Social Selling: What It Is and What Sales Reps Should Be Doing The old ways of selling are gone. In fact, you could say that the cart has officially come before the horse. The "cart" is, of course, a shopping cart (or the moment that a decision is made to buy offline in B2B terms), and the horse is the informed and influential salesperson. The reason for this turn of events is clear and simple: the Internet. The familiar scenario of the bygone era in which the seller educates, informs, and convinces the buyer seems quaint now. As a buyer, can you imagine not researching something that you intend to buy before talking to a salesperson? The scales have certainly tipped in recent years to make selling a greater challenge than ever before. So much information is readily available for both sellers and buyers. Sales reps no longer control the information needed by buyers to make purchasing decisions. Customers are self-educating online. For many purchasing decisions, the primary question is no longer, "Why should I buy this," but rather, "Why should I buy this from you?" Savvy sales reps are tackling this dilemma by starting the process of social selling. As defined in a recent article in Forbes*, "social selling is about salespeople building a strong personal brand. It is about understanding the role of content and how content can be used to tell a powerful and emotional story. And, it is about growing your social connections."* The challenge for sales reps then becomes, "How do I create a brand not only for my organization, but also for a strong personal brand for myself in the marketplace?" Social selling skills and tools make that possible. Stats If you need more evidence to believe in the effectiveness of social selling — or, if you need ammunition to sell it to your boss — consider these statistics: 84% of B2B executives use social media to research buying decisions. Social sellers outpace those that don’t sell socially by a margin of 64% to 49% when it comes to team quota attainment. These few figures support the notion that buyers are researching before contacting sellers. The bad news is that too many sales reps haven’t adjusted to that reality: Only 31% of B2B salespeople include social networks in their selling process. A paltry 26% of sales reps feel that they know how to use social networks for selling. Help Your Reps Understand What to Do Sales reps can no longer afford to wait until they’re actually talking to prospects to start talking to them. Those prospects are already informed about products and services, the competitive landscape, reviews, trends, and issues surrounding their needs and solutions. Here are a few steps to help your sales reps get out in front of the conversation: Build and manage their social profiles. This could include starting from scratch or shifting their focus from solely personal to include their professional personas.  Grow their network. Quality is better than quantity, but don’t overlook people from your past who may be a target for a sale. Create and/or share content relevant to their clients’ problems. Show that you and your company have the experience and expertise to resolve issues that they face. Measure their progress and tweak, as necessary. Find out what’s working and what’s not, and adjust accordingly. That could mean doing more of the same, turning to different social media platforms, or refining the message. Learn More If you would like additional information regarding a great tool that can help your sales team implement these steps, please take a look at one of my past Richy Awards which was given to a company called PeopleLinx. They  have a online tool that can significantly help you implement these steps. *Keenan, Jim. "The Social Selling Curmudgeon, Are You That Guy?" Forbes, July 16, 2014. The post Social Selling: What It Is and What Sales Reps Should Be Doing appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

New and Improved Reporting Analytics Platform Launched for Richardson’s Sales Training Reinforcement Tool, Richardson QuickCheck™ Philadelphia, PA — April 24, 2015 — Richardson, a leading global sales training company, announced today the launch of a new and improved, back-end, real-time reporting analytics platform that will further enhance the effectiveness of their award-winning, mobile sales training reinforcement tool, Richardson QuickCheck® powered by Qstream®. Richardson QuickCheck is an e-mail-based program that leverages salespeople’s mobile devices in order to deliver daily, bite-sized learning that is designed to help reinforce and sustain the knowledge and skills taught in Richardson’s sales training programs. The new reporting analytics platform includes real-time performance heat maps that continuously analyze and present data, enabling a real-time understanding of how users are adapting to the desired behavior change and where additional coaching and skill development may be needed. QuickCheck analytic data is now able to be filtered, analyzed, and exported in many different ways through Qstream’s flexible tagging system. The platform provides management and administrators with a set of new and standard sales management dashboards that feature hierarchical views that drill down on individual reps, team, and region performance. These new dashboards also provide weekly snapshot reports that display performance and engagement summaries, as well as proficiency comparisons within and across groups. "At Richardson we regularly counsel our clients that training cannot be an event; it has to be bigger than three days of relevant learning and great facilitation in order to get behavior change back on-the-job. It is not only important to invest in knowledge retention immediately after training, it is critical that management is provided with the necessary learning analytics," said Gregg Kober, Vice President of Change Management and Enablement at Richardson. Kober continues: "Measuring knowledge retention and visualizing that data enables management to demonstrate how well their teams are retaining the key knowledge and also to provide additional support or coaching where learning gaps may continue to exist." Media Contact: Jim Brodo, SVP Marketing Richardson — jim.brodo@richardson.com Please click on the following link if you would like to learn more about Richardson’s QuickCheck sales training reinforcement tool.   The post New Reporting Analytics Platform Launched for Richardson’s Sales Training Reinforcement Tool appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Tips for Using LinkedIn as Part of Your Prospecting Strategy With "Sells" as my last name, it seems inevitable that I would make a career in sales. I not only love sales, I love corporate B2B sales, even as the playing field has changed considerably during my career. When I started selling in the late 1980s in Los Angeles, we didn’t have cell phones. You had to pull over on the freeway, find a payphone, and keep a pocketful of quarters. Now there are cell phones, the Internet, and social media platforms as tools of the trade. I often ask the 20-somethings in my training sessions to raise their hands if they’re on LinkedIn. Most raise their hands. When I ask how they use it for prospecting, I hear crickets and get blank stares. The key to using LinkedIn is to not only be on it, but also to use it effectively as a professional sales tool. The following are some tips for making LinkedIn part of your prospecting strategy. Profiles: Make sure your profile is professional, accurate, and complete. Choose your photograph carefully. If it’s a selfie, make sure it looks professional. Don’t use a party pic or cut yourself out of a group shot. Save pictures with your family, kids, and pets for Facebook. Upgrades: Review the additional options available as a Premium member, which offer plans targeted to growing your network, unlocking sales opportunities, and both job hunting and hiring talent. Sales Solutions: Become familiar with LinkedIn Sales Solutions, which includes a Sales Navigator, located under "Business Services" in the header bar. According to the website’s statistics, social selling leaders create 45% more opportunities, are 51% more likely to achieve quota, and are 80% more productive. Resources: Download the free eBook, 7 Social Selling Tips to Drive Revenue and Crush Your Quota, from Koka Sexton of LinkedIn, available from the Sales Solutions page. And, a must-read for anyone in sales, in any industry, is Social Media for Salespeople: A Step-by-Step Guide to Increasing Your Leads & Sales, by Alice Myerhoff. Research: Look at a wide range of profiles, including those of your customers, partners, suppliers, and competitors. This is what LinkedIn was made for: helping business people connect. You can link with people you know and then see who they know, which creates a rich pool of prospects. You can also see who has viewed your profile, helping you to gauge interest. Introductions: Mine your LinkedIn network to find out who knows whom. If someone you know is connected to someone you want to meet, contact your colleague about being introduced. This can be done within LinkedIn or through a more personal phone call or external e-mail. Whatever the mode of contact, the basic message is the same: "I see you’re connected to the CIO at Apex Company. Would you be comfortable introducing me?" Focus: Remember that LinkedIn is a social media platform that focuses on business. This is the place to share articles and ideas related to your professional life. For your personal life, use other social platforms, such as Facebook or Instagram or other popular sites. When you’re in sales, the more you know about prospects, the easier it is to turn cold calls into warm ones. With tools like LinkedIn, the whole process of prospecting becomes even easier. ————- Learn more about Richardson’s Strategic Prospecting Sales Training Solutions The post Tips for Using LinkedIn as Part of Your Sales Prospecting Strategy appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Sales Prospecting Tips to Become More "Social" To be successful in sales, you need to be vigilant in looking for new leads. How to do that in the most time-efficient way is the question. One crucial bit of information is to know your retention rate of business. If you retain, say, 80% of your business each year, that means you lose 20%. That 20% of lost business is the minimum amount that you need to replace. Knowing this number helps you be more strategic in your prospecting. Like B2B sales, the element of prospecting has dramatically changed in today’s mobile, social, and digital world. There’s a lot of talk about the ultra-informed buyer who uses the Web for research before ever contacting a seller. Well, two can play that game. The same tools are available to buyers and sellers alike. It’s the savvy user who works them to their advantage. In my previous blog post, I offered prospecting tips targeted to using LinkedIn: Tips for Using LinkedIn as Part of Your Prospecting Strategy. But, LinkedIn is only one of many free social tools that can amplify your prospecting results. The following are a few others, and new ones are appearing on a regular basis. Google Alerts: This free service from Google allows you to "Monitor the web for interesting new content." You might enter the name of a specific company, person, or technology. Whenever your search term appears on the Web, an e-mail is automatically sent to you. Google Alerts provide an easy way to track breaking news and developing trends by matching your search terms to content that appears in blogs, online newspapers, and webpages. Twitter: Many people don’t think of Twitter as a prospecting tool, but it’s a free and easy way to share links to articles and Websites of interest to your target audience. You can also follow industry thought leaders and then retweet their tweets, showing alignment in your interests. By following competitors, you get insights into their ideas and methods, and by following prospects, you can discover what’s on their minds. The key is not to promote yourself, or to just tweet "Click here for a great article," but to offer compelling content of interest to your prospects. For example: "Here’s a great article on employee benefits by So and So," or, "Read the latest in security for mobile transactions." YouTube: Many companies have a YouTube channel for informational, marketing, sales, or other videos. This provides sales professionals with additional opportunities to contact prospects by forwarding links to specific and relevant videos via e-mail. Additionally, you can tweet these links to reach more people. Hashtags: Using a hashtag (the number or pound sign —"#"), in posts on Twitter and other social sites, in front of a word or a phrase where #allwordsruntogether allows your message to be grouped with similarly tagged messages. If you tweet about #Sales2.0 and someone searches that term, your tweet will appear along with others using the same hashtag. It’s like you’re all part of one conversation about the same topic. Don’t worry about joining each and every social media platform; just focus on the ones used most often by your prospects. You have to figure out how they communicate, and then meet them How to Become More Social in Prospectingthere. Connections on LinkedIn or Twitter can progress to e-mails or phone calls and, eventually, a face-to-face meeting. The thing to remember about social media is that it starts with "social" — and that means connecting with prospects before attempting to go for the sale. ————- Learn more about Richardson’s Strategic Prospecting Sales Training Solutions   The post Sales Prospecting Tips to Become More "Social" appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Richardson’s own Senior Facilitator and frequent blogger, Michael Dalis, is currently featured on the HubSpot Sales Blog. Michael’s post is entitled 5 Tips on How to Use a C-Level Executive in a Sales Meeting and can be viewed by clicking here. In this blog post, Michael presents five practical tips for leveraging a C-level executives in an effective sales call, pitch, or client meeting. He shows how using this vital resource can give you and your sales team the extra boost needed to push you into the winner’s circle. We hope you enjoy! Read the Complete Blog Post>> The post Five Tips on Using a C-Level Executive in a Sales Meeting appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Getting Past "No" - Overcoming Objections in Sales Every sales professional in every corner of the world hears "no" or words to that effect — all the time. "No" can come on the phone, before you’ve ever met the person, or while you’re shaking that person’s hand. Getting past "no" and overcoming objections is an important skill for sellers that must continually be practiced. In sales training sessions on overcoming objections in sales, I always ask participants how they feel when someone resists or turns them down. I guide the conversation toward recognizing the opportunity in what seems like a rejection. Some people are naturals at overcoming objections in sales; the rest of us benefit from practicing a step-by-step, client-focused model. The best way to overcome objections is to understand the underlying concern. An effective process for doing this involves the following skills: STEP 1: Relating — Acknowledge or Empathize By making a statement of acknowledgment or empathy, you let the client or prospect know his/her concerns have been heard. Both your tone of voice and your words should be appropriate and genuine, and avoid any signs of defensiveness or frustration. This helps to reduce negativity and helps you connect with the client. STEP 2: Question Ask a clarifying question to make sure you understand the specific objection being raised, then listen carefully to the response and probe deeper. Most of the time, the initial objection isn’t really the true problem. Getting to the heart of the matter can be two or three or more open-ended questions away. "What do you mean by that?" "What do you like better about the old technology?" STEP 3: Position Respond in a way that tailors your answer to the expressed concerns, and do so in a concise and specific way. "You said my company is too difficult to work with and that, specifically, it was the billing system that caused problems last year. Since then, our IT department has revamped our systems and introduced some upgrades to make everything run smoother." STEP 4: Check Ask questions to get feedback on how well your response satisfies the objection. Questions also help to keep the dialogue open and interactive. "I understand there were some problems last year, and we’ve taken steps to change the process. How well does this revised approach work for you?" There’s one particular objection that I like to talk about in training sessions: when the prospect or customer says, "I love your competitor." In this situation, you can say, "It sounds like you have a great relationship with the competition." Say this in all sincerity. Then, follow up with: "What do you love about them?" The answer that they give tells you the minimum you have to do to gain their confidence, and then, you have to kick it up a notch by adding value. I often use a personal example in training from years ago, when I first moved to Denver. I called an older gentleman who agreed to let me come out to meet him. When I got there, we shook hands, and he said, "I’m so glad you came by, but I’ll never ever use you." When I asked why, he said, "Because I love Jim, your competition." So, I probed further and found out that both men were from Minnesota, they were buddies in the mining industry, and Jim frequently wined and dined him. I knew I had to do the same things, at a minimum, and then bring him more value. It took me two years, but I eventually won the account. But, I couldn’t have done it without first knowing why he loved Jim so much. Overcoming objections in sales is all about keeping the conversation and dialogue going. There’s no room for being defensive, so leave your feelings on the sidelines. Show the client or prospect that you hear what he/she is saying, that you care about his/her concerns, and that you’re really and truly listening. Learn More About Richardson’s Consultative Selling Solutions Click the image below or the following link to download a brochure on our award winning Consultative Selling sales training solutions! Or you can contact Jim Brodo, SVP of Marketing directly at Jim.brodo@richardson.com The post Getting Past "No" - Overcoming Objections in Sales appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Six Tips to Leverage Trade Shows as a Sales Prospecting Tool Spring means trade show season, and it’s time to take them seriously. Trade shows fall in and out of fashion as a marketing and sales prospecting tool. But, whether you love them or hate them, it makes good business sense to recognize the significant level of financial, human, and time resources allocated to putting on and participating in a successful trade show. In today’s cool digital marketing and sales world, trade shows aren’t the latest and shiniest tool in the box. Still, trade shows can be an extremely effective marketing and sales prospecting tool. It is precisely because of today’s digital marketing and sales environment that, to differentiate yourself, you need to seize and leverage every opportunity to meet with prospects and clients in person — and trade shows are the perfect tool to do so. Here are six tips for leveraging trade shows as a sales prospecting tool. 1) Marketing and sales alignment — Don’t treat trade shows as a marketing event that requires sales to "show up and work the floor." To be effective, marketing and sales must work together to develop a strategy and tactical plan on what they jointly want to accomplish. Even better, the two groups should create and sign a joint Service Level Agreement (SLA) prior to the show so that each can be held accountable by the other. The SLA should cover elements such as the following: Overall goals, objectives, and budget of the show Personnel coverage model throughout the show Targeted audience (pre-show registration lists are helpful here) and how to meet those targets. Don’t just wait for prospects to come to your booth. Make sure to draw people there before the event by engaging them through LinkedIn or other social media tools, specifically inviting them to visit. Which networking events your company should attend and how you engage prospects there Themes, messaging, communication, and sponsorship tools to develop and deploy, both prior to and after the event Expectations of the attending personnel: what to wear, when to show up, what information to gather, and any reporting documents to complete How leads will be allocated, followed up on, and nurtured. At Richardson, we recommended a lead-scoring system that assigns A, B, C, and D levels of leads. "A" leads go to the appropriate sales rep, "B" to inside sales, "C" to be nurtured by marketing, and "D" to be discarded. 2) Keep messaging simple — Big trade shows can be overwhelming for participants, with thousands of people and thousands of booths promoting thousands of messages. Companies often create messaging about every aspect of what they offer, casting a wide net so that they don’t miss any possible prospect. If, instead, you identify your targeted prospects early, you can work on a simple, clear, and compelling messaging strategy. That’s important when you have only ten seconds to capture someone’s attention as they walk around the showroom floor, looking at potential vendors. Complex messaging can be a distraction; you just need enough detail to spark someone’s interest to start a dialogue. 3) Don’t Pounce — Some booth reps can act too aggressive, pouncing on people as soon as they step near the booth. Traffic flow at shows naturally comes in waves, and this can lead to frustration by those who want to engage visitors and help drive leads. Make sure that you control the pounce factor of your booth representatives. You want your team to be outgoing, but you don’t want to risk scaring people away. 4) Develop an integrated prospecting plan — Don’t just show up at a trade show and expect attendees to stop by your booth. Your teams need to develop pre-show communication plans that drive people to find your booth. There are many good tools to leverage, from LinkedIn and Twitter to e-mail and direct mail. You can be creative by adding booth or show attractions, but the key is to communicate prior to the event. Just because you build the booth does not mean they will come. 5) Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up — One thing to remember after a trade show is that attendees may have visited 50 booths and will have 50 people following up with them. It’s critical to maintain the course and follow-up consistently after the show. You might try a memorable booth giveaway or contest so that you have something concrete to leverage in your post-show messaging strategy. 6) Track effectiveness — Code all leads prior to inputting them into your CRM system. The goal is to track a waterfall of your sales pipeline, looking at responders (booth visitors or those who left or scanned a business card), qualified leads, opportunities, won opportunities, and lost opportunities. Depending on your sales cycle, marketing and sales should, at the very least, develop a monthly review cadence of how the leads are flowing into your system. When all of the leads are closed out, schedule a final joint review meeting to evaluate the effectiveness of the show. Look at what went right and identify areas of improvement for the next show. Trade shows can still be a great marketing and sales prospecting tool, even in today’s digital age. Correction: especially in today’s digital age. The key to effectiveness is focus: on your messaging, on your prospects, on engaging and not scaring away people who visit your booth. Sales and marketing must work together effectively and leverage the myriad communication tools available to drive awareness and build show booth traffic … and interest in your company. ————————- Are you attending the 2015 ATD Conference? If So please stop by booth #1412 to say hello to the Richardson team! Click here or on the image below to learn more about what we will be featuring. The post Six Tips to Leverage Trade Shows as a Sales Prospecting Tool appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Andrea Grodnitzky to Present on Selling with Insights at the 2015 ATD International Conference and Expo Andrea Grodnitzky, Richardson’s Senior Vice President of Global Performance Solutions, will be speaking at the ATD 2015 International Conference & Exposition in Orlando, FL on May 20. Grodnitzky’s session will cover how, globally, organizations are implementing a selling with insights sales approach. She will discuss how these organizations are using insights to guide their clients to make the best decisions for their businesses. Buyers today are equipped with unprecedented access to data and information, but Grodnitzky believes they need knowledge and context to help them sort through the noise. This session will discuss how now, more than ever, the sales dialogue is a critical part of achieving sales success with this type of selling approach and what it really means to deliver an insight that will add value to clients. "We are all aware of just how dramatically the selling landscape and buyer behavior has changed in our information-rich, always-accessible, digital world," says Grodnitzky. "In this session, I will discuss not only why a selling with insights sales approach is necessary in today’s selling landscape, but more on what this approach really entails and how to roll it out in your organization." She continues: "This type of selling approach creates value, value creation builds trust, and trusted advisors influence today’s ultra-informed buyer. I hope that attendees will gain an understanding of how this can lead to greater business results." The session information is as follows: Session: W213 — How Are Fortune 500 Companies Adopting an Insights-based Selling Approach? Wednesday, May 20, 2015 10-11 a.m. Location: W207AB Grodnitzky recently wrote a blog that was featured on the ATD Sales Enablement blog, explaining why this type of approach is needed in today’s environment. Click here to read. To learn more about Richardson’s Selling with Insights sales training solutions, feel free to e-mail jim.brodo@richardson.com to contact us directly. ————————- Are you attending the 2015 ATD Conference? If so, please stop by booth #1412 to say hello to the Richardson team! Click here, or on the image below, to learn more about what we will be featuring at the booth and conference and to set up a time to get together. The post Andrea Grodnitzky to Present on Selling with Insights at the 2015 ATD Conference appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Seven Tips to Improve your Trade Show Selling Experience In my last post, Six Tips to Leverage Trade Shows as a Sales Prospecting Tool, I discussed ways to adopt a more targeted and strategic approach to leverage this tried-and-true sales prospecting tool. Now, I want to share seven tips for improving a sales rep’s interactions and overall trade show selling experience while working the booth. Don’t pounce — I mentioned the issue of pouncing in my previous post, but it’s such an important point that I want to expand my comments. Demeanor and body language while working a trade show booth are critical to attracting people to stop and visit. It’s intimidating to have sales reps standing, arms crossed, and squinting to read the small print of someone’s name tag, clearly ready to pounce on anyone remotely interested in the company. To make sure that people feel comfortable and interested in coming to your booth, your messaging must be clear and engaging, and it must provide the promise of value. Also, as gimmicky as it may seem, good booth giveaways or promotions are important to initially draw people in.If someone comes into the booth and heads straight for the literature rack, without making eye contact, just kindly say, "Please let me know if there are any questions I can answer for you." Most of the time, that person will engage you after making sure there is a connection with the company. If he/she doesn’t engage after a minute or so, you can ask, "Are you finding everything OK?" Then, you can follow up with, "Would you mind if I scanned your badge?" If that prospect declines, he/she may not be a good fit. Either way, thank the person for stopping by the booth, invite him/her to visit again, or, if someone from your company is giving a presentation, hand the person an overview printout to pique interest in attending that session. Be consultative — Trade shows provide a small window of time to have a full, meaningful dialogue. Often, the show is noisy, and you may have a lot of people in your booth vying for attention. Avoid the natural inclination to product dump during your conversations. Remain true to the task of engaging in good, consultative dialogue and maintaining a strong needs-based methodology. Build rapport, ask great questions to identify needs, make sure that you truly listen, manage any objections, and position the value of the company. Take great notes — For a sales rep, one of the pitfalls of attending a trade show is meeting someone, having a fantastic needs dialogue, and then having to turn that lead over to someone else who resides in the territory or "owns" the account. This is typically the biggest objection we at Richardson see regarding aligned trade show participation. What the sales rep needs to have is a pay-it-forward state of mind, meaning what comes around will go round at some point. Reps should not get frustrated when they have a good dialogue and then have to turn over that lead. Just be professional and write up the conversation on a lead form so that the salesperson who does take over will have all of the important and relevant information that was discussed. This will allow for better follow-up and nurturing. Learn to disengage — One of the hardest things to do at a trade show is disengage from non-prospects. This may sound a bit cold, but often, independent consultants, competitors, and other individuals visit the booth for a number of non-business related reasons, including partnerships and job hunters. Remember, a lot of time and resources go into the planning and execution of a trade show, and your company is there for solid business reasons. Sales reps must quickly establish if a person is a prospect and, if not, politely disengage and move on. Again, it’s not easy, and you don’t want to be rude; you might just ask to connect after the show when things are less hectic. Ask for referrals — You may meet someone at a trade show who is not a direct prospect but either works with or for your potential prospect. Make sure that you leverage that meeting or dialogue and ask for a referral to your main prospect. Don’t eat in the booth — During slow times, you may be inclined to grab lunch or eat something in the booth. This is really my #1 no-no. You never know who is going to come by, or when, and you need to be prepared at all times. You can’t have a mouthful of food when someone comes into the booth. It’s important to be professional at all times; if you need to eat, make sure that you have coverage scheduled, and take a break. Clear your calendar — While at a trade show, make sure that your calendar is cleared during your allotted booth time. There is nothing worse than sales reps having to make a client call during booth time. If, for some reason, you can’t get out of a call, let the booth coordinator know beforehand so that the schedule can be adjusted. If you are chosen to attend a trade show this season, don’t look at it as a punishment; instead, see it as an opportunity. Be prepared, be engaged, hustle, and network — not only for yourself, but for the entire organization, driving good leads and sales opportunities. It’s up to you to have a great trade show selling experience. Are there any other tips to improve trade show selling experience you would add to the list? Let us know and we can put them on. Learn More About Richardson’s Consultative Selling Solutions Click the image below or the following link to download a brochure on our award winning Consultative Selling sales training solutions! Or you can contact Jim Brodo, SVP of Marketing directly at Jim.brodo@richardson.com   The post Seven Tips to Improve your Trade Show Selling Experience appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Prospecting and networking apps for ATD Trade show and Conference attendees If you were to time travel back a decade or two, you could revisit attending conferences with reams of promotional paper goods and boxes of business cards in tow. In the pre-tech era the traditional conference protocol was to bring plenty of hard copy materials, and never be caught short. It was better to come prepared with too many business cards than too few. Think about not being able to share your contact information with a person you just met at a conference that you’d love to collaborate with. If you weren’t carrying plenty of business cards, that could be one crucial missed opportunity. Fast forward to today and how times have changed. Partly due to a more ecologically-minded approach to business and daily life and partly due to convenience, now paper goods have been largely replaced by handheld devices with storage capacities and technological sophistication unimaginable just even a short decade ago. Has conference clutter been minimized in the modern age? Absolutely! But with tech innovations comes a new challenge: Selectively choosing from the many app options at one’s disposal. The scope of available apps can be dizzying, and dedicated conference attendees should have a streamlined list of what is most beneficial for their respective needs. With the 2015 ATD International Conference & Exposition in full gear, there is no better time than the present to offer a consolidated list of important apps that merit consideration for anyone working within a conference setting. Choices are varied, so select wisely and make your ATD Conference visit a profitable one. Operations Apps Gone are the days of hiding handfuls of business cards in your conference materials. Evernote, Cardmunch or Evernote Hello allow users to collect business cards digitally for easy storage and organization. Has there ever been a better reason to dispense with your antique Rolodex? For those interested in daily planners, Rapportive can facilitate the process of reviewing client projects and company information, as well as monitoring interactive contacts for conference speaking engagements. Additional daily planning support can be found with Boomerang. Emails can be scheduled for future transmittal, as can calendar updates and reminders. Gmail and Outlook access have never been simpler. Anyone active on Twitter should consider using Buffer at the next conference. Tweets can be scheduled for future posting irrespective of one’s workload. Buffer is an ideal way to stay active in real time on Twitter without disrupting continuity during conference commitments. Sales professionals will find LinkedIn of special importance as it utilizes an advanced search feature to identify potential marketing targets. Future clients can be located using specifics such as keywords, particular business status/relationship, industry, and geographic location Navigating the conference circuit is always an exercise in time and task management. Charlie can help with the latter by working as a liaison between you and your first time contacts by emailing one-page info sheets on your fellow attendees. Planely is the app equivalent of Big Brother, but without the oppressive surveillance. Simply put, the app allows the user to identify which attendees are traveling at the same time so that convenient meetings can be scheduled prior to conference hours. Logistics Apps For those interested in entertainment through fine dining, Open Table gives users the ability to make reservations, explore menus, check reviews, and earn reward points. During conference season, restaurants can often be standing room only, so it behooves anyone interested in taking clients out to eat to have reservations made early and effortlessly. As conferences often attract participants from different locales, the Time and Date world clock app is vital for keeping current on visitors from other time zones, as well as for managing one’s own travel and meeting plans. Everyone is responsible for submitting T&E reports from their road work, and nothing incurs the ire of Accounts Payable more than missing receipts or shoddy expense reporting. Shoeboxed is your personal accountant for tracking receipts and organizing your expense reportage. Similar to Shoeboxed, GoodBudget tracks and organizes the user’s personal spending from any given business trip. A combination of the two apps will guarantee a clear accounting of what was spent, and what can be submitted for reimbursement. If you are partial to community relations, then Viber may be an app worth considering. Sending free messages and making free calls to other Viber users can greatly reduce company phone charges, especially since communications can be made from any device and network, and in any country. Once the domain of a dedicated personal assistant (or tour manager), travel itineraries can be logged into TripIt and updated as necessary with minimal effort. An organized itinerary will keep a person on time for scheduled conference events, as well as multiple trips. If you plan on visiting the 2015 ATD International Conference & Exposition, we will be one of the 10,500 strong in attendance so please visit us at booth #1412. Our company is a leader in global sales training and sales force effectiveness, and we’d welcome the opportunity to meet you and get your feedback. And if you find us with one of the listed apps, let us know! The post Prospecting and networking apps for ATD Conference attendees appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.