This is a guest post by Paul Archer

A few readers wrote to me just before Christmas asking for help. Both were struggling to get in front of new prospects to sell their services and products. Both had excellent propositions but found call reluctance to be as problem and prospects unwillingness to speak with them preferring to “weather the storm” and batten down the hatches.

Have you experienced this as well?

I think we all have to some degree and unless you’ve had your head in the sand, you’ll recognise that we are going through a downturn. Now I don’t sign up for the “business is better that it’s ever been, I’m busier than ever, what recession?” brigade; these people seem to be just massaging their egos when they print this stuff.

The plain fact is – we have to prospect more than ever before. Working harder and smarter at getting to speak with new customers, will help us succeed in this economy.

I think we’ve all got the skills but maybe haven’t had to use them so much over the last five to six years since there’s been plenty of business to go around.

So now’s the time to smarten up our prospecting tools, or client acquisition tools as this is now known as.

Here are some quick tips to help you.

• Examine your product and service and be crystal clear as to what problem it solves. Problems in recessions are all about saving costs and increasing revenue, getting invoices paid on time, preventing suppliers going bust and such like. Try to think like your customers and be totally clear as to what problems your product solves

• What is your customer segment? Be as precise as you can as to which type of customer has the problems that your product or service solves and then focus on these customers.

• Decide on your marketing to reach these customers. There are many routes to market that you can choose but the quickest and most decisive is still telephoning them to make an appointment to see them.

• Get over any call reluctance.

• Dedicate specific blocks of time in your diary to make calls to prospects.

• Aim simply for a face to face appointment nothing else. Don’t get into conversations, send out literature etc. These never work, although we think the do at the time, are easy to do, quite gratifying but divert your attention to the job of making appointments.

• Be up front with your prospect on the phone about the problem that your product solves and ask for an appointment.

• Don’t ask “if it’s convenient to call” you’ll lose sales if you do this. Instead say “if it’s convenient to speak right now I’d like to…” Subtle difference. And if you feel brave enough, don’t even ask, just launch into your opening.

• Learn how to politely persevere on objections twice and then leave the prospect alone. Keep coming back to the objective of asking for an appointment.

• Sticky tape the phone to your wrist and don’t put it down. Use the 60 second rule. This ensures you get onto the next call within 60 seconds, no longer.

• Spend a maximum of 60 minutes making appointment calls.

• Reward yourself when you.re done as making appointments is stressful, there’s no way around it. Yes alpha male macho types will tell you they enjoy it but you look at the burnout rate of call centre direct sales people.

It’s hard, full of rejection and people saying no, occasional rudeness and extremely easy to put off to-do another job.

We all need more prospects right now and making appointments via phone is the quickest and most effective method of doing so. Dig out all those customers that have connections to your company, old names and phone numbers. Those people who you never had the time to contact. Maybe buy some lists or leads and start to make those calls with the specific intention of making an appointment.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

As a consultant specializing in the hand-off of new products (or services) from Marketing to Sales, it was clear to me that my services were desperately needed.

Please realize though, that at this point my targeted account didn’t know they needed me. No one in their business had ever heard of me. And, not one penny in their already tight budget had been allocated for the type of work I do.

But I knew that the lackluster financial performance of this eBusiness could no longer be hidden in the profits of the manufacturing giant. Wall Street would demand results soon. Short-term results. Immediate results. And I knew I could make a difference.

After a plethora of unsuccessful attempts, I finally reached the president. This is basically what I said:

“I’ve been following your business. I know it’s imperative for
your company to have strong financial results immediately.
You’re counting on your new products to achieve your objectives
… and I can help shorten time-to-profitability.”

Following a brief 5-minute conversation, the president told me to call a key marketer on Monday, giving him a chance to talk to her first. Essentially, it was a done deal. The outcome – a highly profitable engagement with the firm.

Why am I telling you this? Because business opportunities for your firm are everywhere. In fact, they’re staring you right in the face every time you pick up a newspaper or turn on the radio or television.

The Ripple Effect of “Triggering Events”
But most sellers don’t use the news because they’ve never connected these “triggering events” with the potential for business.

For example, any time two organizations collide due to a merger or acquisition, this triggers a whole slew of problems of can lead to great sales opportunities. Long-term suppliers no longer “own” the account and the door is open for the astute seller.

Here are just a few of the areas where your opportunities might abound when firms merge:

•  Sales & Marketing: Rebranding, new collateral, revision of go-to-market strategies, product launch, PR support, advertising campaign, sales training, channel conflict, compensation discrepancies, SFA/CRM systems integration, new technology.

• Information Technology: Planning, prioritization of projects, massive system integration issues in just about every conceivable area, new technology acquisition.

•  Human Resources: Teambuilding, compensation issues, legal problems, downsizing/outplacement assistance, evaluating personnel, employee benefits coordination.

Once you know what to look for, opportunities for your products or services become readily apparent. They just need to be acted on.

Capitalize on “Triggering Events”
Follow the news about companies in your targeted market segment closely. Keep your eye out for any changes because they could create business for you. Once a change hits your radar screen, extend your research immediately, collecting as much information as you can before you contact someone in the company.

The key to your sales success lies in your ability to align your product or service offering with their key business needs related to the “triggering event.”

When you connect with corporate decision makers, remember that they could give a rip about the process you use, your leading-edge product line or one-stop shopping. But they care desperately about business results, eliminating problems and achieving their desired outcomes.

So pay attention to the news. Right now some companies desperately need your products, knowledge or expertise because of what’s happening in their business. Use the news as a trigger to identify who they might be, research them and then make that phone call.

That’s the quickest way I know to create new opportunities, shorten your sales cycle and grow your business.

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com

This is a guest post by Paul Archer.

Here’s a tale that many parents will relate to and gives some thought to help next sales meeting.

It was rush hour and I was travelling on a packed intercity train and in the opposite seat was a young couple with a toddler who was causing all sorts of commotion. The poor young couple were very embarrassed. The carriage was stony quiet except for the toddler and everyone was staring at the young couple.

Along came the conductor to check tickets and to the rescue she came. She soon realised how uncomfortable the couple were so offered to head back to the buffet car where they had some special toddler packs containing colouring pencils and picture books.

The couple were even more self-conscious being asked a question until the elderly chap next to me said “Oh can I have one as well please?” He laughed followed by everyone else and the icy tension quickly thawed.

He had rescued the situation with some quick thinking and humour.

This made me think about sales meetings and the need to have one or two questions up your sleeve as rescue questions. When the situation gets tricky – maybe your customer has said something that completely throws you or your laptop crashes right in the middle of the presentation – most of us can’t think quickly enough to come out with an appropriate response so have one preprepared.

It’s here that you can use your rescue question to get you out of the tricky mess.

Here are a few ideas:

“That’s a good point – can we park that and come back later”

“Tell me about your year so far”

“What major changes are you implementing this year?”

So memorise some rescue questions just in case – you never know when they’ll come in handy.

And the toddler? Sure enough the toddler pack did the trick but only for ten minutes. I felt very sorry for the couple but reached for a 21st century gadget to get me out of bother – my iPod and drowned out the noise.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

This is a guest post by Karen Andrews.

Believe it or not, the best way to make sales is not to talk about how wonderful a product or service is or how great the features are because your prospects and your customers simply aren’t interested.

If you really want to be a successful and professional salesperson the best way to achieve that is to master the art of consultative selling.

Consultative selling qualifies and listens to the customer to help them to buy what they need. It focuses on the needs of the customer and how to improve or benefit them in some way. It is the complete opposite to traditional methods of selling because it isn’t about what the salesperson wants to sell them; it is about what the customer wants or needs to buy.

It a common fact that most people dislike being sold to but love the feeling and power of buying so the easier we make it for prospects to buy, the easier it is to win them as customers.

People buy from people they trust and who understand their issues. If you can get customers to think about the needs of their business and to really think about current or potential problems or challenges they may face, they start to see you differently and understand the value you can add to them or their business. This leads to long term profitable relationships rather than short term sales.

There are many times when prospects and customers know what their needs are. However, it is more than likely that they are not only unaware of having any needs for your product but also insist they are perfectly happy with how they are the moment and the last thing they want to do is;

• Change suppliers
• Spend money or increase investment
• Try anything new

Your job is to help your customers and prospect uncover needs they may not already be aware of or to simply consider an alternative to what they are doing now and the way to do this, is through questioning.

Questioning is an important component of consultative selling and the goal is to ask intelligent, high level questions that helps customers to think about their current situation and identify what they are looking for.

Think of consultative selling in terms of a visit to the Doctor. When you visit a Doctor, one of the first things they will do is ask you questions to identify your symptoms (fact finding/uncovering the need). Even if you tell them what you think the symptoms are, they continue to ‘probe’ and ask more questions to ensure they have a full understanding of your problems.

Once the Doctor has all the critical information they diagnose your problem and provide solutions which may be in the form of a prescription or seeing a specialist (providing a solution and the next steps).

If the Doctor doesn’t uncover all the relevant and important information, they will mis-diagnose your problem and provide the wrong solution which can be extremely dangerous.

Imagine how you would feel if the Doctor didn’t ask you any questions or listen to you but simply started talking and assume they knew what was wrong with you. Would you consider them to be an experienced, trustworthy, professional?

Consultative selling is no different, if you don’t uncover the real needs and the real issues of your prospects and customers you run the risk of providing the wrong solution or one that has little to no value to them.

Karen Andrews is Director of Shine Sales Solutions, and a Sydney based Sales Coach and Sales expert who  works with businesses to increase their sales through strategy development, sales coaching and mentoring..

This is a guest post by Paul Archer.

On holiday in France last year we spent many an evening in the local cafes sucking up the atmosphere enjoying everything that is France. Next to us on one evening was a charming British couple and, as you do, we got chatting. The chap talked about life back at home and mentioned excitedly about coaching his local mini rugby team.

Now that’s exactly what I do on a Sunday morning so I began to tell him, with equal enthusiasm, all about my coaching. I told him all about it, never stopped, talked over him and dominated the conversation.

That’s not empathy and rapport building…I blew it.

They didn’t stay in the café very long making their excuses and disappeared into the night. Afterwards I realized what I’d done and knew that if I’d listened to him and allowed him to talk openly about his hobby…we would have got on better. Instead I just got talking about the same subject.

It’s easy to do this when the other person mentions something that you can say a lot about as well. Sometimes we all fall into this trap. I know, I did.

This is useful in sales, coaching and any communication situation where you need rapport and a trust before you can do your job.

Do people a favour and just let them talk.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

Commodity Buyers
These buyers know exactly what they want and how to use it. They don’t need sellers to explain the details. Commodity buyers typically value:

• Low costs. They don’t want to pay any more than necessary. To be successful with these buyers, companies need to pull as many costs as they can out of their supply chain.

• No hassles. Make it simple, simple, simple to do business with your company. Give them an 800 number, send quick quotes, or allow easy online ordering and they’re happy.

We’re all commodity buyers at times. When I order things like contact lenses and office supplies, I just want good pricing and fast service. As a seller, there’s little you can do to create value or sell “value add.” I really don’t care. It’s up to your company to make it cheaper, simpler to order, delivered to my door and with easy returns if I need to send it back.

Strategic Partners
These people are looking far beyond the scope of your products or services. They want a strategic partnership. They’re looking at how to best leverage their organization’s core competencies in combination with another company’s core competencies. These buyers value:

• Intimate and strategic relationships between multiple levels within both organizations.
• Mutual investments in joint projects.
• Merging of systems to accomplish more than either organization could do alone.

Working with Strategic Partner buyers requires a major corporate commitment and is far beyond the scope of any one seller. If your company isn’t capable or willing to do this, these buyers aren’t interested in working with you.

By yourself, you can’t create the value they need. But if your company chooses to do this, you and your firm will become absolutely invaluable.

“I Need to Make a Sound Decision” Buyer
These buyers are either spending a lot of money on a decision or they don’t know everything there is to know about what they’re buying. Typically their decision process is complex, involves multiple people and takes place over an extended period of time.
If corporate decision makers are seriously considering your product or service, they assume it meets their basic requirements and that your organization is reputable. Having a decent offering gets you in the game, but does not typically provide enough value to win the business.

In fact, with these these buyers, the seller creates the value by what they personally bring to the relationship. These buyers value sellers who:

• Help them understand their problems in greater depth.
• Add additional insights into the challenges they face.
• Share relevant information regarding “best practices.”
• Develop unique, innovative approaches to resolving their business issues.
• Keep them up-to-date on trends in the industry and how others are addressing them.
• Help them find ways around the obstacles they’re encountering, and
• Propose new ways to do more with the same investment.

Becoming an Invaluable Resource
What makes a seller invaluable? The ability to contribute so much more with each and every customer interaction – so much so that they can’t imagine doing business without you.

Let me give you an example. Say your company handles direct mailing programs, a fairly non-differentiated service offering.

Here are some ways that you, as the seller could become invaluable to your customers. You could:

• Share ideas about other company’s direct mail programs – what works, what doesn’t.
• Help them find ways to increase the results of their existing direct mail programs.
• Show them how to reduce the overall costs of the program while maintaining its effectiveness and integrity.
• Let them know what their competitors are doing.
• Develop ways to increase the quality of their database.

If you keep thinking, you can come up with even more ways to become invaluable such as:

• Working collaboratively with related vendors (i.e. agencies, telemarketing firms) to smooth out the hand-offs.
• Helping them establish important criteria for their vendor selection process that they currently may not be aware of.
• Proposing ideas for new programs to help them achieve their desired marketing results.
• Acting as an advocate within your own organization on issues impacting the customer.
• Suggesting ways to improve the work flow between all companies and internal departments working on the project.

To become invaluable, you must bring more to the relationship than just your standard product or service. What you want to create is a situation where corporate decision makers can’t live without your ideas, insights, and knowledge.

Becoming invaluable doesn’t just “happen.” You need to invest in yourself. Learn more about your customer’s business. Figure out how to help them improve it. Be an idea generator. Become an expert in your field. It takes a real commitment on your part.

Only the best make that commitment. But it truly sets them apart from everyone else and literally makes them invaluable.

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com

This is a guest post by Paul Archer.

Here’s a sublimely simple way your company can take a small step to ride out the economic downturn. It hit me on Saturday whilst clothes shopping for my daughter.

The shop was empty. Just a few sales assistants wandering around looking trendy and checking the racks of fashion clothes. I guess it was the snow, the fact that it was 10am on Saturday and a retail slowdown that caused the shop to be empty.

I was shopping with Claire and my 8 year old daughter Bethan, for clothes and girls seem to take that job so very seriously, I can never understand why. At the checkout the girl behind the counter took the items. She was very pleasant, smiled fully and got on with the job, which I was keen to finish now having spent 19 minutes in the shop. Believe me; a man’s legs go wobbly after 20 minutes in a clothes shop, so I was keen to see the door.

“Do you want to enter a free competition?” she asked, and pointed to the brochure. As my wife paid for Bethan’s top, I read the brochure. Strewth I thought, now this is one fab competition. Totally free, as she said. But the first prize was £50,000 cash and the second prize a totally luscious Mercedes.

Wow I thought. This is a seriously good competition surely it would be easy to sell to customers. For a start she shouldn’t have said “Do you want to enter a free competition”. No, that’s a closed question asked so unenthusiastically too. She should have used a “yes tag” here. “You’d like to win £50,000 cash wouldn’t you?” and if she’d checked my name on the Maestro Card she would have been able to call me Mr Archer.

I was just about to give her a sales one to one training session to my wife’s horror…but then stopped myself.

The polite girl on the counter hadn’t ever been trained in sales and how many other customer facing staff have never had any basic sales training. Those fashionable types wandering around the retail floor, the people taking calls from customers that morning, the people at the checkouts, the staff that take orders from their online division, the people who take payments over the phone… the list goes on. They’ve never had even the basics of sales training.

As I left the store looking forward to watching England take on Italy in the rugby, a little bit of me thought…isn’t that a shame. Any company that gives every customer facing team member some basic sales tips, will certainly have a competitive advantage in this challenging economy.

So come on everyone who can change this. Give your guys just a few sales tips to help them sell us all through this temporary downturn.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

This is a guest post by Jill Konrath

Of course, you don’t mean to do that! But the truth is that it often happens without you even thinking out it.

Case in point: You’ve just learned all about your new product or service offering. Tons of details. All its selling points. You’re so excited & can’t wait to share what you’ve learned with your prospects.

And when you finally get into a meeting, what comes out?

“We’ve just introduced a new complete system (methodology/process) that’s guaranteed to provide fully integrated communications for all your technology and non-technology needs as well as provide significant return on your investment with an ROI of only 9 months.”

Blather! I know you’re thinking you sound impressive, but from a prospect’s perspective it’s downright intimidating. Their eyes slowly glaze over and before long, you’ve lost them.

To be a successful communicator, you need to talk like a normal human being.

Here’s an interesting tidbit that supports this premise: A language monitoring serviced analyzed the recent VP debate. Palin spoke at a 9.5 grade level, while Biden spoke at an 7.8 grade level. (Full article here.)

Both candidates are focused on connecting with voters, not impressing them. I have no doubt that they could have easily spoken at a much higher grade level – which would have meant bigger words, longer sentences and more complex sentence construction.

However, they chose not to do that. They wanted to relate to us.

If we’re focused on impressing prospects with our vast knowledge, we’ll lose them. They’ll feel stupid. They won’t open up. They won’t ask questions.

And we won’t get the business!

Question for you: Have you ever caught yourself trying to impress customers? What happened? Were you able to recover?

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com

Mind you, they would never answer it if they thought a seller was on the other end of the line. They’re likely right in the middle of a meeting and expecting a call from someone else.

Suddenly, instead of leaving your well-prepared voicemail message, you’re on the spot to say something intelligent and compelling. If you’re like most people, those kind of words don’t flow naturally from your mouth – especially when you’re under pressure.

When I was writing my book, one of my clients was actually working through it in real time, giving me immediate feedback on the strategies, processes and tips in it.

She had a great laugh at my expense when she read about my own major blooper when the vice president of sales actually answered the phone. I totally lost my cool.

My value proposition evaporated into thin air. I stumbled over my words, talked a mile a minute and blurted out this rambling, non-focused spiel about what my company did. It was horrible – totally unbecoming of someone in my position. In fact, I was embarrassed to be me.

I got off the phone as soon as I could before I dug myself into an even deeper hole. My only saving grace was that he probably wouldn’t remember who I was.

Alyssa thought that was really, really funny – that is, until the day it happened to her. She’d prepared this great voicemail script for a prospect with whom she was trying to get an appointment.

She was all set to leave her message at the beep, but it never came. Instead, Mr. Big answered the phone. Immediately Alyssa felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her brain locked and she couldn’t think of a thing to say.

On the other end of the line, Mr. Big was saying, “Hello, hello. Is somebody there?”

“Yes,” she finally said. “This is Alyssa. I’m with Anonymous Software Firm.”

“What do you want?” he said curtly.

“We specialize in (self-serving words to describe her offering). I’d like to talk with you about your sales automation system and how our software can help you improve it.”

He cut her short. “We already have that covered. I’m in the middle of a meeting and have to go.”

End of call. He hung up.

So what will you say after your prospect says, “Hello?”  Have you thought of it? Does it flow out of your mouth as easily as your voicemail? Or, are you getting ready to dig your own grave?

Here are several tips that will help you avoid sounding like a blooming idiot.

1. Keep it simple.  After you say your name, it helps if the next sentence you say is the same for both your voicemail and an actual conversation. That way your brain won’t freeze.

2. Focus on business. Corporate decision makers hate peppy, enthusiastic people who can’t wait to share things about their product or service.

3. Develop a provocative question. You want to engage the decision maker in conversation as quickly as you can.

4. Check to see if they’re busy right then and there. If they’re distracted, you’re wasting your breath.

5. Don’t focus on being nice. Instead, focus on being a business professional that has something valuable to say.

Most of all, plan ahead. You know how seldom someone actually picks up their phone. This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Make sure you put your best foot forward.

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com