28Dec/111

Comfort with Ambiguity

Becoming comfortable with ambiguity is essential to professional selling. That’s because there’s an invisible wall between salespeople and their prospects. It’s built of apathy or resistance. Prospects are often apathetic or resistant to a salesperson’s efforts. Salespeople might even be feeling that way about some of their prospects.

What's on the other side?

And, anytime there’s a wall between two people, ambiguity exists. Salespeople have to work to understand what’s behind that wall. We have to work to understand why a prospect would buy from us.

The wall gets broken down by whoever (prospect or salesperson) most want what’s on the other side. For prospects, that’s whatever is being sold. For salespeople, it’s the sale.

Regardless, until it’s broken down, the wall of apathy or resistance creates ambiguity.

We’ve all been in sales situations where we’re disinterested in working with a particular prospect. Maybe our focus is elsewhere (a vacation) or perhaps we’re thinking this prospect will be a pain in our side. Regardless, we’ve certainly been resistant.

We’ve also all been in situations where prospects are apathetic or resistant to our sales efforts.

Our jobs as salespeople, however, rest on our abilities to overcome those feelings and break down that wall. 

How do you break it down? What's the best way to understand what's on the other side of the "wall"? Let me know.

- @JebBrooks

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10Aug/112

Cold Calling is Stupid

Last May, my good friend and fellow sales trainer here at The Brooks Group, Tony Smith, wrote that Cold Calling 2.0 was really about making “warm calls.” But I’m going to take it a step further and say that...

Cold Calling Is Stupid.

Here’s why.

Prospecting is the lifeblood of your sales career. Finding solutions to their problems is the lifeblood of your prospects.

Making phone calls with the hope of building a relationship is wasteful. Allow me to explain...

  • It’s a waste of your time because you can invest your time in efforts with far greater returns. According to Peter Drucker, you stand a one-in-fourteen chance of selling something to someone who has no relationship with you or your company. Surely we can agree that building a relationship with a random phone call to your prospect is a...stupid...way to build a relationship? How many marriages began with an out-of-the-blue phone call?
  • It’s a waste of your prospect’s time because they've got better things to do than dilly-dally on the phone. Earlier this year, I wrote step-by-step instructions about how you can sell something to me. As I said, "The chances of a cold caller calling me when I'm able to pay attention to their offering is unlikely." The same is true of most prospects. Now, more than ever, people are being asked to accomplish more in less time. Find smarter ways to help them than taking more of their precious time.

In our sales training programs, we teach a front-end loaded process called IMPACT Selling. We call graduates of the course "High IMPACT Salespeople" because they invest their efforts in positioning, prospecting, and pre-call planning. They have High Impact! Their work is far more lucrative than "dialing for dollars." It's more lucrative since it reverses the relationship. If done right, it means that prospects call you. That's a lot more effective than salespeople who bang away at the phones hoping for someone to say, "Yes, I'll listen."

Now, let me acknowledge that cold calling is probably never going to go away. That's because (1) it will eventually work for a small percentage of prospects and (2) there are a lot of managers out there who built a book of business on cold calling and believe "that's the way I did it, so you should, too." However, can't we all agree there are more effective ways to sell!?

@JebBrooks

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3Aug/111

Salespeople: Do Your Own Marketing

It seems more companies now than ever face a marketing v. sales debate.

It usually goes like this:

Marketing: "This sales department just ignores the leads we send them. They don't take advantage of the new collateral we've developed. And they certainly don't appreciate all of the work we did on the new brand. Why don't they get it?"

Sales: "Those marketers just don't get it. We want leads. Qualified leads. But they never send any. They're too busy building a brand. Customers don't care about a brand. Why do they keep wasting their time?"

High IMPACT Salespeople don't join in the debate. They don't point fingers. They don't cast blame.

Instead, they take action.

Regardless of what you sell (and the demands placed on you by "management"), you have some degree of flexibility in the "marketing activities" you can take on as a salesperson.

In most companies, the Marketing Department is tasked with a shotgun approach: Tell our company's story to as many people as possible. Share our offerings with a wide range of people.

Sales, on the other hand, is asked to tell that story to individual people (or people within companies) in order to gain their commitment to use, buy, or implement their offering.

In my opinion, we (sales) got the better end of that stick. I'd rather get the immediate feedback of a prospect than wait around for market research results. But, that's why I'm in sales. Regardless of which you prefer, the lesson here is that there can be a blurry line between "marketing activities" and "sales efforts."

Prospecting -- how and where you look for new opportunities -- could be termed "marketing," but you still do it.

For example, where do you go for referrals? People who've already bought things from YOU. That's not "marketing," that's a prospecting strategy you can employ to grow your book of business.

But we don't have to stop at Referrals…

What about collateral development? Is it possible for you to develop some material that supports your case? Yes.

Or article writing? Could you put together an article about your offering that provides some good, neutral information? Yes.

How about developing an email newsletter of your own? Might you be able to write a monthly newsletter and send it to your prospects and customers? Yes.

High IMPACT Salespeople just take action. They drive their own results.

@JebBrooks

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11Apr/115

What Business Are You REALLY In?

The very first thing I remember my father teaching me about The Brooks Group is that we're not in the sales training business.

We're in the NAME ACCUMULATION BUSINESS!

The same is true for you. Whatever you're selling, you should be gathering as many names of "suspects" as possible. A suspect is someone who might, possibly, eventually do business with you.

Thanks to technology, it's become far easier to -- over time -- turn those suspects into prospects (and eventually raving fans of your offering) than when my father first shared the tenant with me.

But his words are as true now as ever: The best technology is worthless without a good, solid list of names to leverage.

What are you doing to gather names? How many people do you meet in a year, a month, a week, or a day who could benefit from your offering? How are you remaining in front of them?

Do you have a drawer full of business cards belonging to people who might want your offering? Do they remember meeting you (or even know what you do?!)

It's critical that you remain first, last, and always in the minds of your prospective buyers!

@JebBrooks

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5Jan/112

King Collaboration: Ruler of Sales

"None of us on our own are as capable as all of us together"

I paraphrased my favorite Japanese Proverb to make a point: Too often, salespeople stall because they're afraid they don't have all of the answers. The truth is that they'd be much better off if they'd adopt the attitude that, by working together, they'll arrive at a better place.

Smart salespeople look to their colleagues, sales managers, prospective clients, customers -- anyone really -- for answers.

  • A testimonial, for example, is an existing client telling a prospective client that you can do what you've claimed (or, ideally, more).
  • A referral involves working collaboratively with an existing client to identify someone inside their network who can take advantage of your offering.
  • A partnership is identifying someone you can work with to build business opportunities together.
  • A network is a group of people looking to help each other create new business.

As we move into 2011 (and beyond) there will be more and more opportunities to collaborate. Could you partner with someone to write an e-book that would help your prospective clients buy from you? Could you find some experts in your field and coauthor a few articles together? Sure, these ideas may seem a bit far-fetched, but they could help you get discovered by a prospective client!

Are you taking advantage of online collaboration tools?

Are you on LinkedIn? Let's connect there. Are you on Twitter? Follow us.

@JebBrooks

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