Well the calendar declares it to be spring. And spring brings the message of new life, freshness, and light.  Couldn’t we all use that in our daily lives?

That’s why I share the Optimist Creed by Christan Larson with you today.

The Optimist Creed

Promise Yourself …

To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.

To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet.

To make all your friends feel that there is something in them.

To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.

To think only of the best, to work only for the best and expect only the best.

To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the great achievements of the future.

To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.

To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.

To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

What a GREAT promise to make to yourself!  And think about it, with this optimism, how would your sales be affected? How many people would SEEK to work with you? How many loyal customers would you have? How many sales would you make?

Most people like to be around people that make them feel better – for those that don’t - well, i think they are in the minority.

Today – find one part of this creed to focus on and enjoy the day!

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March 1-7, 2010 is National Write a Letter of Appreciation week.  Wow – a whole week dedicated to appreciating – in writing – others! 

A national holiday like this is a PERFECT reminder for us to reconnect with prospects or customers.  The key tips are:

1. WRITE the letter. It’s not a phone call, email or text. Pen to paper. The recipient can hold it in their hands and for tactile people, that’s a good thing! Last month I got a thank you note from a prospect for the follow-up message I sent – on a quality note card and addressed just to them.  I knew this Doer type person appreciated it, or he wouldn’t have taken the time.
2. Be specific in your appreciation. “You are great to work with.” is okay – but something like “I really appreciate how you respond so quickly to my messages.” is much stronger!      I really believe in specific appreciation and as I completed my drive-thru banking transaction last Saturday, the teller said “Nancy, thank you for writing your account number of the back of the checks, it made it so much easier to pull up your account.”  I drove away as the recipient of specific appreciation – and felt how great that is. And the benefit to that teller?  I think I will always write the number on the back of the check now.
3. Do not SELL to them in this letter. The note is  to appreciate them and nothing more.
4. Hand write the address on the envelope. It’s much more personal.

Making time for writing these letters or notes will set you apart, get your name in front of people again and increase your energy!

The hardest part is DOING this.  Schedule an hour or two later this week to appreciate others.  Customers, your manager, assistants, colleagues, spouse, children, parents – everyone will appreciate it!  Set a goal of the number of people you will write a letter to this week and then WRITE them.

My appreciation to each of you?  I very much appreciate the comments that are left to blog posts. It helps me know that I am not just writing to the ‘universe’ – that real people have connected and are adding to the conversation of the posts.  Thank you commenters!

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Ever been in a conversation with a customer or prospect that missed the mark?  Whether we are responding to objections, trying to communicate value or understand their situation, a key component of being an effective communication is to match intensity.

Matching intensity is not an easy idea. It was first explained to me by an industrial psychologist about 10 years ago. I kind of understood what he was saying and then started observing.  What I found is that many communication ‘misses’ are caused by this mis-match of intensity!

You may have heard that we should ‘mirror’ the prospect or match them emotion for emotion.  And that can be effective.  But  with so many emotions, will that always work? Do you want to match:

• Anger with anger?
• Frustration with more frustration?
• Irritation with irritability?

Probably not.  What we need to do is match the INTENSITY of what they are communicating with like intensity.  Here’s an example:

Customer:  “You just gave me the wrong product after a long wait, I’d like a refund.”  with a medium tone and loudness.

Sales Rep very calmly: “Yes, there was an error in fulfillment. What would you like us to do?”

Customer: “I would like you to take back this product and give me a refund like I asked.” Louder and more anxious.

Sales Rep: “Well, we can do that and the refund will take 30 days to process  through your account.” Very calmly with a lower voice

Customer: “I don’t think YOU get this. I have already paid and waited 30 minutes and now  you gave me the wrong item, I was an immediate refund.” Incredulous and loud.

The calm Sales Rep: “I’m sorry to hear that. We would hate to lose your business. The way we are set up is that we will issue a credit in 30 days.”

Customer: “Well that doesn’t make sense!”  Irritated and increasingly frustrated.

And on the discussion went.  What happened?  The rep was saying some of the right things and trying to be  understanding, but by staying very calm and low-key the customer escalated their emotional reaction and intensity because they didn’t think the rep was ‘getting it’.   This is a real situation – that went further involving a store manager who was ‘calm and collected’ and everyone just kept missing my signals of irritation (yes, I was the irritated customer).  What I needed to know was that someone “GOT IT” and that the gift I was expecting now wasn’t here in time for the holiday. 

The disconnect in intensity led to misunderstanding, less engagement and trust. It also has led me to not do business with that company for many years now.  They weren’t showing understanding OR listening to me.  Yes, they heard my words – but they weren’t getting the intensity and emotion of the importance of it. 

 Instead if the rep had been more animated and emphasized his concern with an increase in tone and energy, we might have headed in a more mutually agreeable direction.

What’s that mean for all of us?  Even when something goes wrong, when we try to  understand and connect with the person – we can increase the customer’s level of satisfaction and loyalty.  In fact,  a study by the Washing D.C. firm Technical Assistant Research Programs found that you can increase customer retention by communicating effectively during a difficult situation.

The key is to match intensity level of whatever the emotion.  It is not to get emotional with them.

This just isn’t about complaints – its also about excitement!  If you are presenting a solution and you notice the energy changing in your prospect – pay attention and adjust. 

The adjustment might need to be up or down in intensity – its getting to the right level that matters.  Sometimes I see reps get MORE intense and animated thinking that will get a higher level of interest.  What it usually does is cause the other person to dismiss the discussion as superficial.

For many of us – its not comfortable trying to figure out emotions its much easier to pick up on intensity.  Some ‘intense-level’ signs to watch for:

• Tone of voice
• Energy level
• Pace of speech
• Level of animation and movement in their body
• How close they are standing
• The degree of eye contact
• Whether they are using ‘feeling’ or ‘thinking’ words

Not an easy concept to grab – but one that can make a HUGE difference when you want to build an intense connection with your customer.

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What is your toughest sales situation?  Is it Prospect A?  The Gatekeeper?  Or the ‘new’ guy that needs to prove his worth by making your sale tougher?  Though these might all be REALLY tough situations, many times our toughest sale isn’t to a paying customer, it’s with the internal folks in marketing, customer support, operations and leadership.

Whether we like it or not, collaborating or working WITH others  IN your company to ‘win’ their assistance and support will help you sell more.  Having them on your side makes all your sales activities from marketing, prospecting, presentation, order fulfillment, and customer relations easier and more efficient.

John Miller, author of QBQ! and now Outstanding! uses a phrase that still makes me chuckle, he says that some sales teams call the ‘insiders’ at their company, the Sales Prevention Department.  Now come on!  Are the operations and marketing people really trying to keep you from making sales?  Probably not.  

Like an ignored or unhappy customer, though, they can make our jobs more challenging.

This week I am in Florida working with my Sharpenz.com partner, Alice Kemper.  Watching the support of her Administrative Manager  reminds me why she is so successful.  Alice takes care of Gloriann Perque at work and as a person. In turn, Gloriann will do ‘anything’ (she told me so) for Alice.  And that pays off in business.

With my associates at Sales Pro Insider, Inc. I am fortunate to have Lynn Zimmber, Kayla Kutz and Claire Ziffer help me with so many things – even at last notice.

I see this with many successful sales professionals. They know who to go to when they need to get something done.  They may be demanding, but they also take care of their internal folks.  Some even give gifts or money at year-end to share their bonus and commission that they couldn’t have earned without that support.  Others are thoughtful throughout the year and verbalize their appreciation often.

So today I challenge you collaboratively sell with your internal people:

• Build a relationship with your internal associates
• Ask them questions - understand what THEY do and why they do it.  Find out what they need to be able to serve you better
• Listen – really listen
• Appreciate them and what they do
• When giving them something to do, ask for any potential obstacles and work with them to remove them
• Ask for a decision or commitment. 

Identify one person on your team (it can even be your manager) that you want buy-in from for you and your efforts.  And then begin today to sell with them and win them over.  An easy way is to show genuine appreciation TODAY!  Your benefits will be huge!

What do you think?  How have you turned an internal associate into a huge advocate that helps you?  Who is the internal person that you want to recognize and appreciate? 

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We wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or whatever you celebrate at this time of year.  For us, Christmas is magical.  Most people seem to be in a good mood, ramp up their giving spirit and take some time off from work.  I hope you are one of them.

Thank you for your readership this year, for your comments and encouragement.  My wish for you is that you get ‘enough’ next year.  Enough of what you need to sustain and grow you.  Enough to have more to share with others.  And enough to keep you happy and healthy. 

Lynn Zimmer of the Sales Pro Insider team wrote a recent message about gifts that is worth sharing.  Lynn heard a woman stating that she has made the most of her ‘bonus’ 33 years of life after a terminal prognosis.  Lynn wrote:

It caused me to reflect on the many gifts that I can give to my family, friends and business associates that don’t need to be gift wrapped. 

The gift of listening:  Take time to listen to other people.  In our world of multi-tasking, we many times overlook the importance of giving someone our undivided attention.  When you ask a question take time to really listen to the answer.

 The gift of time:  Mentally slow down and experience the moment you’re in.  Savor the special moments…and share them with the people you’re with.  It’s hard to do when you’re pressed for time, but definitely worth it!

 The gift of thanks:  Take a moment to give sincere thanks to everyone who has helped you this year.

 Christmas gift suggestions:

To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect.                                 

  -Oren Arnold

  “Re-gifting” can be one of the best gifts of all.  Share these gifts with your customers, family and friends and experience the richness that returns.

-     -     -     -     -     -     -

Thank you Lynn for the great gift suggestions!

Merry Christmas – or Holidays to all!

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 Think it is hard to remember your customer and prospects’ names?  Well, you may never heard of Rachel Krishevsky, but she is an inspiration for anyone who has trouble with names.

Rachel and her husband married at 19 and then bore 11 children, who then multiplied, and they multiplied, and so on and so on and so on.  When Rachel died last week at 99 years old she had 1400 descendants!  Yes, 1400!  While that is impressive, what struck me as unbelievable is that she knew each of them by name!  And that all these descendants are going to miss her.

In our world of databases, Blackberry (or the like), contact lists, etc. its hard to fathom not having access to names and contact information at our finger tips.  What did sales pros do before all this technology?  The great ones committed names to memory.

I see professionals who are so dependent on technology - and we know there are many benefits – but what is being lost?  When we focus enough on the person to remember their name or something personal about them, we forge a different connection and build trust more easily.

Now this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use the great tools available to us.  But we should supplement the technology with the human touch. 

It means that we should take time BEFORE each contact to really think about the person, what you know about them, what you like about them, your previous conversations and what needs to be accomplished at this contact point.  Prepare to connect with the human being and then move into business. 

These few minutes of focus on THAT specific person will allow your meeting to start at a different level and allow both of you to be open, honest and efficient.  This leads to more sales – or finding out that there won’t be a sale and you can move on to bigger things.

Wouldn’t it be great if this focus on the person led you to mutliply and multiply and multiply for another 1400 raving-fan customers?  

More on Rachel.

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Customer loyalty should be a goal of anyone who sells, serves or leads.  It doesn’t matter if your customer is a paying customer, a peer, direct report or an internal customer.  The benefits of earning their loyalty are many.

A loyal customer:

1. Will give you the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong.
2. Works WITH you and not against you.
3. Helps you help them – its not just one sided.
4. Can ease your way into new relationships.    
5. Gives you more business!

And the workday is just more enjoyable when you are working with those that appreciate you.

I’m in the midst of a seminar with IT professionals.  Yesterday each person identified someone they liked to do business with – and were loyal to.  They reported on the characteristic that the person has that makes them want to work with them.  The list was long and all but one characteristic was about HOW the other person worked with them than WHAT the person actually did.

Is that a tongue twister?  Simply, your knowledge, technical expertise and skill do matter.  But HOW you work with your customers – communication and focus on what’s important to them is what makes the difference.

What about you?  Who are you loyal to and why?  Leave a comment and give them the appreciation they deserve!

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There were several losses this week in the entertainment world – Michael Jackson, Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett. It seems everyone knew these three celebrities and the media is talking of their legacies.  They each leave a unique thumbprint and memories to those that worked with and watched  them. 

What about you?  Are you a lasting sales celebrity?  If you were suddenly gone, how would your colleagues and customers define you?    

In sales careers we have unique opportunities to create lasting legacies with a lot of different people. 

1. Our support team.  Does your internal team value you or do they consider you a “pain”? 
2. Our customers.  Do they know you value them and that you will always do the right thing for them?
3. Our sales team.  Do you share information that can help them be more successful?  Do you give encouragement and listen to them?
4. Our management.  Do you provide value to your managers above what they expect?  Not just in production but in collaboration, insight and problem solving?

The real Sales Celebrities are transparent, productive and most of all people of integrity.  A tip I give every professional I work with…every action and inaction you take leaves something behind. 

P.S. I was having some fun trying to think of Michael Jackson songs (I’m not saying how I know all these songs ) that could be sales anthems….

• Beat It – because we need to beat “it” – sales goals, the competition, our fears every day.
• You Are Not Alone – we should be in touch with our prospects and customers often.
• Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough – we need to keep on until we have reached those goals!
• I Want You Back – earning back lost customers can accelerate our results this year.
• Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ – action gets us where we need to be.
• We Are Here to Change the World – if your product/service guides value, you can change someones world for the better!
• Unbreakable – Sales pros weather the ups and downs and keep on going.

Any to add?  I’m sure there are more song connections.

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Want to increase your probability of sales success?  “Lost” customers may be the key!  What do you do with your former customers?  Many salespeople hit the ‘delete’ key and focus on new prospects. Big mistake!  These former customers can make great future customers.  Another tip to recession proof your sales – earn business again from customers you’ve “lost” over the years.

How valuable can this be?  A study done by Marketing Metrics shows that we have a 20-40% chance of re-engaging a former customer vs. a 5-20% chance of turning a new prospect into a customer!

Why is now a good time to focus on former customers?  The consolidations, bankruptcy filings, and workforce reductions leave HUGE opportunities for those who are ready to capture more business in this economy.

What can you do?  First,        look BACK!

1. Review your past three years of sales data. Make a list of customers who have not bought/worked with you in that time.  Then for each organization note: 
   • When was your last contact with them?
   • Do you know what/whom they are now working with?
   • On a scale of 1-10, how likely is it they would welcome contact from you again?  If the score is a 5 or higher, they are a good prospect!
   • What do you know about them that you can use to reconnect? History, experiences, challenges they had, people they work with, hobbies or any shared stories?
2. Research your primary contact at each identified organization.  Use the Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, bizjojrnals.com search tools.  Find out what he or she has been up to!  Are they still with that company?  In the same position?
3. Review past business you did with this organization.  What product/service did they use?  What was their experience – favorable, neutral, bad? Why did they stop working with you?  Do you know? Identify whether this was a valuable customer to you/your company.  Sometimes customers can be more work than the value they brought. No sense in recontacting a customer who drained you

Second, use this background information to prepare to move FORWARD.

1. Are the reasons they stopped being a customer relevant any longer?
2. What value might you provide them today?
3. What experiences have you had since you last spoke that would help them?
4. What information would help them Right now?
5. What questions should you ask them?

Third, make CONTACT!

“Hi Gary, it has been a long time. We continue to help companies such as yours increase xyz or decrease abc.  When we worked together, we provided you with the product you needed at exceptional cost and delivery time.  With all the market changes we’ve still been able to help companies with increasing xyz.  And I didn’t forget about you!”

Then turn the focus to THEM!  Be prepared to listen…maybe there is information you don’t know about whey they are no longer a customer.  This should be addressed first.  Then you can move into a series of open-ended questions that will allow you to see if there is an opportunity to work together again.  Some examples:

• “What are you currently working on”
• “How is this economy affecting your business?”
• “What is most important to you these days?”
• “How happy are you with your current supplier?”

This works!  In the past month we’ve reconnected with former customers. And we found that some of them have done NOTHING since we worked with them.  They haven’t left us at all. And yet we haven’t done business with them in a while.  Now that we made the effort to open the discussion again, we are moving through the sales process to see how we can help them again in 2009.

This tip does take work – but the upside of the effort is HUGE!  You never know what hidden gems of business you might FIND in your lost customers.

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Have you noticed the changing buying patterns in business these past few months?  The economy is forcing everyone to re-evaluate how business is conducted and who business is conducted with.  The smart sales pros know changes in buying patterns means we have to change too.  One way to maximize your sales productivity is to re-evaluate the prospects in your pipeline.

Recently I took a hard look at the l-o-n-g list of prospects for our company.  At first glance, I thought “Wow, we have a lot of potential business!”  (Whew!)   But then I started looking closer. 

And I realized…

These aren’t all prospects anymore!!  The likelihood of doing business with some of these people and companies in the next year was extremely low! 

I don’t know about you, but we have limits to our time, energy and resources to invest in our sales efforts.  Our priorities had been pulled out of whack these last 6 months.  The anticipation of what the recession might bring caused some of our clients to postpone scheduled services.  Yet there were other prospects that wanted to reconnect and reconsider our expertise in how to increase sales! 

Now the big question, “Where are we spending our time, efforts and energy?”

I challenged our team to consider some tough questions for each name on the prospect list.  In light of what is going on with the economy:

1. What do you know about this person or company?  How might the economy be affecting them?  What does this do for their need for what we provide?  Do they need us now more than ever?
2. When was our last contact and what happened? 
3. Where are you in the sales process?  Be realistic.  Are you in the beginning stages of building trust and a relationship?  Have you uncovered needs?  Are they open to a solution?  Is it time to tie WHAT you do to their needs?  Have you gone through the process and not asked them for a decision?
4. What is the likelihood of them moving to the next step in the sales process in the next 60 days?  The next 6 months?
5. Do they have money to spend on what you offer?
6. Are you talking to the decision maker?
7. What have you done to provide proof and validation of potential results?
8. What value can we provide them today to demonstrate our expertise and to help them?

We learned that we need to realign our efforts. Some of our prospects needs had changed and so must our approach to earning their business.  We also found that some prospects who took a lot of our time and energy were never going to ”buy”.  They were happy to have lots of free consulting and resources.  But no budget to spend.  This doesn’t mean we will ignore them, but they won’t take up so much of our time.

We’ve been working on the new approach for a month and are having very good results.  Recession or not, 2009 is looking bright because we are focusing on the right prospects!

What about you?  Is it time to re-evaluate your prospect list?  To identify your real opportunities in light of the current economic conditions and to realign your efforts to the highest likelihood of success?  How can making the time now ensure you have recession proofed your sales?

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