What are the main issues you face when you target new vertical markets where you don’t have any experience in that area. Also, how do you overcome these problems?
I get asked those questions frequently. But usually it’s after the decision has already been made and the poor salespeople are struggling to gain a foothold in the new vertical market.
If you’re considering moving your company in a new business direction, here are my suggestions:
Your biggest issue will be credibility. Corporate decision makers don’t want to be your first client in a vertical market. They don’t want to have to educate you since it takes up their precious time.
Even though you’re a good company, they know that your lack of experience could lead to time-consuming and costly errors. They don’t want to risk this happening.
1. Move into the market slowly.
Don’t bet your company on success in the new vertical. Study the industry. Learn their terminology. Know their competitors. Double check for “fit”. I’ve seen way to many companies leap into new markets because they sense greater opportunity there than in their current market space.
2. Define the business case.
Uncover how they’re currently handling things related to your offering. What are the common status quo scenarios? What business objectives will they have difficulty achieving unless they change the status quo? What are the financial ramifications of these? Then define the value they’ll get from changing to your product/service.
Potential clients need to hear a strong value proposition that clearly articulates the business outcomes they’ll realize by using your offering. Use business terminology, not techie talk.
3. Create linkage.
If possible, try to create a link between your current customer base and your new one. If all your clients are schools and now you want to move to theme parks, you need to be able to clearly articulate why it’s relevant.
As an example, last week I had lunch with a good friend who spent over 20 years in marketing with a large accounting firm. She was laid off a while back. Now she wants to work with technology companies.
After analyzing both industries, combined with her experience we realized that her expertise was in helping company’s implement strategic changes in their marketing. That positioning makes sense to potential decision makers – and minimizes the “you don’t have any experience with companies like mine” objection.
4. Pursue smaller opportunities first.
This significantly reduces the decision maker’s perceived risk in moving ahead with a new player in the market. Then, make sure you do a superb job on delivering on what you promised. After that, pursue additional opportunities within the account to expand your footprint.
5. Train your salespeople on all the above.
Without this knowledge, they will flop. That I can guaranteed 100%. Ultimately these people have to make it happen. Don’t send them into the field with some worthless PowerPoints explaining your technology in excruciating detail. They need to be able to have intelligent business conversation with decision makers.
6. Create field-ready sales tools.
Focus especially on the early stages of the sales cycle. Your sales reps are going to have a tough time setting up meetings. Show them how to integrate their value proposition into phone calls, voicemails and emails.
Give them relevant white papers and case studies that are closely aligned with this new market segment. They must be able to show your company’s expertise to customers, so this is a necessity – even if you’re moving to a new market.
Create a “question matrix” that outlines what they should be looking for on calls and the questions they should ask to uncover this information. Develop customer-focused PowerPoints to use on follow-up meetings.
7. Pray!
It takes a lot of hard work to succeed in a new marketing segment. Implement the above suggestions and your chances of success increase. Rush blindly ahead and you’ll most likely waste tons of money, put your firm in financial distress, frustrate your sales force and create incredible internal animosity.
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
Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Do you dive in head first into business speak with customers or coachees? Here’s a simple reminder for us all.
I hear suit telephone sales are up so are fountain pen sales. It’s all the extra business meetings we’re having. British Airways is even offering free business class flights to anywhere in the world to small business owners looking to export abroad.
It seems that in these tough times, we’re all out drumming up business with face to face meetings. And that’s a good thing. It’s heightened our awareness to go back to the basics of selling.
And with the pressure on we’re getting straight down to business talk and this couldn’t be more dangerous. This is a big mistake when you’ve never met someone before. No, we ought to be holding back on business talk even in these pressured times and become even more interested in them, become curious about them as a person. People like to do business with people they both like and trust. OK you may not be fantastic buddies but you like and respect each other and only then will business result.
Do you know when you are with a friend, you get along really well and you become like them, you match their personality, their mood, their pace, their body language, eye contact…everything. But when you are with someone who wouldn’t be a great friend and is not like you, naturally you are not going to become like them are you?
In telephone sales though, you need to become a little bit like them so as to build trust and some likeness. For example, anyone who knows me can see that I’m quite bubbly and excitable and energetic, I like to be positive. My wife thinks I’m quite loud!
So if I meet someone who is the opposite then I need to purposely become like their personality a little. I need to slow down, monotone my voice a little, speak like them, give them the same amount of eye contact as they give me.
I call it personality matching and it works. That way we will build a rapport, begin to trust each other and get on. Then we can start talking about business.
Mirror mirror on the wall…who is the fairest of them all? Not you, but the person you’re talking with, so let’s spend some of our attention on them and begin to match their personality before diving head first into business speak.
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 atwww.paularcher.com
On the train one spring morning to London I met three very interesting ladies who made me think about financial advisers or, in fact,
any phone sales people who want to differentiate themselves from their competition, so let me hare with you why.
These ladies are from Indonesia and live and work in Gloucester. They were dressed immaculately and were chatting and being excited about their trip to London. Being the day before Easter, the train was packed with day trippers looking forward to a day in
London and I expected these ladies to bedoing the same.
“No, we.re going to the Embassy to vote forour President”.
“Oh” I looked surprised.
“Yes”, the lady opposite me explained. “We could vote by post but we prefer to make a day of it, do some shopping, attend a show,
and enjoy each others company as well as vote”.
And that got me thinking about financial advisers and their competition. You see competition for financial advisers is not other
financial advisers, it’s the internet. But some see it as competition, some don’t. Those that fear the internet and see their products that they sell as a commodity.
And that’s dangerous. The internet sells commodities really well and will be more and more effective at this over the next few years.
If you see yourself as a phone sales person of a commodity such as a life assurance, health insurance, pensions and such then you are
doomed. Doomed to be discarded in favour of the internet that’ll sell this much better than you, and cheaper too.
Now my ladies on the train could have voted by post but preferred to enjoy the attractions of London – shopping, seeing a show.
In the same way a client meeting a financial adviser will enjoy what they have to offer. Professional advice, consultation, listening to
their goals and problems and then advisingthem from a plethora of products which ones would help them achieve their goals or solve
their problems.
Many people will prefer to buy these products quickly and painlessly on the internet, but equally many will prefer the longer advice
version.
So be crystal clear as to what you sell. Commodities or advice. And then ensure your clients know exactly how you work right
upfront to overcome the internet objection that will rear its ugly head later. And remember you.re in business to understand
your clients first and foremost. Your job is not to sell products but to understand your client.s position, so invest in your skills this
year and next to do this even better that you are right now.
Maybe the internet can give advice in the future but it will not be automated, this can’t be one. This is what will happen in the future.
Your hologram will be transported to the client via the internet, saving you physically travelling to them.
The technology is there right now to do this,but it costs a small fortune. The internet can transport holograms – pop stars and
politicians are doing it now. Robbie Williams was beamed to a concert recently, Prince Charles was beamed to a conference last
year, and CEOs of major corporations are using this technology to hold important summits without leaving their homes.
But at the moment it’s too expensive for everyone.
In 5 years time we’ll all be using the same technology but it will still be you that is giving the financial advice the client needs who
prefers to get from you rather than buying the commodity over the internet.
So beware that you don’t slip into commodity selling.
And my Indonesian ladies, they were really looking forward to their mini break in London. Poor me – I was on business.
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
In Part I: We focused why asking the “How Can I?” question is the key to getting unstuck and achieving your objectives. Part II continues with more examples.
Creating an Entirely New Revenue Stream
Several years ago, I lost my two bread-and-butter clients when the investment community demanded better financial results. Both these firms immediately suspended all “extraneous” projects – which included all my work with them.
While in the process of rebuilding my business, I did some free consulting for a small magazine serving the entrepreneurial community. I became enamored with the vitality of these firms as well as their contribution to the economy.
But the failure rate was sky high. Good businesses being run by well-intentioned people were closing down because the founders didn’t understand how to sell. It about drove me crazy.
For months, I kept asking myself, “How can I share my expertise with these people and make some money doing it?”
It was a real conundrum. Entrepreneurs don’t have deep pockets. When they hire consultants, they want to squeeze as much advice from them in the shortest possible time. In short, despite the apparent need, I couldn’t figure out how to make a living.
But I kept the question open, choosing not to say ‘no’ yet. Instead, I kept researching and asking the question repeatedly – in multiple variations.
One day, the answer came to me: I’d create a website called Selling to Big Companies where I could give away lots of good sales advice for free. Plus, I could offer some premium content such as ebooks, emanuals and teleseminars. While doing this, I could still serve my corporate clients.
I knew I’d finally hit on a viable business model, and, as they say, the rest is history.
Trust the Questions
Over the years, I’ve come to trust this “How can I” strategy implicitly. Whenever I pose these questions to myself, the answers always come.
They’re better ideas than I could have ever thought of myself. While that sounds strange to say, it’s really true.
Right now, I trust the question again with the Sales SheBang – my online resource, conference and community for women in sales. I’m asking myself questions such as:
How can I attract savvy saleswomen to the 2008 Sales Shebang Conference ?
How can I fund this project so that I can make it bigger & better?
How can I make it an incredible value for the women who come?
The good news is that the ideas are already streaming in. The bad news is that I appear to be a bottleneck in my own system. Too much is on my plate right now, so I’m adding resources to help out. In truth, it’s really not a bad problem to have.
But it all starts with that “How Can I…?” question. Without a doubt, it’s the best strategy in the whole world for reaching your unreachable goals.
Invite others to help you answer your questions. Track down a top salesperson and ask for their insights: How can I be more successful? How can I close more business?
Ask an entrepreneur: How can I create the company of my dreams? How can I get more done in the same amount of time?
The answers are already out there. You just need to ask the questions!
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
Welcome to the most widespread objection today and its not price.
Apparently they’re starring at Glastonbury this summer. I’m talking about Status Quo the rock band whom my 71 year old father is going to see in concert later this month. That shows you how long they’ve been around.
But the status quo have recently become quite a problem for sales people and I’m no longer talking about the band – I’m referring to lethargy or not taking any action.
Apart from the Internet, it’s the status quo that is today.s newest and biggest competitor. Customers are inclined to take no action unless we allow them to see the danger of this course and maybe the cost of doing nothing.
This extra competition that we’re now up against, doesn’t allow us to use our traditional objection handling strategies as we’re not having to compare our product or service with the competitors or justify its value. Instead we have to make sure we let our customer see the problems of not taking our advice.
And we must weave this into our sales patter.
This is particularly important for financial services salespeople who sell an invisible product. There’s an old adage that life assurance is sold and never bought and this is even more prevalent today. Make your customer aware of the dangers of the status quo; ask them what might happen if they don’t protect themselves in the event of their partner’s death, the issues this might bring up in their lives.
Questions, questions, questions – that’ll help them see the perils on inaction.
Let them explore in their mind the consequences of doing nothing and treat the status quo as just another competitor that you need to avoid during your selling process.
And Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt from Status Quo can keep rocking all over the world until they’re ready to pick up their pension. I do believe Francis is 60 next birthday. Fantastic.
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, visitwww.archertraining.co.uk or his sales blog at www.paularcher.com
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 phone sales 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.
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.
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
Everyone knows that in selling or coaching, it’s extremely dangerous to make assumptions about your customer or the person you’re coaching. It’s one of those principles that.s drummed into sales people on day one of their induction sales training. But we’re all guilty of making assumptions from time to time – I know I am. Read on to see how dangerous these can be.
Over Christmas I was talking to my three children about a fearful incident when I was about their age. The story shocked them at the time and they still don’t believe it was true. But I assure you it was.
My first pet was a cute golden hamster that I named Hammy – original I know. Now we didn’t live in a big house so I shared a room with Hammy and my two brothers who I hated passionately. We were constantly caught bashing the life out of each other, as brothers do.
It came to a head one evening when Hammy, being a nocturnal creature, kept us all up with his squealing exercise wheel. It was incessant. It was excruciatingly painful. Nothing we could do would stop him or fix the squeak. And the fighting with my brothers got even worse.
He had to go. The next day Hammy found his way into the garden shed. What a relief, at last we could get some sleep. We had solved the problem but only until that fateful morning.
It was freezing and pitch black at 6am. On my way to my paper-round, I popped my head around the shed door to look up on Hammy. I stared into his cage with a torch, he was motionless. I was devastated – my only true friend was dead and it was my entire fault evicting him to the bitter, murky shed.
Ignoring my paper round, I picked him up and took him indoors. This 12 year old boy was distraught and overwhelmed by it all. So I laid him on the kitchen table and went upstairs to cry my little heart out. Gradually the house woke up and I heard a banshee like shriek from the kitchen. My Mum had found a stone cold hamster on the kitchen table. Not that I could see at the time what the problem was, after all it was dead but maybe that was the point.
“Take it out immediately” screamed mum, so I grabbed Hammy and ran outside to bury him. As I took my old friend outside I laid him down on the earth next to the shovel ready to dig his grave, but then I saw his foot twitch. I thought I was seeing things so I dried my eyes and looked again. There it went again. It had moved and it wasn’t a muscle spasm. He was alive.
I rushed indoors and plopped him on the storage heater. With careful nursing and stroking, slowly and bit by bit he came back to life and I was the happiest little boy on the planet.
Hammy went on to live a normal life. I found out years later that he had merely hibernated that cold night. I still think it was a miracle. And he was within 5 feet of a living grave. So you see that making assumptions can critically damage your health – well maybe your pet hamster. Not assuming can literally save lives.
Seriously though, the next time you find yourself about to make an assumption about the needs of a customer, because you’ve heard it all before dozens of times or you think everyone wants the price to be lower or you assume the recession will gobble you up….just remember that devoted 12 year old boy bringing back to life his pet hamster, Hammy.
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, visitwww.archertraining.co.uk or his sales blog at www.paularcher.com
For anyone who has had building work done, you know what the aftermath looks like. Ours is no different – outside of the new conference room, it looks like the Somme battlefield on steroids. Builder’s rubble in every nook and cranny, old bricks, cement, plasterboard, tangled metal. A sight for sore eyes it is.
But following a 2 hour blizzard, the mess had all disappeared. The field looks brand new as though construction had never happened. It looks beautiful with the white snow glistening in the sunshine.
And it struck me then that in life, we all have set-backs which beat us backwards and these issues can affect us all. Some dwell on them – some move on. We need a way to cover them up and move on otherwise our self motivation will take a battering. We could do with snow to cover them up for us.
Whether you’re in sales or sales coaching, we have to be self motivated to succeed in what we do. Yes, we can be motivated externally with targets, rewards, success and recognition but these don’t happen continuously so we have to have inner self motivation to pull off our goals.
We all have knock-backs, we all make mistakes. The trick is to learn from them. Extract what you learnt so you don’t repeat it, jot it down somewhere. I have a pocket diary where I jot down all my learnings and ideas when they crop up. If I make a mistake, I note down what I learnt from it and then try to wipe out the memory so I can move forward.
Now that’s the hard part.
So when we make a mistake, remove what you learnt, note it down, cover up the mistake with a snow blizzard, pick yourself up and move on. Don’t let previous mistakes bug you as this serves no value. That way your self motivation will carry on unhindered.
And if you do drift back to the mistake, imagine a beautiful white snow blizzard rolling in from the east which will cover up any blemishes on the landscape with minutes. But be quick as snow will melt to reveal the builder’s rubble once again.
Looking outside now, the snow’s gone reminds me to order a skip, and spend a weekend getting rid of the rubbish permanently. And with the warm weather on us, I bet Claire is just waiting to ask me too. Can’t wait!
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, visitwww.archertraining.co.uk or his sales blog at www.paularcher.com
Every once in a while, I read something that a so-called sales expert says that really ticks me off. The other night it happened again. I was doing a quick scan of the latest issue of a popular magazine when suddenly I came across a whole slew of idiocy in just one article.
Here’s just a taste of this lunacy …
“In sales, the results are in the rejections.”
“Every time a contact results in a rejection, your salespeople can view the rejection as making money.”
“The secret is for each salesperson to realize how much rejection is necessary for success.’”
“Sales managers must coach their teams to embrace rejection.”
This is the stupidest advice you could ever get. Think about it. Can you ever imagine yourself saying this:
“Hallelujah! I’ve made 66 calls today and actually connected with 24 people. But of that number, 23 of them were total failures. Those decision makers blew me off as fast as they could. But one person asked me to sent a brochure, so it was really a great day. With all those rejections, I’m well on my way to success.”
Let me tell you why it’s even stupider than you might think.
Guess what happens if you embrace rejection as a part of the job and quickly move on to make the next call. You’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over.
What do I recommend? In my opinion, a rejection is a failure. It’s a sales call that did not result in a desirable outcome. If you want to get better at selling, it is imperative to analyze your failures to determine if a different approach could have yielded a better outcome.
There is NO other way to improve in this profession.
To be successful, you must take a serious look at all aspects of the interaction that were within your control. This includes:
Your word choices.
How you positioned your company.
The sequence of what you said.
How much you said: too little, too much.
Your tone, pace and sound.
Each one of these can be changed and potentially yield an improved outcome. So where do you start? I suggest you pay close attention to:
The specific obstacles you encounter.
What are your prospects saying: too high price, too expensive, currently satisfied? All these are indicators that you need to rethink your approach.
When you encounter these obstacles.
Take a look at what you said just prior to hearing the objection. Most likely the words preceding the client’s comments are key offenders.
The key point is that rejection is data. Simply data. It can be analyzed to determine trends, frequency, and even specific sales behaviors. When you think about it this way, you can experiment with various approaches.
You can simulate conditions by listening to your phone calls from your buyer’s perspective. You can get input from colleagues to see if what you say would sound interesting if they were your prospect. You can check with other sellers to see what strategies they use.
Stop listening to those sales gurus who tell you to “embrace rejection.” They’re spouting old-style selling techniques that won’t get you in the door of major corporations. They don’t have a clue what it takes to succeed in today’s marketplace.
Get smart and start analyzing your rejection. Look at it as a puzzle that needs solving. You may not know what it takes right now to crack into those corporate accounts, but you certainly have the ability to figure it out.
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.
I’m sure you’re making more prospecting calls at the moment, just like everyone else, so I’m guessing that you’re coming across barriers in getting to talk to your prospective customers.
If that barrier is a “Personal Assistant who’s trained to stop you in your tracks, here’s a neat little tip that just might get you put through.
A UCLA survey showed that on the telephone a massive 84% of the message and meaning
is derived purely from your voice. This is a well known fact and was substantiated by Albert Mehrabian in the 1970′s.
I’m suggesting that you sound important so you can get through the gatekeeper.
Important people have deeper voices and say things in shorter sentences. Their tone of voice falls at the end of each sentence to accentuate their importance and they leave lots of pauses.
And most people when faced with someone who sounds ever so important will put you through without hesitation. Try it, it works and is also fun.
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, visitwww.archertraining.co.uk or his sales blog at www.paularcher.com
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Your biggest issue will be credibility. Corporate decision makers don’t want to be your first client in a vertical market. They don’t want to have to educate you since it takes up their precious time.
3. Create linkage. 
7. Pray! 
