Reset. Refocus. Reframe.

This week’s article has been contributed by Darleen Santore, aka “Coach Dar”.

We all have to learn to feel good about ourselves and get rid of the negative talk. We have to live life before it’s too late and that means pushing through the negative to get to the positive. We have to learn that we are good enough.

We need to stop doubting ourselves and stop the negative talk. We don’t need to compare or compete with others.

Just because it’s hard now doesn’t mean it will be hard forever. You need to press forward, and if you need help, call for help…reach out. You have great things ahead. Believe it! A bad day doesn’t mean a bad life or a bad year, there’s always light that peeks through the darkness.

You may be nodding your head while you’re reading this and thinking, “Coach Dar is right. I need to stop beating myself up, but how do I do that?” I’m glad you’re thinking this way because that means you’re getting yourself in gear to make a change. You have to begin with a Reset, then Refocus and finally Reframe so that you can Restart. What do each of these mean and how do you go about doing these things?

  1. Reset – Pause and stop doubting yourself. If you’re feeling down, and you’re doubting yourself, make today the reset. Don’t beat yourself up with lies. Don’t let fear of failure get to you. If there’s an area that you need to work on, you have got to reset so you can start fresh.
  2. Refocus – Examine how you’re looking at things. Look at how your time is being spent. Evaluate what is important. If you have a particular sales goal that seems impossible, but you’re not putting the right amount of effort into it, how can you reach your goal? Refocus on what you want to do and see it in a different light. See it as possible.
  3. Reframe – Believe in yourself. Your past doesn’t define you. You are amazing. You have to reframe how you are seeing things. Stop with the guilt. We feel guilty about everything. Stop with the negative self-talk. Stop with the fear of failure. We all fail, but that’s how we learn!

Reset. Refocus. Reframe so that you can Restart.

Put positive affirmations around you. Stop feeling inadequate. Find a community of people that pull you up and encourage you. Enough with not feeling like you’re enough or that you can’t reach your goal.

Commit to “flip the script” of your life today and make yourself the best version of yourself that you can be. So that you can be the best in life, business and relationships. Let’s do this!

For more information about Coach Dar, her individual and group coaching or to book her as a speaker, please visit www.CoachDar.com or email Coach Dar.

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Stop Presenting

In three separate conversations, I was contacted by 2 sales representatives and one entrepreneur who asked to provide a critique of a presentation that they were taking to a prospect. While the circumstances around each were different, there was one common challenge I identified following each conversation-information around a solution, product, or service was being presented way too soon! None of the three understood how the prospect ran their business without the recommendation that they would prescribe. And only one realized how this approach would lower their chances of a successful outcome, even if they did (for some strange reason) win the business.

A sales presentation is often the prelude to closing the sale.  Stop for a minute to think that the sales presentation is more like third base.  Understanding how a prospect would use your product or service, what their title was, what the decision making process is, what problem is solved by buying from you are all the issues that will get you to first or second base.  Jumping right to the boilerplate sales presentation is one sure way to be knocked out of the game.

Today’s marketplace is very unforgiving.  Buyers have more information and less time than ever before.   Asking the right questions and taking the time to listen and learn about how to help solve a buyer’s problem is the road to success.  Sellers will have fewer opportunities to be “at bat” so make sure that your presentations count.  Make sure your sales organization is not squandering those opportunities by practicing “spray & pray”.

Flannery Sales Systems helps organizations develop and implement a repeatable sales process.  Improving the effectiveness of your sales organization is a key success strategy for the coming year.  We would welcome an opportunity to explore your needs and understand where you could benefit from an improved skills and processes.  Only then would we consider making you a presentation!  Flannery Sales Systems works with a broad cross section of industries and we are confident that we can enhance your results.

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Flannery Sales Systems to attend PITTCON Conference

Flannery Sales Systems to attend PITTCON Conference

We are  pleased to be participating in PITTCON,  the world’s leading annual conference and exposition on laboratory science. Pittcon attracts attendees from industry, academia and government from over 90 countries worldwide. We will be attending the conference this Tuesday and Wednesday, March 19 and 20 in Philadelphia. John E. Flannery, President of FSS will be on hand to speak with Sales and Marketing leaders about fine-tuning their efforts to drive revenue.

“We help all individuals in customer facing roles with the tactical execution of their GoTo Market strategy, which equates to one effective customer conversation at a time” says Flannery, who has worked for customers within the laboratory science sector. The inclusion of Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and Technical Expertise in the execution of sales process has proven invaluable in meeting and exceeding revenue objectives.

For an individual conversation with John, contact him at 858 518-7039 or john@drive-revenue.com

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Why You Should Use Those Buyer Personas You’ve Been Avoiding

Why You Should Use Those Buyer Personas You’ve Been Avoiding

 

Sometimes marketing just doesn’t get it. In my own experience, I’ve worked with companies in which the marketing team gave me one pitch while the sales team gave me a totally different one. Which one did I believe? The sales team’s pitch, because they were the ones on the front lines, and they knew the lingo to use and the angle to take.

 

But when marketing is dialed in, sales can get content that really resonates with prospects and leads. And that content might include buyer personas. If your organization has handed you buyer personas, and you’ve been reluctant to rely on them, read on…

 

The Case for Buyer Personas

Does your organization suffer from a distrust of marketing? Have you had marketing qualified leads handed over only to discover they’re not sales qualified leads? OK, that happens. But don’t distrust everything that comes from the marketing side. If marketing hands you buyer personas, and you’re skeptical, consider these two important reasons for using them:

 

  1. You can be more targeted in your approach when you have a better understanding of someone’s situation and pain points—which is what a buyer persona is designed to help you figure out.
  2. You can approach different audiences in different ways. Your prospects might include decision makers vs. end users, or a business decision maker (BDM) vs. a technical decision maker (TDM). The pain points will vary between each, and you want to hit on the right ones for each—or else they won’t listen.

 

What Should a Buyer Persona Include?

Buyer personas can be quite detailed, and some organizations even use a photograph to try and make the persona that much more real. What, exactly, the buyer personas you’re offered include is up to the team that creates them, but, in general, a persona should help you understand a prospect’s:

 

  • Role
  • Responsibilities
  • Current solution
  • Goals
  • Challenges

 

Other information might include budget, education, industry, years of experience and more.

 

Give Marketing the Feedback They Need

And what if you’ve tried the buyer personas and been frustrated? If you put these buyer personas to work and discover a disconnect, give marketing feedback on what is or is not working. After all, you’re the one out there with boots on the ground. You might have insight they need to refine these buyer personas to better describe your organization’s ideal prospects. And marketing is approaching these buyer personas from their own perspective. They need the information to improve upon the content they’re creating. You need the information to make more sales. So speak up. Don’t put the personas aside. Just ask for better versions.

 

Making Your Own Buyer Personas

And what if your marketing team doesn’t offer you buyer personas to work from? You can create your own. HubSpot offers a free template that you can find here. If you’re doing this on your own, you won’t need to get into too much detail, and you can refine these as you go. But at least you’ll benefit from a more targeted approach with your sales process.

 

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Six Things You Must Know Before Presenting Your Proposal

Business group meeting portrait - Five business people working together. A diverse work group.

There are six things you must know before you present a proposal to your prospect.  Your ability to conduct a professional and complete qualification of your prospect during the meetings leading up to this point in the sales cycle will provide you with the answers.  Here are the checkpoints:

1. You understand the prospect’s business objectives thoroughly and are able to provide a satisfactory solution.If you don’t understand the related challenges completely, how can you be sure you can suggest a solution that would be enthusiastically endorsed?

2. The prospect has to do something – it is NOT an option to keep things the same.

If the “status quo” is viable for the prospect, they might very well select that option.  Problems tend to fall into the “fix it” or “forget it” categories.  Unless there’s a compelling reason to change, most find it easier just to do nothing. Find the compelling reason why they’d want to go through the hassle of changing suppliers or implementing something new.  If they can’t present a compelling case for change, they probably won’t change.

3. You have access to the decision maker and will make your presentation to him/her.

A good rule of thumb is never to make a presentation to someone who can’t say “yes.”  It’s that simple.

4. The prospect needs to implement a solution in a time frame that makes sense for you from a business standpoint.Time kills deals.  What’s the point if your prospect doesn’t want to do anything for 18 months?  Too much can happen in the interim to send the deal sideways.

5. You understand the prospect’s selection criteria, and have a reasonable chance of meeting those criteria successfully. What are the top three things they’ll evaluate when selecting a business partner, and why are those things important?  This will give you a good handle on just how good your chances are.  If this is a price driven deal, for example, and you can’t or won’t compete on price alone, why try to compete at all?  It’s a very competitive world out there and your competitors are trying just as hard to win the business as you are.  You’ve got to know their strengths and weaknesses, how they’re likely to react in certain situations, how hard they’ll fight for the opportunity that you’re trying to win.

6. The prospect is considering only a small number of suppliers and is not putting the deal out to every company in the area. Generally, “RFPs” are not the most optimum type of business to win, since price plays such a major role in the selection process and the opportunity to communicate openly with the prospect is often quite limited.  Prospects whose attitude is “the more, the merrier” are more interested in price than a relationship.  Finally, increasing the number of options for the prospect decreases your chances of winning.

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On The Road Again: IHRSA Conference in San Diego

Flannery Sales Systems (FSS) was pleased to participate in IHRSA,  the largest fitness conference and trade show in the world on Thursday and Friday, March 14 and 15 in San Diego. John E. Flannery, President of FSS was on hand to speak with Sales and Marketing leaders about fine-tuning their efforts to drive revenue.

“We help all individuals in customer facing roles with the tactical execution of their GoTo Market strategy, which equates to one effective customer conversation at a time” says Flannery, who worked with one of the top fitness equipment manufacturer in the industry for four years. The inclusion of Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and Technical Expertise in the execution of sales process has proven invaluable in meeting and exceeding revenue objectives.

For an individual conversation with John, contact him at 858 518-7039 or john@drive-revenue.com

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Back to The Sales Basics: Do Simple Better

 

Do Simple BetterThe quote on a t shirt worn by Joe Maddon, the Manager of the Chicago Cubs (an American baseball team) inspired me. It said “Do Simple Better”. Professional athletes focusing on how to do the simple things, better.

Hmmm, Do Simple Better. What does that mean to your team? In Sales, this is what the focus should be on, and as fundamental as it sounds, doesn’t always happen in the heat of identifying, developing and closing a healthy Sales Pipeline filled with qualified Opportunities.

  1. Understand the Prospect/Customer’s Primary Business Objectives (PBOs): what is the Decision Maker hoping to accomplish if they purchase your product or service?
  1. Identify the Challenges: what is happening in their business today that inhibits them from reaching the PBO? And what is the impact, financial and otherwise, if they don’t make a change?
  1. Align Your Capabilities: how do your capabilities help the Decision Maker to address the Challenges? Be specific in matching the capability, and make sure the prospect identifies the VALUE they could obtain through the use of your capabilities. If they can’t, you should be able to help paint the picture on value.
  1. Agree on a Clear Next Step: what is the next step that the prospect and you are taking to move forward?  My colleague John Golden calls this an advance, as opposed to a continuation. Are we advancing this opportunity to the next step, or in a stall with one of the above mentioned items incomplete?

Items # 1 through 4 are the SIMPLE, or The Basics for sellers in early Opportunity development. They should all be discussed, documented and agreed to with the Decision Maker BEFORE sellers create a quote, write a proposal, ask for technical support or Marketing resources, build a presentation or respond to a tender/RFP.

 

Sales Leaders, it’s time to Coach your sellers to get the Simple right. Right now.

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Building Patience into the Sales Process

have-patience-hs-blogIt may sound counter intuitive, but patient salespeople are always the most successful.  The stereotype of the sales person who won’t take no for an answer, who repeatedly closes and who is relentless about cold calling may make entertaining television, but the evidence points to the patient sales person as the role model for an effective sales organization.

Look at your quarterly or year end results.  Did your sales team discount heavily in order to make the quota?  Has your pipeline of opportunities been cleared out to hit the numbers “at any cost” with that cost being a huge hit to your margins?  I’ve seen this in organization after organization where the sales team and management have not focused on effectively managing their sales process and opportunities throughout the quarter only to resort to panicked, premature closes to many opportunities.  More often than not, this “haste” lays “waste” to your margins and bottom line.

Taking the time early in the quarter to assess your pipeline and schedule business development activities on an ongoing basis is the first step to building patience into the sales process.

Being prepared to listen to the customer to determine their goals is another skill that requires a sense of restraint among the average seller who is too often quick to spray the buyer with product offerings and features hoping for a quick close.  If the seller doesn’t take enough time to fully understand how the customer will use their products, the buyer may get confused about irrelevant features or feel they are buying features they don’t need.

Buyers don’t often like to be told what to buy – particularly by sales people who they feel have a bias to push the sale regardless of the fit.  By listening to the customers needs, sellers are better able to establish the value of their solution.  By being patient, the seller is able to propose usage scenarios to the buyer which positions the seller as a credible consultant and the buyer is more likely to share the values of the alternative usage scenarios.  By exploring the value of the seller’s product usage more fully, the buyer can calculate the benefit of buying the product and the savings of buying it sooner versus later.  Often times the cost of operating without the seller’s solution can be significantly greater than the benefit of negotiating longer for price concessions.  Once the buyer determines that is the case, the urgency to close the deal increases.

Key Points:

  • Listen to the customer’s needs
  • Let the customer establish a goal
  • Establish value for your offering
  • Don’t close prematurely
  • Patience provides strength in negotiation

Developing a sales organization that respects a process that takes the time to better understand the customers need will result in a more predictable revenue stream, a higher win ratio and better margins – all rewards worth being patient for.

Flannery Sales Systems (www.Drive-Revenue.com) helps organizations develop and implement a repeatable sales process.  Improving the effectiveness of your sales organization is the key outcome we provide to clients.  We would welcome an opportunity to explore your needs and understand where you could benefit from improved skills and sales processes.  Flannery Sales Systems works with a broad cross section of industries and we are confident we can enhance your results.

 

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5 Ways Content Marketing Can (and Should) Support Your Sales Efforts

5 Ways Content Marketing Can (and Should) Support Your Sales Efforts

Content and Sales

Content Marketing and Sales

The sales and marketing rift… rumors have it that the gap is closing, and one can only hope that’s true. But does that include a better relationship between sales and content marketing? For the sales rep working hard to make connections and close deals with real life people, the ephemeral aspect of using “content” for marketing might seem like it has little value to their efforts. But it plays an important role—or at least it should.

 

The Content Isn’t New, but How It Supports Sales Is

Content isn’t new. We’ve always used content to promote products and services, and content “marketing” was a thing before it turned into a buzzword back around 2010. But with the buzzword came an effort to quantify the use of content in support of sales, to use content strategically to achieve sales and marketing goals. That shift in approach made content a valuable marketing tool—and therefore a sales one.

 

If you’re still not sure how a magazine or webinar is helping you or your organization with your sales efforts, consider these 5 ways content can be used:

 

  1. Content helps get people into the sales funnel in the first place. Content is doing a lot of the heavy lifting these days as people research solutions on their own before they are willing to engage with a sales person. When they come across your content while researching—and that content is engaging and targeted—that can lead to the first step: becoming a prospect.

 

  1. Content can be used to segment prospects and move them through the funnel. With different types of content offered, you can determine a prospect’s interests based on the content they engage with. This enables you to deliver more content on that same subject and even move the prospect farther down the sales pipeline and know when to engage with them. In this way, content can also be used to identify the best leads and those most likely to buy, by using past experience to predict future behavior. Content can also be used to nurture leads automatically, as with an email drip campaign in follow-up to a download or webinar.

 

  1. Content can keep your company top of mind when prospects aren’t yet ready to buy. Content such as newsletters that is pushed out to prospects provides useful information they appreciate without selling—while keeping your brand’s name in front of them until it is time to sell.

 

  1. Content can be developed in all types of formats, so prospects can interact with and consume it the way they want to. It might be video, an ebook, an infographic, a chart, an article on LinkedIn, a webinar, a tweet, a live video on Facebook, a print magazine, a mobile app…the possibilities are many, but the end result is the same: The user has some control over how and when they interact with that content, making them more likely to do so.

 

  1. Content can make use of testimonials and case studies in a way that you can’t. Prospects don’t want to hear what you say about your company. They want to hear what others say about your company. Content in the form of testimonials, case studies, use cases, success stories and more all tell your brand’s story for you.

 

Of course, this puts the onus on your marketing team to create the high-quality, segmented and engaging content you need. But through feedback loops that tell your marketing team what is or isn’t working, or when you find gaps in the content flow, you can support them in their efforts to create the most effective content while they supporting you in your sales efforts.

 

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Prospecting Spotlight: Leadership Changes Create New Opportunities

Prospecting Spotlight: 3 Trigger Events to Watch For

Artist Jenny Holzer says in her piece Truisms, “A sense of timing is the mark of a genius.” This couldn’t be more accurate within the world of prospecting.

When you’re cold calling and someone picks up the phone, the first question on their mind is often “Why are you contacting me?”

A well-researched answer providing your prospect with a potential benefit is the key to unlocking access from the gatekeeper. This step is critical for reaching your decision maker as soon as possible.

We spoke with a woman who was a Business Development Representative at NetSuite, responsible for setting introductory meetings for Account Executives. This series discusses the top three trigger events she had the most success with and why they work:  they are Leadership Changes, Expansion and Awards & Accomplishments.

1.     Leadership Changes

Reviewing press releases, company blogs, and other news sources like corporate LinkedIn pages are the best ways to learn of any changes in executive leadership. Setting up some sort of news alert feed that summarizes from these sources is an easy, time-efficient way to stay on top of your target accounts.

Executive promotions often go hand in hand with some sort of bigger strategic agenda. Understanding why this person has a new role could ultimately lead to a new opportunity. Start with a congratulatory note or call and see where that takes you.

If your congratulatory email gets a nibble – congratulations to you! How you respond sets the stage for the course of your relationship with this individual.

The key to success here is establishing yourself as someone who is genuine, can provide value, and who has their best interests first. Even though we all know you’re here in hopes of closing a deal, one must remember the old proverb “The best archer never reveals his target until it’s been hit”. In this case, your target is the deal.

Sometimes you will luck out and there is an immediate need for the products or services that you are offering. If not, patience is required (see our previous post, Building Patience into the Sales Process).

Illustrate how your company is an industry expert in their field. Thoughtful whitepapers, articles on industry trends, and any other resources you come across are helpful tools you can share with your decision maker to keep you on the top of their mind.  The secret is not to overwhelm.

When the buying time arrives, you’ll be far ahead of the competition because you already have a relationship with the decision maker. You are the one informing them of best practices, the tough questions to ask, and will be the one they’re comparing everyone else to. In a sense, they are deciding why not to go with you – pretty amazing position to be in all from a little “Congratulations on the new gig!”

Sales can be a numbers game and prospecting is a key success factor we must not underestimate. Effectively tailoring your prospecting strategy enables a sales force to work smarter, not harder. Analyzing and addressing the right trigger events will distinguish you and provides a head start against the competition.

Check in on our next post elaborating on how to leverage a prospect’s news of expansion into closing a new deal.

 

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