Streetfighter Selling

Did you know that ‘chronically happy’ people are generally more successful in their professional and personally lives? More importantly, their happiness is the result of ‘positive emotions,’ not money, but their happiness DOES make them more confident, optimistic and energetic, creating what UC-Riverside research guru, Sonja Lyubomirsky calls “success-oriented behaviors.” It’s too bad that we too often tend to focus on the negatives in life. Bad news sells, and people like to tell others about their ‘pain of the day.’ But those who are serious about success will spend more time looking up than looking down.

It’s become a common rallying cry in the sales profession: “if we cut this deal, we can make it up on future sales.” My first experience with it was in my early days of ad sales. I left a meeting with a potential advertiser thinking ‘this is going to be huge.’ My sales manager wasn’t as impressed when I started spewing my promises for “more, more, more” if we’d take this cut-rate (half price) offer. “We’ll make it up when we renew!” That’s when he explained two rules of selling:
1) don’t sell for potential profit, and
2) it’s not good business to lose money on a sale.

Email, as we know it, will soon be obsolete, replaced by modes that are more dynamic. In the meantime, we rely on it. A lot. Just ask the U S Postal Service. But the speed and frequency of that use is costing a lot of people a lot of sales. The reason? Undue expectations and unintentional misuse.

In recent months, I’ve compiled more than a dozen “do’s” and “donts” when it comes to email in sales.

Here, for your consideration (and further business development) are the topics that fall into the assumption category: things we take for granted:

#1: We ‘assume’ the customer demands it
Problem:
Especially with prospects we barely know, “just email it to me” is the phrase of the day. It’s also the equivalent of the famous line “send me something.” Translation: you’re not one of their vital concerns, and getting you to take a passive action, without their participation, is an easy, diplomatic way to express it. The bigger problem, though, is that we’ve come to convince ourselves that it means “I’m too busy and will not, under any circumstances under the sun, plan a face-to-face visit with you.”

Solution:
When told “just email it to me,” go ahead, but use it as leverage to get a more in-depth discussion, whether by phone or in-person. Agree, then ask questions (“Sure, I can do that, but let me ask you this….”) Clarify more about their needs/usage. Then, (assuming you’re in outside sales) go for a meeting. “…we have options that can make it more cost-effective.”

Tip #1: suggesting a date/time that is several weeks out is more likely to get the green light than the immediate future.

Tip #2: If you’re in telephone sales, go for planned telephone time. Emailing information or prices without doing a needs analysis is usually a waste of time.

#2: Assume they’re reading your email message
Problem:
Congratulations on reading this article. It shows you’re a pro. But, if there weren’t money-making ideas here, you’d have hit the delete button 10 minutes ago. So will your prospect.

Solution:
Be relevant. When you do send basic information or (against my better judgment) unsolicited pricing), add some sizzle. Your subject line must imply ‘take a look at this…it can help!’ Sales expert, and author of SNAP Selling, Jill Konrath has some excellent advice in this article

#3: Assume it’s a great primary new business tool
Problem:
The best prospects are the busiest prospects. They’re the people most likely to delete messages that aren’t of prime importance. And that includes you. If you’re counting on email to get their attention and make a great impression, you’re in trouble.

Solution:
Have a multi-pronged plan of attack. With the potential for rapid, and often dramatic turnover in customers, it takes a strategy of multiple prospecting streams to consistently create new sales.

#4: Assume it can replace personal contact
You can tell I’m a big fan of face-to-face sales, as this one is similar to my first point. I talk by email all the time, and it’ great. Like texting, it saves both parties a ton of time. Just remember…and this is huge….that is NOT always A GOOD THING.

Problem:
The average business email message gets banged out in less than a minute. Preschoolers can do it. Zap…click…boom….done. Who doesn’t like the idea of zapping off half a dozen ‘sales calls’ by email first thing in the morning. Makes anyone feel productive! But it can breed the habits of emailing instead of calling.

Solution:
For the casual comment or response to an inquiry (“how late are you open?”), you don’t need prose and poetry. But if you’re developing a sale, the time you time you put into it should be commensurate with the dollar amount of the sale.

Once again, I’m all for using email. Love it! I’ll add any technology that helps me increase contacts or efficiency. But the one common thread in selling….the one that, with any sale that matters….is still human contact.

Uh oh…you know that feeling you get when you’re about to make a well-prepared proposal and the prospect says they only have a couple of minutes? The first time it happened to me, I condensed a 20 minute presentation into five. Well I just put my motor-mouth in gear and let ‘em have it…..I rattled off my facts and benefits and made it to the price with time to spare.

Of course, I did NOT make the sale.
Whenever possible, reschedule. But, for ideas on how to make your point when you have to press on, read Short and Sweet: Mastering Quick Presentations , a terrific article from Inc magazine.

There are few things worse than a prospective sale that just kind of vanishes.
“Poof!” No reasons, no excuses, no phone calls returned. The process just stops. Phone calls go unreturned, and time continues to drift along.

It’s slipped into the Black Hole of Sales!

Most Black Holes are a symptom of something else. Something we missed. Asking more of the tough questions will take us further behind the scenes where Black Holes originate. These questions include:

Is there a ‘drop dead’ timeline for moving ahead?
What has to happen in order for it to proceed
Who has to decide or sign off on it?
What are the biggest potential barriers?
Is it budgeted?
Is it a strong priority?

Any “no” or otherwise vague answer spells DANGER. Black Hole possibility is good. The sale can still move ahead, but it would be a good idea to ask more questions and uncover those roadblocks early.

I was not in on the Linkedin IPO. In the coming months, I might be kicking myself. We’ll see.

You might have heard, Linkedin (you know what it is) went public this past week, and Wall Street went gaga. There are lots of reasons, from the 100 million worldwide users of Linkedin to investors appetite for the next big dot-com success. While I’ll make no speculation on the short or long term share value, I always look for the ‘sales spin,’ and here it is:

Social media networking is an incredibly powerful tool. Did I say incredibly? That’s an understatement. Eminently powerful. Astonishingly powerful. While it is NOT the end-all-and-be-all conduit of contact, it is a place you need to be. Your presence on Linkedin is a start, but membership in groups that are niche to you business or customers (and active participation in those groups) is essential.

Like Wall Street, I hope you’re bought in.

Are you a confident person? I don’t mean I’ve-got-a-big-ego-let-me-slam-dunk-the-ball confident, but a real sense of knowing that you’re in control of your sales, regardless of economic ups and downs. Are you confident that you are the right person to handle the sale and close it?

Confidence is more than a firm handshake. It can be the difference between struggling to make quota and having a clear plan of action. And today, after a few years of a rough economy, a lot of people have lost theirs…or at least had it slip. Too bad, too, because even a slight drop can affect one’s performance, and next year’s success. There’s an old saying: “confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.”

Confidence is the ultimate intangible. A customer can often read more about you from the signals you send than from the words you say. It has a direct correlation to job satisfaction, too. I’ve spent time at both ends of the confidence spectrum, riding the highs fueled by (and creating more) success, as well as the lows of lack of confidence and the subsequent mediocre performance.

So where do we get this confidence? Most people already have it, but it may be undeveloped. It’s tough to give one of those three-steps-to-the solution answers here. I believe that everyone, confident or not, should conduct a personal SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis. Doing so brings focus to the abilities you have, and those you want to increase. It’s can be a great confidence booster. Here’s a terrific template

Those confident researchers at Ohio State University found that simple things, like posture, play a big role. Remember how Mom always told you to sit up straight? She was right. They found that good posture projected confidence while the lack of it…well, lacked it. And further evidence shows that people who project confidence connect better with others, are more persuasive, and actually feel better about themselves.

You can (and should) “fake it until you make it” by thinking, talking and acting with confidence (even if you’re not there yet). But avoid an air of over-confidence.
Remember, perception is reality, and you don’t want to turn customers off, either.

So start by asking yourself these questions:
1) How do I feel about my chances for success next year?
2) What can I do to make them even better?

Rather than my usual year-end strategies for sales plans, let’s keep it simple. Follow these sixteen truths and you’ll go the distance in 2011:

Know your personal strengths

Focus

And finally, start having more fun. Sure, the stress and minutia of our profession can be draining, but so what? A part of sales now is managing and even thriving on the craziness that comes with it. Drink it up!

There’s a phenomenon sweeping our culture, forcing change at every level of business. Change Guru/Strategist Clay Christiansen gave it a name: Disruptive Innovation.

By definition, Disruptive Innovation is a new, sometimes radically different way of doing something that ‘disrupts’ the old way, sometimes leaving those practicing those old way in the proverbial dust. While the innovation is usually a service or product, at its core is a change that’s radical enough to ‘disrupt’ the product or service process currently in use. Examples include the way cell phones totally changed the landline industry or the way the Internet changed newspapers.

The solution to disruptive innovation is to innovate yourself. A few salespeople have already adapted with innovations of their own. A few others have already been defeated by it. Most salespeople are somewhere in between.

Disruptive innovation has hit the profession of selling in two dramatic areas:
#1: Connecting with customers, and
#2: Maintaining relevancy

The rapid rise in technology has altered the psychology and methods of customer contact. It’s popular to keep supplier contacts short, to the point and only when needed. Technology has rendered obsolete the old approaches to cold calling by phone or having voice mails returned. Connecting with customers today requires proactive innovation, including live and online networking, and high-purpose calls.

Maintaining relevancy is even more reliant on proactive innovation. We’ve got to continually ask ourselves “am I bringing value here?” Or, better still, “do my customers need me?” Historically (meaning, of course, in the old days), the salesperson was the courier of information, of details, pricing and the like. We were the customer’s information and action connection. But, with information abundantly available online, how can you remain relevant? The solutions lie in what they need, not what we want to tell them. Ask more, deeper questions to uncover their hidden costs and concerns. Demonstrate your problem-solving expertise. Make sure they see you as a valued consultant and not just another vendor who wants to take up their time. The secret is…make them want to see you!

Disruptive innovation is changing the world, and the way business is done. We can’t scoff at it or ignore it. To survive and thrive, we have to innovate, too.