There are a number of simple rules to follow to “prospect” for more buyers without going through the “starting from scratch” phase. It has been my experience that many sales staff forget some of the basics. Attracting buyers far outstrips old cold calling and advertising techniques.

1) ALWAYS ASK FOR AT LEAST ONE REFERRAL. Everybody knows at least one person that they can think of that may be in the market for what you sell (and most will know a lot more). If you close a sale, make a call or talk to anybody about your product or service and if you don’t ask for the name of at least one other prospect or referral may the fleas of a thousand camels may infest the hairy parts of your body and stay there for the rest of your life. This is just a simple act and if you have a good relationship with your customer chance arse he or she will make the introduction for you. So encourage the person you are talking to, to call the next prospect on your behalf, don’t just grab a phone number and run.

2) KNOW THY NEIGHBOUR. Visit your neighbours and say hi and tell them what you do. How many thousands of people work within walking distance of you’re office or factory? Remember this can be a high cost activity and should be used sensibly, HOWEVER… if you do it two days a month, fifteen calls a day, you meet 360 people in a year. What I am saying is get to know your neighbours and help them to get to know you and your business. You could even call it a ‘hello, I’m your neighbour campaign’. The funny thing is that you will meet these people over and over again, at the lunch counter, the bus stop or just in the street on the way to work and they will say Hi… and they will know what you do… and they will at some point say to one of their visitors, ‘I know someone that sells those’, just around the corner why don’t you give them a call.

PEOPLE BUY FROM PEOPLE AND WOULD RATHER BUY FROM PEOPLE THEY KNOW (AND TRUST), REGARDLESS OF PRICE!

3) JOINT VENTURES. Find other companies that sell complementary or related services/products and offer some ‘dollars’ (or physical effort) to be included in their marketing campaign. Look at how credit card companies, airlines and hotels do it. Use your imagination and talk to all your suppliers and customers about their marketing efforts and chances are you will find a few that will provide a way for you to reach lots of people at a minimum cost. This activity can be particularly well used if you can get yourself added to high volume Internet sites. You must add value, so find something that will interest the market… industry stats, legal developments or technical advice and offer it for free. You will, over time, be noticed.

4) SET UP A PERSONAL WEBSITE.  Post useful information for the world to see. Include the site address on everything you hand out. The idea is to provide an information source for people interested in your product or industry. If you’re in, say the car industry… what about a list of repair shops, service station locations, after market parts dealers, baby seat retailers, stereo suppliers, air conditioning service centres, tyre shops, spanner sellers, tune up shops, turbo charger fitters, air fresheners, seat covers and auto clubs. A rainy day can be well spent. Look at it this way, you give out your business card to your buyer, he, she or it looks at your site, he says to a friend look at my new car, the friend says, I wish I could update but I think I’ll just repaint the and reupholster, oh says the your proud customer, you should look at this site its got a great list of car stuff and there is a list of paint shops… and one more person knows who you are and that you sell cars… and they tell one or two others and so it grows.

I MET A GUY THAT HAS BEEN A TOP SALESMAN FOR YEARS, HE STILL KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT COMPUTERS, HE’S JUST LOST ANOTHER JOB… PAST GLORIES AND OLD WAYS OF DOING THINGS WILL NOT SUSTAIN YOU… CHANGE, INNOVATE AND PROGRESS IN YOUR ATTRACTION SELLING TECHNIQUES.

Ref: Hilton Johnson, http://www.salesuniversity.com

Seminars – Some Additional Thoughts

Last post I mentioned seminars. They are such a great way to attract buyer I thought I’d just add a couple of more reasons to get involved.

An additional benefit of giving public seminars or at least being the guest speaker at someone else’s is that the more you engage in this activity the more competent you will become. Lets be honest a key attribute that all buyers are looking for in all sales people is competence. Now one of the fears we all have when speaking or conducting seminars is that we will be confronted by ‘expert’ naysayers. So what can you do? If there are one or two cynics in the audience you can overcome any problem they may cause by only taking questions after the presentation, one on one. To ensure this happens you can say, “I have a limited time to speak however I will remain after in case any of you would like to talk to me personally”. If some smart individual tries to corner you publicly just say that you do not consider it wise to have the entire gathering held up while you answer personal queries. If after some time you feel you can successfully field any ‘difficulties’, allow open questions, HOWEVER don’t feel you must always have a question time after a presentation.

A wise person once said to me… ‘often the things you do for nothing will pay you of the most dividends’. This I have found is also true of seminars. For many years and in more than one industry, I have given talks to small business groups and ‘clubs’ and much of my business has come from this activity. One of the ‘free’ seminars I conducted for a professional group on a quarterly basis lead to a request for an industry magazine article which was then republished across a wide range of industry publications, which again lead to more talks and more business. Sure it’s a bit of work at the start, however it’s a lot less stressful than cold calling for the rest of your life.

Oh! Have a fear of public speaking? Train yourself out of it, or don’t sell, become a ‘techi’ or a ‘number-cruncher’. Sorry, however it’s a necessity for salespeople to be able to hold an audience.

WHO HOLDS REGULAR INDUSTRY MEETINGS, WHAT SEMINARS OR EVENTS ARE COMING UP IN YOUR CITY THAT NEED SPEAKERS? FIND OUT!

Sales lead generators, two quick ideas

Market yourself: by attending networking functions, discussion groups, business luncheons, civic events and conventions and by volunteering to be involved. If a speaker is present, always when you are given a chance, ask a question. To formulate your question listen carefully to what is being said and ask something sensible, the other listeners will be watching you. A good question can attract lots of focus on you and of course hopefully  some potential buyers.

The people you know: can be a great source of business. Attach your business card to everything you send out. I once had a salesperson that attached her business card to her electricity payment every month. The person who processed the payments bought a house from our company. Tell your uncles, aunts, friends and old school mates, what you do and for whom you work. Talk with enthusiasm about your company and products, however remember short is sweet, don’t become a bore and talk about nothing else.

ACTIVITY CREATES SALES, BE ACTIVE IN YOUR COMMUNITIES AFFAIRS

Sales Idea 1. Newsletters

A periodical ‘Newsletter’ is a great way to generate interest. Most of our customers need information on our industry at least once a year. For example, if you are in the hotel business, financial controllers, training managers and sales conference organisers need to estimate accommodation costs at budget time. Why not become their expert help by providing market trends, pricing and available ancillary facilities in our region. If we’re in the automobile industry how about providing a guide to used car prices so fleet managers can see if they will be better to trade their old cars this year or next year. If we can become (what all good salespeople should be)… an authority in our field and if we can establish ourselves as a useful information resource, prospective customers will seek us out. Now you may think that newsletters are an old fashioned and an outdated method of reaching your potential customers however here are four good reasons the are still important:

i) They maintain top of mind awareness, important for all sales success.

ii) They build the sense of a relationship between the sender and the reader.

iii) They establish, if well written, the sender as an expert in his/her field.

iv) The are (unlike a blog) a proactive form of communication.

A GREAT THING ABOUT NEWSLETTERS, AS THE READERSHIP TENDS TO GROW SO DOES THE BUSINESS.

Sales Idea 2. Seminars

Seminars are a great way to attract interested buyers. Obviously anytime we can get in front of a large group of people (on a reasonably regular basis) some of the audience will be naturally attracted to either us or our product and services. Business talks and Industry events (even Rotary clubs and the like) often provide a great way for us to subtly sell our organisation and ourselves. When you get the chance to speak to a group you are given a great deal of power. Most audiences when they focus on our message (and us) will tend to believe what is said. You must only talk on topics in which you have some genuine expertise. I am assuming of course that as a professional sales person you do know a great deal about your industry…YES! Undoubtedly you are the expert, you must be because you are the writer of the speech and you are the only one who knows what you are going to say. This is especially true when you are talking about your products and services and you are talking on a topic about which most of the listeners will have little or no knowledge. If you are giving presentations in an attempt to prove your expertise to a bunch of other experts in your field it is a waste of time, find opportunities to give talks to potential customers instead.

I KNOW YOU’RE BUSY AND WRITING SPEECHES IS TIME CONSUMING, HOWEVER… DO IT ANYWAY!

refs: http://www.salesuniversity.com  and http://www.smithfam.com/news/s11.html

Finally out of frustration he, lets call him Geoff, came to me and said he was sick of waiting as he had not had any positive feedback from his friend on when he might finish. I agreed to take on the project and got to work straight away. Although I had another important project underway I finished Geoff’s job in about ten days.

After I had finished the job I coincidentally I met the other supplier for the job at a social event and on discussing building websites in general (a common interest) he mentioned Geoff and said “I have had a job sitting around for a year perhaps you should take it as I and my website techie guy are a bit busy”. He went on and said with a smirk ‘I’m sure if you do it within a year Geoff will be happy. I found this attitude appalling and I know the supplier had actually had plenty of time to get the job done much earlier.

I had also used the other supplier for some creative work and printing some time in the past. My treatment was the same; he promised a lot and delivered very little. In the process he managed to insult me by telling me my existing printed material that his designs would be replacing was rubbish. Unbeknown to him I had designed the existing material myself. Now rubbish or not I still felt insulted.

So if we are looking t advance our career or just work effectively what are the lessons.

1. If you agree to take on a task get on with it with some sense of urgency.
2. “Bullshit may baffle brains” as the old saying goes however not for long.
3. Respect your customer’s let them know where you up to during a job’s progress.
4. Don’t take on work you can’t handle, as your inability to perform will destroy your credibility.
5. The cheapest quote is not always the best quote.
6. Your reputation is important and your slowness to act will always be publicized to others and can destroy your market and your brand, particularly your personal brand
7. Never scoff at the current work or product of your customer because you never know the history of how it got to be what it was or how attached they are to what they have.

Whether you are an employee or an independent contractor the old rule still stands, if you want to be seen as effective “say what you will do ad do it and say what you won’t do and don’t do it.

I am sure there are other lessons that can be drawn from this situation and hopefully you can add a comment to express your similar experiences and the lessons that those experiences teach.

Julian talks at (TED) about:

The importance to listening of patterns, differences, filters & intention.

How we are becoming desensitized and losing our ability to listen and the scary consequences of that fact.

5 listening practice methods

3 minutes of silence
Utilizing the mixer
Mundane sounds and the hidden choir
Listening Positions
A handy synonym – RASA

Listening has become such an important issue in our work and our personal lives that it is becoming an imperative for us to do some formal training on the subject. If you are having difficulty with a that this talk and other resources that can be found on the web may at least add some value and expertise.

The Growth Problems

Strategy Problem – where are the opportunities?
Innovation Problem – generating new initiatives.
Discipline Problem – creating self sustaining system of insights, actions and learning.

Growth through Innovation Part 1

Summary of the “how we go to market” Model

Understand Customer Potential > Prioritise & Deploy Resources > Design Effective routines > Build Delivery Capabilities > Execute to Win
Must be collaborated on by: Marketing – Field Sales – Channel Management – Customer Service

Growth Through Innovation Part 2

Growth Through Innovation a Basic Plan

Traditional planning model: Traditional SWOT -> Strategy -> Detailed Plan -> KPI’s & Budget -> Execution Plan
Growth portfolio model: Case for Action -> Vision -> 12-18 month Priorities -> Initiatives 1-6 months -> Roll-out

It is worth searching for more Michael Treacy information on the web as much can be gained. I first used one of his early works as a small section of a value adding in organization course I was conducting and have admired his thinking and approach to building your business ever since.

Hope your gained value from his videos.

Depending on the size of area you are able to service you may find some locations more fruitful than others. I once trained bank mangers to cold call to look for prospects. Almost to a man they wanted to travel miles to “industrial areas” often over an hours drive away. Depending on what you are selling often you can find prospects next door. The point I am making is that the search for business needs time spent on research. Say you are selling restaurant equipment you need to find the very new i.e. just being established and the getting older, needing plant renewal type businesses. Just calling “willy-nilly” can be a great time waster. Also be careful not to develop a “milk run” where you are just calling on your old favorites because they are easy to talk to.

As part of your territory analysis you need to put together files on your target market players using such sources as government surveys, census information, trade publications, local newspapers and customer feedback.

Giving speeches or delivering seminars in your geographic area can also uncover potential customers. Local Rotary Clubs for example are always looking for speakers. You can’t go along and do a sales pitch however you could talk about, as an example: “the latest technical and cost saving benefits of modern air conditioners” if you were in the business of selling air conditioners. If you establish yourself as a local expert in your field buyers will often seek you out. In other words as well as knowing the potential customers in your territory you need to have a good grasp of the ‘third party’ lead generation opportunities within your geographical area and how to best utilize them.

Define customer “trigger events” and develop systems to alert yourself when they occur.

(An important facet of finding hot prospects from an article on BNET Australia and from which the basis of this article was built.) “Trigger events are circumstances that make it more likely that a customer will buy from you. For example, if you sell management consulting, a trigger event might be a customer announcement of a management change. Similarly, if you sell supply chain software, a trigger event might be the announcement of a merger.”

To expand on this concept I offer this. A true professional in sales will not just be an expert in his or her product. A true professional salesperson needs to an expert in the user of his/her products business as well. One of the best salesmen I ever met was a finance broker who specialized in arranging finance for earth-moving and construction equipment. He was great at his job because in addition to understanding finance and banking he knew as much about earth-moving and construction as his customers. He particularly new when new projects came up for tender and who the likely winner would be and off he would go to see them.

Recognizing trigger events is one of the most powerful attributes that a successful “hot prospect” focused salesperson can develop.

For every product or service there is an expected or at least likely set of potential users. The first place to look is of course your current customer base. Look at who has been buying recently and for what reasons. It is likely if your customer company “A” is expanding or spending due to his/her industry conditions, his/her competitors, companies “B” and “C’ are doing likewise. Secondly research who has money to spend. Its good to remember the old collection adage from the finance company I once worked for. “There are those that can’t pay (read buy) and wouldn’t even if they could. There are those that can’t pay however would if they could. There are those that could pay although they won’t and there are those that can pay (buy) and will.” Hot prospects only come from the last group.

Another hot prospect group can be found through referrals. Talk to your existing customers about who they think may be interested in your product, of course still apply in the finance company test above. Two other simple places is through reading the newspapers and industry journals to look for those who are “movers and shakers” in your target market. One good starting place, at least to get a list of potentials that is often forgotten is… the yellow pages. Social media watch: If your potential buyer’s businesses have a Facebook page check periodically on what they are talking about to see if they mention relevant problems or expansion plans that you may be able to capitalize on.

Research and define your target company positions.

Only call on the decision makers. Remember that committees often make decisions so you must engage all players from the outset. If this is too difficult at least make sure you are dealing with to those that have the ability to greatly influence purchasing decisions for your product or service. If you just can’t get to them all spend as much time as you can in coaching your contact on how to sell the other executives on your proposal. Example I once had a lead on a leasing transaction and the company secretary/financial controller had to present his findings to his board. To assist I had to explain an eight centimeter high stack of printouts containing a bunch of numbers to him. He understood however thought the board would have difficulty understanding the figures. I coached him to say… “Leasing through Ric’s company is it most cost effective option, the figures prove it and here they are.” I told him to drop the heavy binder on the boardroom table with a thud and bet him no one would open it. They didn’t and we got the deal.

More soon… I will tweet ( @rictownsend ) when I have finished writing it.

Although this is a relatively new state for some I can remember some time back while training some Indian colleagues commenting that they were, to put it kindly, “very verbose and that they would do anything to keep talking”. They smiled and said Richard… “here in our country there are many people and limited opportunities, we learn at a young age to stand up and have our say due to a need for us to compete to be noticed”. One participant even suggested, “if you don’t get noticed here, you just fall of the edge”.

So why is a skill in public speaking, as opposed to effectiveness in one on one conversations so important. Firstly learning to speak in public will force you to come to terms with the need to clearly and succinctly articulate a point of view. As you learn to speak in public you will be trained to build your ‘argument’ in a logical fashion and present your points so that one point builds on another. This training in thinking and speaking in a structured and logical manner is a great life skill to develop. If you persist and become proficient enough in your topic to allow for questions you will additionally improve your ability to “think on your feet”, obviously another essential skill for a fast moving environment. All these public speaking experiences of course should, in the normal course of events, enable you to increase your self-confidence, a major key to all success.

A few additional payoffs from learning to speak in public

If you speak regularly (and well) it will make you more comfortable when dealing with strangers, rather than just those that are close to you and particularly in taking the lead in what could be a relatively hostile environment.

Being comfortable and confident when speaking in public improves your employability, as it is a skill sought after in all managers by pretty much all organizations.

This skill will lead to you being better able to persuade people, as you practice and get feedback, which will allow you to improve your chances to appeal to them as human beings that have emotions, desires and thoughts that are often similar to your own. As another writer (source unknown) put it, “this is the difference between distinguishing between a simple [view of an audience as] bosses, employees or clients and transforming them in your mind into people with real problems, hopes, fears, dreams and desires”.

If you have ambitions to be a leader obviously you not only have to come up “big ideas” and a sound vision of the future you will need to express those ideas and your vision with passion and conviction to large groups of people from whom you will need to gain support and co-operation. Becoming a proficient public speaker will be essential if you are to reach a sizeable following.

So the conclusion must be that becoming an effective public speaker is a key life skill and will likely be the difference between success and failure in your life at home, at work and in the community in which you live.

So if you are unavailable for any reason what is the best “can’t come to the phone” explanation (excuse) that can be given. I suppose a simple “he’s out of the office” is OK however there is something I believe is better. “He/she is attending to another customer” for my money is the only phrase that will let me hang up without being annoyed at my inability to reach the parson I wanted to contact.

While I’m at it forget the “who’s calling please” it makes the caller feel as if your deciding if they are important enough to be put through. A better question is “may I tell him/her who’s calling”.

One last thing… never tell a customer, as someone did to me today, “he’s at lunch can you call back in an hour“, that’s terrible. Telephone diplomacy can win or lose you and your company great amounts of business!