the included 300 editable HTML template, or, create your own template with their built-in WYSIWYG. Emails scheduling and marketing life cycle tracking are included.
Individual emailing is included in the monthly rate. Email marketing is pay as you go with a competitive price of $.009 to $.015
Recipients opens, clicks, leads, bounces, unsubscribes, lead conversions, opportunity conversions to won deals are all trackable. 5 Stars
Social CRM integration is coming this summer. FaceBook, LinkedIn, and Twitter profiles, status & feeds will be viewable in the contact record to give you real time customer and competitor intelligence.
Tasks management is included but I did not have time to explore this feature.
Document management, creation, and storage are valuable tools in a CRM. Although I did not demo these, here I was I learned.
Customizable forms, letters, and product proposal templates are available with an organizational library. Documents can be stored by contact and in opportunities for attachment to emails and uploading to micro sites for customer access.
Customer life management is the heart of a successful sales organization. A good CRM must provide a big picture view from lead creation through customer service and support with interdepartmental communication.
Reporting is robust with live data feed updating in real time without refreshing, including charts and graphs. Multiple filters by virtually every type of data in an easy user interface gives you control. Easily see the past and present to plan for the future.
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The data is interactive with detail information of virtually all data in the system. Viewing the pipeline, individual opportunities, sales stages, and managing quotas, CS, and support are all done from a single, responsive dashboard. Executive summary reports can be created for opportunities, including a complete breakdown.
Landslide’s API is open for 3rd party integration to synchronize with Outlook (eliminating duplicates), Gmail, QuickBooks, export to Excel and plenty of others.
Landslide’s mobile platform is not an app and runs from all browsers; intelligently built for the road warrior.
Landslide’s CRM Pricing is offered in three tiers and includes live support from their Pennsylvania offices via an 800 number:
Silver Plan is $29 per month with basic features for up to five users including Accounts & Contacts, Leads & Opportunities, Sales Pipeline Metrics, Task, Events & Notes, Mobile Access, Sales Strategy Tools, Web-To-Lead Forms, Data Import, Outlook & Gmail Integration, Homepage Customization, File Storage, Up 1GB/user.
Gold Plan is $49 per month with most features and no limit on users including All Silver features, plus Multiple Dashboard Charts, Organization Hierarchies, Detailed Pipeline Visibility, Customizable Sales Process, Email Marketing, Smart Templates, Product Catalogs, Smart Email, Landslide Link for QuickBooks, Advanced Tools, PDF Reporting, Optional VIP Sales Assistant Support, File Storage Up to 2.5GB/user
Platinum plan ist $79 per month is full featured including All Silver & Gold features, plus Advanced Management Reporting, Pulse™ Dashboard, iO Channel Collaboration Tool, Scheduled Data Importing, API’s & Software Integration Tools, CRM Developer Sandbox, Extended VIP Sales Assistant Support, Increased Storage, File Storage Up to 5GB/user
Conclusion: Landslide is a 4.5 Star CRM/SFA. The two hour, in-depth with VP of Sales Eric Anderson impressed that I could get what I wanted and needed out of this CRM for any sales force. I am confident that implementation and user buy-in are painless. The addition of social media integration tells me they will continue to develop tools for the evolving sales profession. Everyone I have dealt with at Landslide is customer centric. If you’re looking for a CRM or SFA solution, schedule a demo today.
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Is Your Message a Painkiller?
The advent of summer meant baseball, beach, and crew-cuts. We sat inline in green leather chairs at the barbershop waiting for a promise that outweighed our disdain for the assembly line head shave. The insult was followed by the injury of a burning slap on the neck with the green tinted alcohol combs were cleaned in.
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How I Closed the Biggest Deal of My Life
27 years ago today, after a long, complex sales cycle, I closed the biggest, most important deal of my life. When the deal was negotiated, the buyer chose to make the acquisition. I never asked for the order; not once. (more…)
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