 I moved from working in my business to working on my business!
Jim White, Founder Savor Dallas http://www.savordallas.com |
 I found a community of business leaders who make being in business a lot more fun and less lonely.
Jeannine Sandstrom, CEO CoachWorks International, Inc. http://www.coachworks.com |
 I now have a place to be open about my business success and future challenges.
Debbie Mrazek, CEO The Sales Company Author The Field Guide to Sales http://www.the-sales-company.com |
Archive for November, 2008
Marketing You Can only Buy With Your Heart – Illinois firm thanks loyal workers with huge bonuses
By CARLA K. JOHNSON – Associated Press
Nov. 28, 2008, 6:53PM
CHICAGO — Even though employees at the Peer Bearing Co. no longer work for the Spungen family that recently sold the Waukegan-based ball bearings maker, they still received a turkey each this Thanksgiving in keeping with tradition.
But even better was the gift that came in mid-September, when the Spungens threw a party to celebrate the company’s acquisition by a Swedish company.
They gave away $6.6 million in year-end bonuses to Peer’s 230 employees, decided by a formula based on each worker’s years of service.
“My grandfather was always charitable,” said Danny Spungen, grandson of Peer founder Nathan Spungen. He said Laurence and Florence Spungen and their four children decided on a bonus formula a year before the acquisition closed.
He said the decision was “a gamble that we would come out OK as well.”
Family members signed two thank-you cards to each employee, one in Spanish and one in English, expressing gratitude for “the loyalty and hard work of our employees over the years.”
“They treated us like extended family,” said Maria Dima, who works at the company along with her husband, Valentin. “We won the lottery.”
On the day the checks were distributed, Valentin Dima watched as co-workers broke down in tears over their bonus checks. He drove home first, then opened his envelope: $33,000. His wife received a check for a smaller amount, and the two Romanian immigrants have since taken a Caribbean cruise to celebrate.
“This company gave us stability, so we dare to spend some money on such a thing,” Valentin Dima said.
While neighbors and friends faced new financial strains, the bonuses have helped Peer employees breathe easier.
“I know people who work for corporate America are not going to get treated like that. And most of the family-owned businesses are not going to treat you like that,” said Dave Tiderman, who received $35,000. “This is something that just really doesn’t happen.”
Tiderman, who started at Peer in 1985 and worked his way up from the warehouse to assistant product manager, said most of his bonus will stay in the bank because of the uncertain economy.
“I do have to put some tires on my truck,” he added.
Jose Rojas, who works in Peer’s customer service department, said he plans to save his $10,000 check for his son’s college education.
Peer made $100 million in sales last year and was acquired for an undisclosed amount. The new owners intend to operate the company based 40 miles north of Chicago as a wholly owned subsidiary. Workers have been told that most will keep their jobs.
A graphic designer spoke to me last week. His graphic design firm — let’s call it XYZ Design — was number one in designing labels for a large wine company. Let’s call that ABC Wines. Now ABC wines had some really super wines. They loved the incomparable graphic design of XYZ design, and continued to use them for several of their major brands. This one client alone generated tons of work and income for XYZ design right through the year.
Then It Happened…
ABC Wines sold out to another wine company. This new wine company had its own in-house graphic designers. That effectively meant XYZ Design’s income and work flow were severely hit, causing them to scramble for new clients to fill the gap.
“If only I had done what you said,” said the owner of XYZ Design, ” and not line extended into web design and other forms of graphic design and communication, I would have gone down the drain too”
Not true.
Line extension doesn’t mean you run just one business or have one product.
No, it doesn’t mean that at all.
Multi-tasking existed long before the advent of computers and the more skills you have, the better off you are in today’s world. However, you have to name each ‘twin’ differently to give it a very distinct identity. When you do that, your client recognizes the difference and chooses that ‘twin’ for its own individual personality and character.
How Do You Line Extend Without Line Extending
In the case of XYZ Design, it would have to work in this manner. To all wine companies, they would enter the door as a ‘wine label design Specialist.’ To every wine company in the country and overseas, they would be known, not as XYZ Design but more so, as XYZ Wine Design Specialists.’
This would give the wine companies a specialist to deal with. It would help XYZ Wine Design specialists to build their reputation in the wine industry to a point where if any wine company decided to design a label, XYZ Design would be one of the main contenders.
Now, wine companies don’t do just labels. They do brochures, leaflets, annual reports, websites and tons of other stuff. Your question would be, how can I afford to lose out on that market?
Why You Never Lose Out On The Rest Of The Stuff
It’s called backdoor entry. Everyone (including your competition) is banging on the front door, trying to get in. You, on the other hand, quietly slip in through the backdoor, pick your goodies and slip out.
This is how it works in practice. If you do really good work designing wine labels, it’s almost inevitable that clients will ask you if you can design other associated material. That’s when you introduce your other company, “JKL Graphic Design” and “PQR Web Design”. Same company, different positioning and certainly different brand names. What this does, is it helps clients compartmentalize their thinking. They now think you have specialist groups working on specialist projects taking extra special attention.
This Does Two Things…
1) It helps each of your businesses take on a ‘character’ of its own without affecting the other, much like Air New Zealand is premium and Freedom Air is budget. The public knows they’re one company but still compartmentalizes them into two. You can change the character of each company, and help boil it down to the smallest possible niche, making you an expert in the category.
2) The client sees your multiple brands as different brands. When they need web design services, or when they need to recommend them, they call the web design experts. And so on with graphic design and wine labels or just about anything that you are handling.
Everyone Loves A Specialist
Would you allow a GP to work on your triple bypass? OR would you prefer a heart specialist? Even better, a doctor who does only triple bypass surgery? If you feel the difference, so does your client and to ignore this basic human instinct is to do so at your own risk.
How It Works Not Just In Business But In The Workplace Too
If you’re working in a job, the same rule applies. Be known as a genius for something. Know how several things work. But branding yourself in one skill makes you the expert. Every time the company has a fire in that section, you will be known for your fire-fighting skills.
On an ordinary basis, most employees are not known for any particular skill and wonder why they are on top of the redundancy list. Bosses don’t know what you do and why you’re special, because you haven’t been doing the ‘branding bit’. It’s better to be a specialist than the ’safe unknown.’
As Dire Straits sang in one of their songs, “Sitting on the fence is a dangerous course: You could get a bullet from the peace keeping force.”
Funny (But True) Phrases When You Forget To Obey The Rules
Jack of all trades, master of none. A bird in the hand, is worth two in the bush. And the best one of all: Keep it simple, stupid!
Keep putting these principles in action and you will see a marked improvement in your business.
©2001-2008 Psychotactics Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas? Find simple, yet electrifying ideas, on copywriting, public speaking, marketing strategies, sales conversion, psychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com today and judge for yourself.
Have you ever bought a house?
No sooner than you buy the house than the real estate refers you on to an insurance agent. And a lawyer. And assorted services.
In most cases, the real estate agent doesn’t get paid a commission for her referrals.
But the lawyer, insurance agent and the other assorted services refer their clients back to the real estate agent. And as a result, everyone’s super-busy. And they’re busy because they’re all alliances
of each other.
So yeah, it makes sense to have strategic alliances.
But not all businesses fit as neatly as real estate alliances. So how does a business owner get an alliance started? And how do you know if you’re succeeding in creating an alliance?
Um, you’ll need a benchmark.
So what’s the benchmark?
Do we get the alliance to promote our products?
Do we get them send out our articles?
Do we do simply wait, or bug the hell out of them?
You do none of the above.
Rushing in to get an alliance to promote your product is like meeting someone at a party, and then jumping into bed fifteen minutes later.
Rushing in to get them to send out articles, is like kissing someone eleven minutes after you’ve met them. Bugging them is not really designed to get results.
So what’s the goal?
The goal is start a conversation.
The goal is to keep that conversation going.
The goal is for you to keep that conversation going for long enough that the other person recognizes you on the ’street’ and says hello.
That the other person gets your email and doesn’t trash it. That the other person gets a letter from you and doesn’t use it as toilet paper. That the other person gets a phone call from you and actually takes
it, or returns the call.
That’s the goal.
And this recognition comes from conversation.
You talk. They talk back.
You talk. They talk back.
You talk. They talk back.
No talk about jumping in bed quite yet. You’re just having coffee after coffee after coffee. That’s it.
These three coffees are critical. They’re the benchmark. They’re what gets the other person to know you and like you (in some way).
This is how you know you’re succeeding.
So the question arises: what should you do when drinking all that coffee?
You should be talking about ‘what you can offer’ the strategic alliance. The only real thing an alliance is interested in is what’s in it for them.
And you’re more than likely to have something that’s of value to two groups:
1) Their prospects.
2) Their existing clients.
It’s important to spend that caffeine time finding out how the alliance attracts prospective clients. Find out how they attract clients. Offer to give them a physical product or information
product ( I’ll call them goodies) that will help the alliance attract even more clients.
Then watch as your alliance’s ears perk up.
Notice how their eyes become less glazed.
This is because you’re talking about them, and not pushing your own product or service. In the same manner, you can ask how the alliance rewards existing clients.
In nine cases out of ten, the alliance will have no reward for existing clients at all. If you step in and provide something of value, then immediately the alliance is going to be interested.
Of course you’re smart enough to know that when the prospective or existing client gets the goodies, you’ll get access to a whole new audience.
The more generous you are, the more likely the alliance’s prospective or existing clients will have a look at your website, or try your product, or come to your seminar.
You’ve not only created an incentive for the alliance.
You’ve created an incentive for the alliance’s client.
And in doing so, created business for yourself.
So now you’ve downed enough coffee.
You’ve started a conversation.
How long before you get results?
It really depends.
Sometimes it takes a few weeks.
Sometimes it takes a few months.
Sometimes it may take years.
Keep drinking the coffees.
Keep talking, as long as you see that the potential alliance is worth the trouble. Because one day, they’ll accept the goodies you’re offering. And send those goodies to their clients.
And that’s the day you’ll open the floodgates to hundreds, even thousands of customers.
And it all starts with a simple coffee. Or two. Or two hundred.
And no, I don’t have any alliance with the cafe.
Not yet, at least 
©2001-2008 Psychotactics Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas?Find simple, yet electrifying ideas, on copywriting, public speaking, marketing strategies, sales conversion, psychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com today and judge for yourself.
Written by Alan Rigg
What kind of response do you usually get when you present the price of your company’s products or services to prospects? Do your prospects say, “Wow, that sounds cheap — how soon can I get it?” Or, is their response something like, “Oh.I wasn’t expecting to pay that much”?
If you get the second response with any regularity, the problem may be that you are discussing the price of your product or service “in a vacuum”.
What does “in a vacuum” mean?
It means you have not helped your prospects establish a DOLLAR VALUE to compare your price against. To determine this dollar value, you need to uncover the answers to the following questions:
- What problems can your products or services help your prospects solve?
- Does the prospect have any of these problems?
- If they do, what is the financial impact of the problems on your prospect’s business?
If price is discussed in a vacuum, it will always sound high
However, if you work with your prospects to establish the financial impact of the problems you can solve, and you do this BEFORE you discuss price, your price will usually sound very fair. In fact, it may sound downright cheap!
Let me give you a real-life example of how this process works. One of my company’s offerings is a sales assessment bundle that captures objective information about an individual’s sales talents. When a company orders this bundle for either a job candidate or an existing sales employee, they receive:
- Two online assessments
- Two detailed reports that:
- Compare the individual’s assessment scores against a customized benchmark
- Predict how the individual will perform in the client’s specific sales job
- A two-page summary of assessment results (which we prepare after reviewing the individual’s assessment results)
- As much time as the client wishes to spend discussing the individual’s assessment results
The price for this sales assessment bundle is determined based upon the quantity purchased. It ranges from $290 for a quantity of one to $80 for a quantity of one thousand or more.
I know from experience that I will get objections if I discuss our sales assessment prices “in a vacuum”. After all, there are assessments available in the marketplace for $25 or less. Of course, there are vast differences between these (personality and behavioral) assessments and the ones we use, but it can be difficult to get prospects to understand and value those differences. So, instead we focus on helping our prospects establish values for the problems we can help them solve.
The questions we ask go something like this:
- Does the 80/20 rule apply to your sales team? In other words, do a relatively small proportion of your salespeople produce most of your sales?
- If the 80/20 rule does apply to your sales team, what is the difference in production (in terms of revenue produced, gross margin produced, or whatever other metric is of most interest to the prospect) between top performers, middle performers, and bottom performers?
- What would the impact be of adding more top performers to your sales team?
- What would the impact be of bringing the performance of middle performers up to the top performer level? (This may be possible if the middle performers have the talents required for top performance in the company’s sales job.)
- How often do you make a hire that doesn’t work out?
- What does it cost you in terms of salaries, recruiting costs, training costs, management time, etc., when this happens?
- What would be the value of adding additional quality salespeople to your team? (These people would come from the job candidates that don’t make the cut today, but actually have the talents required for top performance in your sales job.)
The answers to these questions usually produce numbers in the following ranges:
- Cost of Hiring Mistakes: Thousands of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars per person
- Difference in Production (Top Performers vs. Middle Performers vs. Bottom Performers): Hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue and tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit per person
- Value of Each Incremental Quality Sales Hire: Hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue and tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit per person
Compared against tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, a couple hundred dollars for specialized sales assessment tests doesn’t seem very expensive, does it? In fact, it sounds downright cheap!
IMPORTANT NOTE: This approach is most effective if your PROSPECT is the source of the numbers
Why? In general, prospects don’t trust salespeople. Many have dealt with salespeople who were more interested in making sales than they were in providing value. Plus, prospects recognize that salespeople have a vested interest in building a convincing business case that can be used to support a buying decision. This causes prospects to discount information that salespeople provide. However, if the prospect is the source of the numbers, they are perceived as unquestioned truth!
Conclusion
If you want to increase both your sales volume and the profitability of each sale, stop discussing the price of your products or services “in a vacuum”. Delay the price discussion until after you have worked with your prospect to identify:
- The problems you can help them solve, and
- The dollar impact these problems have on your prospect’s business
When you compare the price of your products or services against the dollar impact of your prospect’s problems:
- Your prices will be perceived much more favorably, and
- You will close more sales at higher margins!
©2006-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com
Marketing – Would You Install Your Product for Free – Oil and Gas Pipeline Management Systems Software Inc.
When it comes to marketing there are a million ways to get your product or expertise out to the marketing place. You can run advertising, use referral networks, paid leads and millions of other options. The question is would you ever offer your product at no charge except travel arrangements to any client willing to try it? That is exactly what Systems Software Inc. does, and they do it for anyone willing to try their crude, product, and terminal pipeline scheduling system. I do mean anyone from fortune 500 like exxonmobile, connocophillips, citgo, and shell to smaller operations.
So how can they do it and how can you?
1. They are a 28 year old company who has gone through the ups and downs of the oil and gas industry. During the last market downturn they switched to a virtual office format which allows for little overhead. Even our marketing company uses this format which allows us to be more competitive on pricing than our competition.
2. They have expertise in the area of pipeline scheduling and have stayed focused. This allows them to implement products faster because they have stayed with all the trends with pipeline management over the years as opposed to trying to focus on anything that may make a little money. This is called fragmentation and can make you big money if you are the 1 in a million to make it or cost you everything.
3. Their software application was built by interviewing pipeline schedulers and clients for over 15 years. This means the application is tailored to specific user and how they do their job. Unlike businesses that build applications in a vacuum and then have to try and sell a customer on the product and the cost of training everyone on the new system.
4. They separated their application into core and presentation functions. This is one of the best things to do if you are developing a product. This allows their application to integrate into other applications and systems as opposed to needing the whole platform like peoplesoft etc. This increases sales of your intellectual property similar to how affiliate marketing works. You see this approach in HR outsourcing etc.
Free proof of concepts using real data on a client site can overcome obstacles like, security, training, and setup cost. If you have a superior product it also allows the clients user base become advocated for your company when it comes time for them to make a buy decision.
Here are the keys to remember.
Reduce Costs below your competition.
Stick with what you know.
Build what your customer wants and needs not what you want for them
Make your products open so you can partner with other businesses
Be willing to prove that your product works.
SSI works with a wide variety of clients and installs proof of concepts free. From managing large multi-million dollar corporate installations to small private program integrations, SSI helps you operate your crude, product, and terminal pipeline efficiently and profitably. http://www.ssischeduling.com
Written by Alexandria K. Brown
While there are many effective ways to get more traffic and build your e-zine list, the one I’ve had the MOST success with is to submit articles for use on other people’s websites and in their e-zines.
“But wait a minute,” you say. “Aren’t I supposed to be creating great articles for MY OWN e-zine?”
Yes, you are! And after your article appears in your OWN e-zine, you should then submit it to others. Over the past few years, I’ve found this to be the best way to get traffic, build my list, and increase my sales, for five reasons:
1) You can quickly gain FREE exposure to TENS OF THOUSANDS (or even HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS) of untapped prospects at a time. There are many high-traffic sites and e-zines with high readerships that are looking for content from people like YOU.
2) Articles let you educate and share good information with your prospects. They also position you as an expert in their eyes, so they’ll think of YOU as the most respected resource in your field. (Traditional ads don’t do that for you.)
3) You have the right to promote yourself, your business, and whatever else you want at the end of every article. And anyone using your article must keep this information intact. (More on that in a minute.)
4) This is a tried-and-true method that will NEVER stop working, unlike the latest and greatest gimmicks to spoof the search engines. (Try one of those and see how quickly your traffic halts once the bottom drops out.) Search engines love real content and will always love real content.
5) It’s EASY, and anyone can do it!
HERE’S HOW TO GET STARTED…
1. PICK A WINNER
Browse through your archives and pick an insightful article that really showcases your expertise. Or, if this is new to you, write a basic article on your subject of expertise. (Not a good writer, or need help? Hire a writer from Elance.com.)
2. POLISH IT ‘TIL IT SHINES
Publishers will not be interested in your article if it contains typos, misspelled words, grammatical errors, or inactive Web links — these goofs would compromise the integrity of their publications. So make sure it’s Kosher!
3. ADD A COPYRIGHT NOTICE
At the end of the article, insert a copyright notice, dated when you first published the article. Example: © 2008 ABC Company Inc.
4. WRITE A JAZZY “RESOURCE BOX”
In exchange for your letting other publishers reprint your article, it’s customary to require they include the contact information you provide. This is usually called the “resource box” and it should come RIGHT after your copyright notice. Here’s where you can ham it up.
Don’t waste time promoting your actual business in the resource box. Why? Remember your #1 goal is always to get prospects on your LIST. You’ll gain MORE clients and customers by FIRST getting them to subscribe to your FREE e-zine or special report. THEN you’ve got them! You’ll be in front of them regularly, and that’s when they’ll understand why they should hire you or buy your products.
5. SUBMIT YOUR ARTICLE TO ONLINE CONTENT DIRECTORIES
There are hundreds of ‘free content’ Web sites and announcement lists where you can submit your articles for other publishers to use. Some even let you include a picture and other information about your website. One of my favorites is EzineArticles.com.
6. SUBMIT YOUR ARTICLE DIRECTLY TO APPROPRIATE PUBLISHERS
For best results, take the bull by the horns and contact publishers directly. But not just any publishers — ones with e-zines that accept articles AND whose readers are your ideal clients and customers. A great place to start your search and build your own list is Charlie Page’s Directory of E-zines.
7. AUTOMATE THE ENTIRE PROCESS
I know you’re probably thinking right now, “OK Ali, this sounds great, but isn’t this going to be time consuming?”
The answer is most definitely YES. In the past, you’d have to spend several hours a week just to get one article out there. It’s a lot of administrative work, requiring time that you probably don’t have.
There is also a software called Article Announcer that does a lot of this work FOR you. It blasts out your articles to hundreds of directories, publishers, and other sources to help generate a slew of web visitors to your site, month after month.
While hand-placement will always get you MOST accurate results, I recommend you do BOTH some hand and some automatic to get the most exposure possible!
Remember also that if you don’t want to do any of your own article marketing yourself, it’s a perfect task to pass on to an assistant, intern, or freelancer. The key is getting it down to a SYSTEM that you repeat regularly.
© 2003-2008 Alexandria Brown International Inc.
Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown publishes the award-winning ‘Highlights on Marketing & Success’ weekly e-zine with 36,000+ subscribers. If you’re ready to jump-start your marketing, make more money, and have more fun in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.AlexandriaBrown.com
Written by Alan Rigg
Many recruiting ads and job descriptions include “knockout factors” that can actually screen out qualified sales candidates. One example is a requirement that candidates have an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, or a degree in a specialized field of study such as Engineering. Another example is a requirement that candidates have a minimum number of years of sales experience.
When my customers’ recruiting ads and job descriptions include these types of knockout factors, I like to have a little fun with them. I say something like:
“(Name), imagine that I have two candidates for your sales job opening. One of them has both the college degree and the five years of sales experience that are listed as minimum requirements in your recruiting ad. The other candidate doesn’t have a college degree, and she only has two years of sales experience. But, she has relationships with dozens of C-level executives that are good prospects for your company’s products and services. She could easily book fifteen appointments during her first week on the job. Which candidate would you prefer?”
As you might expect, my customers always choose the candidate with the relationships. That is when I have to deliver the bad news:
“(Name), unfortunately you will never see this candidate, because she is being screened out by your knockout factors!”
If you want to improve the overall quality of your sales candidate pool, shift your focus away from education and experience and toward performance-based measures. How will you measure your new salespeople’s performance during their first thirty, sixty, ninety, and 180 days? What activities will you expect them to perform? What results will you expect these activities to produce, and in what time frame?
Here is an outline for a recruiting process that focuses on performance-based factors:
1. Write a Performance-Based Recruiting Ad: As you construct your ad, consider the following questions:
- What kinds of companies or organizations are good prospects for your company’s products and services? Your ad should state a preference for job candidates that have existing relationships with these kinds of companies and organizations.
- Who are the most productive people (job titles) for your salespeople to call on? Your ad should state a preference for candidates that have existing relationships with people that have these titles, and/or a proven ability to prospect successfully to people at similar levels.
- What specific sales production (such as pipeline dollar volume, sales dollar volume, etc.) do you expect your new salespeople to produce during their first 90 days? Make this expectation crystal clear in your recruiting ad!
2. Scrutinize Resumes for Accomplishments: Smart salespeople know that results sell. When these salespeople prospect, they talk to potential prospects about the results their companies have produced for customers. When they write resumes, they write about the results they have produced and their other accomplishments (awards, recognition, etc.).
3. Conduct Telephone Screening Calls: For candidates that have interesting resumes, schedule a 20-30 minute telephone screening call. This will give you an opportunity to ask performance-based questions related to two critical performance factors: the candidate’s relationships and their prospecting activities. Here are sample screening call questions:
- Who do you know that might be a prospect for our company’s products and services?
- What relationships do you have that could be leveraged for appointments during your first few weeks on the job?
- What activities do you typically include in your prospecting plan?
- What percentage of your time do you spend on each activity?
- What results have these activities produced for you in the past?
- How long did it take before you started making quota consistently in your current job?
4. Assess Qualified Candidates: For candidates that pass the telephone screen, gather objective information about their talents via specialized sales assessment tests. The most effective sales assessment tests go beyond personality and behavioral traits and examine attributes such as Learning Rate and Reasoning Ability.
5. Conduct In-Person Interviews: Now you are prepared to conduct thorough, performance-based interviews. Why? Look at the information you have collected! For each candidate that you are going to interview, you should have in your hands:
- A resume that lists key accomplishments
- Performance-based information collected during the telephone screening call
- Objective information about talents that are critical to sales success
If you ask performance-based questions and clearly outline your expectations for new hire sales performance, you will attract fewer poor candidates, as some will de-select themselves. You will also attract more strong candidates, as they will no longer be screened out by invalid “knockout factors”. The end result will be a steady improvement in the overall quality of your sales organization.
©2005-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.
Written by Alan Rigg
Delivering speeches, seminars, and webinars (online seminars) is a terrific way to generate large quantities of quality sales leads. Why is public speaking such an effective lead-generating vehicle? Here are a few reasons:
- Speaking allows you to deliver your message to multiple potential prospects at once.
- A well-constructed speech, seminar, or webinar can establish you as an expert in your field and increase your credibility with prospects.
- Every speech has the potential to reach far beyond the original audience. If you deliver a compelling message, there is no telling how many times it will be repeated to others by your audience members.
What should you speak about?
Look for topics that are of particular interest to your target prospects. You can offer new approaches for solving especially troubling business problems. You can educate your prospects on compelling new technologies, or other concepts that will help them professionally or personally. You can discuss real-life case studies and share stories about how you (or your company) helped specific customers improve their businesses. Whatever topic you choose must relevant and important to your target audience.
How should you construct your speech?
Constructing an effective lead-generating speech requires walking a fine line. You want to provide your audience with truly valuable information. However, you also want to motivate them to contact you for additional information. As a result, you have to make sure you don’t provide so much information that your audience can solve their problems all by themselves.
This is not a big issue if you are speaking to generate leads for a product, as the audience members will likely need to purchase the product to completely solve the problems you discuss. Where giving away too much information becomes a real issue is when you sell services. If you share all of your knowledge about how to solve specific problems, why will your audience members need to come back to you?
To avoid this undesirable outcome, follow these seven steps to constructing an effective lead-generating speech:
- Open with an “attention grabber”. This can be a truly startling fact or an emotionally compelling story that relates to one or more of the key points that you will address in your speech.
- Give the audience a brief outline of the key points you will be covering in your speech.
- Describe the problem or problems your speech is intended to help your audience solve.
- Describe the impact of each problem as graphically as you can. Engage your audience’s emotions by asking them to describe how a problem has affected them personally or professionally. Another alternative is for you to tell compelling, real-life “problem impact” stories that describe how (current and past) customers were affected by specific problems.
- Relieve the tension you have built up in the audience by letting them know the problems can be solved. However, DON’T tell them EVERYTHING they need to know to solve them! Provide a brief outline of the solution. That way the audience will need to come to you for more details.
- Use glowing word pictures to help the audience visualize how wonderful their lives will be when the problems have been eliminated.
- Close by revisiting the key points from your presentation and giving the audience a “call to action”.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Be very careful about selling from the stage. Audiences become disenchanted very quickly if they feel a speech is nothing more than a thinly disguised sales pitch. You must deliver truly valuable insights and information to your audiences to reward them for taking time out of their busy schedules to attend your speeches.
What “call to action” should you deliver at the end of your speech?
It is perfectly appropriate to include a gentle “call to action” at the end of your speech. Consider closing with a statement such as:
“If you would like to explore the possibility of applying the concepts that were discussed during today’s presentation in your company, please give me your business card before you leave.”
Here are some other effective calls to action:
- Include a “please contact me” checkbox on a presentation evaluation form that you give to each audience member.
- Give them a form they can use to request a free special report and/or subscribe to a free newsletter.
- Invite the audience to visit your company’s website to download a free special report and/or subscribe to a free newsletter. NOTE: Make sure you require them to provide their name and e-mail address in order to receive the free value-added information!
How should you prepare for your speech?
Preparing for seminars and speeches is a lot of work. Here are some of the key steps:
- Prepare your presentation materials, write scripts, and practice them to the point where you can deliver your presentation smoothly and convincingly without having to rely on your notes too much. If you don’t have much speaking experience, you may want to join a local Toastmasters chapter. They do a good job of teaching platform and presentation skills.
- Secure a facility for your speech and make arrangements for any necessary audio/visual equipment.
- If you are going to serve refreshments, make arrangements for the refreshments.
- Develop and implement a plan for attracting an audience. This might include sending direct mail or e-mails, making phone calls, and contacting trade, professional and social associations and organizations.
What can you do to maximize your return on investment?
If you are going to invest the time and effort required to deliver a first-class speech, you should also develop a plan for maximizing your return on your investment. This could include the following activities:
- Give each audience member an evaluation form they can use to provide feedback and request additional information.
- Provide handouts that include presentation highlights and your contact information.
- Hold a drawing for some type of small prize (books, sample products, etc.) to encourage attendees to give you business cards and/or hand in completed evaluation forms.
- Block time during the day or two following your presentation to make phone calls to audience members. When you make the calls, ask for feedback and offer an opportunity to ask questions that might not have been answered during the event. Also ask for referrals to people they know who might be interested in your presentation topic. These referrals may become immediate prospects. At minimum they should be added to your invitation list for future events.
Delivering properly designed speeches, seminars, and webinars (online seminars) is a terrific way to generate large quantities of quality sales leads. If you follow the instructions provided in this article, you should see a satisfying increase in the number, size, and quality of leads in your sales opportunity pipeline!
©2005-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.
Written by Alan Rigg
A question I get asked frequently by clients goes something like this:
“My company’s website doesn’t generate many online sales or sales leads. What can we do to get our website to produce more sales and leads?”
As soon as I hear this question, I have a pretty good idea what I will see when I visit the client’s website. Chances are it will include one or both of the two most common flaws that prevent websites from generating sales leads:
Flaw #1: The home page focuses on the COMPANY rather than the VISITOR.
“We do this.” and “We’re the best because.” and “We’ve won all these awards.” You know what? Website visitors don’t care! At least, they don’t care yet.
When visitors arrive at a website, they are thinking about themselves and their own problems. What they want to learn (as quickly as possible) is whether the company can help them solve THEIR specific problems. There is a time to build credibility by talking about the awards the company has won, its stellar customer list, etc. But, that time comes later in the sales process.
Flaw #2: The language on the home page is stilted, boring, and includes lots of very big (and probably very technical) words.
Maybe that kind of language works for very specific kinds of visitors. What about the average consumer or businessperson? Will they be able to figure out what the company does? Will they be willing to invest the time required to puzzle out what the big words and jargon mean?
Just about every website will generate more online sales and sales leads if it is redesigned to do the following three things:
1. Help visitors RAPIDLY answer two questions:
- “What does this company do?”, and
- “Is there anything here for me?”
How much time do you think your website visitors are willing to spend trying to figure out whether your company can help them? If they are like most website visitors, the answer is probably between three and ten seconds. That’s it! That’s how long you have to grab your visitor’s attention and entice them to learn more about your company’s products and services!
The best way to accomplish this goal is to tell your visitors, in plain English, the kinds of problems you can help them solve and specific, QUANTIFIED results you have produced for current and past customers. That’s the kind of information that really grabs people’s attention!
2. Encourage visitors to OPT-IN to receive free information resources.
If you can motivate a visitor to opt-in to receive information from you, the website visit is no longer a one-shot opportunity. And, if you deliver truly useful information on a regular and consistent basis, you will earn the visitor’s trust and build a relationship with them over time. This will increase the likelihood that the visitor will eventually buy from you.
There is a catch. Many people feel overburdened by the amount of e-mail they already receive. Why on earth would a website visitor sign up to receive MORE e-mail from YOU?
The best way to overcome this reluctance is to offer to offer visitors something of value if they will provide just their first name and e-mail address. (The more information you require visitors to provide, the fewer sign-ups you will receive.) One very effective approach is to offer a free special report or mini-course that will help your visitors solve a specific, important problem. Make sure your special report or mini-course has a compelling title such as, “Twelve Things You Should Know Before You (fill in the blank).”
3. Motivate ACTION
If a website page is going to motivate a reader to take action, the focus needs to change from you, your company and your products and services to your visitors and their problems.
Web pages that motivate action are not distant or aloof. Instead, reading them feels like a one-on-one conversation between you and the reader. The copy invokes the reader’s emotions, plus provides enough supporting details to enable the reader to feel comfortable making a decision. The copy ends with a clear and compelling call to action. This is where you ask the visitor to make an online purchase, contact your company for more information, or take some other action.
This very specialized form of copywriting is called a “sales letter”. You have probably received sales letters in the mail or seen a similar type of advertising in television infomercial’s. Some sales letters and infomercial’s sound pretty “cheesy”; yet, for decades sales letters have repeatedly proven to be one of the most productive forms of direct marketing.
The biggest criticism you’ll hear about sales letters (usually from corporate website designers) is, “This copy is much too long! Nobody’s going to take the time to read that much information!”
You know what? The critics are ALMOST right. Probably 95% of readers will not read any given sales letter in its entirety. That’s OK, because sales letters are not written to appeal to everyone! They are written to appeal to specific individuals who have the specific problems the sales letter addresses.
Most people will skim a sales letter…IF it has a compelling headline or sub-headline that catches their attention. They may read a paragraph or glance at a few bullets. If the paragraph or bullets are compelling, they may read another paragraph. Once they have read several compelling pieces of information, they may decide to go back and read the sales letter from the beginning. At this point the chances dramatically increase that the reader will take the action the sales letter recommends.
Conclusion
If you want your website to generate online sales and/or leads, it needs to do three things:
- Help visitors rapidly figure out what your company does and whether you can do anything for them.
- Encourage visitors to opt-in to receive regular, value-added communications (so that you can build relationships and earn trust).
- Motivate action.
To motivate action, change every page that describes one of your company’s products or services to a sales letter. Make sure each sales letter includes a compelling “call to action”, whether it is making a purchase or contacting your company for more information.
Change the focus of your website from you, your company, and your company’s products and services to your visitors and their problems – and watch the online sales and leads roll in!
©2005-2008 – Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.
Written by Alan Rigg
When your company invests in sales training, what is the expected outcome? Is it a change in how your salespeople perform their daily activities – in other words, a change in behavior?
Unfortunately, most companies drastically underestimate the amount of time and effort that must be invested to accomplish behavioral change. Sitting in a class for a couple of hours or days is a good way to expose salespeople to new skills and techniques. However, new skills and techniques often feel strange and uncomfortable. Many salespeople worry that attempting to use the new skills and techniques with real, live prospects or customers will cost them sales and hard-won credibility. So, they abandon the new skills and techniques and continue to rely on “old” behaviors that are comfortable for them.
Here is a real-life example of a sales training program failure
Executive management at a company I worked for invested more than $600,000 to teach the entire sales team (100+ salespeople) a new sales approach. However, at every turn they looked for ways to reduce training costs and time out of the field. As a result, the sales manager training session was cut from a full day to half a day, and the sales team training was cut from three days to a day and a half. Plus, post-training conference calls (intended to reinforce key concepts) were rescheduled multiple times and eventually canceled.
What was the return on the company’s $600,000 investment? Only 10% to 20% of the salespeople ever applied the new sales approach in the field. The training project was considered a failure.
If you want your sales training investments to produce changes in your salespeople’s behavior, your company’s entire management team, from top executives to individual sales managers, needs to make a different level of commitment to sales training. The skills and techniques that are taught during training sessions must be repeated and reinforced on a regular and consistent basis. Plus, you should provide your salespeople with a non-threatening environment where they can practice new skills and techniques until they become second nature.
To further demonstrate the level of management commitment that is required to accomplish behavioral change, consider the following two scenarios.
Scenario #1
A top executive mentions the importance of a new sales approach in a company meeting or conference call. They mention it again occasionally (once a month or once a quarter). The sales manager also mentions the new approach in a few sales meetings before or after the training session(s). However, the focus soon returns to “business as usual”.
Scenario #2
A top executive explains the importance of a new sales approach in a company meeting or conference call. From that point on, they repeat the message in any conversation they have with any member of the sales or sales management team. The new sales approach becomes part of the executive’s daily dialogue, and they mention it multiple times a day.
Sales managers invest the time required to become proficient in using the new sales approach. They also explain to their salespeople that each salesperson will be held accountable for using the new approach effectively in the field. They help their salespeople become comfortable using the new approach by conducting repeated role plays in individual and group meetings. They also inspect for use of the new approach in a consistent and predictable fashion.
This level of management commitment causes the salespeople to recognize that the new approach is not “the flavor of the month”, and it will NOT go away if they ignore it. As a result, the new approach eventually becomes part of the company’s sales culture.
Do you see the difference in the level of commitment described by the two scenarios? Do you see why the second scenario is much more likely to produce lasting behavioral change?
In summary, if you want to change your salespeople’s behavior, your company’s entire management team needs to demonstrate a different level of commitment to sales training. Here are the recommended steps for this process:
- Any significant new sales approach becomes part of top executives’ daily dialogue.
- Sales managers learn how to execute the new approach.
- Salespeople are trained in the new approach.
- Sales managers hold salespeople accountable for using the new approach.
- Sales managers increase their salespeople’s comfort with the new approach by conducting repeated role plays in a non-threatening environment.
- Sales managers consistently and repeatedly inspect salesperson activity to confirm they are using the new approach.
When new skills and techniques become second nature to your salespeople, they are more likely to apply them effectively in the field. Designing training curriculums to produce behavioral change is the best way to ensure that your company receives its desired return on sales training investments!
©2005-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.