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.

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!

Yes, dealing with gatekeepers can be frustrating at times. However, gatekeepers can also be very helpful, once the get to know you. Generally, administrative assistants know far more about their managers’ habits than the managers themselves. Once you get to know them and gain their trust, they can help you better understand not only their boss but the important policies and processes of the entire organization. If you can bridge the gap between yourself and the gatekeeper, you have actually gained a strong foothold that will help you build a very successful business relationship. Some sales professionals can point to gatekeepers that they have known for years and who have made their jobs easier.

To build and strengthen your connection to the gatekeeper, remember the following tips:

• Treat them with Courtesy and Respect – Let’s face it – they’re just doing their job. If they weren’t good at shielding their boss from every pen salesman this side of the Mississippi, they wouldn’t have a job. Even when seem rude and dismissive toward you, treat them nicely. Outside of their role as a gatekeeper, they may be the nicest person in the world. If you don’t carefully watch the way you treat them, they can make your sales job miserable and block every single call.
• Get to Know Them – As you sell to your client, you ought to seek to “sell” to the gatekeeper. The product you’re selling is you. Don’t hesitate to make small talk or ask friendly appropriate questions that make it clear that you are interested in them and notice them. Just don’t overdo it and waste their time.
• Pick Their Brains – As stated earlier, gatekeepers know a great deal about their manager’s habits, values and schedules. When you get on the right side of a gatekeeper, they can make your sales job easier. You will be in a position to ask questions regarding such things as the best time of the day to catch their boss, what their boss’s decision-making process is, and what the boss likes or doesn’t like about your products, your competitors or the sales process in general.
• A Note or Gift Doesn’t Hurt – Gatekeepers often see their boss or colleagues receiving little perks for doing their job. Take the time to send them a thank you note or a little gift, just as a way to say thanks. They’ll appreciate that you remembered them and will return the favor in kind.
• Be Real – Yes, you should be nice… but you should genuinely be nice. Don’t put on an act and pretend to be that person’s best friend. Most people can see right through airs and will be offended.
• Be Patient – Building a relationship can take time. Of course you want to make a sale, but first you may need to make a friend.

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!

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:

• Call each customer by name as often as you can.
• Listen to what each customer has to say. Don’t jump to conclusions.
• Be concerned about each customer as an individual.
• Be courteous to each customer.
• Be responsive to the individual needs of each customer.
• Take sufficient time with each customer to effectively address his problem.
• Make customers feel like this call is the most important thing you have done today.

When addressing customer needs, here is a FAB-ulous idea. In this case, the FAB in fabulous stands for feature – advantage – benefit. Too often, customer service reps employ a one-size-fits-all approach to customer calls; just giving the standard minimum response so they can clear the call and move on. However, if you will take the time to really listen to your customers and make sure you understand their problems, you will be able to provide a solution for them in the form of what is known as a benefit statement, and this can make a big difference.

A customer isn’t really interested in company policies and procedures; he just wants a solution for his problem. Now, whatever you can offer him is most likely defined by policies and procedures, but don’t start with the company, start with the customer. Show him the benefit of what you can do for him.

• A feature is a characteristic of a product or service. The popcorn setting is a feature on some microwave ovens.

• An advantage defines what that feature does – for instance, pop popcorn with the press of one button.

• The benefit is the way in which the advantage of the feature meets a customer’s need. If he tells you that he mostly uses the microwave to pop popcorn, then the popcorn feature would be a great benefit for him.

Whenever you are explaining a possible solution to a customer’s problem or need, use a FAB form to create a benefit statement like this:

“Mr. Jones, here is what I can do for you. I can offer you this (state the feature of your solution) which does this (state the advantage of your solution) which will give you this (state the benefit the customer will receive from your solution.)”

By using a benefit statement when suggesting solutions to a customer service problem, you will be making it very clear that you have carefully listened to and understood your customer’s problem, and are working to meet his need.

Whatever you do, stay focused on the customer’s need. That is really all he cares about.

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!

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.

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:

In times like this, leadership must do what they believe is in the best long-term interest of the company. In short – leaders are doing their best – and they expect the same from you. You can help by doing your best every day. Adjust to whatever decisions are made without reducing your level of service to your customers, your loyalty to your company and your fellow workers, and your effort or belief.

But cutting expenses or laying people off is not the only answer – it’s just a safeguard and a response to the situation at hand. The best answer is more sales… and more profit. This is where you can help.

1. Ease of doing business with you. The availability of people and product. Have more web offerings, easy access to more people, less voicemail, less automated attendants, more human-to-human contact, and no excuses. Get me what I need, when I need it.

2. Error-free order processing. When I get an invoice, the easier it is to understand and the more correct it is, the faster I pay it. No backorders. No surprises.

3. The quality of your relationships with customers. How strong are your relationships? Are they transactional or interpersonal?

4. Service excellence. You’d think this was a given, but often slower times means slower service. Less people, more work. BIG mistake. BEST PRACTICE: Double service offerings.

5. Your attitude. The way you dedicate yourself to the way you think. If you can’t be positive for yourself, you can never be positive with and for others – both coworkers and customers.

6. Your belief. Belief in your company, your product, your service, yourself, AND belief that the customer is better off having purchased from you.

7. Your loyalty. The best way to get loyalty is to GIVE loyalty. From bosses to employees, from employees to customers, and finally from customers back to you, loyalty is the profit frontier. In these times, giving won’t always breed receiving – but the seed is planted and the roots are deep when the economy begins to rebound.

8. Helping your customer whenever possible. Understanding how they are hurting, and meeting their needs as BEST you can. Offering to assist with anything from manual labor to unparalleled service – from brainstorming ideas with them to making connections for them.

8.5 Your extra mile. What are you doing above and beyond the ordinary? What are you doing to out sell, out serve, and out value the competition? What’s memorable about you and the actions you take on behalf of others? Are you going the extra mile for your customers?

If the economy is down, you have to be up. You have to be ready to help, ready to serve, and ready to be your best. This will not only help others to survive, it will also ensure that you thrive.

To read the full article click HERE.

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!

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.

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.