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!
Definitely read the whole article. His conclusion:
“When it comes to social networks and channels re: sales, there is some value, due to reputation and influence garnered when participating in the social networks including those identified above, but not to close deals. Their value is in developing the kinds of relationships that serve you over time, if you’re a sales person, in pursuing opportunities and finding leads and developing the kind of sales intelligence that provides you with the insight in making your job easier and better.”
I could not agree more. Social Media/Networking solutions (and we put Inquisix in this category) are helpful in getting the deal started, not closing it.
Tom Cafarella, Inquisix member, owner of accounting firm CMB Accounting and host of “Minding Your Money” on TV, interviewed Michael Kreppein of Inquisix recently. Tom and Michael spoke about the challenges facing small businesses, specifically how they can find new business.
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.
Whether you’re a front-line sales rep hunting for new business, a consultant delivering solutions, or small business owner communicating with customers, board members and employees, it’s all about selling: selling to win new business or selling to retain customers in an increasingly competitive marketplace. So what’s the deal with the buzz around emerging Sales 2.0 solutions? Which approaches are best able to fill the pipeline? How can you integrate informal networking with the latest technologies?
This White Paper by Michael Kreppein, Inquisix’s Chief Sales Officer, explores the value of referral networking by using Inquisix to combine your in-person with your online networking.
Please download the White Paper in pdf format by clicking the link below.
I’m a big fan of Kevin Sasser’s The Sales Wars blog. He must be really busy in his day job because he’s not posted in almost 2 months. Well, my wait is over and as usual, I learned something and laughed at the same time.
Definitely read the full blog post. After the funny analogy, Kevin writes about a colleague who is putting together an agenda for marketing to update the sales team. The standard agenda is suggested:
Our company overview
What we see happening in the industry
Our “vision”
Our unique approach
To which Kevin figuratively sticks his fingers in his mouth at the thought of listening to all that. What struck me is that the sales team is probably doing the same thing to the prospect! You are polite while marketing pitches you but you’re secretly daydreaming or reading your BlackBerry under the table. Wanna bet your prospect is doing the same as you pitch? Kevin suggested the following agenda for marketing. I suggest you follow the same agenda when selling to prospects:
Why you are in my office taking up my time
My problem that you can solve for me
How you will solve the problem in clear, concise, concrete terms
The benefit that you will deliver to me that your competitor can’t
As I get reminded at home, it’s not about me, it’s about what’s important to them!
He posted a great letter from one of his readers on the value of cold calling. The real value in cold calling is disqualifying prospects, much like panning thru dirt to find diamonds. I’ve posted on the value of cold calling in a previous Inquisix post.
The commenter’s conclusion on the value of cold calling?
Same as what I said; the benefit of cold calling is….referrals!
I read just a great article today about 6 brothers who are all successful IT sales reps in the Boston area. You can read the full article at MassHighTech and it’s well worth the read. They said that the main reason for their success was the mentoring they all did amongst themselves over Sunday dinner. They did it themselves because they found that “…many companies put less emphasis on mentorship and training than they should.”
The brothers not only mentor each other but take pride in mentoring the new hires working for them.
