Your Key To Success: Sales Preparation
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. It’s an often heard adage that applies to virtually any situation, but with sales it’s especially important because failure isn’t a mere inconvenience – it can be the difference between financial success and financial ruin…or at least financial mediocrity. I once saw the results of a study that said 57 percent of a purchase decision is made before the buyer has any contact with a supplier. Let me put this in graphic terms so you can really get a feel for how important it is. Imagine you’re about to start a race. You look up from the starting blocks and find that the person you’re running against is already 57 percent of the way down the track. You have some serious catching up to do! This underscores the importance of doing extensive preparation before you make any sales call – whether it’s to an existing customer or you’re prospecting via cold calls. You see, if you are able to intelligently engage your prospects or customers (who are 57 percent ahead of you) you can get them to pause long enough for you to catch up to them. If you fail at that, they’ll keep running and cross the finish line without you. Sales preparation steps Your preparation falls into two general categories: Understanding your prospect’s needs, and Understanding how your solution meets those needs. With both of those basic elements understood, then you can begin to craft the best way to engage your prospects to eventually get the sale. Engaging the prospect involves asking the right questions and being attentive to the answers. Let’s first look at how to understand the needs of your prospects. You’ll first want to get a solid understanding of the company itself and how it stands in relationship to its competitors. What are its strengths and weaknesses? If you’ve been in this industry segment for a long time, you may already have a good feel for this. But even if you’re experienced, talk to others and read industry materials. Know who the leading companies are and if you’re approaching one of the “also-rans,” what would it take to push them into a leadership position? Be able to discuss the trends within the industry and how your product or service supports these trends. Do a little digging so you know the history of the company. Has it had any major successful projects or products? If its president or CEO were to give a talk and brag about the company’s achievements, what would they be? Using social media for sales preparation Social media is a huge benefit for us today. If you follow the social media accounts of your prospects, you’ll quickly discover what they assume to be their strengths. Then, by noting what they don’t tout, you’ll have some clues as to their weaknesses. Next, you’ll need to get a good feel for the person or people you’ll be meeting directly with. Again, social media can be a huge benefit. Look for shared LinkedIn connections and if any of these shared connections are people you are close to, make some calls to get additional details about your prospect. Look for shared interests and if your prospect seems to be actively engaged in social media, become a “follower” of his...
read moreWhat Jerry Maguire teaches us about business partners
They say that opposites attract, but the truth is deeper and more important than that simple observation. See if you remember this Tom Cruise line from the movie Jerry Maguire: “You complete me.” He was talking to Dorothy Boyd (played by Renée Zellwiger) and before he delivers the line he talks about how rough and cynical the world of sports representation is. Dorothy Boyd has a simple, straightforward, authenticity that Jerry Maguire yearns for. Together, in love, they complete each other. (By the way, just after that famous line, Zellwiger says, “You had me at hello.” How often do two quotable lines come from the same scene in a single movie?) When a small business partnership is needed Often it takes a partnership to make a small business “complete” and ultimately successful. Sometimes your spouse might be the ideal partner in your small business. For the right couple, this can be a very rewarding relationship. There are, however, risks that stretch beyond the risks unrelated business partners typically face. The first step in deciding if you need a partner, is to have a good understanding of: Your business knowledge and skills, and Your personality. If you don’t have the knowledge and skills to drive the success of your small business, you need to go out and get them. An advisory board can help in some areas and hiring can help in others. But sometimes, you may feel you need someone else “with skin in the game” to really provide the dedicated horsepower necessary to grow your small business to the heights you envision it. However, if you decide to go this route, you need to choose wisely. If you don’t, you can end up in a situation worse than where you began. We know that delegation is critical for the successful growth of a small business, but if you don’t partner up with someone who can handle his or her own “turf,” you aren’t doing yourself any favors by creating a partnership. The best small business partner Ideally, your partner should “complete you” – at least in terms of the knowledge, skills, and personality required to manage and grow your small business. There are two critical parts of “completing you.” The first is all about the business skills you each bring to the table, while the second involves the nature or disposition of you and your partner. What are the strengths you bring to your small business? Are you a sales and marketing rock star? Do you know how to make systems run efficiently for maximum ROI? Are you a technical guru who can do all the coding you need for a killer web presence? Sit down and honestly assess your strengths. I have a short skills assessment form you can use if you want some help. After you do this, you need to consider the areas where you are weakest; those will help point you to the right partner. If you hire someone with essentially the same skill set as yours, you’ll always be butting heads over both the big issues and the minutia of growing a small business. In terms of skills, they usually divide between general sales skills and the general technical and operational skills required to run a business. Consider the original partnership between Steve...
read moreCreating young entrepreneurs: Let’s get as serious as Google
As I’m writing this we’re squarely in the middle of summer. For much of the nation, the heat won’t really let up for at least a month and a half. From a marketing perspective, it’s the best time for the neighborhood kids to set up their lemonade stands. I wonder how many entrepreneurs can trace their first business experience back to a lemonade stand set up in their front yard. It’s a great experience and a tradition that continues to this day. However, I didn’t hear a person recently comment that the lemonade stands in his neighborhood were all set up to raise funds for charity. He thought that could be a mistake. Why not let the kids keep the money so they could experience the fruits of their labor directly? There is certainly nothing wrong with fundraising for your favorite cause, but it’s also important to recognize and reward successful commercial efforts. Frankly, if it weren’t for profitable businesses, charities wouldn’t have any sources of income. As great as a local kid-run lemonade stand is, Google has a program that gives it even more juice – if you’ll pardon my wordplay! Google has a division called Google for Entrepreneurs and one of the things they do is organize Lemonade Day programs across the country. It gives the experience of creating a lemonade stand more structure and pushes the kids in ways that the average Saturday afternoon lemonade stand wouldn’t. Participants are required to set a goal, work with a mentor, make a plan, keep a notebook, participate in a workshop, and more. In other words, they need to do the kinds of activities that would be required if they were founding a business they expected to last for years and years – not just through a summer heat spell. To see if there’s an official Google-sponsored Lemonade Day program in your city, check out this map and don’t forget to keep up with Lemonade Day current events via their official Twitter account! I applaud the folks at Google for seeing the need to instill the entrepreneurial spirit in our youth as well as teach them some of the basics of starting and managing a business. And if you’re a parent, I think you should do your part too. Introduce your children to important principles that are necessary for business success. Unfortunately, we’ve seen something of a drop in entrepreneurial activity in recent decades, with business closures now outnumbering business creation. Perhaps the best and maybe only way to reverse this is to redouble our efforts at introducing young people what is possible through entrepreneurism. Support your local lemonade...
read moreSurvey says! Small business owners weigh in on presidential election
Have you noticed how the NFL stretches out its preseason, regular season, post season, awards season, and draft season to keep professional football in the headlines all year long? I think they got the idea from our political parties. We had the primary season, now we’re in the convention season, and immediately after that comes the campaign season. And the “polling season” is a year-round affair, which brings me to an interesting political poll recently conducted by Sage. The company, which specializes in integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, took the pulse of business owners to measure their views on the current political and governing environment and the candidates running for president. The survey, conducted by Qualtrics and administered to 301 Sage customers across the United States in early June 2016, found that 49 percent of small and medium-sized business owners/founders were dissatisfied with the current political landscape. Words used to describe their feelings were “discouraged,” “disgusted,” “angry,” and “mistrustful.” The same percentage, by the way, felt that the 2016 business outlook was the same as it was in 2015. And for 44 percent, that meant that they were not optimistic about the future. In other words, no progress has been made. What issues are top of mind for small business owners? Here’s what they are concerned about: Policy – 67 percent Health care – 60 percent Education – 55 percent It’s interesting that “policy” tops the list. It’s a rather vague term that usually doesn’t get much attention. However, recent policy changes have pushed the topic into the small business headlines. This includes the recent Department of Labor policy change regarding exempt and nonexempt employees, which makes overtime pay mandatory for millions of additional employees. I’m also thinking of DOL changes to the “persuader rule,” which will seriously hamper small business owners’ ability to cope with the threat of unionization. No matter where your political affiliation lies, you probably sense that the 2016 presidential election has more direct implications for small business than has been the case in previous election cycles. The recent policy changes coming out of the Obama administration may be part of the president’s plan to secure his legacy by making fundamental changes to the critical relationships between employers and employees. For those who favor these changes, support for Hillary Clinton is the clear choice. For those opposed, support for Donald Trump – who has claimed the turf of ultimate outsider – is quite likely…and the Sage survey seems to support this. Small business owners side with Trump on six out of 10 policy initiatives: Decreasing regulation, Reforming tax codes, Handling the deficit, Handling gun rights, Reforming immigration, and Providing access to capital. I think many of the most important small business concerns – especially health care rules and DOL policy changes – fall into the category of “decreasing regulation.” What is interesting to me is the finding that immigration reform is important to small business owners. One might think that all business owners would want to continue the influx of less-skilled workers from Latin America into the U.S. to keep overall wages down. But apparently, that’s not the case. Finally, the Sage survey included an interesting question. They asked if small business owners could draft a former president (living or not) to take the...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: Startup marketing DNA, mompreneurs, and five states that want your small business
Five states are making concerted efforts to lure small businesses, and if you’re going to start a new small business, there are four things you need to have in place. Get all the details and more in this week’s collection of curated content from around the InterWeb. Politics, government, and the economy Some states are putting in a real effort to lure small businesses to set up shop within their borders. Check out the five profiled here and get ready to load up the moving van! Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation About to start a small business? Be sure you have these four things in place. If you need some inspiration, listen to what these successful moms who are also entrepreneurs have to say. Marketing a startup presents special challenges. Find out how to develop a growth marketing DNA in you startup. Leadership, management, and productivity You can do more than keep your accounting books on the cloud. Cloud-based CRM and other apps can also give your sales team a boost. Do you really know what kind of shipping options your customers prefer? This MarketingProfs article examines the question. Once you read the article, the title will make sense: 15 Ways to Drive Employee Engagement and Reinforce Culture via the Green Goldfish. It’s App-Mania in this collection of the 2016 edition of the 25 best apps for small business owners. Marketing and sales Yoav Vilner says that ultimately, all marketers must turn to data to understand their customers on a deep personal level…and he offers three ways to create data-driven marketing campaigns. Instagram can be a great marketing tools for many small businesses. Here a complete guide to get you on your way. Take in the advice in this piece to hone you skills at producing social media marketing visuals that get shared. This roundup does a good job comparing and contrasting the effectiveness of inbound and outbound marketing. If you need more convincing that you should make mobile marketing a priority, these seven top reasons will do the trick. Running into a brick wall searching for content ideas? This FreshBooks blog will jumpstart your brainstorming....
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