No, not those Time Bandits.
How often do you look up from your desk, see that it is almost closing time, and feel frustrated that, yet again, you weren’t able to complete one or more of the important tasks that needed to be finished today? If you regularly find yourself wondering where your time goes every day, you need to be on the look out for these five time bandits. Once you see them coming, you can arrest them so they will never bother you again. Read the rest of this entry »
What can we learn about sales from Starbucks? Mark Tewart wrote an article about five sales tips he gleamed from spending some time at his local coffee franchise. Below are some excerpts.
Lesson #1 – Make sure you ask for the business. I have just watched a beggar collect at least $5 worth of donations in the last half hour with a sign that says – “I am saving up for a hooker, weed, wine and a steak dinner.” Not one of the people bothered to read his sign and know what they were even donating for. Not the family man with his wife and children, not the group of older people probably in their 80s, not the business man in the suit, nobody. The beggar obviously learned the power of asking, no matter what.
Lesson #2 – It’s not the money. People pile into Starbucks one after another spending three and four bucks on of a cup coffee. Obviously you can get a cup of coffee at a diner down the street for a lot less money. But yet, people willingly spend a $100 per month or more at Starbucks. Why?
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Lesson #3 – Change the process to win. I am watching out the window as people scurry on the streets. The whole world is moving faster today; the Internet, news, businesses and people in general are moving faster and faster.
People will willingly pay lots of money for a process that either speeds things up or slows things down. Although many people want things and processes that speed things up, just as many are fighting brain drain because of all the speed and want to slow things down. Change your process with your customers in mind, sell your unique advantage and experience to the customer and they will pay for the process.
Lesson #4 – Change the wrapping. I am staying at a smaller but kind of funky and cool hotel here in San Francisco. Because I travel so much and stay in so many look-a-like chain hotels, it’s a treat to stay somewhere unique. In the last several years there has been a big push towards dealers upgrading and improving their facilities.
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Lesson #5 – The money is in the niche. Watching traffic go by in San Francisco makes you understand the wide array of cultures, diversity and multitude of options people desire in their choices. I often watch in amazement as many dealers are lead by advertising agencies to spend vast sums of money trying to be everything to everyone with a generic non-benefit driven message.
Without a doubt, sales is more profitable and satisfying when you are able to identify and access a steady stream of enthusiastic customers. The process of finding those customers is called prospecting, and it can sometimes be a daunting task.
According to Anthony J. Urbaniak, a prospect is a person or institution that can both benefit from buying the product or service and afford to buy it. The process of identifying good prospects is called “qualifying” the prospect. The person or organization must be able to benefit from the product or service; those who have no use for it are not qualified prospects. Also, no matter how badly a prospect may want the product or how much they can benefit from it, if they cannot afford it, they are not qualified prospects.
There are no hard and fast rules as to the processes different sales organizations use to prospect for and qualify new business. In some companies, prospecting is done on the outside sales level. Those tasked with the majority of sales activities are also responsible for mining their territory for new business. In other organizations, telesales teams actively pursue new business and funnel qualified prospects to account managers and other sales reps. Other companies rely on the web, print advertising or other means to generate inbound leads that can be distributed based on a variety of different methods.
For the time being, we will assume that those sales professionals reading this module are tasked with prospecting duties. Rather than relying on others in an organization to provide them with prospects, they must hunt in their own territory to generate new business. Listed below are five general guidelines that will make prospecting easier. Read the rest of this entry »
