Category archive for ‘Selling’
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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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Do You Really Give a Shit About Your Customers?
Do you care how they feel or how they are?Do you care about their future? (more…)
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I Want a Sales Force of Derek Jeters
Courtesy Robert Sabo/News
Queuing up the Yankee ballgame on my iPhone, in hopes of seeing Derek Jeter hit number 3,000, evoked childhood memories of my very first mobile device. My father cashed in wrappers from the countless cigars he smoked to give me the most popular electronic communication device in history.
I was 8 or 9 years old when he called me into the living room to watch him set it up. He opened the back and loaded the batteries before sliding it into the tan leather case. He turned it on, tested it, and said “Here’s the ear phone” as he handed it to me.
The transistor radio changed the world in its day, it made entertainment portable. On a sunny day, you could go to the beach or park without missing a game. It was the beginning of mobile life. We listened to our favorite announcers talk about Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays in a way that made you feel like you were sitting in the ball park.
Now I was sitting on the patio of a local restaurant, overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains, waiting to have lunch with my daughter and “watch” a Yankee game from a “phone!” The glass of wine I sipped was extra crisp and meaningful when we watched Derek Jeter’s 2,999th hit. Before we finished eating, Derek put one over the fence for number 3,000. He’s the 28th ballplayer to do it and only the second to have done it with a home run.
A few days ago, I remarked that I would love a sales force of Derek Jeters. The choice has nothing to do with his celebrity and everything to do with his character, personality, and attitude. The crowd would have cheered for hours because they love him, and with good reason. Even the Rays and ex-teammate Johnny Damon joined the standing ovation to honor #2.
Although Jeter was on the disabled list with an injury until last week, and has unexciting stats this year, he made the All Star team for the twelfth time. So what makes this guy so special?
Despite the constant leveraging of free agent status for more money that sends ballplayers to different clubs at a staggering rate, “Jete” has been a Yankee for his entire sixteen year career. Loyalty means more to him than making a few million dollars more. Loyalty is the cement of great teams and that’s one of the many reasons he has the rare honor of being the Yankees 13th team captain.
In a sport rocked by steroids, a litany of scandals and controversy, you never hear a bad word about this scandal-free guy. He’s never in the tabloids for anything scandalous. After his weak performance last year, with his contract expired, there were concerns about the Yankees resigning him.
After the Yankees publicized the negotiations all he had to say was “I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t angry about how some of this went; the negotiations were supposed to be private,” a class act. Nevertheless, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said of the Yankee captain: “If you had a daughter, you’d want her to marry Derek Jeter. He’s a great person.”
He finished this historic game with 5 hits including the game winning RBI, but as always, this gentleman never glorified his accomplishments. Here are some quotes from the post-game interview with Yankees announcer Kimberly Jones:
“The most important thing is we were able to win and I was happy I had the chance to contribute.”
“I wasn’t trying to do it (3,000 hits). I just come out here and try to play hard every day and if you do that, I guess good things happen.”
When asked what he would say to the fans, “I’m glad I did it here. Thanks for coming, thanks for the support throughout the years. I’m most happy that I hit them all in this uniform, playing for this organization.” -Derek Jeter
George Steinbrenner was known as being one tough boss. He paid his players more than anyone else, demanded a lot, was outspoken about it, and rarely paid a compliment for what he felt was due him. Yet here is what he said of his team captain:
“I have always been very, very careful about giving such a responsibility to one of my players, but I cannot think of a single player that I have ever had who is more deserving of this honor than Derek Jeter. He is a young man of great character and has shown great leadership qualities. He believes, as I do, what General (Douglas) MacArthur said, that ‘there is no substitute for victory.’ To him, and to me, it’s second only to breathing.” – George Steinbrenner
Real heroes and heroines aren’t perfect, but they share certain qualities that make them who and what they are: commitment, consistency, courtesy, discipline, enthusiasm, friendship, helpfulness, honor, humility, kindness, loyalty, passion, optimism, teammanship, and a tremendous work ethic.Even fans who hate the Yankees love Jeter. That’s the kind of person I want selling on my team.
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Slow Down, You’re Selling Too Fast
When the new Corvette came out in 1984, the president of our company gave me one as a company car. My red toy had the first digital dashboard; it was like driving a video game. Slamming the gas pedal pinned you to the back of the seat. I could go from red light to red light faster than almost any other car.An officer who gave me one of three speeding tickets awarded to the red beast told me, “Son this car looks fast standing still.” I do not believe I got anywhere any faster than I did in any other car.
My third speeding ticket came with a license suspension. I plead with the judge, “It should be illegal to make cars that go this fast.” The judge agreed, and then found me guilty. (more…)
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The Last Vendor Standing – A Heavyweight Sales Event
Andre the Giant - Last Man Standing - Courtesy of Ethan
Five heavyweight vendors publically vying for the same customer is a rare, riveting event. Selling is a courtship of suitors with competitive sportsmanship that includes incidental contact and ends with only one vendor standing. Last weekend, someone researching marketing automation solutions for their marketing department served up round one.
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Are You Selling Like Publishers Clearing House?
The first time a “You won a $1,000,000” showed up in my mailbox, my sales and marketing mind was piqued. Opening this treasure revealed I had not won anything yet and might only win a car or digital clock with a shortwave radio that doesn’t work. The pitch unfolded to a litany of stuff I did not want, yet subliminally suggested a purchase would help me win.
Sales people spend tremendous effort and expense to pay for the first meeting. Niceties are exchanged, the timing seems right, and the coveted secret value proposition is launched with something like this: (more…)
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