In one of my all-time favorite movies, Clint Eastwood articulates what might be the greatest salesperson’s motto ever – and he wasn’t even playing a salesman!

Okay, I admit it. I’ve never seen Clint Eastwood sell. I’ve also never seen him play a salesman in the movies, although I’m sure that at some point during his career, he’s had to do some selling to get a part, or to get a movie made. What I have seen Clint do is articulate one of the best sales philosophies I’ve ever seen.

One of my favorite movies is an early-80s piece called “Heartbreak Ridge,” starring Clint as Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway, a craggy Marine that’s committed to the Corps, but is too headstrong and rebellious to ever hold rank for long. Highway takes over a small band of misfits that he must whip into shape as a model Marine Recon unit. At one point, one of his charges asks him how to accomplish a challenge, and Highway growls, “You’re Marines. You adapt. You improvise. You overcome.” If “adapt, improvise, overcome” isn’t one of the most succinct selling philosophies around, I don’t know what is. Let’s look at what it means to a salesperson, shall we?

Adapting, as it applies to sales, should be the most natural part of our jobs. As much as we’d like to think, we don’t know everything. We’re not going to know everything. Our environment, both competitive and customer, changes constantly. Salespeople who don’t adapt simply don’t survive.

To adapt (change) to meet the needs of our environment, we must first understand what our environment is. We do that by acquiring information and knowledge. The best single source of that information, happily, is also the most important – our customers. When salespeople begin sales calls by asking questions to determine needs before presenting, they are adapting. In short, the essence of adapting in sales is to discover how your customer wants to buy – then create a way to sell that matches. Listen to your customers. They will tell you what you need to know.

Improvising is a very important skill for salespeople. Generally, “improvising” means creating something on short notice – or no notice. A good example in the entertainment world might be improvisational comedy, where the audience suggests a topic and actors make up a skit on the spot.

In sales, improvisation means changing our selling techniques, tactics, or presentation at a moment’s notice. If you’ve ever walked into a presentation where you anticipated an audience of one or two, then found that the entire executive committee decided to sit in, you know what I mean.

Improvisation can also be found in the salesperson who avoids canned sales “pitches,” but rather tailors his/her presentation and product offering to the client – and does so on the spot. That kind of salesperson is almost always guaranteed to be successful in sales, because he/she is speaking directly to the customer’s needs at all times.

The real key to improvisation is to be prepared for as many eventualities as possible. Know your stuff, and use the knowledge of your stuff, and you’ll be prepared to improvise.

Finally, salespeople must overcome obstacles in their path – but they must recognize those obstacles. Some salespeople turn selling into a contest between themselves and their customer. Not surprisingly, the customer usually wins, and the salesperson loses. Let’s be clear – the contest should NEVER pit the salesperson against the customer. The salesperson is pitted against any and all competitors or obstacles to helping the customer reach a beneficial buying decision. Note that “competitors” does not have to mean other companies that do what you do – “competition” can simply mean maintaining the status quo, doing whatever it is in-house as opposed to outsourcing, or anything else that serves as an alternative to buying what you have to sell.

If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend renting it. You’ll see Clint at his crustiest, and you’ll also see a pretty accurate sales philosophy played out in war guise.

When I am speaking, I get a lot of inquiries and solicitations asking me what my “#1 tip” for increasing business is.

This, of course, is a very complex subject that requires a lot of detail. But there is one quick tip I send along that can help people in any phase of business or even their lives. And that is:

Take the second shot.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Persistence pays off.” Most people interpret this to mean that “persistence” means aggravating and annoying people to death until they buy to get rid of you.  Many things, including fear, keep people from going down this road. However, there’s a nice medium ground, and that is what I call the “second shot.” The second shot means just that – it means trying twice to make good things happen.

The reason that I focus on a second shot, rather than a third or fourth, is that most salespeople are easily put off. While the public image of salespeople is that of the bulldog that never lets go, the truth is far from it; most salespeople are perfectly willing to take the first “no” rather than battle a bit for the win. That’s a shame, because a lot of business and opportunity lies beyond the first “no.” Let’s look at this in context, as I would in a sales training course.

The context will be the teleprospecting phone call, which as you know, I still believe is the core skill of B2B new business generation. Let’s imagine a call from a salesperson selling copiers:

Salesperson: “Hi, Mr. Prospect, this is Salesperson from Pretty Darn Awesome Copier Company. Our manufacturer has just released some new technology that can drastically reduce your per-page cost while actually increasing the quality of your paper documents. Could we meet next week, and see if there is a fit between your company’s needs and this new technology?” (NOTE – this is an imperfect call – there’s a step missing – but it’s typical of a decent teleprospecting call.)

Prospect: “Sorry, I’m not interested.” Now, about half the time that a customer says this, they’ll hang up on you. No second-shot opportunity exists on those calls. But, half the time, they’ll hang on and wait for the salesperson to say something weak like, “Uh, thanks anyway.” If you say that, you’re done. Instead, let’s take the second shot.

Salesperson: “I don’t blame you for not being interested. I’ve sold a number of these machines already, and I’ve found that the customers didn’t really have any interest until they understood what these machines could do, how they could reduce expenses and at the same time build your customer image through better documents. Would it be worth, say, 20 minutes of your time to at least know what those customers now know? If there’s a fit, I’ll tell you, and if there isn’t a fit, I’ll even tell you that. Fair enough?” Second shot taken. You’ve now given the prospect a better window into why he/she should take the appointment, and perhaps even aroused a bit of curiosity. Here’s the thing – whatever your chance is of getting the appointment on the second shot, it’s better than the zero you’d have if you bailed out at the first ‘no.’ A good rule of thumb is that whatever your ratio of contacts-to-appointments (let’s say you get 1 appointment in every 5 contacts normally), you’ll increase that 20 to 30% with a  good second shot effort.

Of course, even though this sounds good, it doesn’t come for free. You have to have a game plan. You need to anticipate common objections, have responses ready, and be very focused on the conversation. That requires a lot of thought and preplanning, and it also requires a focus on generating an appointment, not a sale.

This technique doesn’t limit itself to cold calls, either. Final objections, job hunting, getting a raise, getting a date – all of these can be improved by focusing on the second shot. Just keep in mind these steps:

1. Be prepared. Know the objections and the common responses.
   

   ---

2. Create a “win” for the other party by accepting your second shot.
   

   ---

3. Take extra shots with great care. Two makes you persistent, more can make you a pest, depending on the situation (the farther into the sales process you are, the more persistent you should be).
   

   ---

4. Finally, remember that there are some objections that cannot, and should not, be overcome. Use good judgment, and don’t sell bad business.
   

   ---

Most non-salespeople reading this article would think that it’s completely unnecessary; salespeople always do this, right? Nonsense – most salespeople are easily put off, because they fear pushing farther. Don’t be that guy or gal, and you’ll be more successful.

Is it time to reinvent yourself, or your company?  It’s hard to say – but this article might shed some light on it.

Whenever I think about tough economic times – such as we’re dealing with now – I always remember an interesting story about the inventors/founders of the Palm corporation. You know, Palm – the company that basically built the handheld computer industry. In the article, I was reminded of the fact that Palm actually started as a company that made software for handheld computers made by other companies. They just had one teeny-weeny little problem in the early 90s. Their industry was dying without ever really living.

If you remember, the handheld computers of the time sucked. They were heavy, awkward, and didn’t work well. Therefore, if you happened to be in the business of making software for a type of computer that people weren’t buying, you were not in a particularly good position in the market. During a meeting with their investors, one investor happened to ask Palm’s founders if they knew how they would build their own handheld. Jeff Hawkins, the brains at Palm, replied that he did. Hawkins actually didn’t have the slightest clue how to build a handheld, but the board didn’t know that. They tasked Hawkins with reinventing Palm. And in the reinvention (if you hadn’t guessed), there’s a Business Development lesson for all of us.

Frankly, Hawkins was working with more machismo than anything else, but sometimes, that’s what it takes. After the board meeting, he and his co-founder had a brief meeting where they decided that it was better to take a risk of going out in a blaze of glory, rather than dying of a thousand paper cuts as their industry tanked. The rest, of course, is history. Palm reinvented themselves, and in so doing, reinvented their industry. It goes without saying that a lot of people got rich in doing it.

I’m reminded of a couple of my Consulting clients (and several other people I’ve talked to in the last couple of years) who lament the fact that their industries are dying, shrinking, or just stagnant. Or worse – that their companies are. Or, finally, I’ve encountered salespeople with the same lament about their territories. And they don’t know how to fix the problem. Well, take heart. There is a fix. But it takes the same kind of huevos that Hawkins showed, and sometimes it takes the willingness to plow forward without a full knowledge of what lies ahead.

If you’re finding yourself in this situation, you have to reinvent yourself, or die a slow death. One essential truth of business is that you’re either growing or shrinking. There’s no middle ground. Even if your revenues are the same year to year, you’re shrinking due to increases in costs. And if you’re shrinking, it takes radical steps to fix the problem. I’ll tell you how, but I’m making the assumption that you’re doing things right. You’re still making sales calls, your products and your services are meeting customer expectations, and overall, you’re not actively killing your company. Here are the things you need to think about to reinvent yourself:

• Change your stuff. Your “stuff” is your array of products and services. Sometimes, the stuff you’ve been selling for years is no longer the stuff that the market demands – maybe your technology has become obsolete, or maybe your products have fallen behind your competitors. You still have a valued asset – your customer relationships. Use that relationship. Find new stuff (preferably somehow allied to your current stuff) that those happy customers will buy from you. I worked recently with the sales manager for a copier company here in Kansas City. Nothing remarkable in that, except that the company started many years ago as a typewriter repair company. Think there’s a lot of call for typewriter repair these days? At some point, they reinvented. With some good sales training (provided by me of course), they have succeeded.
• Change your customer base. Maybe, instead of adding new products, your stuff can be sold to a different industry or customer base. The classic example of this is Viagra. There’s no delicate way to put this, but Viagra was originally developed as a medication for certain heart conditions – and it didn’t work as well as they hoped. It had…uh…certain side effects that were marketable. Conventional thinking trashes a couple hundred million in research and development – creative thinking has made billions.
• Go to the mattresses. Remember that old line from the “Godfather?” Sometimes, you’re not in a position to change your customers or your products. It’s just that someone is going to survive, and it’s going to be either you or your competitors. Well, who’s it gonna be? This is definitely a risk it all strategy, but if you’re going to do this, there’s no halfway. History is littered with failed companies that viewed their competitors as “gentlemen” and “friends” who reacted too late to their competitors’ aggressiveness. Don’t be that guy.
• Cut out the middleman. If your product or service is sold through distribution, and those distributors quit supporting you, don’t wait. Go to the end user. It’s a tough strategy, but if it’s survival, who do you want it to be?
• Vertically integrate. This is what Palm did. Their survival depended on the quality of the manufacturers upstream from them. When those manufacturers laid a collective egg, they were toast until they decided to take control of their own destiny. A decade later, they still command the handheld computing market.

Usually, I write my columns hoping that they apply to a lot of my readers. In all honesty, I hope it doesn’t apply to too many of you. However, if you see yourself in any of the above examples, it’s time to fix the problem. You can either write a success story or a failure. Good luck and good selling!

At this time of year, there really are two types of salespeople – the ones who can give thanks for a great year, and the ones who ring their bell and beg for dimes.  Which are you?

Ah, yes, the holiday season is upon us. That means that this is the time to spend with friends and family, giving thanks, gifts, and appreciation for all that they give us. It’s also the season for something that is charming at its start, but – if we’re all honest – can get kind of annoying by Christmas – the Salvation Army bell ringers at every supermarket and shopping center. It seems to me that there is a parallel in the sales world.

I’ve always found that in selling, there are essentially two types of salespeople within the last month and a half of the year. Those who have had a successful year are in a very celebratory mood, because they already have a pretty good idea where their year-end numbers will be. They’re not worried about the “holiday objection;” instead, they are thinking about, and lining up, January business to get a good start on the year. The other kind has had a bad year, and spends their time running from customer to customer, ringing their bell and begging for dimes so that the less fortunate (themselves) can have a Christmas. Which are you? More importantly, would you like to be one of the celebrators next year?

If you do, it needs to start NOW. Over the years, I’ve written several articles on dealing with the “holiday objection,” (“talk to me after the holidays”). The reason that salespeople have trouble with this objection is that they don’t contribute value to the discussion. Too many salespeople spend their lives doing what I call the “doughnut call,” where they bring a box of donuts and ask for an order. If you’re one of them, it doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re NOT one of them, you’re still probably wanting to move ahead next year, so let’s talk about that. Here are some ways to redo your game for 2011:

Every call has a purpose. The biggest sales-killer is the purposeless sales call; i.e. a call that begins with no agenda and ends with no result. Stop ‘just dropping by’ to get the weekly order (or beg for an order); instead dedicate yourself to moving the relationship forward on every call. Ask new questions, present new products, get introductions to new contacts, etc. If the relationship is no better at the end of the call than the beginning, you’re wasting your time and your customer’s.

No excuses. Salespeople are great at making excuses and coming up with reasons why they don’t control their own destiny. Quit it. Your company blows? Find another company. Products are outdated? Find new applications or again, find another company. No new business? Get comfortable with prospecting resources like ReferenceUSA and Jigsaw, and build your business. It’s on YOU, champ, and there are more resources available to you than ever before.

Know your numbers and live them. Sales is a process, and like all processes, it has predictable results. While equal quantities of activity may produce differing results in the short term, over the long haul, you can predict your results with a given level of activity. Given that, there’s really no excuse (see above) for poor results – other than an unwillingness to live by the numbers. Know your numbers – how many calls produce an appointment? How many appointments produce a viable proposal? How many viable proposals produce a sale? Then EXECUTE them to achieve what you need. Or – just for giggles – why not go BEYOND the basic formula and overachieve?

Better your game. The basic formula of sales achievement is: (Quantity of activity x Quality of activity = Results). We just talked about the quantitative issue; when was the last time you worked to up the qualitative side of the equation? If you learn a new technique, every call you make is more powerful. The truly great salespeople work consistently to become better week in and week out, year in and year out. Do you want to be one of those people?

There’s no magic to this, of course. It just takes hard work and dedication. Even in this time of 10% unemployment, few salespeople who live these principles are out of work. Start working NOW to make 2011 your best year ever, and this time next year, you can be giving thanks.

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently teaching engineers how to sell.  As it turns out, they’ve been helping me learn something very valuable about selling, too.

For whatever reason, I have spent a lot of my time, particularly within the last three years, working with a lot of companies who have sales engineers – meaning that they hire people with engineering backgrounds to be salespeople. When I tell people about this fact, they give expressions of horror or sympathy, because of what they perceive as the difficulty of training engineers to be salespeople. What’s funny is, I love working with engineers. Want to know why?

It’s simple. Engineers know their numbers, and they understand repeatable processes. Engineering is all about creating repeatable processes, and so is selling. The only difference is that in selling, our processes aren’t 100% repeatable because we sell to human beings who have their own motivations. That said, every new skill learned, every new technique applied, is designed to raise our percentages. If a new skill does not raise our percentages, we ought not use it. There’s a basic formula to calculating your chances of selling success, and it is:

(Quantity of activity) x (Quality of activity) = Results.

Notice that I didn’t use variables like “luck” or “economy” in there. Those are factors that might skew your results somewhat in the short term, but over the long haul, your success in selling depends entirely onhow much selling work you do, and how good you are at it. Although that sounds simple, there are a lot of salespeople – and a lot of companies – that do not get it. Salespeople will look forever for a “magic button” to improving their results without measurably improving their quantity or quality of sales activity. Hence, with this in mind, let’s take an engineering-focused approach to a sales improvement plan for 2011.

Step One: Optimize Quantity of activity.

You will notice that I didn’t say “Maximize” quantity of activity. Sometimes, the “maximum” level of activity isn’t desirable; you then find yourself rushing through calls just to put up numbers. You increase your Quantity, but you can actually decrease your Quality of activity enough that your results are worse. Consider this: Most B2B salespeople have about 40 hours of meaningful selling time to work with in any given week. Let’s look at two simple ways to maximize your “Between the lines” time:

Cut the BS. Look, I’m no saint when it comes to sales activity. I have been known to make personal calls, pick up dry cleaning, etc. during that 40 hour window. But whenever I do those things, I first consider the penalty for lost selling time. Too many salespeople don’t. Make a log, in fifteen minute increments, of how you spend your selling time during the week. What can you cut out, and more importantly, what meaningful selling activity can you plug in? Push as much personal junk off to the after-hours, and optimize your selling time.

Delegate. Every task has a value, and every person in a company also has a value. If the value of the task doesn’t match the value of the person, you have an inefficient allocation of resources (gee, that phrase sounds like the engineers are rubbing off on me, too). Essentially, we want tasks delegated to the lowest salaried level that can carry them out well. Hence, if your time is better spent outside making calls than sitting at your desk writing sales letters, perhaps you might work with your manager to find someone to write those letters for you. Can a customer service department or inside salesperson process that order? Give it to them, and get back to what you do best. In doing these things, you will optimize your activity.

Step Two: Improve Quality of Activity.

This step differs from Step One, because in Step One, there’s a limit to how much you can streamline your workday. There’s no limit to how much you can improve your skills – yet I see salespeople who have been selling for 25 years and obviously haven’t learned anything new in the last 20. This is a process ofcontinuous improvement, gang. The selling environment never stops changing. When you stop changing, you are giving up.

Get up to speed with technology. I thought about putting this under step one, but the truth is that technology can improve your quality of activity much more than your quantity. I’ve already made myself clear on social networking (and if you haven’t read those articles, they’re archived on my site in the blog section), but you should be using technological tools like Jigsaw and ReferenceUSA to find new prospects, Google News Alerts to keep up on current customers, and tools like Constant Contact to stay in touch. If you’re not on game with these, all the Tweeting in the world won’t help you. Selling in today’s world is a battle of information, and the salesperson with the most customer information usually wins.

Commit to a program of self improvement. You should be a continuous digester and user of selling information; fortunately today’s technology puts more of this at your fingertips than ever before. Commit to learning one new skill every two weeks. Week one is to research and read about the skill; week two is to practice and adopt it. Repeat the process every two weeks for the rest of your professional life. Sometimes these skills don’t work in your environment; have the professional discipline to toss them out.

No Donut Calls. The “Donut call” is the lowest common denominator of selling activity; it’s “Hi, here are some doughnuts. Can I have an order?” There’s no effort at relationship building here. Don’t be that guy or gal. Instead focus on building the relationship with every customer you have, and developing them to their maximum.

Well, this plan is simple to write, but it’s not simple to execute. However, if you COMMIT yourself to executing these steps on a continuous basis, 2011 will be a lot better than 2010 – even if your 2010 was pretty good. Hopefully that’s a repeatable process we can all get behind.

No, I’m not talking about making sales in December 2010. It’s too late for that.

 Heck, it’s been too late for that for a couple of months. Is it possible to get appointments and sales this month? Sure. But let’s be honest – it’s not likely by now.

There are few things as sure as the “holiday objection.” That objection goes roughly like this: “Sure, Troy, that sounds interesting. Tell you what – call me back after the holidays, will you?” If you’re selling, you’ve heard that objection. There are reasons both legitimate and illegitimate for it, and best of all, there are ways around it. I can’t give you magic words that will automatically make people want to see you, but I can help you win sales in December 2011.

Here’s the secret: You win December sales based on the work you do from January through November. You don’t win them in December. As I noted, there are reasons both legitimate and illegitimate for customers not wanting to see you during the holidays, so let’s take a look at them:

Your prospect is closing out the year. If you’re calling on top management – or worse, the financial department – you’re going to get this objection a lot. It’s real, or it can be. Upper managers are worried about closing out their books in December, and they may not want to make time to see a salesperson at that time. Unless you can demonstrate that seeing you is a higher return on investment than working on the books, you’re probably sunk with this one.

They’re out of money. This one can be figurative or literal. Figuratively, they’ve spent their budget. Literally, their own customers are stretching them out financially (trying to make their own year-end) and they’re cash-poor. If this is the real issue, you might be able to work out some creative payment or shipping terms that work with their financial issues.

Of course, there are illegitimate issues. Or at least, there are issues that salespeople like you and I perceive as illegitimate, and all those issues boil down to this one:

They just don’t freakin’ feel like seeing salespeople during the holiday season. Sad but true – however, customers will take whatever excuse they can to NOT see salespeople, and since salespeople accept the “holiday objection” so readily, why not use it?

So what can we do about this objection? Sadly, there’s not much we can do right now. There are the usual combinations of sales words we can try:

“So what will change after the holidays?”
”If you’d like to do business after the holidays, why not get together and start now?”

“How about helping me make a sale, and we can both have a Merry Christmas?”

The truth is that these words will sometimes get you in the door. Sometimes. Well, actually, probably not very much unless you’ve already built a foundation. What we know is that we need to build a sales funnel, and we need to communicate value in order for prospects to want to meet with us. In December, both those skills are raised tenfold. Keep in mind that, in addition to the “holiday objection,” the normal reasons that people won’t appoint us still exist.

To win in December, you have to start in January. You start by understanding customers’ decision and buy cycles, and plan your sales efforts. Most salespeople don’t do this – if the customer in front of them won’t help them make this month’s quota or next month’s quota, they aren’t interested. By doing so, they lose sales opportunities. Don’t be that guy (or gal). When a customer or a prospect indicates a potential buy cycle, note it and use it – plan for the long term.

You can also create a reason to buy in December that doesn’t exist in other months. Most people are thinking of cutting price right now, but you don’t have to do that. What if you offered a heightened level of initial service for December purchasers that only cost your time? By doing this, you might be able to pull some sales forward from January (you’re planning your sales ahead, remember?).

Or, if none of the above options are available, you can simply get more aggressive in December. Step up your letter-mailing efforts at the end of November, and bite the bullet and make more calls, more cold calls, more networking, more whatever in December to hit your numbers. Yes, it’s possible.

See, here’s a cold fact. Whatever you’re selling (with the possible exception of beachwear in Minnesota), it’s being purchased in December. That means someone is making the sale. Shouldn’t it be you? Get cracking. If not now, then when?

Are you really a relationship salesperson – or do you just think you are?  This article will help you decide.

For the past 5 years, I’ve recruited an average of a dozen people per year for my clients. For each of those jobs, I’ve interviewed anywhere between ten and 25 people; that means that I’ve interviewed somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 to 750 people in the last five years. I would bet that every one of them, at some point during the interview, described themselves as a “relationship salesperson.” Unfortunately, “relationship selling,” which should be one of the most meaningful phrases in selling, has become meaningless through overuse.

Over the course of time, some sales skills become more important and some become less important.  In today’s environment, one skill that is becoming more important is the skill of written sales communication.  Unfortunately, based on what I see, one skill that is rapidly going away is – you guessed it – written sales communications.

  Hence, today, we’re going to discuss the rights and wrongs of selling with a keyboard. First, however, I want to make one very important point: The very best sales letter, brochure, or marketing piece is no substitute for even an adequate face to face sales call. Written sales communications should be designed to facilitate the sales process, not replace it.

With that in mind, let’s think about our objective for a sales letter (for brevity’s sake, I’ll refer to all written sales communications as letters). The purpose of a sales letter (or for that matter, any form of sales communication) is to advance the relationship between seller and customer. Period. The litmus test for anything you’re about to send out, therefore, should be: Does this advance the relationship in any way? If it does, you’ve got a good start. (This is true for letters to prospects, as well – if the letter makes it more likely that a prospect will see you, it has advance the relationship.) Following are some ways a good sales letter can advance customer relationships:

Educate the customer. This is perhaps the all-time best way of advancing a customer relationship. If you can impart some piece of knowledge that helps your customer do a better job of running their own business, you win. If you’re selling to end users, think about ways to teach your customers how to better use your products and services; more successful implementations reflect on your knowledge and expertise. If you’re selling wholesale, consider teaching your customers better ways to sell, market, and price your products. If you sell to a vertical market, consider regular communications that help your customers identify industry trends quickly. You get the idea. If you hadn’t already figured it out, “Educating the Customer” is the primary purpose of the HotSheet.

Tell them about new stuff. Most companies add products and services from time to time, yet many of those same companies forget to tell their customer base about the new products and services. If you’ve ever had a customer say, “Hey, I didn’t know you did that, too,” you’re probably one of those companies. Remember – our objective with each customer is to sell them as much of our stuff as possible. A letter announcing new products helps advance the relationship by letting them know everything you could be doing for them. Make sure you remember to talk about the BENEFITS of the new products, as well.

“By the way, we also sell:” This is a close relative of the “new stuff” letter. If you sell multiple product categories or lines, your first sale usually will not cover the entire length and breadth of your product line. You still want your customer to know what you do, so after thanking them for their first purchase, send out a letter saying, “You might not be aware, but we can also serve your needs in these ways,” etc.

Personnel change notifications. Although it’s not pleasant, turnover in sales and service can’t be helped. If your outgoing salesperson has a large customer base, it’s probably going to be difficult to call them all (either by phone or face to face) before one calls in asking for Joe, who no longer works for you. Be proactive and let your customers know who will be taking care of them after the current person’s departure. Personnel changes tend to induce fear in customers (that their needs won’t be taken care of), so the more proactive and reassuring you can be, the better the relationship.

Of course, the types of written communications you might want to do encompasses much more than I have space for here, but if you give each letter the litmus test discussed above (does it advance the relationship?), you will be far ahead of those companies that send out communications that do nothing for either the sender or receiver.

I mentioned that I might have more to say on the topic of “Credibility” in the coming weeks.  I do, and here it is.

About a week ago, I was quoted in an article on Fast Company’s Blog site regarding credibility. The article was good, but there were some things that I said that I wish would have made the cut. However, since I do have the power of the keyboard, I’ll rectify those omissions here. The basic thrust of the article was, “How important is credibility in sales?” Here’s my basic reply, as quoted in the article:

“Credibility is the cornerstone of a successful selling career. As salespeople, we place ourselves in the product distribution process between the manufacturer and end user. The only reason for us to be there is that we can add value to the process. This means discovering customers’ needs and matching our products to those needs better than customers could if they were just leafing through a catalog or going to an Internet site.” Let’s take a deeper dive into this topic:

Credibility is the characteristic that causes people to believe what you say – because it’s you who is saying it. “Credibility” has less to do with the words being said, then, than the person who is saying them. Without that credibility, there is no way for salespeople to add the necessary value to become a part of the sales process. Then we are simply middlemen, and in some cases an obstacle to success rather than a help toward success.

Credibility has two basic components: Expertise and Trust. When the customer sees you as credible, they do so because they believe, first, that you know what you’re talking about (you know their needs and the product’s characteristics well enough to make a proper match), and that you are a trustworthy person (you’re not going to lie, fib, exaggerate, embellish, or any other word that means “deceive”). Without this credibility, there’s really no reason for you to be involved in the customer’s buying process at all. So how do we build these two characteristics?

Both characteristics have to be both built and demonstrated. Here are some ways of accomplishing this:

Building Expertise:

• Become a student of your product(s); keep abreast of new developments and applications.
• Know what your own company does well and not so well.
• Become a student of the process of selling; especially know how to ask good questions.
• Become a student of your customers; work to know their objectives, goals, and needs nearly as well as they do themselves.

Demonstrating Expertise:

• Solve problems for your customers live and on-the-spot.
• Write articles for trade publications.
• Blog or send out e-newsletters with helpful tips and techniques to maximize your product.
• Become a “go-to” person for your customers; be interested in solving problems beyond what you sell.
• Make the most out of your face time with your customers.

Building Trust:

• Commit yourself to never telling your customers anything that isn’t true.
• When a problem occurs, accept full responsibility (even if it’s not your fault) and fix it ASAP.
• If you don’t know the answer, take the time to find it rather than guessing or winging it.

Demonstrating Trustworthiness:

• Tell the truth – even when it hurts.
• Don’t sell anything your customer doesn’t need, or that is an inappropriate application.
• Commit yourself to being a problem solver.

I should tell you that true credibility in the eyes of your customers is not something that comes quickly or easily. But it is worthwhile, and probably the best investment of your time you can make.

One great way to generate selling opportunities is to create a teaching seminar.  Here are some guidelines on putting one together.

In this space, we talk a lot about the conventional selling approach; i.e. data driven prospecting, networking, and other “push” methods of getting to our prospects and selling them. There’s a good reason for that – those methods WORK. They worked 20 years ago, they work today, and I’m pretty comfortable with betting that they’ll work 20 years from now. But there are other ways of creating a selling opportunity, and that’s what we’ll talk about today.

One great way of creating a selling opportunity is to host a seminar for your customers and prospects. A seminar is a program that teaches your attendees something that they can take and use. The idea of the seminar is that, by teaching them something, you add value to their business as well as prove your expertise. Since expertise is one of the ways that people use to determine who they buy from, you become a potential vendor.

The road to hosting successful seminars is filled with pitfalls, though (believe me). I’m a big fan of hosting seminars as part of a successful sales approach, and hopefully in this article, we can avoid some of the pitfalls and give you pointers toward success.

Pitfall #1: Selling instead of teaching. When you announce a seminar, your potential attendees’ biggest fear is that they are in for a 60-minute sales pitch, rather than an educational opportunity. The timeshare industry is notorious for this, but they’re far from the only one. If you want to host successful seminars, you’ll make sure that your program is an educational opportunity for your attendees rather than a sales pitch. In my programs, I typically keep any sales messages (i.e. selling my own stuff) to no more than the last 1-2 minutes. If you do your job and teach them something of value, you’re better off than if you’d spent 30 minutes babbling at your audience about how you’re the best vendor.

Pitfall #2: Bad promotion. To maximize attendance, you should have more than one potential way of getting the message out. You’re best off to include current customers as well as prospects, and have channels for communicating with each. Salespeople can invite people personally, for instance. You can, and should, also promote via e-mail invitations. Web sites like Chamber of Commerce sites, as well as LinkedIn, serve as great ways to get your message out.

Success Point #1: Have a great topic! To drive attendance and enthusiasm at your program, you need a topic that is interesting and valuable to your attendees. For instance, instead of “How to operate the new ZXY-2000 printer,” you might have a workshop on printing with vivid colors and rich paperstock while still minimizing ink and toner expenses. “How-to’s” on your product rarely work; “how-to’s” that most of your customers can use, regardless of product, can be winners. If you’re in doubt about what constitutes a great topic, ask your customers! And remember, they won’t all be winners; I’ve held a few clinkers. Sometimes the topic that sounds great draws little interest, and vice versa. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t succeed at first.

Success Point #2: Have a good environment. Your seminar should be at a location that has a nicely decorated, professional appearing room for the seminar; you should have plenty of parking; drinks and other appropriate refreshments should be available, and most of all – COMFORTABLE CHAIRS are important! If you don’t have such a setting, many hotels, Chambers of Commerce, and other institutions do. Don’t be afraid to move off-site. If it’s a lunch-and-learn, the food should be excellent.

Success Point #3: To charge or not to charge? Early on in my business, when I hosted my own workshops and seminars, I gave much consideration to charging an attendance fee. For my own business, the right decision was in fact to charge, and I do so now. When I charge a fee, I get a much higher show-up ratio, and the people showing up are usually more qualified. That said, this is your decision, and has much to do with the quality and value of the information delivered. Whatever you charge should be a fraction of the value realized, though.

Success Point #4: Interactivity is better. The more you can involve your audience, the better; people stay more attentive if they know to expect someone else at some point. You should also build in some time – 15 to 30 minutes is plenty – for attendees to network together.

There’s a lot more to be said about having a seminar for lead generation and selling purposes (as a matter of fact, this could be a topic for one of my own seminars), but these guidelines will get you started. The key question to ask yourself is this: What can I teach my customers that is topically related to what I sell them, and that will generate value and interest for them? Answer that one, and you have a topic. Then give it a shot. Don’t feel bad if it takes you a few tries to get it right.  It’s another tool in the successful salesperson’s toolbox.