3 Videos That Will Radically Shift Your Client Positioning and Results

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As you begin to think about 2016, I want you to consider three things to commit to next year.

I want you to create…yes I said “create”…3 videos for the expressed purpose of landing new clients.

How can videos help me land clients? Well….are you ever in for a surprise! Let me start with a blanket statement. OK, it’s my opinion….but a statement it is.

Video will help you tell your story, compel people to seek you out, and help you position yourself properly prior to client contact. 

VIDEO 1

Last week, I was in a coaching session with two sales leaders and their lead generation person. In the conversation, I found that they’re asking prospects to fill out a form on the web, then hit SUBMIT. Then, their lead person emails them back to set up a call. Read more

Building Your Platform To Make Selling Easy(ier)

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Last week, I got called by a CPA firm who wanted training for their people. This you must know: CPAs are not very good at selling. It’s not that they don’t have the expertise. That’s not it at all.

It’s that selling spooks them. It’s not in their comfort zone.

So, when I get a call from a professional services firm (or any company), I always start with one simple question: Do you have a platform?

Platform

After the weird looks they give me, I go on to educate them to what a “Platform” is.

Platform: definition, A position in the market that you occupy where people look to you for expertise.

Physical Platform

Just as you would speak at a conference from a podium (platform) the same thing applies here. In the physical world, it is you speaking from the stage, on a topic that you have some degree of expertise in, where all eyes are on you.

There, you don’t have to fight for attention. You ARE the show.

In the sales & marketing world, your platform could be a variety of things. LinkedIN is a platform. Any kind of social media could be a platform (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram). Your email list is a platform. A podcast is a platform.

Simply, it is a place where you command attention of the people you’re trying to reach.

Your platform is a positioning tool that raises you above the din of competition and market confusion.

You Have One Right Now, But You May Not Know It Read more

The Problem With Idea Generation – And a Solution

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More ideas are not better. I know there is a saying, “If you want to come up with a great idea, come up with lots of ideas.”

Ideas

But I see Presidents and Salespeople generate idea after idea – and yet have little to show for them. So what happens. Here’s my take.

My sense is that the person that has the idea (the creator) is seldom the person who will implement the idea and bring it to profit. I didn’t say “never,” I said seldom.

So the idea-creator needs to have either a) someone around him/her who can flesh out the idea before investing too much time dreaming about it. Or, b) a system that walks them through the ‘fleshing out’ process. Read more

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.