Do You Recognize These 5 Warning Signs of a Bad Prospect?

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There is trouble ahead for you. I bet that right now you have prospects in your sales pipeline that are bad prospects. And it’s time for you to get rid of them.

Bad Prospect Warning Signs

In my sales training and coaching practice, I get clients who call me to strategize on how to close deals. One such client called me this morning. I won’t go into the verbatim of our discussion, but it got me thinking about how we ignore warning signs.

We get so enthusiastic and “needy” that we refuse to look at the truth.

Here are Five Warning Signs that indicate you’re in trouble: Read more

Have a Discussion that Generates Real Leads

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(This is a concept that will be discussed in our upcoming webinar, “21st Century Lead Generation,” a live event March 28,  12p EST) 

I struggled for years thinking that we sales and marketing professionals play too loosely with the term lead. To me, a lead isn’t a true lead until there’s a conversation with the prospect that determines if they have an interest, if they have the money to pay for it, and if they are committed to fixing the problem they tell you they have.

When we don’t clearly define lead, any person who shows up in our space becomes a “lead.” And that’s not how you create business. That’s how you become tired…quickly. Read more

Lead Generation, a Hurdle for the Outdated Sales Person

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OLS21centurylead

(This is a concept that will be discussed in our upcoming webinar, “21st Century Lead Generation,” a live event March 28,  12p EST) 

Are you an outdated sales person? You are if your primary sales tactics include cold-calling and finding customers—you know, traditional sales methods from the 20th-century. I know what you’re saying, “The 20th century was just 14 years ago. How can an entire industry be outdated?”

I like to think of the role of the sales person in 21st century terms. I say this because I notice some of us are stuck using the same old traditional sales tactics. We’re in an age of technology-driven efforts and wider markets. Shouldn’t we be further along?

Okay, Bill, if you’re so smart, then what should I be doing to generate leads? Here’s one tip that I’ll cover in a webinar with Brooke Green on March 28: Read more

Too Much Eagerness. Bad for Customers. Bad for You.

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Last week, I had a coaching session with one of my clients who is a pretty talented business development person. I say ‘talented’ because she has all of the raw materials: enthusiasm, energy, work ethic, and decent communication skills.

Then, last week she relayed a deal that her company is working on. As she described the situation, a couple of things caught my attention. She proceeded to tell me how important this deal was to her company and how excited she was and how desperate some of her teammates are about landing this deal. (I suspect the desperation came directly from the sales force, but that’s a different matter).

After she reviewed the situation I asked her if she noticed anything about how she described the deal. She said she didn’t. But I did.

What I noticed was the underlying theme of neediness and awestruck-ness about this deal. It’s that “this-one-would-be-a-huge-feather-in-our-cap-if-we got-it” attitude. But that kind of thinking, to me, assures she won’t get it.

It’s Bad for Your Internal Team

Since one of the strategies with this prospect was a presentation meeting where she was to bring her engineers to discuss the deal with the customer, it becomes even more vital that their (engineer) minds are right when in contact with customer.

Anytime you give those people ample reason to be scared they’ll take it. Feeling pressure and stress is no way to go through a presentation like this. And the more magnitude and burden you put on the situation, the less likely you will be to care/focus on what the customer wants.

This is part of that overall misguided myth that the more excited we are about getting a deal, the more excited the prospect is about giving it to us. I know we were all taught that-and really want to believe it. But in my experience, it’s the cause of more lost deals than won deals.

It’s Bad for Your Customer

More importantly, anything that takes your eye off of the customer’s problems and goals creates a block for you – and they’ll feel it. Feeling that pressure to perform is one of the most common mistakes made in business development /sales. In coping with that pressure, you take the attention off of them and put it right on yourself. Read more

If Customers Are Not Calling You, Why Not?

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Sometimes I wonder if we don’t unintentionally make our businesses too hard.  We sales types lament a lot about prospecting and the behavior required to generate new discussions and meetings as if that were the only way to grow our business.

But that’s the way it will always be as long as we have our “sales hat” on.  Because when that hat is on we are always thinking prospecting, cold calling, closing, handling objections, etc.

Sales people must learn to put their “marketing hat” on and that hat should cause you to ask the question:

“What can I put out into the marketplace to make my phone ring with interested and qualified prospects?”

Not possible in your world you’re probably saying?

Heck yeah it is, but not if you continue to think like a one at a time sales person who is stuck in an office making cold calls to generate appointments.  You’re better than that and you should find a better way to execute.

Cold Calling In A Modern World

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As sales trainers, we get frequent questions centered around cold calling:

  • “What should my cold call sound like?”
  • “Should I even make cold calls anymore?”

Even on Twitter recently, where we asked the question, “What is your biggest sales problem?” the answer came back, “How do I get the motivation to pick up the phone and call people who don’t know me?” @laurenkriner

So in this episode, Bill and Brooke disagree on the answer, but still offer advice in a Point-Counterpoint style on cold calling.

Evolution of a Salesperson [INFOGRAPHIC]

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In problem-solving terms, the rule is when you are confused about the next course of action you always start with, “How did we get here?” As we look at sales forces all over the world, we see problems like:

  • Closing percentages are low
  • Difficulty finding and getting in touch with buyers
  • Every part of the sales process gets commoditized
  • The sales process lasts way too long.

So, the first question we had was: How did we get here? The infographic below gives you some insight into how we see the world of professional selling today and helps you rethink your role as a salesperson.

Read more

You Less. Them More.

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“A great man is always willing to be little.” Not sure where I heard that first but it makes sense in sales.

Rather than playing the game of ‘impressing‘ the prospect (which we all do, albeit unintentionally), why don’t you aim to be “insignificant.”

Let their pains and dreams take center stage, instead of yours. It just might be that they develop so much rapport with you from being heard, they actually buy something.

The Monetary Benefit of One Idea

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I have a client who is in one of our training programs, and once a quarter we’ll get together and talk about his business. You might call it “personal coaching,” but it’s really just me hearing what his struggles are and giving some advice and tips and ideas on how he might be able to alleviate them.

The thing I love about his approach is that he always tells me what each idea I give him could be worth.

About two months ago, I suggested to him that in his sales process he put in a “diagnostic assessment” that allowed him to assess the customer’s business in a way that would help him determine if he even wanted to spend any time with that customer. And, of course, it would help the customer know if he/she had pain that was worth spending any time to fix.

Prior to this he had only asked questions and taken opinions from prospects. He had never put in any kind of a process/assessment. That idea just earned him a $1.3 million sale, which will generate about $300,000 of net profit in his business—one idea, $300,000.

But That’s Not Typical

What’s more typical is that ideas that we toss around in training meetings and coaching sessions go unused. They go unused because most of us have no way of executing anything new. We get so rigid in how we’ve done things that a new idea goes in one ear and out the other.

The Challenge

In 2011 I have a challenge for you: Make this the big idea year. And big ideas don’t mean earthshaking new ways to do business. It could be a very small idea that becomes a big idea because it leads to a windfall of economic benefit.

So the next time you ask someone for advice, and they give you something, don’t let it pass through your brain without filtering it through to see what that one idea could be worth. New ideas are the coin of today’s realm, but they’re worthless if no time is spent understanding them and deciding how they can be of economic benefit.