You may have been reading my earlier posts and thinking, "I already know that toxic leaders are terribly destructive because I currently work for one. So what can I do about it?" Like most tough dilemmas, your choices really depend on the context surrounding the situation. While I’m a strong advocate of honest feedback, I have found this strategy often fails when subordinates try it with toxic leaders. My research [1,2] showed that toxic leaders are narcissistic and only want to see themselves in...

Business meetings are the bane of our professional lives. According to The Muse, managers spent between 35 - 50% of their time in meetings. That’s a pretty significant number. You might be saying, the answer to this is get rid of meetings. But here’s the thing. I doubt that meetings are going away. The definition of meeting is "a coming together of two or more people, by chance or arrangement." People will still get together to accomplish stuff. That’s a meeting. Some...

Communicating Value to Protect and Grow Strategic Accounts (Part 1) Protecting and growing strategic accounts requires that you constantly look for ways to create value for your customer. However, creating value won’t mean much if it goes unrecognized. Yes, you need to help your customer achieve their desired outcomes, and you must do so in a way that creates a positive customer experience. But, you also need to invest the time and effort to ensure that the right people in your account understand your contribution. Don’t take this for granted, and don’t assume. Value not communicated is value not perceived. So, how do you communicate value and to whom? There are three basic steps: Quantify your impact. Identify key players who need to appreciate your impact. Develop a strategy to communicate your impact to those key players. 1. Quantifying your impact. This is much easier if you establish objective metrics at the outset of your work with the customer. This requires you to establish the right key performance indicators (KPI’s) and goals and to track progress toward those goals through verifiable outcomes. All of this is easier said than done. Many customers will resist if it feels hard, if the data isn’t readily available, or if it will open political issues. In the absence of objective measures, you can fall back on subjective measures. These will help you, at least anecdotally, determine if progress is being made, even if it’s difficult to measure at present. These success stories are valuable for communicating early achievements and building momentum or commitment for further work. Subjective measures include net promoter scores, attribution surveys, and "look back" surveys, such as customer satisfaction surveys. Although they are lagging indicators versus leading indicators, they can still help you substantiate the impact you are making in a strategic account. Also, consider investing in activities such as presentations, case studies, articles, and awards that motivate your customer to tell their story and potentially get recognized for their success by a reputable third party. These provide a satisfying win for your customer contact, and the third-party validation helps to legitimize your impact in your strategic account. Co-presenting a case study with your client at an industry or trade conference can be a wonderful relationship building experience. You and your customer will most likely spend time developing the presentation, spend time together at the event, and spend time afterward basking in the glory of a job well done. It also gives you and your client valuable exposure in front of prospective clients and peers. Also, the honor should create some buzz in your client organization because your client will probably need permission from other key players to participate. That in and of itself will help raise awareness. Afterward, your client will have great material to use for internal co-worker education meetings, thereby adding more value. Articles serve a purpose similar to presentations, and co-authoring a case study for an industry journal or analyst publication can have a similar impact. The experience may not be as intimate because you won’t actually be on stage together, but it can be more enduring because a published article lives on in the form of reprints and blogs and usually becomes part of your client’s professional resume. An article is not only a source of pride for the individual but also for the organization in which they work. If the organization has a PR or communications department, the article will provide superb content for newsletters, intranets, and websites. Awards are also very nice gestures and forms of acknowledgment. Nominating a client for an industry award is a wonderful gesture, and it will be a tremendous achievement for them if they win. Most legitimate awards programs require a comprehensive application process that includes the impact that you made. The beauty of awards is that you can give them to an entire team, not just your immediate contact. You can also send one to the CEO or other influential people in the organization that you want to get to know. All of these tactics will help you to quantify the impact of your work in a strategic account.  However, as we mentioned earlier, value not communicated is value not perceived. Now you need to identify other key players in the account and create a PR strategy to spread the news inside your client organization. We’ll discuss this in the second part of this article. **************************************************************** New Richardson eBook. 12 Social Media Tips To Support New Business & Account Growth Click here The post Communicating Value to Protect and Grow Strategic Accounts, Part 1 appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Communicating Value to Protect and Grow Strategic Accounts In the first part of this article, we introduced the notion that value not communicated is value not perceived and three basic steps to ensure that the right people in your account understand your contribution: Quantify your impact. Identify key players who need to appreciate your impact. Develop a strategy to communicate your impact to those key players. We also discussed how to quantify your impact in a strategic account. This article continues the discussion with the next two steps to help you protect and grow your position in the account. 2. Identifying Key Players. Protecting and growing accounts is based on meeting the right people, building relationships with them, and understanding their challenges and opportunities. These people can either buy, influence buying decisions, or derail buying decisions. It is crucial for you to identify these players, understand their role in the buying process, uncover their perception of you, and, if necessary, shape their perception of you in a favorable manner. All of this sounds simple, right? Well, according to a report from CSO Insights, 40% of salespeople do not adequately identify key stakeholders. A relationship map is a tool — a visual representation of both the reporting relationships between stakeholders in an account and the political landscape surrounding an account — to help identify key stakeholders in a systematic manner. It is helpful to go through a relationship mapping process by starting with your day-to-day contacts, then moving up and down the org chart to identify and fill gaps, and then moving across divisions with high potential to benefit from the solutions you sell. LinkedIn is a powerful tool that can help you with this task. Start by linking to your day-to-day contacts. This will enable you to see their connections and filter the connections in their company. Most people connect to their bosses and their immediate co-workers, and many will connect with co-workers in other groups that share similar responsibilities. With a bit of inference, LinkedIn can help you to understand the organization quickly and begin building the relationship map. If you have a good relationship with your day-to-day contact, they can help you add to and validate your map. 3. Developing a Strategy to Communicate Your Impact. Once you start building your relationship map, it will become clear who you need to get to know to communicate the impact of your work in the organization. If you have many relationships in a strategic account, then you have more opportunities to learn about their needs and spread the word of your success. There are a few natural opportunities in your strategic accounts to meet key people. Personal introductions through your day-to-day contact are the easiest way to spread the word about your impact in a strategic account. These can be simple introductions to co-workers or orchestrated events in a social setting. Strategy and planning sessions give you the chance to facilitate decisions and directions in multi-phase projects, and they can help you set priorities for new projects. In many cases, you can add real value for a client by offering to facilitate such sessions or by contributing additional resources that will help the client make the best decisions. Kickoff meetings are especially valuable. They draw large numbers of people, making them aware of what will happen and how it will impact them. These meetings also give you the opportunity to ensure that key players are comfortable with the plan. Involving key people in kick-off meetings, or parts of kick-off meetings, also sets the expectation that you will check in with them occasionally over the course of a project. Updates, reviews, and progress meetings offer opportunities to report on progress and resolve issues. Executive briefings are similar to updates and reviews but at a higher level. Think of an executive meeting as a meeting before the meeting to surface concerns, seek direction, and build support from key executives. Scheduling an executive meeting is a wise political move, giving you access to key executives and making them more comfortable with you. Training sessions give you license to meet people impacted by the change. Lower-level people will often attend the training, but they typically need permission to do so, giving you the opportunity to explain to managers or department heads why it’s beneficial for their employees to attend. Training is also a perfect time to make a good impression on a client. If he has a good experience, he might become your avid supporter. Customer education sessions enable you to provide valuable insight to your customers and position yourself as a trusted, expert resource on topics important to them. Often, you can build a good audience in the client organization by offering to help them understand new trends and issues or by sharing new research and best practices. This is an excellent opportunity to bring in a renowned expert or a top-level executive from your firm. Again, it’s about identifying who you want to meet and creating an intriguing event that they feel compelled to attend. If they can’t attend, they’ll be interested in a follow-up activity. Every event mentioned here is an opportunity to meet key players and prospective buyers. You can ensure that they understand and appreciate the impact that you’ve had on their organization by kicking off any of these events with a quick overview of where they are today and the ways you’ve helped their organization progress. Strategic accounts are many companies’ most valuable assets, and care must be taken to protect and grow these assets. Invest the time and effort to ensure that the right people in your account understand your contribution. Don’t take this for granted and don’t assume. Value not communicated is value not perceived. *************************************************** New Richardson eBook. 12 Social Media Tips To Support New Business & Account Growth Click here The post Communicating Value to Protect and Grow Strategic Accounts - Part 2 appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Which e-mail Campaigns Deliver More: Broad-based or Account-based? Every day, it gets more difficult to capture the attention of busy professionals using a broad-based e-mail marketing campaign. More and more companies are adopting automation tools for content-based e-mail marketing campaigns that typically focus on the top few generic topics faced by everyone in their database. For most marketers who use this approach, the key performance indicators (KPIs) involve tracking and capturing opens, click-throughs, and responders. The next step is an automated drip follow-up campaign to nurture these leads and take them to the next level. The entire process is a numbers game for the marketing team. The more responders they get, the more potential leads there are that can be nurtured and turned over to the sales team — and the more likely they are to hit their KPIs. But what if, instead of playing a numbers game, you targeted ten key accounts that your sales team wanted to acquire? And what if you identified two or three contacts at each accounts? Then, you could create an e-mail campaign directly relevant to the targeted individual. It would include a few insightful data points or messages that the recipient could relate to — and they would appreciate the value you provide in helping them solve their issues and improve performance. I get literally hundreds of e-mails every day, and I actually study the good, the bad, and the ugly to constantly improve what we do at Richardson. First, let’s look at a broad-based e-mail and then compare it with a more specific account-based one. Both cover the same topic: improving search engine results based on keywords. Here is one of the "ugly" and impersonal broad-based e-mails: Dear James, I hope all is well. Did you know that 63% of all buyers will use search engines during the ever changing buying process to find out information about your company? In today’s ever changing world of internet marketing, it’s crucial to fully optimize your web site and show up when someone searches for you … Download our free report on 5 Ways SEO is changing marketing. My first reaction: Really? Who sends a senior vice president of marketing an e-mail about the importance of SEO? If I didn’t already know this basic information, I and my company would be in serious trouble. My second reaction: How cold and impersonal was that? The e-mail was addressed to James. Everybody knows me as Jim, so there’s some bad data mining going on there. But this ugly e-mail only gets better. Three minutes after I received the first one, I received an exact duplicate addressed to Jim and then another one for Jimmy. Finally, I received a fourth one addressed to Dear Info. I’ll give them points for persistence, but the impersonal and generic approach made them zero for four in terms of response. My second example — a "good" account-based approach, follows: Hey Jim, As a courtesy, I just completed a brief analysis of your web site and how it is ranking on the major search engines. First, let me tell you how impressed I am with your ability to rank #1 and #2 for so many major keywords related to sales training and sales coaching. I know how difficult it must be to achieve these rankings. Second, I would like to take the opportunity to briefly talk with you about how you may be able to improve your exposure even more with a secondary focus on building long tail keywords, by doing XYZ and ABC to your landing pages… I have included a PDF file of one of your landing pages with some suggestions. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this strategy with you and how XYZ may be able to help. This is more like it. The e-mail is personal and immediately got my attention. It not only addressed an important issue for me, it identified specific opportunities to improve long tail keywords. Overall, it was an insightful e-mail and provided me with some value-based suggestions. The salesperson really earned the follow-up call and a subsequent meeting. Don’t get me wrong. Broad-based e-mail campaigns still have a place in the marketing and sales communication mix. They can provide timely higher-level information and help build a brand for your company. Just be sure to scrub your database from time to time to keep it current. Specific account-based e-mails are much more focused and can provide a deeper level of value to the recipient. Yes, these campaigns are much more difficult to create — and time consuming. To get it right, you have to research target companies and craft a very specific message, delivering relevant insights into a perceived need. You will typically spend more time in development and produce a smaller demand generation waterfall. You may have to explain your rationale when your KPIs drop. The payoff, though, can be well worth it. If done right, an account-based campaign that provides relevant insights will provide much more value to the targeted individual and drive more qualified opportunities and hopefully closed pieces of business. ************************************************************* Download our Complimentary Social Selling Report To learn more about Richardson’s 2013 Social Media in Sales Survey, please click here to download the report. The post Which e-mail Campaigns Deliver More: Broad-based or Account-based? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

A Simple Guide for Defining Your Ideal Prospects and Leveraging LinkedIn to Find More Growing your pool of potential customers begins with defining the profile of your ideal prospect. This activity should be done collaboratively between sales and marketing. Start by looking back at opportunities that you won over the past two or three years and recreate the path or circumstances that led a prospect from contact to lead to opportunity. Drill down to determine the types of individuals and organizations, as well as the situations or issues they faced that motivated them to talk to you. A word of caution: be careful about accepting the lead source in your CRM system at face value. Marketing automation and CRM systems are notorious for missing offline handoffs and will tell you that all leads came from the web. In my experience as a CMO, there are many other activities and touch points that engage multiple buying influences within a prospect organization. This activity drives brand awareness, word of mouth, and offline delegation of tasks within the buying process. So when an organization is finally ready to buy, they either will go directly to your website and call the 1-800 number or they will Google your company or product name, hit your website, and call the 1-800 number. Buyer Characteristics If you’re going to find like-minded prospects, then you need to know what specific activities led to this point. While you’re at it, find out what issues they were trying to solve and why they chose to engage your organization. This is a great opportunity for sales to educate marketing about what customers are really buying and for what reasons. Defining your ideal prospect requires you to look at the characteristics common to your buyers and the organizations in which they work. This typically includes: Company Characteristics — company size (employees and revenue), industry, location, growth rate, age/maturity Buyer Characteristics — job title, level, tenure, attitude, ownership (or lack of) of the problem, scope of responsibility (buying on behalf of department, function, or company) Situational Characteristics — initiatives, triggers, opportunities, threats, regulations, internal change Leverage LinkedIn to Find Ideal Prospects Once you have determined your ideal prospect profile, you need to find prospects that fit the profile — some of whom might be sitting right under your nose within your existing accounts. Get into the habit of linking to your customers on LinkedIn, which will give you the ability to see who they are linked to (unless they make their contacts "private," but this is seldom the case). Here are suggestions for leveraging your connections’ networks: Their colleagues: People usually link to others in their organization who share similar interests and responsibilities. If you are linked to your buyer, who is perhaps an IT Director in Division A, LinkedIn can help you find IT Directors in other divisions or locations of that organization that you should get to know. People also link to their bosses and their boss’s boss. So if you need to sell up and across in an organization, LinkedIn can give you insight into whom you need to target and possibly facilitate a referral. Connections outside their company: Your connections are also connected to people outside of their organization who could be viable prospects for you. These could be former colleagues with whom they used to work but who have changed companies or classmates who had the same major and are doing a similar job in another company. Suggested similar connections: LinkedIn is also a great resource to help you find people similar to your buyers. In fact, they make it simple by including a feature on every profile page that identifies people with profiles "Similar To" the profile that you’re viewing. Organizational and industry groups: LinkedIn Groups are a great hunting ground to find people who fit your ideal prospect profile. Start by looking at the LinkedIn profile of a contact who matches your ideal prospect. Scroll down to see the groups that they belong to, and click on a few that seem likely to have similar ideal prospects. You’ll be able to see members of the group and the discussions taking place. If appropriate, request to join the group. Most groups are "open," and you will be accepted almost immediately. Once you are a member, you will be able to see the names of other group members, even if you are not yet linked to them. And, if you know the right technique, you can either invite them to link to you, get introduced through a contact, or send them a message. Even offline, you will find that "birds of a feather flock together." For example, HR directors know other HR directors, and many belong to the same HR industry associations and subscribe to the same publications. CFOs have their own industry-specific associations, as well as regional associations. All of these associations have meetings that provide speaking or sponsorship opportunities for you. As a vendor, becoming "part of the group" might take a little longer and require you to be in "helping mode" versus "selling mode." There are many other sources of contacts (e.g., Hoovers, Data.com, Netprospex, and Lead411), as well as associations and groups, to join. Knowing your ideal prospect will help you find targets that, over time, have the best odds of becoming customers. The suggestions made here all favor casting your lines where the fish are, so to speak. That usually makes the most sense and nets you (yes, pun intended) the best results. ************************************************************* Click here to learn more about Richardson’s award winning sales training solutions. The post A Simple Guide for Defining Your Ideal Prospects and Leveraging LinkedIn to Find More appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Leveraging Trigger Events to Take the Pain out of Prospecting In a recent post, I talked about ways to find ideal prospects. Once you’ve identified the profile of your likely buyers, you could start cold calling them to gauge interest and get them on your mailing lists, but that takes time and promises little yield. A more effective approach is to know situations or circumstances that precipitate buying among your current clients and then target ideal prospects in similar straits. Trigger events are leading indicators from prospective companies that might signal a need for your products, services, or solutions. Knowing these trigger events and how to track them can give you a first-mover advantage and a much better shot at engaging a prospect who is ready to buy. What is a trigger event? When an organization issues a press release announcing that they have secured financing to fund the expansion of a new facility near you, this indicates that they have money and have set an expectation to make a significant investment. Growing companies need to buy lots of products and services — from construction services to IT hardware to janitorial services. Follow the money! Another factor to know (especially for professional services providers) is where and how you fit into the ecosystem of solution providers and if there are other solutions that are leading indicators of an eventual need for your services. For example, in our business, a company that launches a new product will eventually need sales training. So, we network with marketing and brand strategy agencies that are usually involved at earlier stages with clients doing market research, go-to-market strategies, product marketing and communications, and graphic design. You can try to formalize these relationships into partnerships or alliances in which you share leads and earn a cut of a sale. These alliances can work, but they often fail because the relationship is often actually between individuals within the partnering organizations. When they are focused, times are good. But when one party gets too busy, distracted, or leaves their company, the partnership suffers and often fades away. If you want such an alliance to work, ensure that it gets embedded into your organization beyond a single point of contact. Google enables you to set up "alerts" that will send automated e-mail notifications for keyword-based trigger events that you specify. For example, if you sell marketing solutions, a good trigger event to track might be new marketing VPs. When companies hire or promote new marketing VPs, they will often issue an announcement or a press release, which will get picked up by Google. If your alert is set properly, you will receive an e-mail notification, which you can then use as an opportunity to get in touch to congratulate the VP and offer your services. It is also helpful to follow your prospective companies on LinkedIn, which also serves as a news aggregator for the company. Following companies and prospects is also a great feature of Twitter. As a sales leader, the final step is to train your sales managers and sales reps on how to spot and follow up on trigger events among your ideal prospects. Once you set your mind to the task, it probably won’t be difficult to identify the trigger events in prospective companies that can help your sales. The more challenging aspect is the ability to know about them when they occur and to follow up before your competition or before the opportunity slips away. ************************************************************* Click the following to  learn more about Richardson’s award winning sales training solutions. The post Leveraging Trigger Events to Take the Pain out of Prospecting appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Selling with Insights:  The Why and How of Approaching Informed Buyers with Insight In our previous blog post, we discussed four changes in buyer behavior driving four challenges for sellers. These were: Online Perception Bias Reputation Bias Solution Bias Procurement Process Bias In this article, we’ll share some ideas for overcoming those challenges with insight. How to Approach Informed Buyers Buyers are doing their research, and traditional sellers are getting left behind. It is tempting to throw your hands up in defeat and simply respond reactively to the opportunities your customers give you. This approach puts too much of your fate in the hands of your marketing team and can drive intense price competition. Sellers need to engage informed buyers differently. To avoid commoditization, rather than simply respond, sellers must create and shape opportunities. Shaping opportunities requires the seller to change the way the customer thinks about their needs or a solution to the seller’s advantage. It is most applicable when the customer is far along in their buying cycle and has already formed a concept for what they want or need. Shaping the opportunity requires the sales rep to disrupt the customer’s thinking so that they take a few steps back and reconsider the need or solution. Through building trust and credibility, and through sharing relevant insight based on credible research or experience, the seller challenges the buyer to think through what’s wrong or what’s missing in their prescribed approach. Shaping opportunities creates a win-win because it helps mitigate competition and price sensitivity for the seller while resulting in a better solution for your customer. Creating opportunities requires the seller to make the customer aware of a new issue or opportunity or raise the sense of urgency of an issue to act sooner. This is most applicable when the customer is very early in — or not even in — their buying process. The sales rep that engages the customer at this level is trying to provoke a need rather than responding to a request. As in the shape mode, sales reps must build trust and credibility and share relevant insight based on credible research or experience. By doing this, the seller challenges the buyer to think through the risks of not prioritizing and accelerating an initiative. Creating opportunities creates a win-win because it helps mitigate competition and price sensitivity for the seller while helping the customer move forward on an initiative to help them make money, save money, or manage risk. Effective Utilization of Insights As mentioned above, creating and shaping opportunities requires the sales rep to leverage insight to challenge the customer’s mindset. Insight is information or ideas that are based on credible research, authoritative content, or relevant experiences and are tailored to a buyer’s challenges and opportunities. When shared, it encourages the buyer to think about his needs in a new way, showing him a path to solve a challenge or capitalize on an opportunity by leveraging the capabilities and differentiators offered by the seller. Selling with insight is not about inundating buyers with data and facts. If sellers do not understand how to deliver insights effectively — collaborating with customers rather than dictating to them — the approach can backfire. It requires more advanced preparation skills and communication skills. From our experience, these skills are learnable if the organization has the will and commitment to reinforce a new way of thinking about sales. Selling with Insights:  Techniques to Modernize Your Sales Force Twenty years ago, a sales rep met with customers to tell them about his products, and all he needed was polished marketing materials and an enthusiastic sales pitch. In most cases, buyers didn’t have access to other information unless it came from other sales reps with a similar approach. If they were impressed or persuaded, there was a good chance that they could buy from you with little additional input or process. Times have now changed. Remember, buyers may be as far as 60% through their buying process before they contact a sales rep. To overcome the four challenges driven by changing buyer behavior, you must approach informed buyers with insight that adds value to the conversation. Sales reps need to transform their approach by anticipating buyer problems, offering compelling insights, and tailoring solutions to specific customer needs. Training sales reps to respond to changes in buyer behaviors is the best way to guarantee that you don’t end up in a race to the bottom. ************************************************************* Click the following  learn more about Richardson’s Selling with Insights(TM)  Sales Training Solution.   The post Selling with Insights: The Why and How of Approaching Informed Buyers with Insight appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Although attendance at trade shows has decreased, trade shows continue to attract key providers and serious buyers.  What’s happening with trade shows parallels what has happened in selling.  With a click, buyers can learn about your company and your competitors’ products.  So why do they continue to come to trade shows?  What is it they are looking for in one of the last bastions of face-to-face marketing?  The answer is clear: ideas, insights, collaboration, and the connection that comes with a handshake. The buyers who come to trade shows are highly prepared and strategic in their objectives.  Their expectations are higher.  They frequently participate in teams, which reflects the trend for decisions by consensus, and the number of team members a company sends can show how serious the buyers are.  So, look for teams. According to The Center for Exhibition and Research, 43% of participants say trade shows have improved in the past two years, which means fewer than half of exhibitors are stepping up to meet the higher expectations of participants and address their level of sophistication.  It shows that there is room for improvement and opportunity to differentiate. What hasn’t changed is the key metric for success for exhibitors to develop quality leads that produce results.  Most exhibitors continue to send their A teams, but getting through all the noise has made developing quality leads even more challenging.  In the past, more than half of the leads generated at a trade show were not followed up on, but with fewer leads, that is becoming less of a problem.  The problem now is converting quality leads into results.  The time-tested basics for trade show success, such as capturing leads; staffing booths with energetic, proactive, skillful, driven, and smiling salespeople; and creating an appealing booth and location, still hold true. But there is something NEW, and that is what is drawing customers to trade shows.  They are not just driven to learn about products.  Of course, learning about products, and especially new products (launching a new product is a great way to attract activity at your booth), is certainly a factor (as is the hope of finding new providers, making new contacts, and checking in and on current providers), but none of that is enough to initiate the buying process.  So, let’s look at what you can do before, during, and after trade shows to make the time, effort, and expense pay off for you. Before the Trade Show Reach out to attendees and potential attendees in advance to get on their calendars before their dance cards fill up.  Most trade shows will provide a pre-show mailing list so that you can reach out to the attendees.  In addition, your Marketing team can create "events" and send invitations using social media.  Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn groups are great for getting the word out.  Richardson’s creative marking team uses a tool called Enthusem, which allows them to craft a customized message to the individual level through an online system that automatically sends out a traditional snail mail postcard containing relevant information specific to the recipient.  Salespeople can do their part by personally inviting their customers and prospects. Think about what you will do that is NEW and what your visitors will learn as a result of talking to you.  Think about how you can incorporate social media and personalized communication pieces.  As you look at the trade show plan, identify at least one WOW, and if you can’t find one, ask your marketing team to help out.  Dare to be different. I like the idea of an "Ask the Thought Leader" booth where buyers can get insights and advice on their business challenges.  It would be a lot like an old-fashion kissing booth and buyers would love you for it.  Some creative ideas companies have used include promoting a paperless booth, building an exclusive social networking community, using Pinterest so attendees could pin up what interested them, and advertising thought leadership through on-site consulting.  Give prospects a reason to want to stop and look and more. At the Trade Show Initiate conversations.  Change the conversation.  Rather than probe for product interest, ask about the business challenges and desired outcome, and share insights.  Back into your offerings, and set up specific follow-up. Your message must be one of insights and ideas, and your goal is to add to what your visitors already know.  Be prepared to share the highlights of key industry success stories.  Customers don’t want to hear a pitch, but they are very interested to hear what other companies are doing and to gain insights from your experience or research. If a prospect seems not to qualify, ask at least one more question to be sure.  Make every visitor feel welcome and valued, and thank everyone who engages with you. After the Trade Show Post trade show activities are essential to reaping the benefits of all the expense of a trade show.  Marketing can tweet, but sales leaders must clarify expectations for their sales teams and use technology to ensure timely follow-up and accountability.  Once you have a good lead, response time is the first, and possibly the most important, factor in conversion. Here are some best practices to help you and your organization maximize every lead: Distribute leads ASAP — within one day of the end of the trade show.  Hot leads can be acted on immediately and appointments set before the trade show ends.  Give an award to the salesperson that has the most appointments in place before the trade show ends. Call immediately.  Talk in terms of solving business challenges.  Be prepared to leave a concise, upbeat value message customized to the prospect. Invite your leads to connect with you or a company group on LinkedIn. Have contact courage.  If you call on a Monday, call back on Tuesday or Wednesday and continue to call.  Call at 7:30 a.m.  Be creative.  Be assertive.  Do what it takes to get through.  Use e-mail to support phone contact.  Send something relevant. If you can’t connect with the prospect within a week, don’t give up.  Don’t take it personally if the prospect is slow to respond.  Remember, after a trade show, participants are likely swamped with catch-up.  It’s your job to reach the prospect to start the buying process. Trade shows are a lot of work, a lot of standing, but can also be a lot of fun.  You are out there to greet, learn, and teach.  You connect personally and professionally.  Take advantage of the pre-purchase stage, which truly is an important bonding stage.  Gaining early entry into a customer’s buying journey is one of the big advantages of trade shows, so make visitors feel welcome and understood. Trade shows are not the same.  So, what will you do to be different?  What will you contribute to the WOW? ************************************************************* Click the following to  learn more about Richardson’s award winning sales training solutions.   The post Not Just Another Trade Show: Convert Leads into Results appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

My Top 25 List of Tools for Sales People When you think of typical tools for sales people, CRM software and services, such as Salesforce.com, likely come to mind. While CRM is certainly an important aspect of a salesperson’s job, it’s by no means the end-all-be-all. In order to effectively prospect and sell, sales people and managers can and should take advantage of a host of tools and applications to guide their activities and help their efforts. Here’s my list of 25 Tools for Sales People with brief descriptions and grouped by activity: Find Prospects Very few sales reps have an evergreen book of business. In addition to networking, how else can you look for new prospects? LinkedIn — 200 million+ members. Manage your professional identity. Build and engage with your professional network. Access knowledge, insights, and opportunities by company, industry, geography and role. Leverage groups and discussions. Twitter — Follow your clients and prospects, their colleagues, and their corporate accounts to stay on top of what’s important to them and their business. What are they saying, and who do they follow? Lead411 — Lead411 provides business e-mail lists, company addresses, executive e-mails, and phone numbers. NetProspex — NetProspex, voted Best Lead Generation Solution, is the fastest-growing and most accurate B2B contact information solution, providing new, targeted prospects. Google Maps — Find local businesses, view maps, and get driving directions in Google Maps. Stay Informed There’s no shortage of information out there, but you need to be able to sift through what’s most relevant to you and prioritize your time in reviewing it. Evernote — The Evernote family of products help you remember and act upon ideas, projects, and experiences across all the computers, phones, and tablets you use. Scoop.it — Easily curate engaging magazines. Effectively feed your web presence. Pulse — Pulse takes your favorite websites and transforms them into a colorful and interactive mosaic. Sign up to personalize your experience. Recently purchased by LinkedIn. Flipboard — Flipboard is your personal magazine, filled with the things you care about. Catch up … Tap red ribbon, Accounts, select a network, and sign in. Google Alerts — Google Alerts are e-mail updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries. Follow client or prospect organizations, and receive an e-mail when they’re in the news. Depending on the amount of news, you may need to refine your queries. Live Conversations Few sales reps are shy and likely prefer to have a live conversation. "If I could just get him on the phone so that I can have conversation instead of hoping he’ll read my e-mails." ConnectAndSell — ConnectAndSell offers an order-of-magnitude improvement in sales productivity. Insidesales.com — Phone dialer software. InsideSales.com is the leading provider of inside sales software and solutions to respond immediately and persistently to leads. Make 350+ calls per day. ooVoo — ooVoo is a FREE video chat and instant messaging app for desktop, mobile, tablets, and Facebook. ooVoo lets you chat with up to 12 people for FREE anytime. Skype — Make internet calls for free with Skype. Sign up today and discover a whole new world of staying in touch. Not a tool for cold calling, but an effective one if you’re in that stage of not having met in person but want to enhance your relationship. More personal than a webinar. E-mail E-mail is still a prevalent mode of communication. These tools can help you leverage your e-mail efforts and know what’s getting through, opened, and clicked on. Don’t underestimate the power of a good subject line. Rapportive — Rapportive shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox. We combine what you know, what your organization knows, and what’s on the web. Cirrus Insight — Rated #1 by Salesforce users. Create new leads and contacts. Save e-mails and attachments to Salesforce. Sync calendars. Boomerang — Boomerang is a plugin for Firefox and Chrome that adds scheduled sending and integrated e-mail reminders to Gmail. Yesware — An e-mail tool for salespeople. Track e-mails, create templates, sync with CRM, and more. Yesware helps you close more deals faster. Bananatag — Track e-mails from all clients. Know when your e-mails are opened or clicked. Streak — Streak is great for sales, but you can also use it for hiring candidates, handling e-mail support, organizing deal flow, fundraising, and organizing. Video and Presentations According to Domo, there are 48 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. Videos and savvy presentations might be just what you need to get the attention of your targets. Keep them professional and not too long. Leverage your charismatic sales leaders in a way that e-mail can’t do justice. YouTube — Share your videos with clients, prospects, and colleagues. Record brief tutorials, demos, or product descriptions to whet your prospects’ interest. Put your content experts on screen to help engage your targets. SlideShare — Offers users the ability to upload and share publicly or privately PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, and Adobe PDF Portfolios. Brainshark — Create online video presentations and mobile video presentations from PowerPoint or your other static content. You can also create voice-enriched video presentations. Screenr — Instant screencasts — just click record. Screenr’s web-based screen recorder makes it a breeze to create and share your screencasts around the web. Snagit — Snagit screen capture allows you to grab an image or video of what you see on your computer screen, add effects, and share with anyone. Hopefully, this list gives you some ideas to help your selling and prospecting. Do you use a tool or application I haven’t listed here? Please let us know by leaving a comment along with the primary benefit to you. The post My Top 25 List of Tools for Sales People appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

We live in an age where we are overwhelmed with information. However, changing buyer behavior requires sellers to bring tailored insight to the table to build awareness and credibility and begin to shape the buyer’s concept of what they need and why they need it sooner rather than later. However, too often, we see a seller’s attempt at bringing insight to buyers fall flat. Insight is only insight if your buyer believes it is insightful. The internet is chock full of research studies, data, and white papers, but buyers won’t make the effort to hunt for the nuggets or make the connection between their challenges and your capabilities. To make an impact, the seller really needs to view the world from the buyer’s perspective and bring insight that is relevant, credible, digestible, and actionable. The insight you bring must be tailored to your buyer to resonate with them as individuals. This means more than creating a custom field in your sales automation system to hit your client or prospect list with an e-mail blast. You need to get smart on their business fast because buyers want to work with partners who understand their business. The more you demonstrate that you understand their business and the challenges and opportunities they face, the more successful you will be in triggering an "aha moment" with them that gets them thinking differently about you and their needs. Start with Google and LinkedIn Google and LinkedIn should be your first stop. Type your target’s <Firstname Lastname, job title, company name> into Google. This will give you the opportunity to find them and try to discover what makes them tick. Their LinkedIn profile will likely be one of the first links on the search engine results page. Go to their LinkedIn page to see if and how you’re connected to him or her. Maybe you’re closer than you thought! The sooner you can link to your buyers or prospect on LinkedIn, the better. Also, see if they are active on Twitter. If so, follow them and the target company’s corporate account. Once you’ve Googled the individual, Google their company name to learn about issues in their company. Next, find out what challenges your prospects are facing in their specific role by Googling the phrase "top issues facing <industry> <job title>". This research helps you identify the pain or opportunities facing your buyers. This then enables you to make an educated hypothesis of what you can provide and which of your capabilities and insight will be most relevant. Listen and watch for trigger events Once you’ve identified a prospect or a buyer you want to pursue, you should set up a Google Alert to track changes in their business and identify trigger events. Trigger events give you insight into major developments in a buyer’s organization, which gives you the opportunity to link your capabilities to these developments and priorities. This makes you relevant to what they face now and enables you to position your message more precisely. Pay attention to your ecosystem Your ecosystem consists of the other solution providers that work with your clients or customers in the areas related to what you do. For example, we network within the sales and marketing ecosystem. When we get wind that a company is launching a new product because they are working with one of the marketing firms we follow, that signals to us a need to ramp up and focus our prospecting efforts in that organization with a message targeting their new product launch. We know they have a budget, a need or opportunity, and a time frame. Once we find and engage the person within their organization who has authority, we’ll have our BANT sales criteria covered. (Remember, BANT stands for budget, authority, need, and time frame.) Possessing that information significantly increases our odds of success and shortens the sales cycle. Provide a compelling "call to action" You’ve researched the company, their issues, and situation; the target prospect or buyer; the challenges facing their role; matched their problems to your products and solutions; and gathered relevant content to support your claims. Your next challenge is to craft a call to action — something of value that you will offer in exchange for the time that your prospect will hopefully give you. This might simply be an offer to have a conversation to share best practices, trends, or the results of a benchmarking study. But in other cases, it might be something more substantial. Regardless of what you offer, it needs to be perceived by your prospect as high value and low effort, with no strings attached. Bring it all together with a concise value statement Tailoring insights culminates with the formulation of your value statement. You need to package a hypothesis that addresses their needs and situation, asserts your credibility, provokes them with substantiating content, and delivers a convincing call to action in a concise statement that will resonate with them. This message should be adapted and delivered across multiple channels. ************************************************************* Click the following  learn more about Richardson’s Selling with Insights(TM)  Sales Training Solution.   The post How to Tailor Insight to Resonate with Your Prospects and Drive Action appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

How to Update Sales Talent Profiles without Tanking Your Business Tinkering with your profile of a successful sales rep is risky business, but what can you do when you know the talent that got you where you are today won’t get you where you need to go in the future? For example, maybe you need to transition from a product to a solution-led sale, manage accounts more strategically, or take a more assertive insight-led sales approach. Your business is constantly changing, and you probably have good reason to redefine the attributes of your future top performer. How can you make this transition to minimize risk and disruption? The Assessment-based Approach One way to implement new sales talent profiles is to conduct an assessment-based talent audit. This involves developing competency models for your different sales roles, assessing your people (hopefully with a valid, compliant assessment instrument), and comparing how well they compare to the model of a top performer. Sounds simple, right? Well, there are inherent risks in this approach. Psychographic assessments can help you understand the optimal sales behaviors, but they don’t tell you what top performers actually do and what they do differently from their lower-performing peers. The assessment only tells part of the story. Additionally, the results are based on probabilities and need to be carefully validated over time to determine if the profile is truly predictive. What happens when the assessment tells you that half of your top performers don’t fit the profile? Will you believe it? Will your sales managers buy into it? Are you prepared to bet on the new profile and manage steady performers out of the business? That type of upheaval would limit your ability to meet current goals and objectives and destabilize your business by lowering the morale of your remaining workforce. For this reason, talent audits alone may not be sufficient. The Process-based Approach Another approach is process-based. In this situation, you would define your optimal sales process, identify key performance indicators and verifiable outcomes, and force change by altering your sales management processes. This allows you to apply pressure where it is likely to produce change that aligns with your new vision. If you do this, you will also need to develop a proactive recruiting pipeline because not all people can adapt to the new processes and will leave. With the talent-based or process-based approach, you are likely to experience high rates of attrition, and the primary by-product of attrition is disruption. Along with the loss of existing staff, you may lower morale, decreasing motivation and productivity. They key is managing the implementation of new profiles to maximize opportunities for positive change and limit disruptions. We Recommend a Hybrid Approach A hybrid approach combines aspects of talent audit and process development. The hybrid approach delivers the change you desire but in a more measured and gradual manner that is more likely to get buy-in from your existing team, ease the transition, and decrease disruption. Study behavioral differences and similarities Create two study groups: sales reps who are top performers today and those who you believe have the traits to be successful in the future. Go through the assessment process to determine if people within each group share any common traits and if there are noticeable differences between the study groups and the top and average performers. This will help you decide if there are significant behaviors that differentiate successful sales reps today from what you believe will be needed tomorrow. It’s also important to understand the differences, if any, between the two study groups to understand what you might be giving up in return for what you want to gain. For example, if you want to transition to sales reps who are proactive and assertive, you might be giving up traits that build trust and relationships in return. This might be good or bad for your business, but if you need to make tradeoffs, it is better to make these decisions with your eyes wide open. Build on what works Start by observing top performers to better understand what they actually do day-to-day in their jobs. Chances are they’ve figured some things out that enable them to be more successful that you can replicate through process enhancement or training. This will also help you understand what your stars will need to do differently in the future to stay at the top of their game. Capitalizing on existing successful practices also makes your new profiles feel homegrown, diluting the instinct to resist change. Your study should extend beyond those who have a history of success. For example, it could include recent hires from companies that have sales practices you want to emulate. Create a foundation for sales managers to reinforce desired behaviors Understanding what currently works helps you define a best-in-class customer engagement process. Once you have a process that you know works today, you can make gradual adjustments over time to the process that you believe will be necessary for the future. This gradual approach enables you to test and validate that your process is actually working. Having a process enables you to identify verifiable outcomes to determine if the process is being executed and metrics to measure the effectiveness of execution. These give your sales managers more substance to manage to and reinforce the behaviors you are trying to change. If your managers have even basic metrics and adequate skills and know the right questions to ask, they can coach sales reps more effectively. Predictive metrics also give sales reps a sense of control over their changing environment because they know what is expected and how they will be measured. Greater understanding leads to greater comfort and less disruption. ************************************** Click the following to  learn more about Richardson’s award winning sales training solutions. The post How to Update Sales Talent Profiles without Tanking Your Business appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Top 10 Disruptive Sales Technologies Cloud computing has given us "software as a service," disrupting the previous business model of selling suites of software to be installed on individual computers or network servers. The cloud has disrupted the market for storage. And if you even remember the once-ubiquitous floppy, is it the 3.5-inch, the older 5.25-inch, or the original 8-inch disk that once littered your desk? Recently, I got to thinking about the top disruptive technologies in sales and marketing. Some are product specific, while others are more general technologies. Some fall into the "Doh! No kidding, Jim," category, and others, I hope, are of the "Hmmm, interesting thought," variety. One caveat: You will not see e-mail on this list. While it certainly is among the top disruptive technologies in communication — replacing phone tag and faxes — I wanted to dig a little deeper. Here goes: Google: Search engines have completely disrupted the way buyers and sellers think and do business. But Google does so much more than just search. Think about all the Google tools that can help sales and marketing: Google Alerts, Google Trends, Google Analytics, Pay-per-Click Ads, Google+, YouTube, Google Docs, and on and on. Salesforce.com: More than just CRM, Salesforce.com has disrupted contact management, rolodexes, planning tools, document management, management, lead tracking, forecasting tools, collaboration tools, and so forth. Oh yeah, it’s also in the cloud. LinkedIn: For B2B salespeople, this is the most disruptive social network. It offers live networking, account data and information tools, communications tools, competitor analysis, recruiting and talent acquisition opportunities, newspapers, magazines, and market research. LinkedIn really is one of those cars that can drive, fly, and go underwater. I live in LinkedIn, and if you’re a sales or marketing professional, you should too. Marketing automation: Tools like Genius, Marketo, HubSpot, and Constant Contact could be considered disruptive or just innovative, additive tools. They allow us to become more efficient and knowledgeable. Is that disruptive or just something good made better? I’m not sure, but I included the category rather than quibble. PowerPoint: This is one of those "no kidding" ones. I had to add it after finding a tray of 35mm slides in my closet. Remember slides? How about overhead projectors with clear acetate sheets? I, for one, am glad to be done with those cumbersome technologies. PowerPoint rules for presentations. Online contracting Software: I love DocuSign and EchoSign. How much easier is closing out the sales cycle now? Anyone using an online contracting system to close out a quarter knows exactly what I mean. And it links directly to Salesforce.com, where you can save the actual contract. PDF files: When is the last time your company printed a large run of brochures? How much have you saved in mailing costs by attaching a PDF to an e-mail? How much easier is it to review documents created across platforms, without worrying whether your PC will open a Mac file? And with PDFs, you don’t have the paper-copies-and-delivery-package dance to meet deadlines. Sales enablement tools: Savo and other tools provide an integrated structured that links directly to a company’s sales process, allowing easy access to all of the support materials a sales professional needs. No more e-mails from the sales team asking, "Has anyone ever worked with XYZ?" or, "Does anyone have information on the financial services industry?" Blogs: The ability to post short articles online in real time has made experts, gurus, authors, and publishers out of many of us. Blogs have replaced company newsletters and created a major disruption for traditional print media. I follow ten-plus blogs every day; I never read that much in an industry magazine. Online meetings: Virtual meeting technology has significantly improved over the years, reducing costs and travel time associated with in-person meetings. Today, online meetings can be facilitated and run in a similar fashion as live ones, allowing the easy dissemination of content, the ability to network, and interactions with groups large and small. These are my top ten disruptive sales technologies. Let me know if you have a different list. ————————————————————————————— Click the following to  learn more about Richardson’s award winning sales training solutions.         The post Top 10 Disruptive Sales Technologies appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Why Cross-selling Fails: The Ultimate List Companies want their reps to cross-sell more to their existing customer base.  For many sales reps, the thought of selling that one little extra or next big thing is very enticing.  Your quota went up 10% this year, great!  Just cross-sell a little bit more and you’ll be fine, right?  If it were only that easy! We started building out our list of why reps struggle to cross-sell. Please let us know if you have any to add.  Once we have a comprehensive list, we’ll give our thoughts in another blog post on how to overcome these challenges. Too much planning and too little execution.  You confuse cross-selling with strategic account management and spend too much time building an elaborate plan that you can’t execute. Account managers are too risk averse. They don’t want to disrupt a sound relationship by introducing concepts, solutions, or people that they don’t fully trust. Misaligned compensation and incentives. The reward for cross-selling and doing the right thing for the customer does not outweigh the risk of maintaining the status quo. Too many products, too little product knowledge. Your reps have access to dozens (or more) products, too many to possibly learn, and fall back into selling what they know. Reps have the will, but not the skill. Despite their desire to cross-sell, the rep doesn’t know how to position the new product and loses credibility with the customer. Too little intelligence to select the right product. The rep doesn’t have enough information to make an informed choice to select a product that makes sense for the customer. The sale feels forced. Poor understanding of how products fit into an integrated solution. Building on the previous point, reps may know something about a product, but they are unsure how different products fit together into a solution. Additionally, they have no idea how to design, implement, or support the solution. Lack of a "win-win" mindset.  The rep is so determined to cross-sell that next product that they lose sight of why the customer will benefit and why they will buy from the rep. Value proposition is unclear or not compelling. The rep cannot create a strong enough business case for the customer to move forward, or the proposal is not aligned with the customer’s goals. Difficulty working with product and subject matter experts.  Subject matter experts are often wired a bit differently than sales reps and, in the absence of a personal or working relationship, may be difficult for your reps to trust. Insufficient political juice to marshal necessary resources. The rep wants to do all the right things and bring together all of the right people, but just can’t rally the support needed for his/her effort. Lack of common language or process. The rep manages to rally all of the right subject matter experts but the process feels disjointed and everyone ends up fighting for shelf space. The rep is a bad fit for the customer. The rep may have too little experience or the wrong experience, and can’t build enough credibility with the customer to sell more. Heavily entrenched competition. Your rep has the perfect solution for the customer but expanding the solution creates a potential conflict with another provider. "Do Nothing" is still your biggest competitor. Sad but true. Your rep doesn’t make a strong enough case for change or create a sense of urgency to reprioritize your solution. Remember, cross-selling is about working together with the customer to develop the best solution to solve a problem or unlock an opportunity.   A bad sales experience can make you feel used or abused, but a good sale can feel like you’ve been done a great service.   In fact, when you get great service and feel like you got exactly the right solution—you normally come back for more because it was a great experience. What other cross-selling challenges would you add to our list? ***************************************************************** Want to learn more about Richardson’s award winning cross-selling sales training solutions? Please email us by Clicking Here! The post Why Cross-selling Fails: The Ultimate List appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Sales Reps and Managers tell us what they Really Think of Your Content Marketing Strategy!   In the era of online research and lead generation, content creation and optimization now play a crucial role for B2B marketers to drive traffic and leads and elevate the perception of a brand as a thought leader. In this age of the empowered buyer, there is no question about the importance of being found when the buyer searches, and being perceived as a leader with whom they want to work. As content marketing becomes more main stream, the big question now is how to optimize efforts and investments to actually drive revenue. We have many clients who struggle with how to bridge the gap between the provocative content and thought leadership marketing creates and their sales team’s ability to use that content to find new customers, win opportunities, and grow strategic accounts. To learn more, we (along with our partner, SellingPower™ Magazine) conducted a survey to better understand what is working and what is not. You can download a PDF of the full study by clicking here. Key Survey Highlights - Brace Yourself! Sales reps do not understand your company’s content marketing strategy. Sales reps and managers are reading and reviewing your content, but are struggling to find value that is easily transferrable to your customers. Your content’s purpose is not meeting the objectives and initiatives of your sales team. Although thought provoking, your content is not helping sales reps and managers throughout the selling process. Sales reps and managers are looking for content that is relevant and applicable to the solutions your company sells. They are not asking for more, they are simply asking for better. The following is a list of statements and questions within the survey along with a summary of the data points: 1. I understand my company’s content marketing strategy.   More than half (54%) of sales reps and only 65% of managers agreed with this statement. This is surprisingly low and reveals that sales reps and managers are not employing an "Always Be Sharing" strategy. When reps and managers don’t understand your content strategy, they miss out on opportunities to: Continuous learn about relevant issues and development in your business Build their credibility with clients and prospects as a trusted resource Create new opportunities to grow their pipeline through the insight they could bring   2.      I read the content my company publishes or sponsors.  Nearly a quarter (23%) of sales reps disagreed with this statement suggesting that they do not read your content at all. This dilemma can create a lack of integration and communication between your sales and marketing teams. Sales reps may be less informed and this may lead to missed opportunities. According to Genius.com, 66% of buyers indicate that "consistent and relevant communication provided by both sales and marketing organizations" is a key influence in choosing a solution provider. One thing is for sure, if your sales team isn’t reading your content they are not digesting, tailoring, and sharing your content which is a huge lost opportunity for your organization. 3.      The content my company publishes is valuable to our customers.   Less than two-thirds (65%) of sales reps believe your content is valuable and relevant to your customers, while more than a quarter (26%) of managers believe your content is off the mark. If they don’t find value and relevance in the content you are producing, they simply won’t use it. It could signal the need for marketing to step down from the ivory tower and talk to some customers. 4.      The content my company publishes helps to: "Differentiate our brand" and "create market awareness" were most frequently cited among sales reps and managers. Surprisingly, "lead generation" happens to be at the bottom of the barrel.  Less than 40% of sales reps and managers believe the content your company publishes assists with generating qualified sales leads. You must ask yourself where and how your content marketing strategy fits into the sales process. This may, in fact, be directly related to the survey statement above regarding value and relevance. Sales reps and managers must draw the line of relevance from your company’s content to your customer or prospect’s situation. 5.      I am confident in using thought provoking content to:   Of the six choices, the top two answers for both sales reps and managers related to prospecting. Specifically, sales reps and managers are confident in using your content to support their existing prospecting efforts and to create new opportunities. They are least confident in using it to upsell existing customers, to motivate customers to buy, and to disrupt a customer’s mindset. Sellers must be willing and able to create a competitive advantage by disrupting the buyer’s mindset and they need help using your content to do so. Your content must assist your sales reps and managers throughout all stages of the selling cycle. 6.      How can your company better help you use thought provoking content to support your selling efforts?   Sales reps are claiming "I do not need more, I need better." Only 36% of sales reps said they want your company to self-publish content more frequently while 59% requested your company improve its content relevance to fit your customers. Managers, on the other hand, are requesting that your company create a stronger link between the content and the solutions you sell. Linking content to selling solutions and to customer relevancy, is just as important as linking your sales reps and managers to your content.  Again, not more, just better. Create the Connection Sales reps and managers may be reading your company’s content, but they are not utilizing your content to its full advantage. Create the connection between sales and marketing to reach the end goal of enablement, assistance, and collaboration. Show your people the value and worth of the content you are producing; eliminate the gap, and draw a line of relevance. COMPLIMENTARY RESEARCH REPORT Download a copy of our full report by clicking here The post Sales Reps and Managers Tell us What they Really Think of Your Content Marketing Strategy! appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

The Impact and Importance of Brand Adoption by Sales Reps and Managers You may recall the research I presented a few weeks ago from the market research firm BuyerSphere that states the top two sources of information for executive level buyers are the web and word of mouth. This suggests that executive level buyers are turning toward brand influenced engines for the information they desire. Brand Matters in B2B We have conducted a survey and it has been found that B2B buyers frequently search by brand name. This influences the ability of your brand to be found and influences your ability to differentiate, showing the impact and importance of brand adoption by sales reps and managers. Take a look at the following trends we have identified: Buyers will visit your company website In addition to the 55.8% of respondents who directly visit company websites, 87% search on general search engines and 68% search on targeted industrial sites (e.g. ThomasNet.com). Of note, company websites were ranked #1 or #2 by 61.3% of respondents as having the most relevant search results when searching for industrial products or services. Buyers use 3 keywords on average when searching When searching for industrial products, 58.8% of respondents use 3 or more keywords. Similarly, when searching for industrial services, over half (52.7%) of respondents use 3 or more keywords. Buyers include product specifications in keyword searches Nearly half (44.2%) of respondents said that they always or frequently include detailed product specifications (e.g. "1/2 in. x 2 in. galvanized carriage bolt") or detailed capabilities specifications (e.g. tolerances or machinery) when searching for what they need. An additional 47.3% said that they sometimes included detailed specifications. Buyers frequently search by brand name 53.6% of respondents state that they always (4.3%) or frequently (49.3%) include brand names (e.g. "3M" or "Baldor") as part of their search keywords. An additional 43.2% said that they sometimes included brand names. Buyers include geographic locations in search keywords A little more than one-third (37.7%) of respondents state that they include a geographic location (e.g. specific state) when searching for industrial products or services. An additional 52.9% say that they sometimes include a geographic location. Recognizing the Need to Improve Brand Adoption Brand equity continues to be very important for businesses. What drives B2B brand equity? Sales rep behavior had the highest impact on B2B brand equity, closely followed by sales rep personality. The sales force impact on business-to-business brand equity is paramount. B2B sales reps play a major role in shaping brand perception. Their behavior is among the strongest influences with customers. Two factors driving sales force brand adoption are high expected customer demand and high sales manager brand adoption. B2B sales reps have a greater chance of adopting a new brand if they believe the new positioning will drive higher customer demand or if their sales managers demonstrate a high-level of brand adoption. Ways to Improve Brand Adoption Develop distinct internal and external launch strategies. Create separate launch strategies targeting your clients and prospects (external) and your managers and reps (internal). Influence positive attitudes toward new brands among sales managers. Take extra measures to get them bought in. Additionally, provide training and support resources to help them model behavior. Create expectations that new brands will drive high customer demand. Increase demand generation activities in early stages of launch to reinforce the perception that the brand is driving higher demand. Explicitly show how brand attributes will translate into more sales. Provide training to help sales reps "deliver" the brand with customers. Take the time to ensure your sales reps know what to say to differentiate your message and what to do to differentiate your expected behavior. COMPLIMENTARY RESEARCH REPORT Download a copy of our full report, Content Marketing and Sales Effectiveness by clicking here The post The Impact and Importance of Brand Adoption by Sales Reps and Managers appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

The High Cost of Poor Sales Training Partner Selection and Management Practices A company’s vendor selection and management decisions can have a broader impact throughout the organization than most people realize. You can pay too much or waste precious dollars on ineffective products or services, but one problem I have witnessed too often is companies buying services that are redundant and in some cases in conflict with each other. In our world, an all too common example of this is hiring many different sales training companies to design training programs, prepare materials, and facilitate programs. Two vendors could both be great at what they do but different in how they prepare and deliver their services which poses challenges and limits efficiencies for clients. How does this happen? What are the consequences? What can you do you prevent it? I’ll explore those questions here. 1.      A "Best-of-Breed" mentality Some companies set out to hire what they consider "best-of-breed" providers. These providers are either the best known or most reputable providers in their space, which is great. Each one comes with a price tag and, more importantly, each has their own model and way of doing things. This might sound like a reasonable price to pay for getting the best, but it prevents buyers from leveraging and fully utilizing their existing relationships. Companies with this mentality don’t consider that these best-of-breed providers could be in conflict with each other (some are likely competitors) and will force someone on their staff to streamline and smooth out the wrinkles across providers or even worse, ignore the differences and cause grief and confusion for their employees and reps on the receiving end. When someone in a leadership or managerial role tries to take inventory and aggregate the various pieces purchased from different providers, they might realize that what they end up with is far from a best-of-breed solution because the pieces don’t connect. Instead, you are faced with: Multiple models, lack of consistency, and multiple solutions Frustrated learners because the burden falls on them to process the differences A lack of leveragability across programs and providers 2.      Too many buyers making uncoordinated purchasing decisions This is a no-brainer. When multiple people in your organization buy services on their own it increases the possibility of heading down the wrong path. Perhaps a particular office or business unit needs a unique training program then it would make sense to hire locally, But before you do that, check with your existing providers to ensure that this specific training isn’t available and it makes sense to go outside on this occasion. The more freedom you give your people, the less control you will have and greater the risk of causing problems. This gets right to the argument of whether you allow a federation of fiefdoms or take central control. Further compounding this dilemma is just how accessible employees with buying power are today as a result of online profiles and directories. Almost everyone is a target and must know how to respond to solicitations. 3.      Lack of a centralized training and development mission In the absence of a specific training and development strategy and direction, people will find a way to do their own thing. Do you have a global, regional, national, or local training and development mission? Can one provider satisfy your needs at all levels? You need leaders who will hold people accountable. This means  people do the things they should and do not do things that will harm, disrupt, or deviate from the norm. 4.      Miscommunication, missing true goals and objectives Playing whisper down the lane can be funny, but not when your company dollars are at stake. When you have multiple internal buyers purchasing services from multiple vendors, each one is likely giving a different message with different priorities, contexts, goals, objectives, and scopes. Those messages are then  embedded into the programs and training which the reps learn and pass on to prospects and customers, thus confusing those important audiences. 5.      Confuses sales reps and staff being trained When sales reps come out of the field to be trained, you want to maximize their time as you impart new skills and knowledge, help them retain what you’ve taught them, and encourage them to use it on the job. The more consistent the training they receive - even in terms of the program, design, format, materials, tools, coaching and reinforcement - the more they will be able to focus on the content and not worry about getting comfortable with the content and up to speed with each new training provider they encounter. 6.      Wastes time and resources How many people do you want interviewing, selecting, reviewing contracts, hiring, onboarding, and working with vendors that provide similar or overlapping services? If that’s what they have been hired to do, then fine. But if it’s not their primary role, then they’re being distracted from their job and potentially contributing to this larger problem of ineffective vendor selection and management. 7.      Prevents leveraging costs and efficiencies of "bundling" services Buying more than one  service from a vendor usually gets you some form of discount as a reward, which you won’t get if you insist on buying one-off projects and programs. Another benefit of working with an existing provider is that they already "know you" and can likely get up to speed quicker leveraging what they’re already doing for you without reinventing the wheel. How should organizations think about their learning strategy and their learning partner strategy? Ultimately business leaders, heads of training and development, and heads of sales need to decide what they value. The goal should be to hire partners that can satisfy needs in an integrated fashion from soup to nuts. That should mean consolidating program providers, connecting the parts, aligning them to the sales process, and communicating that to those who need to know in order to gain and maintain control of the situation. Establish and communicate a strategy. Leaders have to take into account how their current programs and providers connect to one another. As you look for a sales training provider, for example, look at the full sales process and consider whether you want to introduce a new model for every phase of the sales process (which then introduces a new methodology or a new approach) or if one vendor can work with you across the spectrum of need. There are benefits to having a level of consistency in the design phase and also in the delivery phase, including context, history, approach, preferences, rapport, shortened lead time/reduced learning curve, comfort, and familiarity. Diversify very carefully. Putting all of your eggs into a one provider basket can be dangerous. Similarly, working exclusively with only one provider for too long shields you from other good ideas and methods that are out there. Consider giving a small project to a new vendor as a test, but do so deliberately knowing how it fits with what you’re already doing. Be prepared to act (i.e., change vendors) once you have the results. Proven capabilities. Be sure that the vendor has a proven track record for the services you need. Maybe you’re already working with a vendor that tries to convince you they can help you with related or other projects. Don’t be desperate or foolish and brush off your due diligence. Can they really do the work? If not, stand firm and hire another, or structure a deal with your current provider on a trial basis to see if they can do the work before making a longer-term commitment. Complimentary Webinar  Making Learning Stick: How Building a Continuous Learning Environment Can Improve Learner Retention http://bit.ly/16DQV62 The post Pennywise and Pound Foolish: The High Cost of Poor Sales Training Partner Selection and Management Practices appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Richardson is  excited to offer you the opportunity to participate in two upcoming complementary sales improvement webinars. Making Learning Stick: How Building a Continuous Learning Environment Can Improve Learner Retention In this webinar, David Mallon of Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Perry Cole of CooperVision will discuss how a learning organization can build a continuous learning environment that blends formal and informal learning approaches that are deliberately staged for individualized learning needs. The Webinar is scheduled for 12:00 pm EST on June 12, 2013. To Register, please click here. Selling in Financial Services: The Difference Between Leading and Surviving Tuesday June 25th - 1:00-2:00PM CDT Join Dario Priolo, Chief Strategy Officer at Richardson and Matt Guido, Vice President of Strategic Alliances & Business Development at SAVO to learn how driving alignment to a new, formalized sales process can improve sales execution and win rates in an increasingly dynamic and competitive market. Register to ensure your company is positioned to capitalize on new and existing market opportunities     The post Complementary Sales Improvement Webinars appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Selling with Insights™: What We Have Learned, and What Is Necessary for Successful Execution We have seen an interesting trend emerging among our clients and prospects. Many acknowledge that buying behavior has changed, that buyers have more information and do a tremendous amount of due diligence on sellers, and that sellers need to use insight to shape and disrupt buyer mindset. Sales leaders want their sellers to be more assertive and more proactive, but most have failed miserably in making this transition. Now, sales leaders are coming to us to help them design a solution that will work for their organization.  Organizations that we are working with us on Selling with Insights™ often have several challenges to overcome. First, they have challenges harvesting insight from across their organization and packaging that insight in a format that can be used by their sellers. Our Insight Framework™ gives them a model to become  self-sufficient, and provides step-by- step guidance to their sellers to personalize insight that resonates with their buyers. Second, our clients come to realize that the presentation of insight is only a small part of the overall customer dialogue. Some sellers have been led to believe that a 15-minute insight monologue will lead to a sale. If it were only that easy! What they learn is that you can pitch an insight, but you still need to:  identify buying influences, ask questions, listen, answer questions, resolve objections, collaborate on solutions, close, negotiate, and deliver. The insight is the spark that begins to get the buyer to think differently. Introducing the insight doesn’t guarantee you a sole-sourced contract. It is just the start of a process, and the buying process may turn out to take a long time with many twists and turns. Last, but not least, sellers may have all the best of intentions to present insight, but the minute they get a little bit of resistance they shut down. Sellers go down a line of questioning with a buyer, and once the buyer isn’t expressing interest, pushes back, or creates some discomfort, the seller moves in another direction. Rather than pressing forward with a concept that is in the client’s best interest, the rep takes the easy way out. One of the challenges for the salesperson is to not give up too easily, especially when they have a strong hunch that what they are proposing is the right thing to do. Requirements for Selling with Insight™ 1. The Right Mindset Sellers need to have the right mindset about doing the right thing for a client. According to research by IT services, Christine Crandell’s (F100 study) on how the Fortune 100 buyers have the following expectations: Have a long-term partner orientation Act like a trusted business advisor Always have a sense of urgency and care Be relevant and credible Set realistic expectations Be transparent and forthright Honor your word Be fair and flexible Maintain a positive & broad reputation Be consistent and predictable Focus on overall success vs. a transaction Products perform "as advertised" The minute buyers get the sense that sellers aren’t working in their best interest, they will become defensive and dismissive. Sellers must recognize the areas in which they have expertise that the buyer doesn’t readily have and then bring this expertise to the table to help themselves. 2. Knowing How Far and How Hard to Push Sellers have to accept that they can’t just roll over when they encounter resistance from a buyer. This is difficult because sellers must strike the right balance between being persistent and not creating an awful experience for the buyer. Sellers need to recognize when the buyer is unaware of an issue or opportunity or misinformed. When this is the case, the seller has a duty to inform the buyer or help the buyer realize that their thinking about an issue may not be correct. This takes some finesse because nobody like to be told they are wrong, especially a senior-level executive. Sellers must also get a feel for how far and hard to push their buyers. This requires a feel for reading customers and knowing when they have been pushed far enough. From our experience, if you have a good relationship with a buyer, he or she will tell you when they’re at their limit. It is important to let the buyer know that you are pushing them because you have concerns that they haven’t really grasped the issue. The rep should be thinking, "I am not going to give up. I am not going to accept your no because it is not good for you. You do not understand enough yet for us to take this off the table." Prefacing also helps, such as "Okay, I can see why you might think about it that way. Let me share what we are seeing and what we’re learning working with other organizations. Please hear me out. Then, I would like to get your feedback on these things." 3. Preparation to Anticipate Objections Selling with Insight™ requires more than just getting uncomfortable and going further. It is not just the skill of doing that, it is thinking in advance of what those questions are going to be so that when you do go there you are comfortable with it. Most reps do not prepare that horizon of questions that is going to help them when they are in that moment. Organizations need to take measures to help their reps by anticipating the objections a buyer will raise to a given insight. During the insight creation process, we encourage teams responsible for the insight to identify as many of these objections as possible and to work with sales management on reasonable responses to these objections. As sellers prepare to share insight with buyers, they can select the objections they expect to hear from a particular buyer in advance, and then take extra measures to prepare for these objections. This advanced-level of preparation gives the seller more confidence to stay the course and follow through. Selling with Insight™ requires a high-level of skill, preparation and confidence to execute. Having the right mindset, knowing how hard and how far to push, and being prepared for objections are table stakes for successful execution. ———————————- To Learn more about Richardson’s Selling with Insight™ sales training solution, please click here or on the graphic below.   The post Selling with Insights™: What We Have Learned, and What Is Necessary for Successful Execution appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Don’t Be a Jerk - Coaching and Mentoring Sales Reps Leads to More Effective Knowledge Transfer We see it so often that it’s almost cliché. There is the bad guy ("the jerk") who demands results by endlessly belittling, berating, and badgering his people. We instantly recognize this negative behavior and more readily gravitate toward the good guy - the nurturing coach and mentor who takes a genuine interest in teaching and supporting his people. Cliché or not, managers that wear the white hat of coach and mentor are more likely to get their people to perform better over time. A recent study conducted by Training Industry Quarterly found that learning leaders from effective organizations reported using coaching and mentor networks almost twice as often as ineffective organizations in facilitating knowledge transfer among their employees. This seems to indicate that good ol’ fashioned dialogue can mean the difference between meeting or falling short of your objectives. That’s not to say that the other methods of knowledge transfer are useless. Other tools and practices measured in the study included work shadowing, paired work, short-form content (e.g., quick reference guides), knowledge libraries, and e-learning modules. Used in concert, these each have a place in the development of sales reps, especially as references following some form of training. Training is about teaching new knowledge and skills and changing existing behaviors to fulfill an objective. The training program itself is certainly important, but what you do beyond the training event can have a tremendous impact toward achieving the desired objectives sooner and sustain them longer over time. Beware of Negative Competition Sales has a reputation for being a fast-paced, high-pressure, and results-oriented environment. And that’s not without reason. Many sales reps are well-compensated with generous incentives to perform. Those who don’t hit their numbers are dragging the team down and risk being cast aside for the next crop of sales trainees. Another common element among sales forces is competition. Healthy competition can be good and, let’s face it, most sales reps are competitive by nature. However, negative competition usually fits well with the bad behavior cited at the start of this post. Watch for it and stifle it before it gets out of control. Yes, cracking the whip is sometimes necessary and might help some reps to achieve short-term results, but that’s not a long-term strategy for success. Repeatedly hounding and badgering certain reps will eventually take its toll. If a rep consistently misses his numbers, then maybe he is just not cut out for sales and should move on. Perhaps something else is going on that’s distracting the rep or preventing him from reaching his goals. This is where a healthy dialogue comes into play and enables sales managers to identify problems and come up with solutions to help get their reps over the hump. If you only "drop in" when numbers are down, then you’re not getting to know your reps, including their nuances, strengths, and weaknesses (which will help direct your training efforts). (Of course, don’t be a pushover either and allow reps to take advantage of your goodwill and nurturing tactics. If there’s cause for concern, then take the necessary steps to ensure that the underperforming reps get back on track and document your actions along the way in case more drastic decisions are required down the road.) Foster a Coaching Culture Coaching reps with a focus on and intent to not only help them hit their numbers, but also to grow and develop their selling skills has many benefits. In these cases, managers send a clear signal that "I want you on my team, and I want to see you do well." Other research shows that employees leave bad bosses, not their company. If a sales manager can build trust with his reps, that should in turn increase employee satisfaction and thus engagement and performance. Heads of sales trying to encourage a culture of coaching among their sales managers may find it difficult to achieve if it runs counter to the culture of the broader organization. When senior leaders believe in the power and effectiveness of coaching and mentoring, their actions and words will trickle down throughout the organization to drive that behavior. Mentor networks not only help to maintain a coaching culture, but also provide stellar reps with the opportunity to share their knowledge and expertise with those who need it. It empowers the mentors, gives them a taste of what it would be like to become a sales manager, and establishes a mechanism for unlocking their wisdom and imparting it throughout the organization. Just be careful to rein in rogue reps’ philosophies and ideas before unleashing them on innocent learners - be sure you can trust the mentors to teach and reinforce the right behaviors. Do your managers know how and when to coach? Do you encourage sales managers to coach their reps? Do you assume that they coach reps? Or do you just worry about other things as long as everyone makes their numbers? The post Don’t Be a Jerk - Coaching and Mentoring Sales Reps Leads to More Effective Knowledge Transfer appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

As a global sales training company headquartered in Philadelphia, this past week was quite exciting with the 113th US Open taking place at Merion Country Club in nearby Ardmore. First and foremost, congratulations to Justin Rose on a great victory and thanks to the USGA and all of the players for a very memorable event. Merion is one of several old gems in the area which date back to the late 1800s. On the surface, Merion looked easy.  At just under 7,000 yards, the course is over 500 yards shorter than some of the recent US Open courses.  Additionally, heavy rains would leave greens soft and vulnerable to the best players in the world pin hunting and shooting darts. Early buzz suggested record breaking scores, with the number 62 bandied about. When it was all said and done, not a single player broke par and many of the best players in the world fell to pieces: #1 world rank - Tiger Woods: +13 #2 world rank - Adam Scott: +15 #3 world rank - Rory McIroy: +14 #4 world rank - Matt Kuchar: +12 Merion was tough when the pundits said it would be easy. Yes, it was short, but what more than made up for length was: the tall, wet rough, stunningly difficult greens, blind shots, white sand bunkers, and the strategic precision Merion demands every minute a golfer is playing the course. Add to these challenges nerves, butterflies and jitters that come with playing in a major, and in hindsight it is easy to see why the pundits were wrong. Pundits in our industry talk about sales like it should be easy. All your people need to do is follow a sales process, use the latest technology, read the newest bestselling sales book and they will shoot the lights out, right? Well, in spite of what the pundits say, selling is very difficult. Back in April, CNBC (http://www.cnbc.com/id/100669506) reported that top-line growth has been anemic for over a year and appears to be getting worse. In Q1, only 39 percent of companies beat their top line, far below the historic average of 61 percent. Like the Merion rough, there are several factors that impact revenue growth over which your sales people typically don’t have much direct control: Implosion of a Eurozone economy or a recession in China Market conditions, especially those that prompt customers to curtail spending Turnover of executives in your customers that influences the buying process Regulatory changes that redirect customers from strategic initiatives to compliance initiatives Innovation and new technology that competes for mindshare with your core offerings Like a PGA professional in search of a US Open victory, your people need to deal with the course and the conditions over which they have no control, but you can help them (and yourself) by focusing on the conditions over which you have control: Consistent territory, account and opportunity management processes Effective sales management process and coaching Aligned marketing and sales messaging, lead definitions, and service-level agreements Consistent call planning and execution discipline Verifiable outcomes and metrics to track essential selling activities Equipping your reps with skills to hold compelling conversations with customers Providing access to subject matter experts when a deeper level of expertise is required Ultimately, success comes down to your people’s ability to execute in the moment and under extreme pressure. Like the US Open, selling is a test of skill, mental toughness, patience, and execution. This doesn’t happen without preparation, practice, collaboration, and coaching. Establish conditions to help them execute your plan, hold them accountable and you improve your odds of winning on the tough course of our business world. COMPLIMENTARY RESEARCH REPORT Download a copy of our newest research report, Content Marketing and Sales Effectiveness by clicking here The post What Sales Leaders can learn from the US Open at Merion appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Top 10 Indicators that You Need a Sales Process Today’s Blog Appears Courtesy of Richardson’s Partners SalesLatitude and is Written by Co-founder Susan Spivey If you’ve managed sales teams for a long time, you begin to accumulate knowledge of the warning signs that a sales process is either ineffective or nonexistent. The importance of a sales process - that is, what will be done to work a deal to closure - should not be underestimated. These are the top ten signs that a sales process is needed in your organization: 1. Inaccurate forecasts and deals continue to appear in the pipeline quarter after quarter 2. Sales cycles vary greatly and lack consistency across similar markets and solutions 3. Use of the words " I think" when reps describe their deals, and a missing buyer’s point of view in their explanations 4. Absence of a clear strategy or set of guidelines when reps describe how they plan to win 5. Reps are stuck in reactive mode rather than controlling the next steps 6. Most of the opportunities being worked are lost at the very end of the sales cycle 7. Reps state your solution’s features as what is driving the customers to evaluate your offering 8. Your organization seems to have a low deal capacity per rep 9. There is no common language when reps are explaining deals to the needed resources 10. Reps are rushing to demos and meetings, or doing proposals as a key selling event with little knowledge of the key strategic initiatives, priorities or needs of the organization and/or key stakeholders Do any of these indicators look familiar? Take a moment to reflect on how your reps work deals and manage their sales cycles. It’s possible you’ll need a sales process that will help you establish a framework for more accurate sales forecasting and achieving your goals. Download our Complimentary Sales Force Change Report Managing Sales Force Change To learn more about the Managing Sales Force Change study, please click here to download the full report. The post Top 10 Indicators that You Need a Sales Process appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Zen and the Art of Prospecting: Working with the Obstacles in Your Path This article was adapted from a post by Leo Babauta on his website www.zenhabits.net Selling and prospecting in this day and age is a tough job and it is easy for people who sell to get anxious, discouraged and give up. Let’s say you are prospecting and sitting at your desk with a new prospect identified to call, and you notice some anxiety, and an urge to go instead to one of your favorite distractions. And let’s also say you decided to adopt my approach, the Obstacle is the Path. So the anxiety, and the distraction are your obstacle … but how do you "work with them" as I advised? First, you don’t run from the obstacle. So instead of seeing the anxiety as something to be avoided (with distraction and procrastination), see it as the place you go to. Same with the fear of failure, the worry that things will go wrong, the cold fear that comes when you think of quitting your job and starting something new. Anxiety isn’t the worst thing in the world and is nothing to be feared. It’s just a feeling, and we can survive it. So sit with it. Second, you accept the feeling. If it’s anxiety, say, "Cool, I’m feeling some anxiety." Not, "No! I don’t want to be anxious!" The first actually calms the situation down, and allows you to look at it like an observer. The second makes the situation worse and makes you see the situation as a scared child. Third, you look at the cause. What is causing your anxiety? Is the prospecting really such a bad thing? No, actually, it’s not that hard. It’s simply taking the time to do your research, thinking about the value you will bring to your prospect, putting them down in writing, and picking up the phone. The prospecting itself isn’t giving you the anxiety — it’s the fantasy you have of wanting to say something excellent that people will think is good and judge you as competent and smart. The anxiety comes from the worry that you will fail at this and people will instead judge you as dumb. This fantasy, which isn’t real, is the source of your anxiety. Fourth, you see that it’s hurting you. You can’t let go of this fantasy, because you want it so much. But take a moment to see its effects — it is hurting you. It is causing you suffering. It’s causing you to not do the things you want to do. Be honest about its effects — the fantasy isn’t helping, and is definitely hurting. Fifth, let it go out of compassion. If you’re hurting yourself, and not helping, with this fantasy — why hold onto it? What’s so great about it? It’s not real. It’s totally manufactured in your mind. Instead, be compassionate with yourself, and let go of the fantasy. When you let go of this thing you’ve been holding onto, you can feel a sense of relief. Sixth, then go through the obstacle and be mindful. The obstacle was anxiety. It lessens once you let go of the fantasy. You can now get to prospecting, and once you do, without fantasies, you can see that it’s not that bad. In fact, if you are mindful in your activity, you can see that it’s kinda alright. Better than that perhaps — kinda great. And you almost missed out on it because of your obstacle. If you go through these six little steps, which aren’t that difficult each step along the way, you’ll not only be able to do the writing (or quit your job or start a new project or have a difficult conversation) … you’ll be better at dealing with similar obstacles in the future. You’ll be stronger, smarter, less afraid. This is why you should work with the obstacles instead of avoiding them — you learn from them. COMPLIMENTARY RESEARCH REPORT Download a copy of our newest research report, Content Marketing and Sales Effectiveness by clicking here The post Zen and the Art of Prospecting: Working with the Obstacles in Your Path appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Intimate or Creepy? How to Prevent a Big Disappointment when Selling with Insights and Selling with Big Data I recently had the pleasure of re-connecting with an old acquaintance who is now an executive at a company called Lattice-Engines. The company helps sales and marketing organizations to transform customer data into deep, real-time insight about customer needs and behavior to make better decisions on which accounts to target and how to engage with decision-makers. We have a common client, and are excited about helping our client incorporate these insights into their conversations to create value for their customers and win more business. As consumers, we all know there is a fine line between an intimate customer experience and a creepy invasion of privacy. The Ritz-Carlton gets rave reviews for knowing its customers and anticipating their needs. They pay attention to details, such as knowing their favorite wine, restaurants or shops, and this drives immense customer loyalty. I don’t stay at the Ritz very often, but when I do, I really enjoy the experience. They make their customers feel special. Contrast this with an experience I had at a branch of a large national bank in the suburban grocery store where I used to shop. My wife and I had just sold an investment property and had a larger than average cash balance in our checking account. I was at the bank making a routine transaction, when a young bank teller processing my order nervously asked me if I would like to make an appointment with an investment advisor. I asked him why he thought that would be a good idea, and he couldn’t answer my question. He couldn’t even tell me in an open and honest manner that the bank’s computer system collects information to help its customers get the most value from their relationship with the bank. Curiously, I stopped by two other of the bank’s branches that week and I got the same offer from two other tellers, both who couldn’t answer the same "why" question. Evidently the banks systems were smart enough to identify a cross-sell opportunity, but not smart enough to note that I declined the offer twice in the past week. The irony of all this was that I had a brokerage account with the bank and I had a financial advisor, but he apparently didn’t get the alert and never contacted me. So, in my bank’s attempt to leverage "big data", they both annoyed me and disappointed me. Companies implementing big data initiatives in sales must be extra sensitive to the customer experience. As buyers, we often give permission to the companies with whom we do business to collect sensitive data, but that permission is often given implicitly versus explicitly. This magnifies sensitivities. This insight derived from your customers’ habits, preferences and situations could create a Ritz-Carlton-like customer experience, but the strategy could also backfire in a big way if you’re not careful. The rise of social media has raised the bar forever on customer expectations, who expect vendors to invest financially, intellectually and emotionally in understanding and consistently meeting their evolving expectations. They expect a good experience, and when they don’t get it they can let the world know by posting on Twitter, Facebook or Yelp. Add to all of this the recent events around Edward Snowden the NSA’s surveillance activity, and it should not be surprising that people are becoming even more sensitive about online privacy. A new study that was released earlier this week showed that more than half of all Americans believe that we really are in the era of "big brother." A survey from the University of Southern California <http://www.digitalcenter.org/> showed that Millennials - and an even larger percentage of users age 35 and older - are uncomfortable with others having access to their personal data online or information about their web behavior. When asked about the statement, "No one should ever be allowed to have access to my personal data or web behavior," 70 percent of Millennials agreed, compared with 77 percent of users 35 and older. What this means to big data initiatives in sales If you want your people selling with big data, then we feel very strongly that you can’t just install a piece of software or send an email with instructions, and then be done. The risk of creating a creepy customer experience is just too high. And, if your people sense that customers are pulling back when they approach them with a big data-driven insight, then they will stop using the system and your big data initiative will turn into a big failure. We believe you start by clearly defining the customer experience you expect your customer-facing people to deliver. This experience must be perceived by your customer as putting them at the center of your world with a sincere desire to add value and delight them. You must ensure your people know what to say when approaching your customers with this insight, and ensure they have the skills to engage naturally in these conversations. Ritz-Carlton exceeds customer expectations because, among other things, they anticipate your needs. At a minimum, you should positioning big-data insights as anticipation of needs. However, the conversation needs to be authentic. This takes practice and coaching to perfect. Finally, you must identify the right metrics that drive the behaviors necessary to deliver the customer experience, and align rewards with expected behaviors and outcomes. All easier said than done, and I’ll drill deeper into this in a future post. While this might sound a bit soft, it doesn’t have to be that way. Cross-selling and growth can be aligned with providing a great customer experience. Your big-data initiative should identify opportunities to help your customers make money, save money or manage risk. If your people take the time to know the customer and personalize a unique value proposition to the customer, then everyone can win and your big-data initiative has a better chance of success. COMPLIMENTARY RESEARCH REPORT Download a copy of our newest research report, Content Marketing and Sales Effectiveness    The post Intimate or Creepy? How to Prevent a Big Disappointment when Selling with Insights and Selling with Big Data appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.