Two days left in April – and for some this is a ‘woeful’ time.  They have about 24 hours to ‘make numbers’.

I spoke with two different sales managers this morning – both scheduled meetings - that needed to reschedule because they are in ‘make the number’ mode. Really? Today is when they are worried? What about on April 15th or even April 1st?

It’s so timely to think about this after the last post of Cause and Effect. If you are really scrambling now, the cause might have been what did – or didn’t – do weeks or months ago!  It’s time to diagnose the cause of the state you are in.

1. What was your plan for the month? Did you have a clear plan with actionable items?
2. How diligent did you carry out the actions necessary?
3. What market changes happened? How did you adjust for them?
4. What resources did you use effectively during this time?
5. What barriers did you personally create?
6. What worked well for you this month?  What actions and contacts paid off?  How can you duplicate those?
7. What did you do to strengthen your knowledge, skill or belief in what you sell?
8. What successes did your customers realize as they used your product/service? How can you use that for next month?
9. On a scale of 1-4 (no middle ground here – you were above or below average) – how well did you carry out the activities needed for success?

Your answers to these questions will help you make sure next month end is a ‘wow’ instead of a ‘woe’.

Good luck!

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Tags: maximize sales productivity, productivity, Sales, Sales Tips

Work and life events recently have reminded me of a scientific concept – Cause and Effect.  Our sales and leadership ”Effect”iveness is very much tied into our ’causes’ whether we like it or not.

What you put into your career, your activities and your life DO determine what you will get out of it.  Examples:

 The list goes on and on – we might not have control over every aspect of the effect – but how much more likely are you to realize the Effect when you take action on your ‘Cause’?

For this week, consider what your ’cause’ is…what effect do you want to have on:  sales, performance, your customers, your colleagues, your family?  Then with that goal/objective in mind – determine the input needed to realize the output at the end of the week.  You will be effective if  you back your cause with action and effort each day!

Join in – with the time of year, month (it is month end for many of us), etc. What are some of the Input you need to make to reach the Output you want?

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Tags: focus, maximize sales productivity, Sales Tips

We are in the middle of Earth week – as Wiki Answers states Earth Week is a: celebration of the Earth and the environment, in order to get environmental sustainability into the hearts and minds of the community.  You can be a part of this by practicing Earth Friendly habits in your work!

5 Earth Friendly Saving Tips (’tongue in cheek”):

1. Save the trees. Reduce your paper consumption. Consider how you store information – are you taking advantage of the electronic storage or do you print out and keep everything in paper? How can you reduce the paper you use by 10-15% this year?  Reuse your envelopes – just slap a new label over the old one and tape it shut. Or Stop mailing all together – doesn’t everyone just NEED more emails?
2. Save the oceans/lakes. Very sad this week to hear another grey whale beached itself in Washington State and the amount of debris they found in it’s stomach.  After a hard day at work, some of you may turn to liquor or vicadin. Do not flush your leftovers!  It gets in the water supply and harms the creatures living there.  Instead use what you have or share
3. Save the air. Actually visiting customers in person needs to be cut! Stop driving and flying all over to build relationships – use email for everything to reduce carbon emissions.
4. Save the landscape. Do you know how quickly landfills are growing? Just miles from where I live, the ‘moutain’ of trash is visibly taller each year. Instead of throwing out old products and marketing materials – combine them into special sales or a special marketing push – better to get them into the hands of someone than YOU be the one that throws them away.  Oh, that don’t work or have obsolete information? Just use a Sharpie to ‘fix’ that.
5. Save the resources.  Two tips on this one!
   • Most plastic is petroleum based. With gas prices creeping again and concern over ‘running out’ of natural resources – eliminate plastic ‘trinkets’ or give-aways.  Most customers or prospects won’t really use the ruler, mug, bouncy ball, water bottle, or business card holder with your name/logo on it. Think of  ‘green’ gifts that they will use!  Recycled personal paper products, granola bars, or a reusable shopping bag – now THOSE are gifts that are memorable!
   • You can save a lot of electricity by powering down whenever possible. Yes, turn off the Blackberry, Droid, Queues and your handhelds! Use them for 8-10 hours a day and then turn them off. Your family and friends might really appreciate having your full attention and you will need to charge them less saving electricity!

There you have it – five crazy ways to help the planet.  Though following them will COST you a lot of success.  And while I had fun coming up with them – I am hopeful this gets you thinking about wasted resources.   I really am an environmentally conscious person. We recycle, put our scraps in a mulch pile, reuse paper in the office for printing drafts, carpool whenever possible and so much more.

In business, we do have opportunities to be Earth Friendly – Make sure your business trips are planned well, recycle and turn off your electronics after hours.

What other fun tips do you have to Save the Earth at work?

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Tags: Sales, sales tips

The last blog post spoke to the ‘ills’ of sales success Skills and Will.  Timely then to receive a phone call this morning from a manager who wanted advice on terminating someones employment.

After sorting through the reasons Why – it was clear – she didn’t demonstrate any willingness to:

1. Act
2. Own

Act

Doing the right activities and behaving in the right manner are important for job success. If you don’t act appropriately, you won’t accomplish what needs to be done.

Own

She didn’t own her responsibilities or job. She passed on whatever she could to others without taking ownership and therefore made herself unnecessary.

What’s this have to do with  you? Well, its a good checklist to gainful employment and success.

Knowing the right things to DO is important. Then taking responsibility for them and completing them is what will keep you employed.

This week – first take action on the things that need to be done and then own your job, your cusotmers, and your results.

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Tags: sales success, Sales Tips

I have spent the last week working with AWESOME sales professionals – many newer to the career of sales.  Many sales manager believe that new people can be  ‘trained’ the right way and not have to unlearn bad habits.  Yet even the newbies can have’ills’ that will potentially keep them from success. 

Not a newbie? If you’ve been in sales a while (or a LONG while) you may have even more sales ‘ills’.   So, what are some of the ills? From observation and sales manager stories, most of them fall into two categories:

1. Not doing something that would lead to success.
2. Doing the wrong things that keep them average or below.

Really?  Is it that simple?  Well, it can be. 

These categories can be cured by two other “-ill”  words:

• Skills
• Will

Skills

You do not have to be a ‘born’ sales professional!  The skills needed to be successful can all be learned and developed!  What’s important it identifying the skills that are necessary in  YOUR type of sales and then building them.

It’s been found that most any skill can be developed in 50 days with practice – Vince Lombardi clarifies the need for practice with this quote:

Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.

Making the time and effort to identify WHAT is needed gives a higher dividend.

Will

The ‘will’ is your energy and motivation to act.  Without action, you will never reach YOUR personal best.  how to strengthen your will? 

1. Set goals. The power of clear goals is that it provides the target for your actions. You can proactively work toward something if you know where you are going.
2. Identify your rewards. What’s in it for you? What if you take the actions – even if you don’t want to – what will you gain?  Only you can determine that – and if you think money is the reward – think further. Think of the what the money DOES for you or GETS for you – that is the real reward and motivator.  More and more research is finding that the ‘intrinsic’ rewards are more motivating than the ‘extrinsic’ rewards of ’stuff’ and materials.  Think about what the ’stuff’ intrinsically does for you? 

In the upcoming weeks I will post additional information about the intrinsic rewards and what it takes to build skills – for now use this time to idnetify WHAT skills you need to build and the goals you want/need to achieve.

Curing Sales ‘ill’s is possible – but no “Pill’ will give you an instant cure.

Make today matter!

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Tags: focus, goal setting, Sales, Sales Tips

For most people it is hard to see a full picture of what the personally do well and the areas we don’t.  We plug along doing the same thing day in and day out.  We are ‘blind’ to what really helps us … and what is hurting our results.

How to change that?  Well, if you are reading this post, you are already looking for sales tips and ideas to be more effective – give yourself a pat on the back!  To take it further, ask those who see you at work for feedback.  Prepare 2-3 questions on specific areas and broader feedback to help them give you meaningful information. 

Questions such as:

• When we worked together on the ABC prospect, from your viewpoint, what did I do to help move that sale along?  What did I do that maybe challenged it?
• From your observations of working with me, what are the activities that you see hold me back from being more successful?
• What do you think I do well?

Ask for balanced information and be prepared with follow-up questions to get to the ‘real’ feedback (just like in a sales call where you have to ask for more than the first response).

If you have a sales manager, they are a good source. But don’t stop there, your colleagues and customers – even administrative support – might be able to help you shine the light on those blind spots and turn them into ‘gold’.  Once you know what works and doesn’t – you can address them!

What other questions can you ask to find the blind spots?

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Tags: learning, maximize sales productivity, Sales Tips

What’ s unique about you?  I’m sure there are a lot of different ‘things’ that make you who you are.  And that is good! 

 April is  National Diversity Month and Lynn Zimmer of the Sales Pro Insider team wrote the following note to remind us to celebrate diversity:

     -     -     -     -     –

A national survey conducted in 2007 revealed that diversity in culture and background contributes to innovation and greater business success.  Over the years, this concept has continued to grow.

When we open our ideas to diversity around us – including the many diverse ideas available – creativity knows few limits!

Diversity means acknowledging, appreciating, and ultimately managing differences and similarities at the same time.  Its reach includes categories such as:

• Race
• Gender
• Age
• Religion
• Sexual Orientation
• Physical Disabilities
• Nationalities
• Political Beliefs
• And others…

The month of April celebrates workforce diversity and fair and inclusive workplaces. 

To celebrate diversity this month, take time to gain a greater appreciation of the diversity of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences of those around you.

“Diversity is not about diminishing differences by overshadowing it with similarities.  It is about creating active working environments where fostering appreciation of both differences and similarities is paramount.”

- Stephen Stewart

-     -     -     -     - 

I’d like to add a few other diverse ideas here… we can ‘categorize’ all of us into a lot of different groupings of how we are diverse – but does it matter what ‘bucket’ we are in?  My 19 year old, who has a strong interest in all things cultural (he’s studying geography in college) told us again last weekend how much he dislikes having to categorize his ethnicity and such on surveys (he volunteered to complete the Census Survey for our household).  

So I ask you to celebrate the uniqueness of yourself and those around you – find what makes EACH person who they are and celebrate that wholeheartedly!  The rewards in business will pay off as you accept and adapt to them.

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Tags: consultative selling, Sales, Sales Tips

Yesterday’s post discussed nurturing leads and customers with drip marketing. As promised, today’s post shares some tools you can use to automate and make it easiest for you.

It’s always great to know WHO to go to with questions, and Nancy Nardin of Smart Selling Tools  came thorugh on ideas for her drip marketing picks.  Nancy shares the following tools:

• ActOn Software

Obviously, marketing automation software would be helpful but they aren’t cheap or free. However there is one marketing automation tool that claims to be focused on the Fortune 5,000,000.  Yes, 5 million.  In otherwords, all the small businesses who need affordable marketing automation. You can get started with ActOn Software for $14.95/mo/1000 active contacts. They’ve built in all the typical marketing automation functionality such as demand generation, lead qualification, website tracking, webinar and event management and automation capabilities.

•  Yoono

A free toolbar slider (a vertical toolbar) that lets you track tweets and rss feeds of your client.  Here’s how to use it to stay in regular communication with your prospects.

1st. Create a list of your prospects’ twitter ids (you do this within Yoono).  Then each morning, simply pop open the Twitter Panel.  You’ll see a summary of all the tweets from your list.

2nd Simply re-tweet the ones you pick.  Your prospects will notice that you’re following them and are interested.

 The RSS functionality works the same way.  You simply subscribe to your prospects’ blogs. Then pop open the RSS Panel once a day or as frequently as you choose. From there you can share, comment, or tweet the blog post.

 And lastly, if you’re surfing the web and find a site (a page or article) you think your Twitter followers would be interested in, simply click the “Share” button on the side panel. It opens up a window for you to tweet about the page. The link is automatically inserted. Hit submit and you’re done.  Again, just hit “share”, type your tweet, hit submit – you’re done.

•  GoldMail

When sending along a helpful guide or other document, use GoldMail to personalize.  Easily record a quick personal message that attaches itself to the document.  GoldMails can be sent from within Microsoft Outlook or from Constant Contact. Click here to see a quick video demo on how to use GoldMail in Constant Contact

You get a lot of functionality in their free version.  You get even more with their $9.95/month version.

 Your GoldMails can also be posted via links within Twitter, or Facebook or use them on your web-site for call-to-actions.

•  Cloud2Mail

Want to really impress your contacts? Send them real mail. Cloud2Mails tagline is “Real Mail as easy as Email”.

Whether you’re sending postcards, greeting cards, brochures or just a note, all of these formats can be ordered and mailed much like an email.

Cloud2Mail is a free application on the Salesforce.com Appexchange with a simple low per unit cost structure (.50-.99).

At Sales Pro Insider we use SendOut Cards for our ‘real mail’. There is a small charge for it – and it is worth it! 

And there you have it!  Easy and cost-effective ways for you to stay in front of your leads and customers without the boring ‘check-in call’ every few weeks.

Please share other tools you use as a Comment.

Happy nurturing!

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Tags: Creativity, prospecting, Sales Tips