Entries Tagged 'exercise' ↓

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Time is money.

A sales reps job, as well as the organization that supports him, is to maximize their resources, of which the primary one is time.

Anyone can make their quota…if they have enough time.  And if the quarters were longer.

One of the biggest, yet unavoidable wasters, is spending time with people who don’t ultimately buy.

Sure, you can do all kinds of qualification…but even if the deal is qualified, do you win every single one of them?

Let’s try this: even if you won every single one of them, how is that deal going to make you more money moving forward?

Monetize the Loss

I’ve lost deals that were well-qualified in the sense of right leve, budget, pain.  We’d meet huge numbers of people on the implementation team, the decision-makers, and so forth.  But, at one point, a requirement would come up that we couldn’t sell around.  Who knows: it could be the competition got there first and set up a different vision.  In some cases, really, customers do absolutely need a feature that isn’t offered.  While you can continue to try to sell the “value” of not having the feature and some of the other capabilities…at some point, their need is not a fit with your capabilities, particularly in fast-moving technology.

Well, what happens then?

If I could take those contacts and, probably more valuable, the account information and translate that in a whole new at-bat, wouldn’t ‘that be worth it?  Maybe translate it across multiple sales allies and give me multiple at bats.

The nice benefit if you proactively do the introductions is that you get to stay in touch with that lost account, because you never know when things change.  More on that later.

Monetize your losses into new opportunities.

photo credit: My Buffo

With busy schedules, what is a way to make it easy for reps to really leverage their network?  I’m proposing a simple dashboard — you know — the kind with Red, Yellow, and Green — in areas they can focus on and do something today:

• Number of requests for contacts you’ve made
• Number of Offers you’ve made to your network (you’ve gotta feed it to be fed)
• Number of companies on your Target list (if it’s not rich and robust, you’re not taking advantage of the network)
• Number of people in your network

Each one of these can have a very, very simple action to take to improve it.  But these will all pay off in dividends by finding more contacts and more leads that you couldn’t do simply on your own.

photo credit: Bob Jagendorf

What’s not to like about trade-shows?

You get to stand and talk to customers who come and want to learn about your product.

If you’re a rep, maybe some of those will be qualified.  Maybe one or two may even fall into your territory.  Psyche!

The question I ask is how do I turn ever event or effort into something that can potentially yield residuals.  I need to have an ongoing source of potential leads and people to talk to.

And guess what, tradeshows are that place.  Just not where you think they are.

The real gold in tradeshows

The real gold lies in the other attendees, like yourself.  Yes, you are all technically competitors because you are going after the same pool of dollars from the same pool of customers.

But, look, haven’t you had prospects who could not and would not buy what you have, but could be a great fit for something else?

What if you could trade in that contact for one who was a better fit for you?

Aha!  Now what if you did that for different customers across a range of different non-competing sales reps?

More aha!

Stay tuned, find out more!

photo credit: René Ehrhardt

Here is an exercise which could have a profound effect for you.

In fact, I have been doing it myself every day for the past couple of days.

What I’ve been doing is going online to a job-posting site for sales positions.  I look at the sales-position and the industry and I put it into a spreadsheet.  I keep doing this, each time categorizing the industry they are in, as well as their target market.

For example, I will determine whether they sell to Enterprise or to SMB, and if Enterprise, try to determine the title of the person.

I picked some non-tech industries to broaden my perspective.

I came up with eco-systems of companies that are looking to hire.  They appear to be selling to similar industries, but with different products.

I came up with one: selling to restaurant.

• gourmet chocolate and dessert materials
• wine
• restaurant-related advertising
• “green” receipts for processing credit cards
• some kind of a machine for the kitchen (not sure exactly what it did)
• “green” plates and utensil
• credit-card processing

For the most part, the sales people hired for these positions will ultimately be calling onto the same types of businesses — restaurants — and in most likelihood, needing to talk to the owner at some point.

What if they were all in each others’ eco-systems, exchanging information and leads as they came upon them doing their own prospecting?

So…here’s an exercise: can you think of who is in your selling eco-system?