Tough Times = Time to Train

This article understandibly caught my eye at the Top 10 Sales Articles website: “Tough Times Call for Tough Training”.  

Often people think of “training” as only skill and knowledge building. However there are additional plusses from good training – motivation and a positive attitude. These can be even more important than the skill and knowledge development.

Training takes time and money – two resources that are in short supply at the moment. However, both can be overcome with a little creativity.

The author goes on to discuss the type of training, who should attend, who should conduct it and how to make it cost effective. You can read the full article here.

Unlocking the Door

When you hear the term gatekeeper, what does the term imply to you? Some people visualize David Spade’s famous Saturday Night Live character that was tasked with controlling access to Dick Clark’s office. In the skits, one notable person after another would come in to visit Dick Clark. Spade was famous for his “and you are…?” line. You’d be surprised how often sales professionals hear those words used in a condescending manner. Just recently, one rep described how one gatekeeper went through three of those “hanging questions”…

“And you are…?”

“And you’re with…?”

“And you’re calling about…?”

What makes those questions frustrating is that the next sound one usually hears your call being routed to voice mail. The gatekeeper has successfully blocked you from the decision maker. Ugh!

Pay no attention to that man behind the email!

Email gets used alot during the sales process.  And if you think about it, it’s really a great tool.  You can reach more people with email, there’s not awkward small talk like on a phone call, and people hardly ever tell you “no” (though they can press that DELETE button).

We’ve talked about email previously, but sometimes following all of the email rules can keep a prospect from getting to know you and make them more likely to press DELETE than REPLY.

Kendra Lee over at SalesGravy wrote on article on how to get your personality to come out in your emails.  Her main tips include:

• Mention a tidbit about yourself. One time I emailed a bunch of prospects during my birthday month and told them all it was my birthday that month! I got nearly a 100% reply rate and started a conversation with every one.

• Picture your prospect and write as if you already know him. You know what job your prospect has, so talk about something he can relate to.

 

• Make it easy to reply by suggesting a couple of times to talk. You’ve been friendly and now you’re eliminating the work in scheduling a time to talk. Of course he’s going to respond because you’ve given him a valuable reason to take you up on your offer.

 

She has a great example in the full article and points out that if you let your personality come out in your emails, you can see an 85% of your prospects to reply.  Sounds good to me!

FAB-ulous Customer Service

Without a doubt, the biggest test of customer service comes when things go wrong. When they do, you have a perfect opportunity to build trust by sincerely bending over backwards to fix the problem. However, from the customer’s perspective, the biggest issue is not that a mistake has been made or problem exists. He is only watching to see if you will make every attempt to deal with the situation to his satisfaction.

Here are a few quick tips for preserving that sense of personal caring when you are interacting with customers:

Positive in Tough Times?

Tony Robbins was on the Today Show recently talking about being prepared mentally and staying positive through tough times.  Good clip and only about 4 minutes long.  Check it out below!

Shazam!

Like them or not, superheroes are bigger now than ever.  Two of the biggest movies this summer were superhero flicks.  The top halloween costumes?  Superheroes.  Whether its regular joes using creative gadgets, mutants with cool powers, or aliens in tights - people love superheroes.

So I laughed when I found Super Hero Cards.  These are business cards, but with a custom-made superhero on one side and your business information on the other.

If your customers get a lot of business cards from other sales reps (and they probably do), this might be a cool way to help you stand out!

And to quote Dwight Schrute from The Office: Do you know who the real heroes are? The guys who wake up every morning and go into their normal jobs, and get a distress call from the commissioner, and take off their glasses and change into capes, and fly around fighting crime. Those are the real heroes.

Not Down, Just Different

I like reading stuff by Jeffrey Gitomer.  He has great sales advice and he’s actually interesting to read.  Despite the reputation most salespeople get for being “people-oriented”, most sales books I read are kind-of boring.

So I mosied over to his website today and he had an article about finding opportunity during tough times.  I’ve heard it from numerous sales teams – the number one objection now is “we’re cuting back on expenses because of the economy” or usually something along those lines.   It’s tough to argue with, but it’s not impossible to overcome.

Keeping this in mind, Mr. Gitomer outlines 8.5 things that you can do to help get more sales now and help out the company:

Improving Your Outlook

A lot of us use Outlook for our email.  And I’ve noticed that many people who use Outlook don’t keep it all that organized.  I’ve talked with some people who keep upwards of one thousand emails in their inbox alone. This makes it a litle daunting when trying to track down a key reply from one of your customers.

Enter the new tool, Xobni (zob-knee, or “inbox” backwards).  Xobni is a powerful email analytic tool that installs as a skinny vertical pane on the right side of Outlook.  Click on one of your emails and it instantly displays that person’s phone number, lists previous email threads, and the various attachments that you’ve exchanged. 

Darn cool stuff when talking with a customer on the phone and needing to reference a previous email exchange.  And it also analyzes when people tend to email you – information that you can use to strategically send emails in order to get a quick reply.

It also syncs up with LinkedIn to show their profile picture and a link to their info there.

And another one of my favorite features is a link in the window to “Schedule time” with the contact.  When you click on that link, Xobni will quickly analyze your calendar and then pull up an email to that contact with your available times over the next few days.

Like I said, cool stuff.  And cooler is that it’s free.  Check it out here and let me know what you think!

Looking for Opportunity

As we continue to weather the storm, keep on the lookout for opportunities that will pay off in the long run.  That’s the advice of Warren Buffett in this Op-Ed in the NY Times.  It’s a great article with some really solid advice.

A key quote:

A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sure, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense. These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now.

Again, good things to keep in mind.

Reality Sales

Paul Cherry at EyeOnSales.com gleamed some sales lessons from his local hardware stores.   The main lesson?  Being real with customers goes further than building superficial relationships.

The store’s been at the same location for close to 50 years, and as far as I can tell, it does a terrific business. There are plenty of other places to buy hardware: bigger stores with more selection and better prices. So what keeps people coming to this one?

I think it’s those crotchety, opinionated salespeople.

These days, many salespeople are polite, efficient and helpful – and utterly anonymous. It’s not their fault; they’ve been trained that way. They sell from a script and never take a chance. You might as well be talking to Robby the Robot.

Not so at the corner hardware store. For better or for worse, you never walk away from the counter without feeling that you’ve just engaged in a deeply human interaction. Sometimes I’m amused. Sometimes, frankly, I’m a little annoyed. But in the end, I keep coming back because I feel somehow connected to them. They’re an institution, and the neighborhood wouldn’t be the same without them.

Click HERE to go read the full article.