This is the second in our series of meeting our Inquisix community members.  Thank you to Rick Roberge, master networker and sales coach with David Kurlan & Associates — and an Inquisix member since December 2007. Rick spent some time to answer a few of our questions about trends in business and networking and we’re much obliged.

Alyssa Dver is author of, “No Time Marketing” and was recently on Barry Moltz’s Business Insanity Radio show again. She had a great quote that was both funny and deadly accurate.

She said that “Happy Ears” is her term for confusing prospect enthusiasm with purchase authority.

What a great quote! It should be one of your top concerns when submitting your forecast to management. And management should be filtering forecasts with same consideration.

What about your forecast, does it have too many opportunities in it based on Happy Ears?

Since I have that fancy letter “C” as the first letter in my title as Chief Sales Officer, I get quite a number of cold calls.  Of course it just makes me cringe to be called by someone who hasn’t even spent a minute looking at our business and developing a message about their solution that I’d care about.  But I do enjoy critiquing in my mind their pitch.

Some would like to rename cold calling.  I recently heard it called “introductory calling” in an interview done on Barry Moltz’s talk radio show.  I don’t know, seems analogous to putting lipstick on a pig.

Instead of just renaming the term, Nigel Edelshain of Sales 2.0 has written a 24-page ebook on turning cold calls into social calls.  He reviews the new Sales 2.0 techniques and tools to “…help you with the three most critical factors: talking to the right people, establishing relationships and using changes in your buyer’s environment.”

You can download Nigel’s book for free here.  Adding his blog to your RSS reader is also well worth it.

I worked with Trish Bertuzzi of The Bridge Group on a few inside sales consulting engagements when I ran PeakSales Consulting in the late ’90′s.

Her company specializes in improving the Insides Sales department, especially when the group is involved in the full sales cycle till close. So they’re well qualified to publish reports on Inside Sales Best Practices. Trish’s latest offering is the “Periodic Table of Insides Sales Metrics” which I think is a really neat way to summarize the important data relevant for building a top-tier Inside Sales Group. Best of all, the table is free to download from The Bridge Group website.

If you’re local to Boston and would like to hear Trish speak, why not print out the table and get her to autograph it at the Sales 2.0 Conference on May 21, 2009? I’m first in line!

Most everyone has an online avatar. Whether it’s your Facebook picture shown to your friends or your LinkedIn picture with your resume, everyone’s putting their mug shot online. With the introduction of YouTube, easy-to-use video editing software like iMovie and inexpensive video cameras like The Flip, it seems like everyone is taking the next step from pictures on the web to videos on the web.

And web videos are a natural extension of your sales and marketing efforts. It’s a great way to quickly and accurately get your compelling message across to a large number of customers and prospects. We’ve been exploring adding video to the Inquisix site not only to educate members but allow members to tell their own story to fellow members.

Since we don’t want our videos to win awards on “America’s Funniest Home Videos”, I sat down with Inquisix member Catie Foertsch of OurTownProductions to learn more. She talked about her 6 tips to making a better video. I’ll summarize them here but you should go to her website for the complete details.

Catie’s 6 tips to a better video

• Start with a script
• Be Yourself
• Use a quality microphone
• Use lots of good lighting
• Frame your face well
• End video with a call to action

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all. As the end of 2008 rapidly approaches, the Inquisix team hopes you are all enjoying the holidays with your family and friends. If you’re thinking of prepping early for 2009, here’s some of our most popular articles from 2008.

Why Cold Calling Doesn’t Work:

• Cold Calling Is Ineffective
• Selling to Senior Management

Cold Calling From the Buyer’s perspective:

• Referrals from the Buyer’s perspective
• Where Senior Management Gets Their Info

Generating Referrals:

• Keys to a Strong Referral-Based Business
• Marketing While You Sleep
• Customers as References Not Referrals
• The Golden Rule of Networking

Pay or Play for Referrals/Reputation:

• Paying for Relationships

Stephanie Fox Muller, one of our advisory members, sent me this email along with her comments below.

Why would anyone take a salesperson seriously when their first communication – first! – offers a freebie of four hours of work? Let’s see, I don’t yet know what you do. That means I have to take my time to go to your website and figure it out. Then decide if I want four hours free.

If your fear of the economy is showing, maybe you need to take a step or two or nine back. If your product or service had value before the economy tanked, it still does. If you don’t believe that, you can bet that your prospects won’t. Good sales and marketing people know how to position their offering to meet the current needs of their audience. If you can’t figure out how to sell whatever the heck you offer in light of the current economic conditions, the last thing you want to do is give it away. If it ain’t worth anything to you, it’s worth less to me. And I don’t buy the little disclaimer at the end – if you try us out now, you may buy us later. If I don’t need you now, I won’t remember you later.

Instead of doing the email equivalent of cold-calling with a drop-your-shorts offer, how about asking clients who DO see your value and ask them for referrals?

I attended the “Winning Big Company Clients” event in NYC earlier this week.  The event was hosted by Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0 with a panel discussion led by Jill Konrath, author of “Selling to Big Companies” and Razi Imam, CEO of Landslide Technologies.

Jill’s discussion was very interesting.  While she admitted that much of what she wanted to talk about was in her book, it was beneficial to get the synopsis.

Her main point is that the corporate decision makers use the delete key first.  When listening to your voice mail, their finger is on the *3 or whatever key combination they use to delete your voice mail and email.  Their preference is to delete, not listen.  So if you are not relevant, your message is deleted immediately.

That means that you don’t have 30 or even 10 seconds to get your point across.  You have 5 seconds to be relevant.  Her studies have shown that corporate decision makers also believe that it’s your responsibility as the sales rep to call them back.  Jill says that you’re their conscience.

Being relevant means you can’t be consultative.  No more, “Hi, this is Jill and I’d like to understand more about your business issues so that we can find a solution for you.”  Corporate decision makers don’t have the time or desire to educate you.  Jill says that you must be assumptive in your belief that they have a pressing problem and that you can solve it.

Jill says that the corporate decision makers will review 3 things in their head as their finger is poised over the delete key.

• Are you relevant?
• Is this an urgent problem?
• Are you credible, ie are you the one to solve this problem?

I found what she said very timely and very interesting.  Thanks, Jill for your insight.  And thanks to Nigel for hosting!

I met Seth Godin years ago at one of those kids activity centers where parents host their pre-schooler’s birthday parties. If you have kids, then you know that pre-school birthday parties means “no drop-off” thus you can’t run a few errands or stop by Dunkin Donuts. I was reading his “Permission Based Marketing” book amongst the happy screams of little kids and I notice out of the corner of my eye that 2 people keep walking past me and smiling. One of them finally approaches me and says, “My husband wrote that book!” The other person walking past me turned out to be her husband, Seth. You’d think that I’d recognize him since his handsome dome was right on the front cover of my book!

I was reading this while my kid was here

Seth’s recent post is about how intangibles are what allows you to charge more for your service vs the commodity-oriented competition. Some of his ideas include participation, enthusiasm, speed, focus, generosity and hope.

Hope? No, not “I hope this deal will close” as that’s not an viable or effective tactic for beating the competition. Instead, “is your offering going to be something great.”

As I’m reading this blog, it struck me that I consider all these intangibles to be my reputation. Just like an intangible, it’s hard to quantify reputation. You either have it or you don’t. Your reputation with your customer is what keeps them coming back to you instead of saving money with your competitor. Your reputation is what gets you the warm welcome when you meet with prospects.

Here’s a few suggestions of mine on ensuring you have the intangibles, the reputation, it takes to compete and win.

With 15+ years of sales experience, often working for small companies with no brand recognition or large marketing budgets, I’ve learned that a repeatable process for selling is a must. At the beginning of the sales cycle, giving and getting referrals is key to my business. Cold calling is a necessary evil in sales but it’s less and less effective every day with caller-id and spam filters.

Many sales reps want to GET referrals or will only GIVE a referral if they get one in return. But the most successful referral-based sales reps, business owners and rainmakers know that giving referrals without expectation of one in return is the best course of action in the long term.

My Karma Keys to a Referral-based Business are -

* It’s better to give then receive

Yes, this seems counterintuitive for a sales person but try to give referrals without the expectation you’ll get one in return. That doesn’t preclude you from remembering who behaves the same way you do and networking with them more than others.

* Give referrals to enhance your reputation

Don’t give referrals just as a favor to the person asking for one. Instead, give a referral to enhance your reputation and trust with your colleague that you are making the referral TO. (Often known as the Giver’s Gain theory)

* Get referrals from Customers, Vendors & Sales Colleagues

Don’t limit asking for referrals from customers as your vendors and sales colleagues often have great connections they’d be happy to introduce you to.

* Reputation Matters

No surprise but the better your reputation, the more likely you are to get referrals and be asked for referrals. If you say you can give a referral, make sure that you follow through with that warm introduction. If you get a referral, treat your colleague’s contact with the utmost respect.