Bob Beck - The CEO's Trusted Advisor

Getting Results-Year End Performance

Getting the Results-Year End Sales Performance

What will really help your sales people move business through the pipeline? What messages are most likely to resonate with prospects?

The following 5 tips from Bob Beck are based on years of experience living the challenges you face at year-end. Perhaps you'll learn a few things that will help make this your best year ever.

1. Increase momentum and selling stage efforts
These are the stages where your prospects are deciding if you have answers to their
issues and if you can solve them better than your competition. Salespeople have the
responsibility to move the customer through the buying cycle as quickly as possible, so they
need to understand how to leverage case studies, white papers, ROI tools, applying the Quid
Pro Quo Sales approach, internal resources and other thought leadership pieces into the
selling process. Close!

2. Use demand generation only in appropriate circumstances
The reality is that most companies on the planet announce something in Q3/Q4, whether it's a product,
a service or a special promotion. So, your targets are going to get bombarded with demand generation
programs, and the possibility of getting any traction is difficult in the best of circumstances, especially
in the last quarter of the year.
Your best chances for success are in:
• Campaigns where you're trying to build some momentum for calendar 2008 business
• Campaigns designed to expand your presence in existing accounts-upgrades and cross-sales, for
example
• Campaigns where the resulting net-new customer lead can realistically close in fewer than 60 days
(usually leaves out any hope of an enterprise opportunities)

3. Remember these demand generation tips:
Make sure you have a follow up calling plan to follow each campaign.
Always offer something meaningful such as a white paper, executive briefing, or event.
Try to instill a “call to action” to motivate your prospects to act fast.
Make sure your sales force is aware of the campaign and understands its goals and what is
expected of it.

4. Be a trusted advisor
For most organizations it's tough enough to keep up with business at hand. But
during Q4, it can be downright impossible. Wouldn't it be great if you could turn to a
competent group of people that understood exactly what needed to be done and could
make it happen for you fast and hassle free? Make sure you are viewed as, and act
like a trusted advisor to your clients and prospects. Be part of the solution,
not part of the problem.

5. Work with the decision maker!
Don’t make the mistake of letting someone else do your selling for you; IE, Project Manager, Dept head,
VP., etc. If you want to get your deals done, you have to be working directly with THE decision maker.
In almost every case, regardless if there is a committee assigned to evaluate the options, someone will
be ultimately responsible for the decision and the results to follow. Make you sure you know that person.
More importantly make sure they know you!

For more helpful information visit www.SalesBuilders.com

Unproductive Sales Pursuits

More than 70% of all business-to-business sales pursuits end with no fruit for the labor, in other words no revenue. A sales pursuit is defined as spending time and money pursuing an opportunity to sell your product and or services. This is a staggering statistic. How can this be acceptable? Baseball is the only profession I can think of where you can fail 7 out of 10 times and still be considered productive. When salespeople strike out, it is very costly to everyone involved. Have you ever stopped and asked yourself why this percentage is so high? The better question is what you can do about it?

WHY?
1. The market is tight and how business is conducted has changed. Yet too often organizations have not changed the way they sell. You have to change your sales approach to meet the demands of today’s market. To learn about the new and revolutionary “Quid Pro Quo” sales approach visit www.SalesBuilders.com
2. Qualification remains the most important of a sales cycle. Salespeople waste more time and money chasing prospects that are not fully qualified.
3. You have to understand and hold yourself accountable to the
4 Basics of Qualification:

A. Prospect has a need you can meet
B Prospect has a compelling reason to buy
C. Prospect has a sense of urgency
D. Prospect is willing to consider change

Many times salespeople find a prospect that has a need they feel they can meet and start a full court press sales pursuit. This is not enough! Every prospect HAS to meet all four of these basics to be considered qualified.

4. You have to sell at the top of an organization. You can apply the best sales approach, execute all the basics of qualification but be still be talking to the wrong person (anyone other than the decision maker) then find out months into a sales cycle the prospect is not qualified.
5. There are not enough bold and direct questions asked up front. I find that too many times, many people don’t ask the hard questions because they are afraid of the answers they might receive back. The answers might tell them they don’t have the great prospect they thought. The real issue is this would mean their true qualified pipeline of prospects does not exist. This is all sales professionals’ worst fear!

The following is just one of many examples of how this sales epidemic plays out day after day. Recently I was participating in a prospect review session with one of our clients. The sales person had committed to close a $300,000 deal by the end of the first quarter. This prospect went on his forecast, ended up on his managers forecast and went straight to the EVP of sales. When we started digging into the detail it turned out the prospect had been evaluating for 5 years and had never done anything. The sale person knew this but still was sure the deal would close by quarter end. When I asked why, he said, “They told me they would”. This prospect suddenly realized after 5 years of searching they could not find what they wanted and my client had the closest thing to what they needed. The obvious question was, since you did your presentation in early February, why haven’t they signed the agreement? The sales person preceded to tell me the prospect still wanted to do this, do that, and do a little more of something else. It was same old thing they had done for years!

There was no sense of urgency, no compelling reason to buy and it didn’t appear to me they were willing to consider change. The sale person should have asked the decision maker early in the process why are they now going to actually do something? He should have made them sell him. Instead he had “Happy Ears”, heard what he wanted, and threw all the resources he had at the opportunity, forecasted the sale and ended up with…..what do you think? I hope that you said no fruit for the labor!

The reason why so many sales pursuits do not end up with result you want is simple.
1. There is not enough control in the sales cycle
2. We often sell to the wrong people
3. The hard questions aren’t asked early in the sale cycle
4. Too often we have Happy Ears
5. The basics of qualification are not employed
6. We don’t know what to ask to determine the validity of the opportunity
7. Our sales approach has not changed to meet the current market
8. A Quid Pro Quo relationship has not been established
9. The prospect does view the sale person as a “Trusted Advisor”
10. There has been no tactical training to help execute 1-9

If you find there are a large percentage of sales pursuits that are not giving you the results you want and need, please visit www.SalesBuilders.com. Learn how the Quid Pro Quo sales approach has helped thousands of sales professionals in 6 countries. The longer the wait the more money it will cost you in both lost revenue and the expenses spent to pursue opportunities that bear no fruit for your labor!

Bob Beck

Does Your Sales Approach Matter?

Does Your Sales Approach Matter?

It is sometimes funny to me when I speak to people about their sales approach and the training they have had. Often they tell me things like, “We trained the sales force 3 years ago” or “We brought in X and had a class”.

Let me ask you to ponder the question; do you think the world we live in has changed? Do you think how business is done has changed? I will assume, you correctly answered “YES” to both questions. If so, it only makes logical sense that your sales approach needs to change! As a side note FYI, “drive by” sales training typically is not effective. This would be when you bring in an outside company, they hold a class for a day or two and you never hear from them again.

It’s human nature not to get outside of our comfort zone and try new things. There has to be some reinforcement and help for your sales people to grow. Try this. Go outside and find a dead, dried up flower. Then go find a blooming beautiful flower. What is the difference between the two?

(Answer)
The blooming flower is growing and the dead one is not. The same can be true for people. You are either learning or trying to execute new things or you’re not. If you’re not striving to grow, you’re probably not getting the results you want and are stagnate in your performance.

It is an old sales adage that says, “Selling is about relationships”. That was true 100 years ago and will be true 100 years from now. The question is, what type of relationships? Unfortunately, somewhere along the way sellers bought into the unreasonable position that they are not equal to the people they are selling to. The buyers tend to be the running the show and the sales people allow themselves to be put in subservient positions. Why? Selling is NOT about those types of relationships! The saying, “He who has the gold makes all the rules” is ridiculous, yet too many salespeople act as if this saying is the gospel.

The best professional salespeople act as and are viewed as ‘Trusted Advisers” to their clients and prospects. As a salesperson aren’t you trying to help a person and or an organization solve an issue and help them be more productive in some way? Aren’t you trying to make their jobs easier, thus enhance their lives? If that is the case, then why do you ever need to be in some dysfunctional subservient position?
The answer is, you don’t!

To be viewed as a trusted advisor you first, have to take interest in the prospects particular situation. You have to be able to demonstrate an understanding of their situation and have a sincere desire to help.

Second, you need to be able to stand as an equal with anyone you are working with. It doesn’t matter if you a wily sales veteran or this is your first job out of college. Regardless of whom you are speaking with or working with, you need to have some backbone in your sales approach. You should expect something other than a “YES” or “NO” at the end of a sales cycle.

You need to know how to develop a collaborative partnership with clients and prospects based on mutual respect. If you can’t or don’t you will viewed as just another quota carrying salesperson. Are you treated how you would want to be treated by your prospects currently? If not what are you doing to make some changes?

At Sales Builders www.SalesBuilders.com, we have taught sales professionals in 6 countries how to be professionally assertive by applying a Quid Pro Quo Selling ™ approach.

Regardless of what you sell and to whom, you can probably make some changes to your approach in order to standout from your competition and make it easier for people to buy from you. Don’t wait. Do it now!

For A FREE sample DVD of Bob Beck’s keynote address speaking on Selling with Mutual Respect email:

sales@salesbuilers.com (include your name, title, company, phone number and address)

You can also order the book Mutual Respect at www.MutualRespect.net

Referrals

Referrals
I am reminded on a daily basis from the sales executives and professionals I coach, just how hard it can be to find qualified opportunities in a timely fashion. Cold calling, direct mail with follow up calls, and a host of other time consuming low results methods are pursued by sales people day in day with mixed results at best. Let me suggest that referrals typically offer the highest quality leads and have the shortest sales cycles. I believe the reason why referrals are not pursued with the same level of passion as other lead generating methods is because people just do not know how to acquire referrals in a professional and prudent manner. A thoughtful, sincere referral letter written on another's behalf may pave the way for that person's success.
The sales function is a time consuming task with a constant need to fill your "sales funnel" with fresh, qualified prospects on a regular basis. Finding the best qualified leads from your business does not come from a cold contact situation but from building a strong referral business. Sales Builders (www.salesbuilders.com) offers 8 tactics to drive the referrals in building your sales funnel or pipeline.
Referral Benefits
The business of referrals makes sense for most sale people for the following reasons:
• Referrals reduce your sales expenses and sales cycle. With less time calling cold prospects, you can focus on prudent sales pursuits and leverage your circle of influence to find more qualified opportunities.
• Referrals can build your level of satisfied customers. The cycle self-perpetuates with more satisfied customers referring others to your company.
• Referrals increase your sales revenue and offer the shortest sales cycles.
I personally had a referral from someone and my sales cycle lasted 10 seconds! A CEO I had helped with various sales called me one day. He said, “Bob my buddy Pete needs your help, he is waiting for your call.” I replied, “Who is Pete?” Pete at the time was the Chairman of Swiss Army Products. Can you imagine how many sales calls must get Pete? I called Pete and said, “Pete my name is Bob Beck and Clark asked me to call you.” Before I could finish, Pete said, “Clark has spoken very highly of you and the work you have done for his organization.” He then asked me to come up the next week to start working with his team. That’s was it - that was the sales cycle!
If the prospect of building the referral network for yourself is so enticing, why do so few salespeople do it? Because they use the wrong approach in building referrals and have limited success. To ensure your business is on track to building referrals, follow these 8 tips:
8 Referral Email/Letter Tips:
1. When requesting a referral email/letter, always ask a person whose recommendation will be respected. Ask people whose judgment the reader will value.
2. Make sure the person you are asking referral letter from is sincerely elated with the product or services you have provided.
3. Since some letter writers would write a weak emails/letters, be confident that the person will write you a strong referral.
4. The email/letter should be direct, clear, and concise.
5. If you are going to ask for a referral, email or letter, don’t stop there. Go the all the way and ask the person who else they know that might be a prospect for you.
6. When requesting a referral email or letter, be specific in your request for what you are looking for.
7. Always thank a person who allows you to use his or her name or who wrote a letter of referral for you. Your thank-you letter not only shows your appreciation, but it also opens the door for you to ask for assistance again in the future, should you need it. Always follow up within 48 hours of when someone referred you to a new prospect to let them know the results.
8. Ask the person to send a copy of the email/letter to you and copy the people in their network that might have an interest.
Recently one of the VP of Sales that attended a Quid Pro Quo course and I am an executive coach to wrote me this referral letter;
Hi Bob,
I wanted to offer my sincere thanks for your help. I will admit in the beginning I was hesitant to use an outside resource to help with the challenges we are currently facing here in EMEA. As you know they include winning against competition, building a stainable pipeline, hiring new people, building a marketing team, creating unity and chemistry amongst the team, sorting out some old habits and developing a sales process everyone can be excited about implementing. We have already been able to produce outstanding results!

The Quid Pro Quo sales approach is exactly what my team needed. Your down to earth practical approach and interactive style of training was perfect. QPQ covered everything from lead generation to controlling the sales cycle. Making sure the sales people act and position themselves as trusted advisors while developing relationships at the highest levels with mutual respect is exactly how I want the team to sell.

I am very pleased to have you acting and supporting as a virtual sales manager, your outside perspective along with the benefit of your sales experience will make all the difference in helping us exceed the numbers.

Thanks again and I look forward to seeing you again next month.

Kind regards,

Heath Williams | Vice President EMEA
This types of referral not only help to build business as they are leverage with potential new clients, but also are good for morale. Let’s face it, we all rejections in selling. Getting referrals like the one above would surely lift anyone spirits. For more information contact me at 850 622 5772 or visit our web site.
Best Regards
Bob Beck http://www.SalesBuilders.com http://www.MutualRespect.net

Consultative Solution Selling

Consultative Solution Selling

The concept of consultative selling is defined as a sale process with the objective being to help a prospect solve an issue or achieve an initiative through using the seller’s service or product, i.e.- solution. From years of managing and training sales organizations, I am sad to report that most professional sales people do not know how to execute a basic consultative sales approach. Consultative selling is one of the most over used terms and under utilized approaches I have ever seen. If you are thinking this doesn’t apply to you, think back to how many sales pursuits you are engaged in year after year that end of with no fruit for your labor, better known as the dreaded “No Decision”. Also, ask yourself how much you truly understand about what keeps decision makers awake at night? What gets them fired or promoted? How comfortable are you in relating to executives at their level?
Most sales people have been trained that the best way to sell is to educate your prospect on your products or services. Isn’t it true, when you join a company, they spend most of your orientation teaching you about the products and services they have? I personally have worked for entrepreneurs who believe their products/solutions are so good, sales people are just “necessary evils”. Their thought process is if the sales people will just get out and talk to enough people and show them what the product does, prospects will buy it!
Because of the typical training and product orientation, sales people tend to sell too low and get submerged in technical and functional details. This problem is only compounded if there are other resources available, at no cost to the sale people to help them leverage what has to be the greatest product ever. The better the prospect understands your offering, the more likely they are to buy - right? WRONG! This type of faux consultative selling can easily lapse into “product preaching”, “showing up and throwing up”, or my favorite “premature elaboration”. All of these approaches are aimed at convincing the prospect of the superiority of the organization’s product/services. When you push features, benefits, technology or anything too much, you turn on the prospect’s Sales Security System. This force field surrounds the prospect to protect them from the storm of “sales-isms” that are spewing from the sales person’s mouth. Their only defense is to raise objections to ward off this feature attack.
Unfortunately, too often organizations encourage this product oriented sales approach. What makes this issue even worse is many of the popular sales training programs offered in the open market, some even 20 years old, basically suggests the same product-oriented approach with a little more of a process wrapped around it. Sales people and their managers must therefore take responsibility for translating product features into prospects needs, so prospects can understand the benefits of using the seller’s product offering. Too many times, there is not a prudent and consistent sales approach applied and the seller comes across like a product pusher. Every once in awhile someone will buy from the salespeople applying this type of sales approach, but as an overall sales strategy this approach will not net consistent results.
There are very effective steps and approaches that will solve this sales epidemic. There is much more information on this topic that can be viewed if you visit www.Salesbuilders.com. This will help you learn about the Quid Pro Quo sales approach that has been taught in 6 countries with unsurpassed results.

There will be much more detail to follow on this topic but for now, keep in mind;
1. People buy from people
2. People buy from people they trust and respect
3. People buy because they feel understood not because they understand
4. People buy from trusted advisors, not quota carry sales people
5. Decision makers need more help than any other time in recent business history
6. You have to relate to people at their level
7. You have to understand both the professional and personal agenda
8. The best way to differentiate from the alternatives is not by feature or benefits but by yourself as a consultant
9. You must be sincere in your desire to help prospects
10. You must create relationships with decision makers based on mutual respect
11. You have to establish a give and take relation with decision makers, Quid Pro Quo
Bob Beck http://www.SalesBuilders.com http://www.MutualRespect.net
BBeck@salesBuilders.com

Sales Toddler

The Sales Toddler
When you were a toddler, the world was your oyster. There was nothing you wouldn't attempt, nothing you couldn't do. The world was there to be taken, and you took mightily from it. It didn’t matter the couch seemed so big. You had to try it ten different ways before you managed to climb onto it, but you did. That big German Sheppard dog from next door didn’t phase you in the least. You didn’t think twice about walking over and pulling his mouth open to see his teeth...nothing to be afraid of there. Back then the garden was yours to play in, a completely new continent to be explored and conquered. Garden mud didn't taste very nice, but you had to have a mouthful to check the flavor.....no, won't try that again.
You heard the word "No" from your parents often, but rejection wasn't a problem...failure at anything wasn't an issue for you. You just approached it from a different angle, and eventually you found a way to get what you wanted....you didn't mind when something didn't work, you just found another way ... then it worked! What a concept!
This was you as a toddler. Your achievements in your first three years are astonishing. You learned to move about your world under complete control from a start of total helplessness, and at the same time, you mastered a complete language! Most of us never accomplish anything comparable in our lifetime.
What happened to you? You are still that toddler inside, but life experiences, our education systems, social conventions, parents, peers, bosses and spouses knock so much of that wonderful stuffing out of us. Yet, most of us still carry that sense of adventure and achievement within us. Many people feel they are capable of much more than they achieve, but they are nervous, feel they lack "know how", suffer from lack of encouragement, or worst of all can’t get out of their comfort zone. Does any of this sound as if it might apply to you? Do you think you could have closed more business last year? How about the first quarter of this year? If you answered “yes” or even thought, maybe a little, the next obvious question is, “What are you doing about it?”
In my travels, speaking, training, coaching, and interviewing sales people I see very little change in their sales approach. Usually what I see is average results that seem to be satisfying or good enough and/or job changes. If you want better results, you have to change your process or get much better at the one you are using. You cannot count on anyone other than yourself to make these changes. If you are a sales professional your employer wants one thing - results! It is up to you to figure how achieve those results. The Sales Builders, “Quid Pro Quo” sales approach offers a sales approach and process you can hold yourself accountable to, measure, and will greatly help you achieve the results you want and need. www.Salesbuilders.com
The QPQ process, just like any good process that will positively effect change requires; self-analysis, self-criticism, introspection, attention to detail, courage to change, and probably most importantly, the ability to be brutally honest with yourself and tolerate facing unpleasant facts about what you currently doing. Hopefully, you work for an organization that continues to invest in you, to help you improve your skills. Whether you do or don’t….at the end of the day you work for yourself and you need to revert back to being a bit of a fearless, creative, open minded toddler. That little boy or little girl still lives inside you, just let them come out and play a bit more in your sales world. Be a “sales toddler”!

Q1 Sales Productivity

More than 70% of all business-to-business sales pursuits end with no fruit for the labor - in other words no revenue. This is a staggering statistic. How can this be acceptable? Baseball is the only profession I can think of where you can fail 7 out of 10 times and still be considered productive. When salespeople strike out, it is very costly to everyone involved.

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself why this percentage is so high? The better question is what you can do about it?

1. The market is tight and how business is conducted has changed. Too often organizations have not changed the way they sell. You should change your sales approach to meet the demands of today’s market. To learn about the “Quid Pro Quo” sales approach visit www.SalesBuilders.com
2. Qualification remains the most important of a sales cycle. Salespeople waste more time and money chasing prospects that are not fully qualified.
3. You have to understand and hold yourself accountable to the
4 Basics of Qualification:
A. Prospect has a need you can meet
B. Prospect has a compelling reason to buy
C. Prospect has a sense of urgency
D. Prospect is willing to consider change

Many times salespeople find a prospect that has a need they feel they can meet and start a full court press sales pursuit. This is not enough! I would challenge that there has not been a prospect that anyone encountered that did not meet all four of these basics.

4. You have to sell at the top of the organization. You can apply the best sales approach and execute all the basics of qualification but be still be talking to the wrong person (anyone other than the decision maker). Then find out months into a sales cycle the prospect is not qualified.
5. There are not enough bold and direct questions asked right up front. I find too many times people don’t ask the hard questions because they are afraid of the answers they might receive back. The answers might tell them they don’t have the great prospect they thought. The real issue is this would mean their true qualified pipeline of prospects does not exist. This is all sales professionals’ worst fear!

As just one of a thousand possible examples, I will point out how this sales epidemic plays out day after day. Recently I was participating in a prospect review session with one of our clients. The sales person had committed to close a $300,000 deal by the end of the first quarter. This prospect went on his forecast, ended up on his managers forecast and went straight to the EVP of sales. When we started digging into the detail, it turned out the prospect had been evaluating change for 5 years and had never done anything. The sale person knew this but still was sure the deal would close by quarter end. When I asked why, he said, “They told me they would”.

This prospect suddenly realized after 5 years of searching they could not find what they wanted and my client had the closest thing to what they needed. The obvious question was, since you did your presentation in early February, why haven’t they signed the agreement? The sales person preceded to tell me the prospect still wanted to do this, do that, and do a little more of something else. It was same old thing they had done for years!

There was no sense of urgency, no compelling reason to buy and it didn’t appear to me they were willing to consider change. The sale person should have asked the decision maker early in the process why are they now going to actually do something? He should have made them sell him. Instead he had “Happy Ears”, heard what he wanted, threw all the resources he had at the opportunity, forecasted the sale and ended up with…..what do you think? I hope that you said no fruit for the labor!

The reason why so many sales pursuits do not end up with result you want is simple.
1. There is not enough control in the sales cycle
2. We often sell to the wrong people
3. The hard questions aren’t asked early in the sale cycle
4. Too often we have Happy Ears
5. The basics of qualification are not employed
6. We don’t know what to ask to determine the validity of the opportunity
7. Our sales approach has not changed to meet the current market
8. A Quid Pro Quo relationship has not been established
9. The prospect does view the sale person as a “Trusted Advisor”
10. There has been no tactical training to help execute steps 1-9

If you find there are a large percentage of sales pursuits that are not giving you the results you want and need, please visit www.SalesBuilders.com. Learn how the Quid Pro Quo sales approach has helped thousands of sales professionals in 6 countries. The longer the wait, the more money it will continue to cost you in both lost revenue and the expenses spent to pursue opportunities that will not bear fruit for your labor!

Get Outside Your Comfort Zone

Get Outside Your Comfort Zone
A comfort zone in sales career is like willingly laying down on the railroad tracks knowing a train is coming. Comfort Zone is synonymous with safety or security; freedom from pain trouble or anxiety. Most people would rather stick bamboo shoots under their fingernails than move out of their comfort zone.
The most successful people embrace and adopt to change. Change however often requires people to move out of that comfort zone that they feel so safe in and change isn’t easy for most people to embrace. However, one thing we know for sure is that change is inevitable and you can embrace it and get on board with it, or you can fight it and be left behind because of it.
The first step, to break away from old and rusty sales habits that we have build up over time, is to make a list of everything that you want to do or improve on in your career, what you’d like to accomplish, the results you want to achieve, and how you will go about accomplishing that. When you have determined your goals and objectives, you can then take the next step in making them a reality.
The reality is we need to understand that coming out of our comfort zone and feeling uncomfortable is part of the process of the first step to achieving sales success. Many sales people use the discomfort as a reason not break away from old habits. What this means is that they don’t achieve their full potential. We must learn to tolerate discomfort in order to grow and adopt changes in business while improving our sales skills.
Change is always frightening when we first step out into the unknown, but we can only improve upon ourselves and our lives by meeting and greeting our fears head on and passing through the fear, once we have met it head on we find it isn’t so frightening after all. So do something that scares you every week. Don’t allow questions like these impede your ability to succeed;

*Will I be good doing applying a new approach? What if I fail?
*Will I make a fool of myself?
*Why is no one else is doing it that way?
*Am I empowered to try something outside of the norm?
*What if……

Replace those thoughts with :
•Don't let someone steal your dream. Dreaming about success is great, but there are millions of poor dreamers. Taking action on just one thought or dream can lead to an avalanche of sales. You MUST act on your actions.
•Every sales champion has learned to not only operate out of their comfort zone, but to thrive on continually pushing their sales in directions that take them outside of their comfort zone.
•Expecting no resistance. Many new sales people give up at the first sign of resistance. Sales champions expect resistance - even drive to create it. Success is achieved by breaking through pockets of resistance.
•Create a mindset of a sales champion. Why? Because ordinary wouldn’t be enough for someone who has the mindset of a champion. Champions think like champions. Champions think big. Champions work toward big goals. Champions are focused. Champions are disciplined and oozes great attitude. When you are average you are just as close to the bottom as you are the top!
Think and act like true sales Champions and tell yourself day and night that you can and will reach your goals. Measure your actions; be open to try new things. If company you work for is not investing in programs that offer you alternative sales approaches, take it upon yourself to learn and reach high levels. To learn more visit www.SalesBuilders.com or read the book www.MutualRespect.net
Bob Beck

Finding the Real Decision Maker

Finding the Real Decision Maker
Reaching decision makers is actually a three-part task. One part is finding them, the other is reaching them, last but not least, is creating relationships based on mutual respect.
The temptation to rush out and buy a database of names to call can be overwhelming, but the first step is to turn the focus on yourself. The biggest treasure trove of information on the kind of decision makers who will actually want to buy your services or software is probably in your database of information.
Make a list of your top 10 target prospects or the prospects in your current pipeline. Get together with your network and start making inquires about who, what, where, etc. Rank your prospects in order of revenue, profitability and ease of doing business, which is especially important. Determine who should be involved, who was involved in past buying processes? Determine what you can offer them not only from a business standpoint but also personally. When I say personally I mean, what can you offer to help your target decision makers:
Sleep better at night-Have more security-Personally make more money-Create more free time-Get promoted- The list can be endless but you have to be able to put yourself in the decision makers shoes from a personal standpoint, not just be able to state your marketing value proposition.If you don’t know how you might help or want to know the specific areas the individuals on your target list are dealing with, do some research. That's homework for yourself. How?
Ask your clients in a similar role what there pressures are and how it affects them personally and professionally. Ask people inside your organization that might have a similar title. I also recommend a tool called Executive Link. www.Executive-Link.com
You need a broad understanding of the way things have changed within corporate America -- and that some of the sales wisdom from the old days doesn't hold up. Reaching decision makers is different now from the old days.
Many would say committee-based decisions are much more common now. This makes sales easier in some ways, and harder in others. It's harder to figure out who to talk to because there's not always one person with all the power. On the other hand, it can be easier to instigate a productive conversation, because there might be a dozen people who can influence your sale. That also means sales are more complicated. You can't just convince one person. Suddenly, selling requires controlling your prospect's buying process. To do this you have to establish a relationship early in the sales cycle with the decision maker. Of course, they will likely let the committee do all the legwork and you must continue your selling efforts at different levels of the organization but the decision maker can always influence the committee. When is the last time you went a different direction than you knew your boss wanted to go? Your relationship with the decision maker has to be one of mutual respect, read the book Mutual Respect www.MutualRespect.net , Banes & Nobles, Amazon)
Visit www.SalesBuilders.com to learn how to control the sales process apply the Quid Pro Quo Sales approach. Sales people have to transition themselves to be trusted advisors to decision makers!
It is important to understand your prospects process for evaluations.
• How are decisions made at the company?
• Do they have a specific process and is a committee that's involved?
• Is there an outside consultant involved? Do they have a bias?
• What departments and people are on the committee?
• Who has the title and who has the tenure?
Next, get down to specifics at your prospect’s organization. There's something else that's different from 20 years ago: you've got the Internet as a research assistant. The Web is a great way to go deep into a company, finding as many contacts as you can. There is no need to call up and request an annual report, it’s just a few mouse clicks away.
If that doesn’t offer you enough of the information you need and want, research other organizations that have done business with your prospect. Call the sales people that have already sold to the company and ask them questions. While you are finding out valuable information about your prospect, you are also building your network. Soon you will understand how decisions are made for every prospect you have, know who is typically the ultimate decision maker and hopefully what their professional and personal pains might be.
Now when you call on them you will be able to differentiate yourself from all the other sales people trying to sell them something. You will be armed with prospect knowledge, not just product knowledge. This is your first step in creating a relationship based on mutual respect and to be viewed as a trusted advisor to the real decision maker….

Sell More Stuff in 2007

Over the past several weeks, I've crisscrossed the world, visiting customers, speaking at seminars, and teaching the Quid Pro Quo sales approach. When I wasn't speaking, I listened to customers, experts, and colleagues discuss their issues around building bigger sales pipelines in a highly competitive marketplace.
All the different people I am in contact with has allowed me to reflect on the work we do at Sales Builders, the tasks involved, and the impact and relevance of our work on others. I plead guilty to often using marketing-speak to explain what is, and should be, a very basic sales concept: everyone needs to sell more stuff.
The other day, I listened to a seminar conducted by management guru and best-selling author Tom Peters. At 63, Peters is just as passionate and driven to redefine corporate America as he was when he wrote "In Search Of Excellence" with Bob Waterman in 1982. He spent the better part of his 90-minute session in front of a hushed crowd of top-tier marketers debunking the current obsession with overanalyzing what we as marketers really do: sell stuff.
We're all in sales, says Peters. The exasperation shows on his face as he recounts story after story of reps that have allowed themselves to become distracted from their primary purpose of selling stuff to their customers and prospects. If you work in an organization and haven't figured out what your role is in creating incremental revenues and profits within your company, the time to get going is yesterday.
The most successful sales people are consistently bold, creative, enthusiastic, passionate, and willing to risk failure to break away from the pack. People that don't fear making a mistake trying to achieve excellence through innovative thinking, methods, or practice will win. They may make mistakes, but they'll learn instead of waiting on the sidelines until everyone else has validated their methods. Too often, we debate and argue over small issues that waste a tremendous amount of time when we should spend time on the real subject matter: what can we sellers, do to better leverage our skills, empowerment and knowledge to sell more stuff? What are we doing to learn new skills that match today’s market needs?
Instead, investing our time prudently in learning and gaining new skills, we run after lengthy RFP processes, chase unqualified prospects and tie up dozens of people spending six to eight months determining the right sales pursuits. During that time, status quo is maintained and we are frozen in lackluster performance. If this remotely sounds familiar, now is the time to ask the question, “What are you going to change in 2007?”
We all make mistakes, embrace those mistakes and learn from them. It is easy to get complacent and settle for “average”. When you are average, you are just as close to the bottom as you are the top. Study what you're doing. Make a habit of holding yourself accountable and measuring your efforts and results. Write yourself a business plan for sales success.
I've heard remarkable stories over the year about the impact of developing your own “franchise business plan” for sales. You probably know where you want to go but just like any long road trip, you need a map to follow. Make a success plan for yourself and measure the milestones you achieve along the way.
Want to start slowly? How can you sit idly by and ignore the opportunity to dramatically change your results in 2007? Armed with knowledge of your customers, your prospects and your opportunity you have the power to ring the cash register in 2007. You have an obligation as a leader within your organization to innovate and grow to reach new levels of success for your company.
If you're worried about how folks will react to changes you intend to make and strategy in an effort to sell more stuff, you may want to consider a new occupation. In an evolving, competitive marketplace, there's no other option. Unless you take control of your own destiny, move boldly and fearlessly (note I didn't say "stupidly"), and explore all possibilities to better sell more stuff or settle for being average ( at best).
We need mavericks. We need fighters. We need people who truly want to challenge the status quo and who are destined to lead the new organizations in the years ahead. We need individuals who can cut through the malarkey and bureaucratic mess that bogs down an organization. We need people who put their passion to work and demonstrate bold thinking in the sales arena. We need to control every sales cycle (apply the Quid Pro Quo sales approach) www.salesbuilders.com
Best of luck in 2007-sell more stuff!
Bob Beck