Sell, Sell, Sell!

Recession, economic crisis, financial grid lock, even DE-pression!  These are the words we hear virtually everywhere these days.

Its scary.  If you’re running or selling for a small business, its likely that the gloom and doom that is being showered on us by our politicians, Wall Street and the media has gotten your customers in a hesitant mood and it may have even infected you personally.

There is a lot of advice available on the web for selling in tough economic times.  My advice is to recognize that fear and pessimism are like viruses.  You can be infected easy and you can easily pass them on.  The good news is that you can choose not to do either!

Just be optimistic and hopeful!  No question that this will be contagious to your customers.

Of course, your customers live in their own worlds and they have already been infected by fear elsewhere.  If so, the position your company as the safe bet for them.  Don’t let their fear of the future cause them to put things on hold or look at other alternatives.

Look closely at your companies terms and conditions and ask yourself what will my customers be afraid of when entering into this relationship.

In B2B sales, customers are most often afraid that things won’t go according to plan and they won’t have sufficient options to adjust as needed.  Experience teaches us that things almost never go according to plan.  Your solution may not meet all of their expectations and/or other plans the customer has for their business may not materialize and these things may effect their utilization of your company’s solutions.

So, make sure you give them options when unexpected surprises come up.

Its amazing to me how often I learn about competitors that force their customers to sign year long or longer contracts and then force them to pay big bucks to cancel early.

I don’t know about you but, my customers are smart enough to ask about that sort of thing in the beginning.  I know for a fact that Salesforce.com and other competitors in the Online CRM and Contact Management space won’t refund any of your money or even help you get your own data out of their systems.  What I also know is that customers know that they may need to exit the contract for reasons that have little at all to do with the vendor.  If the vendor’s going to "lock them in", then that can be scary.

So what if you make your company’s edge the fact that you align your interests with your customers?  If they’re not happy, your not happy…  Isn’t that what a free market is all about?

Your business is surely very different than mine and the options that are important to your customers are probably very different too.

Look at the Ts & Cs that are talked about when your customers are evaluating vendors.  Ask some customers which ones they find the most limiting.  Now find a way to take those restrictions off your customers.  Set them free to get what they want without fear!

You just might find that 2009 turns into the year that your market share grows faster than it ever has!

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Today’s Wall Street Journal includes an article entitled "Businesses Say Theft by Their Workers is Up", by Sarah Needleman.

The theme of the article is that in "these tough economic times", more employees are padding their expense accounts, stealing office supplies, etc.

Ms. Needleman quotes Bob Riordan, leader of labor and employment practice group Alston and Bird, as saying the best defense against employee theft is prevention.  Mr. Riordan suggests codes of ethics and video monitoring where appropriate.

What struck me as I read is that no where is information piracy or security mentioned.

No offense to Ms. Needleman or Mr. Riordan… its a fine article but, its almost 2009 right? 

If you’re reading this post, you’re probably in the sales or marketing game.  So, other than sales people adding an extra lunch or two to their expense account or walking away with a box of pens, what are the most valuable assets that sales and marketing employees have access to?

Its information about your customers, prospects, sales methods, pricing policies, marketing strategies, etc.!

The fact is that whether the economy is up or down, most businesses have minimal to non-existent security policies for information related to customers and marketing.  I know.  When talking to business owners interested in SalesNexus’ online contact management system, I’m constantly hit with this irony:

The greatest fear most business owners have when considering a hosted contact management or CRM system is the security of the information.  So, I always ask them where they keep that information currently.  Inevitably, the answer is that its stored on each sales rep’s computer in Outlook, ACT!, Excel, etc. and maybe there is some master copy of all this on a server in the office.  The next question is "Who has access to that information now and would you know if they made a copy of it or modified it maliciously?".

Point is that information about your customers is currently in the hands of your sales reps and you probably don’t even have an up to date copy of it yourself.  You are currently at risk for one of the most damaging frauds that could possibly hit your business!

So, if a sales rep is considering an offer from your competitor, do you think he’s making a copy of the information?  If the sales rep leaves or you fire them, how will you "pick up" the relationship with your customers?  How much information will you lose when the sales rep is gone?  How much information will your competitor gain when they hire that rep?

In my view, the potential risk to your business in piracy or damage to your customer information is far greater than anything an employee could do by stealing office supplies or parts from the warehouse.

Of course, a hosted contact management system is not the only solution to this risk.  Here are a couple of suggestions:

• Automated backups - be sure that each employee’s computer is being backed up daily and that you’ll have access to the information if the sales rep, their notebook computer and their cell phone or PDA dissappear one day.  www.carbonite.com is an easy and affordable solution that offers corporate accounts your control.
• Frequent, consistent and mandatory updates to a master list of customer and prospect information by all customer facing employees.  This could be solutions like ACT! or Goldmine, hosted online solutions like SalesNexus.com or Salesforce.com, or just excel sheets submitted by reps that someone merges into a master list.  Important note - be sure you put some teeth into this.  A rep planning to leave is likely to "forget" to submit their information.  Make paying commissions contingent on compliance with the policy.

Your business’ existence is based on the relationships you have with customers.  Information about those customers is a strategic asset.  Protect it with the same vigor your do your physical and financial assets.

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"Webinar?"  That’s the response I got at a recent family gathering… I was telling some of the group about my business, etc. and mentioned how important our weekly webinars are.  Most of them had no idea what I meant.I had to explain.  If you don’t know, its an online seminar, hence "Webinar".  In my mind, a Webinar is distinguished from an online meeting in that it includes people from many different businesses, not just a group of folks from one business gathering for a demo or presentation online.

We’ve been holding one every week for over a year now with great success.  I’ve been demoing software for years and I’ve learned a few things in the last year about holding webinars that were not obvious to me.

If you’re currently or planning to hold webinars to promote your business, I hope the following list of tips and suggestions is helpful.

1. Practice.  Do a dry run or two to be sure the audio is clear, the slides or demos work and flow smoothly.
2. Set expectations up front.  This is public speaking 101 but, is easy to forget…  Tell them what you’re hoping to accomplish during the webinar in outline form and let them know how much time they should expect to spend.
3. Don’t let any one person dominate with detailed questions.  Always keep the general audience in mind and ensure that the discussion is relevant for all.  An easy way to redirect in the case of the squeaky wheel is to offer to follow up after the webinar is over.Open up with introductions all around.  If your group is not too large, it really helps get everyone engaged early on.  The risk in a webinar is that people will be checking email, etc. and not paying attention.  If you can spare the time, go down the attendee list and invite each person to introduce themselves and state why they’re attending so that you can use that feedback as a guide to what to focus on.
4. Be sure you have a good strong, and short, list of "take aways" that you want each person to leave the webinar having learned.  Be sure to summarize them at the end.
5. Close with a compelling call to action.  In some cases, its appropriate to go for the close and offer something special to those that attended and then purchase your product or service in the near term.  However, often its better to invite them to simply take the next step in learning more about your company and services.  Be sure its clear how they can take action, make it easy to do so, and be sure they can easily understand how they’ll benefit.
6. Follow up!  This is probably the most overlooked step in webinar success.  Believe it or not, many companies wrap up their webinar and then turn their backs on the attendees.  An easy way to engage the prospect post webinar is to call (or email) and ask for feedback.  Ask for feedback about the webinar itself, not your company’s products and services.  Was the subject matter valuable to them?  Was there anything they would suggest be done differently in the future?  These types of questions will naturally lead to the prospect opening up about their intentions regarding doing business with you.

If you’ve not done it before, jump in and try it.  Webinars can be a tremendous marketing tactic and an efficient means of moving folks through your sales pipeline.   If you’ve been there and done that, I hope this list will help you take a step back and refine things.Good luck!

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In a recent survey conducted by KnowledgeStorm and the Artemis Group, the chance of connecting with a prospect decreased by 71% if the follow-up is not made within the first 24 hours.

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I was recently asked to write a guest post by Gerald Weber of Search Engine Marketing Group for his excellent blog on Search Marketing.>

The topic is adjusting your sales process in order to maximize close rates and return on leads that come through your web site.  If you’re spending money to drive traffic to your website, then you there are some very common but deadly mistakes that you should avoid.

I hope you’ll give it a read and let us know what you think by commenting!

Click here to read the full article. 

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We all know there are countless ways to say everything.  We also know that choosing the best way to say something can mean the difference between communication and confusion, success and failure, motivation and discouragement.

I found this video on John Winter’s blog and just had to share it.  Apparantly it was used to help focus a team preparing a branding campaign.

Its also quite moving.  I hope you enjoy! 

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Jonathan Farrington’s blog is always packed with incredibly valuable wisdom that any sales manager or business owner can use.

Now he’s packed all the best of his posts and those contributed by others into a nice, neat e-Book that you can download and take with you.

If you’re leading a sales effort and you want to be sure you’ve got your eyes wide open to potential challenges and opportunities, I highly recommend giving this a read!

Well done JF!

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Chris Brogan hits it out of the park again!  He’s just released an awesome e-Book on using social media to get REAL results in Business to Business sales.

His e-Book, “Fishing Where the Fish Are” maps social media to the B2B buying cycle.  Well worth the read.

If you’re a business owner or sales manager with lots to do and not enough time to learn about social media the hard way, Chris’ e-Book is a great quick start guide!

I hope you enjoy!

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Thanks to “Technology for Business Sake” for pointing out this very intriguing survey conducted by Wells Fargo.

There “Small Business Index” contains some really good insights into the perspectives of small business owners on technology.

Particularly of interest to me is that only 35% of small business owners say that loss of Internet access would have a major impact on business!

Click here to read the complete results.

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