Category: Sales & Marketing

Amongst the struggle of the various voices and opinions offering different advice everywhere you turn, it seems difficult for Sales Professionals to actually pinpoint the areas that can have the biggest impact on their bottom line results.

So, based on 100’s of successful training assignments here’s the 4 key areas that we believe will have the greatest impact on your results and some practical advice to get you started.  Focus on developing your skills in these areas and get your sales performance ahead of the curve in no time.

#1 – Be More Persuasive 

You will never be a great Salesperson if you don’t learn to persuade.  If you’re not actively trying to persuade prospects on every interaction, you’re playing a massive numbers game – waiting for the guy that says ‘I’m glad you called, I want to buy” who just doesn’t exist.

Expect a little resistance now and again and prepare yourself for it rather than giving up the ghost at the very first indication of resistance.

Empathy is key here, so bear that in mind and give yourself a fighting chance by pre-preparing your responses to common objections you can use where appropriate.

Make sure you’re communicating at a sufficiently high level to confidently get through any turbulence you may encounter at the start line.

#2 – Be Easier to Communicate With 

The phone is undoubtedly your most effective tool.  Being effective with your e-mails however is another area that will impact your results.

An e-mail that is quick and easy to read is quick and easy to respond to so you should be working on the assumption that any more than an intro line, 3 sentences of body text and finishing with a question is too much.  If it doesn’t finish with a question, or at the minimum a clearly defined next action, I wouldn’t bother sending it.

You need to make yourself as easy to communicate with as possible.

Define your sole objective for each communication and get used to being direct.

#3 – Qualify Earlier 

Think about the reasons you can’t close deals.  Cost, Timing and loads of other likely excuses I’m sure will flood to mind.  The fact is though you’re probably thinking about it all wrong.

If these specific areas are stopping you closing at the end of the process, you need to address them as early on as you can in order to clear the resistance in your path to the finish line.

This also avoids false hope and spending valuable time on deals that aren’t coming in this month.

#4 – Listen Better 

What is interesting is that salespeople seem to show little or no regard for the language that is used by their prospects.  They listen to what they say but not how they say it.

How to Listen Better

Make a list of vague words/terms (could, should, maybe, in the future, soon, probably, possibly etc) and next time you have a sales conversation with a new prospect, tally down how many woolly terms they actually use; but do nothing at this stage.

This serves as a massive eye opener.  When you start really paying attention, you can pick up on these cues and use them to explore these areas further, develop need and get a better understanding of your prospects position.

You may need some help but if you can work on improving your skills in these key areas, you’ll see results.  I guarantee it.

If you have to beg…you’re probably not working on the right leads. 

Planning, executing, and closing the sales for your venture are arguably the most important tasks in starting a business. Too many new entrepreneurs (myself included) decide to go for the gold, and aim directly for customers, without putting in all the work it requires at the beginning.

Here are the biggest mistakes and #entrepreneurfail examples that new entrepreneurs make when working on marketing and sales:

1. Targeting anyone and everyone and not focusing on a niche: I recently mentored students creating business plans. One student was targeting all women ages 12-65. Would a pre-teen girl want the same product as her grandmother?  Probably not! The key is to imagine an ideal customer profile and then find him/her (instead of convincing everyone to become the ideal customer).
2. Focusing on leads that are not able and willing to pay: I would love to provide free services to everyone I could, but that wouldn’t result in a sales funnel. Qualifying leads for ability and willingness to pay is key.
3. Providing no compelling education in marketing or lead magnet: If you have no way of identifying “hot leads” how will you make any sales? Some examples include ebooks and videos.
4.  Forgetting to reach out to people you know to see if they can refer qualified leads: I often forget about my own networks when we start searching for clients. Even if my contacts are not my ideal customer, they may know someone who fits the bill!

For more details about how to generate even more leads, check out this post.

Was it tough knocking down that first lead? Tell us about your experiences it in the comments below.

This post was originally created by Kriti Vichare for #entrepreneurfail: Startup Success. She is the founder of IdeaKube, providing innovation and creativity workshops for virtual teams.

Article Contributed by Sophia Quinn

If only it were enough to craft a winning product or service that just sells itself. Unfortunately, competition is stiff and the only way that today’s entrepreneurs can get any traction is by aggressively seeking out and expanding their audience.

In this post, we are going to explore a couple of powerful ways that you can amp up your small company’s voice and grab the attention of new potential customers. We’ll cover one of the most powerful online tactics along with an old-fashioned offline strategy that still delivers plenty of value. 

Engage with Customers Online

Blogging and social media platforms present businesses with an excellent opportunity to expand their reach and tap into new audiences. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and a host of other social media sites are powerful tools on the 21^st-century marketing stage. However, posts can easily go unnoticed if you haven’t gone to great lengths to build and engage with your social media fan base. Of course, it’s one thing to say this and quite another to actually achieve it.

The brilliance of social media marketing is the fact that your own followers are the ones out there sharing and ‘liking’ your posts and content. They’re doing the legwork for you. Assuming you have genuinely grabbed their attention, they’ll be providing your company with this service because they actually want to. In other words, they’ll do it for nothing in return. When your company’s subscribers and followers start pushing your marketing messages into viral territory – well, that’s when sales are going to hit a fever pitch.

Here are some tips for turning your company blog or social media account into a high-powered, audience-expanding marketing medium:

• Don’t blather on about your product features or the inner workings of your company; this may be interesting to you, but the average person probably doesn’t care.
• Provide links to relevant information and events, even if doing so doesn’t directly benefit your bottom line.
• Get the discussion moving by asking and answering questions.
• Offer preferential discounts and promotions to your followers (e.g. through a promotional code that they can use on your website); this is a real-value proposition, and people will take notice.

Provide Something of Value (For Free)

That’s right. Give stuff away. You operate a business, and your target customers understand that you’re in it to make money. That only makes this tactic all the more effective. Whether you’re passing promotional pens to advertise an upcoming sale or giving away product to loyal customers, the only thing that matters is that the items you put in their hands have some level of utility.

Tried-and-true promo campaigns like this have been around for eons, and they’re not going away anytime soon. The key is to understand the fact that the items you give away are – well, they’re more than just items. They serve a purpose in the hands of the recipient, and they also broadcast a clear and succinct message from your business. You can’t exercise total control over who gets their hands on these products, but you can certainly target certain demographics by carefully planning when, where and how you pass them out.

This tactic is backed by plenty of research. A survey conducted by the Promotional Products Association International found that nine out of ten people surveyed had at least one promotional product in their kitchen. More importantly, three-quarters of respondents were able to recall the product, advertiser and marketing message attached to a recent promotional product they had received. Those are encouraging figures, and they serve as an important reminder that brick-and-mortar marketing still has a powerful role to play in the Digital Age.

About the Author:

Article Contributed by Sophia Quinn of Dynamic Gift in Australia,  a dependable provider of quality promotional products. They not only have promotional pens and other stationery, but also mugs, power banks, and magnets.

You just put the finishing touches on your kick-butt marketing plan that’s going to skyrocket your business. Hooray!

Only problem is that kick-butt marketing plan isn’t going to do a thing for your business unless you actually put it into action. And that, alas, is where most marketing plans end up — a really good idea that never got implemented.

So, how do you stop that from happening? Here are 3 steps to help you move from thinking to doing.

1. Figure out what you need to be doing versus what you can get someone else to do. Look, there’s no reason why YOU have to do all the implementation. Get some help!

If you already have a team, fantastic! Now you just have to start delegating. If you don’t have a team or you don’t have the right person on your team to do a specific job (for instance, a technical person to fix your shopping cart) then you need to put finding that person to your to-do list. In the short-term, yes it does add to your workload, but in the long-term, it will save you a lot of time.

2. Block off time in your calendar to work on your plan. The only way these things are going to get done is if you actually take the time to work on them. So start by actually setting aside the time.

You may be someone who works better in shorter, more frequent bursts of time (15 or 20 minutes every day) versus a longer time less frequently (2 hours or half a day once a week). Only you know what appeals to you, and I would suggest scheduling your time accordingly. (Look, it’s tough enough to get things done; you might as well make it easier for yourself by working with your natural tendencies than against them.)

3. Set yourself up for success. Just because you set the time aside doesn’t mean you’ll actually get anything done on your plan during that time. So you need to keep yourself focused and motivated and don’t allow yourself to get sidetracked.

Now there’s no question that’s much easier said than done. So how do you do that? Here are a few tips to try:

• Remind yourself WHY you’re doing this. Is it so you’ll be able to take care of your family better? Is it because you want to sell a million copies of your book? Is it because you’re so tired of the way things are you’re ready for a change? Whatever it is, remind yourself of the bigger WHY before you sit down to work. That will keep your motivation up.

• Make it a special time just for you. Maybe light a candle, put on some favorite music or pour yourself a fave cup of tea. Or maybe you head out to a local Starbucks to hang out. Whatever it is, make it special — something you look forward to.

• Create a “squirrel file.” If you ever watched the movie “Up,” there’s a talking dog in it that keeps getting distracted by squirrels. So he’ll be talking and in the middle he’ll shout “squirrel!” and completely lose his train of thought.

As entrepreneurs, we are surrounded by squirrels. And there’s no better time for the squirrels to come and play then during this time we’ve set aside to implement our marketing plan. “Oh, I’ll get to my plan as soon as I get this email out…as soon as I return this phone call…as soon as I clean up my desk.”

You get the idea.

So the way to keep the squirrels away is to create a “squirrel file” (or call it something fun like “squirrel nest”). Any of those squirrels come running out, capture it and stick it in the file to work on “later.” If you want, you can even designate a time to work on all those squirrels.

But the most important thing to do is DECIDE you really ARE going to implement your plan. Once you do that, the rest will fall into place.