3 Ways to Align Communication with Corporate and Customer Needs

Sales leadership is always on the hunt for new sales tactics and strategies to transform their sales team into the dream team. When you take away sales training and costly CRM’s, what resources are left? Free (or almost free) tools and tactics are coming to light with the new age of selling. With a culture consumed by social media and the idea of marketing combining forces with sales, the industry’s relationship with its prospects is being challenged. Here are three, cost-efficient tactics to help improve the performance of your sales team and ultimately fill the pipeline:

1.    Social Selling

Free, simple and effective are three words to describe social selling. Encourage your sales team to leverage platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ to listen, engage and establish relationships with prospects. Hootsuite does an incredible job of outlining the pillars of social selling; the process is as follows:

  1. Listen and learn
  2. Research and relate
  3. Engage and impress
  4. Collaborate and close

Take advantage of everything social platforms have to offer. Get into the conversation; encourage your employees to respond to posts on the LinkedIn and Twitter newsfeeds. This is an almost effortless way to engage with prospects in the social community. Speaking of effortless, LinkedIn offers something called the Daily Digest which is an alert that it sent to you daily informing you when a contact changes jobs, gets a promotion, or even tells you when it’s their birthday. Similar to LinkedIn’s Daily Digest, Newsle is a free online tool that connects to your Facebook or LinkedIn accounts and alerts you when one of the people in your network are in the “news”.

These are all opportunities to engage, which can have a big impact for a small about of work. Just remember, social engagement is the gateway drug to lead generation.

 

2.    Partner with Marketing

Does your sales team understand the role marketing plays in the success of the business? Marketing exists to make the sales process easier so the company can hit its bottom line. Break the communication barrier and explain to your team where marketing fits into the sales process.

Sales can provide marketing with valuable information, including hindrances, prospect objections, customer feedback and market activity. With this information marketing can create programs and materials to streamline the sales process (follow-up emails, communication scripts, collateral, etc.). Working together can prove successful for both departments and the company as a whole.

 

3.    Identify Your Purpose

How does your business change the life of your customer? Everyone on your team should have an answer to this question. What are your customer’s issues? How will your product make their lives easier? Can you list product benefits?

  1. Among the obvious reasons, your team should be able to communicate an understanding of customer pain points when speaking on behalf of the organization. It’s easier to believe in something if you are able to relate to it; case in point, if you can’t relate to the customer then they surely won’t be able to relate to you or the product you’re selling. Once your staff understands the overall purpose of the organization from the customer’s perspective, their role in the company and how it fits into the big picture will become clear.
  2.  Identify the individual’s purpose and department purpose so they are able to see how their actions can help or affect the success of other departments. For example, we help marketing accomplish x, y and z. Sales helps marketing with a, b, c. When all team members understand not only their role, but the role other departments play to determine the success of a company.

Ultimately, a clear understanding will help build the foundation for good communication with clients. As well as helping the team identifies aspects of their conversations that would be helpful for marketing or trending issues so you can continue to relate to customers at their level.

 

These three strategies are designed to help you and your team reach your goals the most effective, cost-efficient way possible.  I hope you’re able to take these ideas back to your team and put them in action to help create your sales dream team.

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Successful Selling, Successful Business: How to Lead Your Team Well into the New Year

It’s easy to get caught up in your day-to-day routine of checking emails, project management, checking emails, attending meetings and checking more emails. As a member of sales leadership, it’s your responsibility to take a step back and reexamine how you’re doing things. When was the last time you cleaned your contact database? Are you taking advantage (or even aware) of new sales tools? These routine jobs may be time consuming, but they’re necessary. Simply said, it’s time for Extreme Makeover: Sales Edition.

1.    Take Two: Look at the Customers POV

Do the messages on your website connect with your customers? Part of understanding your customers’ needs is communicating it to the customer. Avoid overusing the word “we” in any type of communication when describing your organization; instead exercise more customer-facing messaging. Successful businesses know how to market to customers so they clearly understand what the product can do for them. Here are several questions to ask when reevaluating your customer’s point of view:

  • Do you speak their language?
  • Do you anticipate and answer their questions?
  • Does your product fulfill the customer’s needs or solve their problems?

2.    Sort and Clean Databases

Don’t wait three years to scrub your database, make life easier for your team by doing an annual cleanse to remove duplicates, stale clients/prospects and organize sales stages. Here are five tips to keeping your database squeaky clean:

  1. Don’t waste space, identify duplicates and remove
  2. Set up alerts to be notified of duplicates so you can determine whether or not the contact is truly a duplicate.
  3. Get rid of inactive contacts
  4. Check for nomenclature uniformity (i.e. Business Name Inc., Business Name, Co.)
  5. Eliminate the junk or contacts with fake information. For example, some people will use false email addresses like asdf@hotmail.com.

3.    Take Advantage of Webinars for Lead Generation and Client Retention

Cost efficient and effective, webinars are a simple way to generate leads and maintain an active relationship with current clients. Webinars are an opportunity to display your industry expertise and increase brand awareness, as well as engage in conversation with prospects, customers or peers.

4.    Get Closer to Your Numbers

Digging deeper into your numbers and what they mean can help your team understand what is working, what’s not working and what areas need improvement. This is easier said than done. An article on Forbes.com says today’s successful companies are doing three things well:

  1. Use analytics to identify valuable opportunities
  2. Start with the consumer decision journey
  3. Keep it fast and simple by investing in an automated data system

What’s your strategy to staying on top of your team? If you can’t succinctly describe how your product/service helps your target customers, then you’re in trouble. Prospects can see fluff copy and messaging from a mile away—cut to the heart of your product’s benefits and you’ll be surprised how effective more targeted words and messaging can communicate to your customers.

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Renew Your Love of Selling At Our Sales Boot Camp Feb 20-21, 2014

iloveselling

We all go through times when we love our jobs, but at other times, lets admit it:  We don’t.  Whether it’s the after-the-holiday-let-down, discouragement, boredom, a skill deficiency, or a desire to interact with other salespeople for new ideas and motivation, we’ve got the perfect program to get you pumped up and primed to renew your love of selling!  My colleagues at the Whetstone Group are conducting a Sales Boot Camp February 20 and 21, in a place that everyone loves: San Diego!

The best way to renew your love of selling, is to take a couple of days to catch your breath and join some entertaining and experienced instructors who will help you look at selling with a new perspective.  Take the time to catch up on the latest buying trends, evaluate your personal selling skills, and learn advanced theories and ideas while re-focusing on the basics of what there is to love about selling!  Increase your confidence and credibility, and you’ll love your compensation: earning power!

Attend our Boot Camp; click here to learn more: http://www.whetstonegroup.com/training-programs/css-2-day-boot-camp/
Be sure to mention John Flannery when registering, and call us at 866 518-7039

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Helping to Close the Gaps Brings Sales Success

Navigating your way through the tunnels of the oldest underground railroad in the world, the London Underground, you can’t miss the bright red and blue warnings signs, “Mind the Gap”.  Because some platforms are curved, and the trains that use them are straight, an unsafe gap is created when a train stops at a curved platform.  Visual warnings are also stenciled along the edges of the platforms and auditory warnings can be heard in that unmistakable English accent, warning, “Please, Mind the Gap”, advising passengers of the risk of being caught unaware and the possibility of sustaining injury by stepping into the gap.

Identifying the Prospect’s Gap

In early opportunity development, the “prospect’s gap” is exposed when they share a business objective, goal, or problem with us, which often begins a sales cycle.  The gap is the space between where the future customer is now, and the place they want or need to be.  Unfortunately, as we embark on sales opportunities day after day, we can easily become complacent about taking the time to really understand our prospect’s gap. Once they share a goal or need, our first inclination is to grab their hand and quickly leap across the gap, embarking on the “presentation train” where we can show them just how our product or service will meet their objective.  The danger lies in the fact that we may not realize we’re are on the wrong train, until the end of the line when the “sale” comes to an abrupt stop.  Time and money are often wasted, chasing sales which are out of alignment with what the prospect really wanted or needed in the first place.  Slow down, Casey Jr.!

“Minding the Gap” with a Discovery Map

 Ignoring the warning to “mind” your prospect’s gap could be reducing your chances of a successful arrival at your desired destination; closing the business.  The word “mind” suggests, “to watch or give care to”.  Similar to a map that can guide you through the London Underground, we have developed a tool to help you “mind the prospect’s gap”, called a Discovery Map.  Experienced reps can use it as a guide to avoid complacency as they dangerously become “experts on what the prospect needs” because “it worked for someone else” instead of taking the time to discover the prospects unique circumstances.   Inexperienced reps, who are just learning, to “watch or give care to” the gap, can use the tool as a discovery process to more thoroughly understand the prospect’s goals and objectives so that the presentation train they select is on the right track.
Closing the Gap: Clarity for the Path Forward

 When utilized correctly, the outcome of conversations held during gap discovery will also become the genesis for the plan to close the gap and build a path forward, commonly known as an implementation plan. If you have done a thorough job using the Discovery Map, and the prospect is then willing to work on an implementation plan ( on how to USE your product or service) with you before the deal is closed, you will be in the driver’s seat. Lack of  a willingness to do this tells you that there must be some items left to discuss in the prospect’s mind.

Let us help you develop a Discovery Map that you can hang up in your office as a reminder to “Mind the Gap” as you navigate a sale.  If it works in the expansive Underground in London, isn’t it worth an inquiry to Flannery Sales Systems to get you to your final destination successfully?

 

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