“I have been working under the assumption that Weiss Communications will be considering _________. Is this still the case? If you are not interested or if there is another person you would like me to follow-up with, please let me know. I certainly do not want to waste your time.”
This is an email I recently received from a sales representative. It’s interesting because this is the first communication that I actually received from this representative. Didn’t recognize the rep’s name. Didn’t recognize the company name. Don’t really know what he’s selling or why I should be interested. And of course, I have heard nothing further from him.
I suppose that if one sent enough emails of this type, eventually someone would respond that they are interested. This strikes me as a very frustrating way to fill a pipeline.
The bottom line is that if you want to be able to sell consistently, if you want to have those million dollar and beyond sales careers, if you want to avoid major frustration and wheel spinning, blanketing the earth with emails, voice mails or even phone calls is not the answer.
The answer is to be highly specific about who your prospect is and why they should buy from you. Far too often when speaking with entrepreneurs, business owners and sales
professionals, I ask them, “Who is your market?” and the response is “Everyone.”
Sorry. “Everyone” is not the answer that will make money for you. Even if “everyone” could use your product/service, (highly unlikely) they would all be buying for different reasons. Your job is to identify those reasons, make sure the reasons correspond with the prospect with whom you are speaking and help your prospect understand that your product/service is the answer to his or her needs, wants and desires.
So here are the questions that you need to ask yourself:
1. What am I selling? What is the value and/or benefit to my customer who buys what I am selling? What is the reason my customer buys? Why should my prospect be interested in
what I am selling? What need, want and/or desire does my product/service satisfy?
2. Out of everyone in the entire world who might purchase my product/service, who is most likely to purchase my product/service? Out of that group, who is most likely to buy a lot of my product/service? And who is most likely to return again and again to buy more of my
product/service?
If you are able to satisfactorily answer these questions, you will be able to spend your time wisely, focusing on prospects who are truly viable. Your selling time will be productive and your numbers will go through the roof.
To your success!
By Wendy Weiss
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Growing Your Sales Force from Internal Talent
After 20 years, Barbara, an imaginary business owner, took a “buyout” from her Vice President position because of a merger. She now owns a profitable marketing services business. She is competent, talented and gets remarkable results for her clients with her exceptional creative and administrative team. However, she needs to add a sales person to continue to grow. She wants someone who can take the referrals they get, plus the responses to their own marketing efforts, and turn them into profitable clients.
Should she hire an “experienced” sales person, or promote someone now on her staff?
Some pros to hiring an experienced sales person:
• The person comes with experience, maybe even in your industry, and a contact base that should generate some new business.
• The experienced person can “hit the ground running,” because they already know how to sell.
• The experienced person can bring expertise to the organization, which will help grow business.
Some cons to hiring an experienced sales person:
• The experienced person will cost you more because of their experience.
• Their experience may cause them to avoid profitable segments of your market because of preconceived notions like “They never buy our kind of service.”
• The experienced person might not fit your organization’s culture.
An experienced sales person, particularly one changing industries, may have developed habits or attitudes that are inappropriate and unproductive. Rarely will a top producer be let go, unless their additional sales volume is not worth the cost of keeping them in the organization.
Why not offer someone in your existing team the opportunity to grow into a sales position, and ultimately into your Vice President of Sales?
This has advantages:
• The new sales person is a known producer and respected by your team.
• S/he knows and likes your culture, and works well with your team.
• This person will cost less. They can continue at their existing salary, looking forward to bonuses or commissions to increase their income as the sales come in.
• Sometimes they can help train their replacement as part of the package.
But there are some disadvantages to this approach:
• The other staff might not support the change due to jealousy or fear of additional work for them.
• The person you move into selling might not be prepared for the unique pressures of the sales profession, or
• S/he might have a negative view of the sales profession which has not been communicated to you.
• You may have some significant difficulty finding a competent replacement.
One key to success when promoting from within, is to watch your people carefully to see who really cares about understanding client needs before trying to provide services. Professional selling is about uncovering needs and, if you can help, showing how your service or product meets those needs.
Building People to Build Business
J. Mark Walker
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