Sales Question:

"I frequently get stumped by prospects responses to my sales questions - What should I do?"

Short Answer: Ask Better Questions!

Long answer:

This weekend I had the privilege to witness several high schools compete in a mock trial competition in Tampa, Florida as students taking law electives battled it out in an actual court room with real judges at the helm, with each team having to take turns being the prosecution and the defense.

During one of the mock trials, a student in the "prosecution role" became visibly frustrated when he wasn't getting the answer he needed out of a defense witness, no matter how many times he re-asked the question.

When the trial was over, the judge addressed each student (in front of the entire audience) and gave them constructive criticism.

His advice to the prosecution attorney / student:

"If you don't like the answer, maybe your question was the problem!"

How true is that!?! Not only for attorney's but for salespeople as well!

As I watched this situation play out in the court room, I could easily see how this same scenario happens everyday with salespeople and their prospects:

• Salesperson makes call;
• Gets prospect on the phone;
• Asks a few questions;
• Doesn't get the response they were hoping for;
• Salesperson tries again - get's same response;
• Both parties get frustrated and then the call ends.

Think Like a High-Powered Attorney to Close More Sales

Attorney's and salespeople have a lot in common.

Namely, they are paid based on their performance. The better each performs, the more cash they earn.

Before ever picking up the phone, be prepared well in advance of what questions you are going to ask, why you are going to ask them, who you are going to ask them to and be ready for the responses you'll get.

The days of being "Captain Wing It" are over.

Asking better, smarter engagement questions are essential to becoming a high powered sales earner.

Michael Pedone
CSS: Chief Sales Scientist
SalesBuzz.com (A 2011 Sales Training Company Watch List Award Winner!)

8-Week B2B Sales Improvement Program

Learn How To:

1. Eliminate "No, Thanks", "Not Interested" & "We're All Set" Responses from Cold and Warm Calls
2. Neutralize Gatekeepers & Get Voicemails Returned
3. Ask Engaging Questions Instead of Probing
4. How to Really Qualify (I'll show you a better way)
5. Give Stellar Presentations & Handle Objections
6. Close Follow-up Calls and Get Targeted Referrals
7. How to Set & Achieve Your Toughest Sales Goals
8. Improve Your Time Management Skills

Duration: 1 hour per week for 8 weeks
Where: Online @ your desk, conference room or home
Presenters: Michael Pedone

Get Next Available Workshop Dates / Times / Registration Information Now!

Sales Question:

"I'm doing my best to take advantage of "social selling" with LinkedIn but I'm having a hard time getting prospects to accept my connection requests. Any suggestions?"

Answer:

LinkedIn is a powerful social selling tool that can help you increase sales - if used correctly.

What makes social selling work for salespeople is it gives us the ability to quickly & easily get on our prospects radar. It’s the ultimate channel for branding yourself as an SME (Subject Matter Expert) at the cost of virtually "free" other than the time you need to put into it.

Now when it comes to reaching out to connect with potential prospects on LinkedIn there is a default message that most salespeople use when sending their request.

It looks like this:

“I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. – (Your Name Here)”

Now some salespeople will add something like:

“You visited our both at last weeks trade show and I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. – (Your Name Here)”

The problem with the templates above is that there is nothing beneficial that would make a prospect want to accept an invite, let alone check out the requesters profile. (And you want them to check out your profile - provided you have it set up right – as it may generate an inbound lead for you… I’ll write more about how to do that in the future)

Using the "What's In It For Me" Rule

So instead of using the standard boring request form that everyone else uses, try using the WIIFM (What's In It For Me - with "ME" being your prospect) version…

You’ll have to create your own but here’s a word-for-word connection request that I use after someone registers to view our free on-demand B2B sales skills webinar:

“Hi (prospects name)… Thanks for viewing our Voicemail Strategies webinar and hope you found it useful. I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn in case you decide I may be of some help to you in the future. - Michael Pedone"

By making it more personal and having the WIIFM message, your prospects will be more inclined to accept your request – which will help increase inbound warm leads and make you less dependent on cold ones.

Michael Pedone
CSS: Chief Sales Scientist
SalesBuzz.com (A 2011 Sales Training Company Watch List Award Winner!)

8-Week B2B Sales Improvement Program

Learn How To:

1. Eliminate "No, Thanks", "Not Interested" & "We're All Set" Responses from Cold and Warm Calls
2. Neutralize Gatekeepers & Get Voicemails Returned
3. Ask Engaging Questions Instead of Probing
4. How to Really Qualify (I'll show you a better way)
5. Give Stellar Presentations & Handle Objections
6. Close Follow-up Calls and Get Targeted Referrals
7. How to Set & Achieve Your Toughest Sales Goals
8. Improve Your Time Management Skills

Duration: 1 hour per week for 8 weeks
Where: Online @ your desk, conference room or home
Presenters: Michael Pedone

Get Next Available Workshop Dates / Times / Registration Information Now!

How to Hold Yourself Accountable (And Make Bank Doing It)

Top salespeople are self-starters. But even self-motivated sales reps run into times where it’s hard to kick-start their own engines.

If you know what you want but are having a hard time staying committed to the game plan for achieving your goal, the answer is simple: You need to implement a system that will hold yourself accountable. I know, it doesn't sound fun but read on. It's not as bad as you think.

ac·count·a·ble

Required or expected to justify actions or decisions; responsible.

The keyword here is “justify”. That means you have to explain yourself to someone.

So how does this work in a sales environment?

Simple. Let’s say it’s your sales quota that’s the issue. You want to increase your odds of reaching it on a more consistent basis but you’re having a hard time staying motivated to do everything that’s necessary to achieve that goal.

Here’s what you do…

Step 1: Break up all the “selling activities” that you must do in order to hit your goal into specific categories such as:

• Prospecting
• Qualifying
• Presentation
• Objection Handling / Closing etc

And then be specific on what you must do / what your goals are on a daily / weekly basis for each category.

Example:

Prospecting

• Minimum of X amount of new prospects per day
• Minimum of X amount of first time calls per day
• Minimum of X amount of follow-up calls per day

Step 2: Pick an authority figure above you that you will have to answer to (Think Sales Manager, VP of Sales or a Business Mentor)

Step 3: Meet once a week, preferable early Monday to go over each category.

The first time you meet you will want to go over what your goals are for each category for that week.

The second time you meet (and every time there after) you will first go over your previous week’s goals before moving on to what you hope to accomplish in the current week.

This is where the “justify” comes in. When you know you’re going to have a meeting to explain why or why you didn’t achieve your clearly defined goals & tasks, you will find that extra motivation to make sure you hit the mark. Plus having clearly defined objectives on a daily & weekly basis will act as a motivator in and of itself. We tend to do better when we see a clear step-by-step action plan laid out before us.

Extra Bonus:

Having clearly defined goals and tasks for each category that are key elements to you achieving your goals will also help you spot any weak areas that you will need to improve upon in order to increase your odds of winning.

One last thing…

In the prospecting example I gave above, it’s not just about “doing more” as in calls per day… that’s just a small piece of it.

But let’s say through these weekly accountability meetings we discover a problem in the objection-handling category… we can now put in a resolution to solving that problem. Think of it has fine tuning your engine in order to run at top performance.

Hope you found this helpful.

Michael Pedone
CSS: Chief Sales Scientist
SalesBuzz.com (A 2011 Sales Training Company Watch List Award Winner!)

8-Week B2B Sales Improvement Program

Learn How To:

1. Eliminate "No, Thanks", "Not Interested" & "We're All Set" Responses from Cold and Warm Calls
2. Neutralize Gatekeepers & Get Voicemails Returned
3. Ask Engaging Questions Instead of Probing
4. How to Really Qualify (I'll show you a better way)
5. Give Stellar Presentations & Handle Objections
6. Close Follow-up Calls and Get Targeted Referrals
7. How to Set & Achieve Your Toughest Sales Goals
8. Improve Your Time Management Skills

Duration: 1 hour per week for 8 weeks
Where: Online @ your desk, conference room or home
Presenters: Michael Pedone

Get Next Available Workshop Dates / Times / Registration Information Now!

What separates top B2B sales performers from the rest of the crowd?

Answer: A lot. But one of the strengths top inside sales performers posses is the ability to turn a weakness of theirs into an asset whereas average salespeople tend to ignore that they even have any weakness in their sales game at all.

Every one of us, no matter how successful, no matter how long we’ve been in the game, have areas that if improved upon, would boost our revenue stream.

The problem is most salespeople fail to recognize the opportunity that comes with improving a problem area.

The better we are in every category that constitutes “sales” allows for the increased likelihood of us reaching that next level.

And there’s always “another level up”!

But in order to do that, one must not be afraid to admit they have weak spots and then they need to pinpoint what those areas are.

To help you with that, here’s where to start…

Identify all the sales categories that are important.

Example:

• Prospecting (cold calling etc)
• Qualifying
• Presenting
• Objection Handling / Closing
• Time Management
• Goal Setting
• Social Selling

Each one of these categories requires a special skill set. And there's always room for improvement. Top salespeople know this.

Three keys for reaching that next level:

1. View weakness as an opportunity;
2. Identify a specific area in need of improvement;
3. Attack it.

Make it a regular habit of identifying areas that need attention and develop a game plan for improving it and watch your income start to rise.

It's that simple.

Michael Pedone
CSS: Chief Sales Scientist
SalesBuzz.com (A 2011 Sales Training Company Watch List Award Winner!)

8-Week B2B Sales Improvement Program

Learn How To:

1. Eliminate "No, Thanks", "Not Interested" & "We're All Set" Responses from Cold and Warm Calls
2. Neutralize Gatekeepers & Get Voicemails Returned
3. Ask Engaging Questions Instead of Probing
4. How to Really Qualify (I'll show you a better way)
5. Give Stellar Presentations & Handle Objections
6. Close Follow-up Calls and Get Targeted Referrals
7. How to Set & Achieve Your Toughest Sales Goals
8. Improve Your Time Management Skills

Duration: 1 hour per week for 8 weeks
Where: Online @ your desk, conference room or home
Presenters: Michael Pedone

Get Next Available Workshop Dates / Times / Registration Information Now!

No One Makes Excuses When Winning

When a sales team (or salesperson) is making quota, you don't hear excuses like:

• “Cold calling doesn’t work”
• “Prospects don’t respond to voicemails”
• “Gatekeepers won’t let me speak to the decision maker”
• “No one has any money right now. Budgets are frozen”
• “Our pricing is too high / our competitors pricing is better”
• “The leads are old and have been called 100’s of times” etc.

But when we are failing to reach our goals, and the pressure to identify and correct the situation get’s turned up, its often all too easy to start making (and believing) excuses. And that is an unhealthy environment for everyone involved.

Excuses Keep You Where You Are. Solutions MOVE You to Where You Want to Be.

There are two options when dealing with failure:

1. We can make excuses to justify the reason for failure... Or...
2. We can look at the problem and use it as a "map" that will help lead us to the resolution for solving the roadblock that is keeping us from reaching our goals.

Example: Problem > Not Making Quota

Question: Why aren’t we hitting our numbers?

Answer: Well, for one, we leave lots of voicemails and get very few callbacks. It's hard close deals when no one calls you back!

Choice:

Option 1: Excuse: "No one listens to or returns cold call messages anymore"

Option 2: Ask yourself "why aren't my voicemails being returned and how can I solve that?"

Going with option 1 keeps us where we are: Unsatisfactory number of callbacks with no hope of improvement.

Where as option 2 would allow us to investigate how to solve the problem, which would help us get to where we want to go.

Example:

• Do I have a consistent message, designed to pique interest and entice a callback with a valid reason, prepared well in advance? Or do I put on the “Captain Wing It” cape and say whatever comes to mind or feels right at the moment?
• When was the last time I recorded my voicemail message and played it back?
• How can I change my message to improve my callback %?
• When was the last time I role-played with my peers in order to get constructive criticism?

Excuses rob us of happiness, pride and the ability to reach our potential. They also take away our accountability. And without accountability, destructive behaviors run rampant.

Definition of ex·cuse

VERB: Attempt to lessen the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); seek to defend or justify.

If we continue to justify our failings, how will we ever achieve our goals?

Don’t accept excuses from yourself (or anyone else for that matter). Only accept solutions and watch how quickly your situation goes from “failing” to “winning”.

Hope this helps.

Michael Pedone
CSS: Chief Sales Scientist
SalesBuzz.com (A 2011 Sales Training Company Watch List Award Winner!)

8-Week B2B Sales Improvement Program

Learn How To:

1. Eliminate "No, Thanks", "Not Interested" & "We're All Set" Responses from Cold and Warm Calls
2. Neutralize Gatekeepers & Get Voicemails Returned
3. Ask Engaging Questions Instead of Probing
4. How to Really Qualify (I'll show you a better way)
5. Give Stellar Presentations & Handle Objections
6. Close Follow-up Calls and Get Targeted Referrals
7. How to Set & Achieve Your Toughest Sales Goals
8. Improve Your Time Management Skills

Duration: 1 hour per week for 8 weeks
Where: Online @ your desk, conference room or home
Presenters: Michael Pedone

Get Next Available Workshop Dates / Times / Registration Information Now!