Hearing “maybe” from a buyer is more common than hearing a yes or no. Sometimes maybes are just a disguise for a lack of authority or an aversion to saying ‘no’. Other times maybes disguise a real need to delay a purchase until a later time. Most often, maybes disguise a real problem or set of problems that you can and must address immediately, even though the very purpose of a ‘maybe’ is to buy more time.

Let’s take a look at a real-life scenario. Jonathan (the buyer) took the time to talk with Heidi (the seller) and liked what she had to say. The conversation was prompted when Heidi phoned to follow-up after Jonathan signed up for a free trial. Heidi took the opportunity to explain features and to learn about Jonathan. She asked how many people would be users of the system. She asked about his time-frame. She even asked probing questions about Jonathan’s current processes and the challenges he wanted to overcome.

In closing, Jonathan suggested that Heidi check back in two weeks’ time.

Why did Jonathan ask for Heidi to give him two weeks? Please take your best guess:

a)      He is genuinely interested and expects to make a decision in two weeks
b)      He is genuinely interested but he doesn’t really know what will happen next.
c)       He is not interested but doesn’t know how to say ‘no.’

For this situation and many like it, the answer is both a) and b).

Jonathan—like most buyers—estimated how much time he thought he would need to complete his evaluation and arrive at a conclusion. To him, conclusion and decision mean the same thing. And they are the same thing when the conclusion is a negative. If you conclude as a buyer that the product won’t meet your needs, then you will pretty easily arrive at a purchase decision of ‘no.’

If on the other hand, if you conclude “yes, I like the product,” or “yes, I think others will like the product,” or “Yes, I think we should purchase,” it’s not the same thing as deciding to purchase.

Deciding to purchase is often a much longer journey than concluding a product’s usefulness and value.

Jonathan didn’t think through the various emotional, intellectual, or mechanical layers of a purchase decision (buyers rarely do) when he asked Heidi for two weeks.

So when Heidi called back in two weeks, Jonathan wasn’t ready with a purchase decision. He didn’t yet know if he wanted to buy. Nor did he know whether he didn’t want to buy. All he could say is “Maybe.”

As I’ve repeated many times in my posts, “Time Kills Deals.” If Heidi doesn’t handle this situation the right way, this sale is destined for ‘Maybe Purgatory.’

Jonathan knew he wasn’t ready to make a yes decision but he wasn’t ready to say no either. Jonathan’s big “maybe” wasn’t indecision, however. It was a lack of focus disguised as indecision.

Heidi needed to turn the big maybe into a small yes. Heidi thought of the possibilities. What if, instead of buying into Jonathan’s uncertainty and waiting on the sidelines while time marched by, she could get Jonathan to take a specific action that would help him gain clarity one step at a time?

Here’s what Heidi said that turned the situation around, “Jonathan, I understand that it can take time to make such an important decision. Why don’t we put the decision aside for a short time, and run a simple test. Let’s see how just one of your folks responds to the system. It’s a great way to quickly learn whether you’re on the right track. Would it be worth getting that feedback before going any further?”

Heidi pushed for a small (but important) yes. She eliminated any hidden decision anxiety Jonathan was experiencing by removing the decision from the process for the time being. She offered a precise next step that told Jonathan where to focus—one that would actually be helpful to Jonathan (and to her). Jonathan agreed her suggestion was a good idea.

‘Maybes’ are disguises for the real—sometimes unrecognized—objections. They are tangible evidence that uneasiness, or uncertainty are lurking within. Maybes drain your sales capacity and put the accuracy of your forecast at risk. As I once heard Jim Dickie of CSO Insights say, “It’s not a crime to take a long time to get a ‘yes’ but it is a crime to take a long time to get a ‘no’.” If you can turn big maybes into small yeses, you can keep time from killing your deals and push the sales process forward.

Nancy Nardin is the foremost expert increasing sales productivity through the use of tools. As President of Smart Selling Tools, she consults with many of the top sales productivity software vendors as well as end-user organizations looking to select the right tools. Click to get Nancy’s What & When weekly digest with invitations to complimentary webinars and informative publications. Follow Nancy on Twitter @sellingtools or subscribe to her Sales Productivity blog. Nancy can be reached at 916-596-3035. To schedule a free 30 minute consultation click here.

Fast growing companies are often the best prospects for products and services. Fast growing companies need to hire more people, open new offices, and acquire additional hardware, software and services. These companies not only have a need to change, they are changing. Of equal significance is this, ‘fast growing’ refers to revenue, and growing revenue is an indicator of ‘ability to buy.’

The characteristics above are what you would call trigger events. Craig Elias, the creator of Trigger Event Selling™ says that when companies experience a ‘Trigger Event’ and now want to change they are up to ten times more likely to buy than they were before. That they are more likely to buy certainly makes a lot of sense, but the degree is rather astonishing. Craig goes on to say that for those companies that desire change (and are now 10X more likely to buy), they are again up to eight times more likely to buy when they can afford to buy due to a second ‘Trigger Event’ – the one that affords them the time to look at what you have and the funds needed to make the purchase.

Winning big deals and steady, fast-paced revenue growth are good indicators that a company can afford to make desired changes. By now, you’ve probably heard of iSell from OneSource which is a great tool for finding contacts, and conducting prospect research. Did you know that iSell will also alert you to relevant trigger events so you’ll know when to call? Along with iSell, you might consider delving into the Inc.500/5000 list if it’s  the fastest growing companies you’re after.

The Inc.500/5000 list consists of privately owned companies in the U.S. whose revenue was greater than $100,000 in 2009 and no less than $2,000,000 in 2012.

Of course you won’t want to simply add all 5,000 accounts into your sales database and set about contacting each one. Instead, you’ll want to focus on those that best meet your ideal customer profile. Not every company will be a good match for your products and services and it would be a shame to waste your time—or theirs—calling on accounts that aren’t a great fit. How do you know which are a good match? Sometimes it’s helpful to know what technologies they have currently installed. If that’s the case, you’ll want to consider IncView by ReadyContacts. IncView offers a download-able list of Inc. 500/5000 companies with 10,000+ decision maker contacts including phone numbers, email addresses AND technology insights.

If you sell to IT organizations and you want to contact IT decision makers at companies of all sizes, you should look into DiscoverOrg. DiscoverOrg specializes in providing detailed information on IT decision makers including their contact details as well as technology intalls, key initiatives, and IT organizational charts. There isn’t a better source of prospect insight if you sell to IT buyers. DiscoverOrg also alerts its customers of real-time triggers they uncover during their interviews with IT buyers—triggers that may not surface in web searches until later, if at all.

Now that you have your lists of contacts at fast growing companies that are likely to have a need, a desire to change, and the ability to buy, how will you secure an appointment?

First off, you’ll need to be prepared and have done your homework. The above solutions will help you with that. In addition, it might be helpful to know what companies in the prospect’s area you are already doing business with. To list names of local client companies in the surrounding area will go a long way toward giving a prospect a sense of trust and just might put you on the fast-track to an appointment. Valgen’s cfMAPP is just the ticket for that. With cfMAPP fully integrated into Salesforce, your reps can quickly get local knowledge to convince prospects about your geographic strength in their markets. They can name-drop effectively and influence prospects to move to the next step.

As the saying goes, “If you want to catch fish, fish where the fish are.” Fast growing companies represent a healthy market for many sellers because of their very nature. They are hungry for ideas that will fuel their continued growth trajectory. They aren’t afraid of change because they embody change.   The trick is to zero in on those that meet your ideal customer profile and to secure the meetings. You can do that with the tools in today’s blog.

Share your ideas. What other ways are there to identify ready-markets for products and services?

Note: IncView has agreed to offer a special 20% off discount for Smart Selling Tools readers. Use this promo code: INCVWSST20OFF

Nancy Nardin is the foremost expert increasing sales productivity through the use of tools. As President of Smart Selling Tools, she consults with many of the top sales productivity software vendors as well as end-user organizations looking to select the right tools. Click to get Nancy’s What & When weekly digest with invitations to complimentary webinars and informative publications. Follow Nancy on Twitter @sellingtools or subscribe to her Sales Productivity blog. Nancy can be reached at 916-596-3035. To schedule a free 30 minute consultation click here.

I read a post this week by Colleen Honan of OneSource. Colleen is the SVP of Sales and Service for OneSource. Her blog was entitled, “Are you selling or searching.”

It’s a great question and it really got me thinking. What are sellers searching for and why?

Buyers are more savvy than ever. They don’t have time for salespeople who haven’t done their homework. They expect salespeople to be informed and relevant. Winging doesn’t work in today’s world. So salespeople set out on their search for information and insight.

There’s plenty of information available on the Web. So much information that it takes a great amount of effort (and time) to gather. Salespeople can’t find the bits and pieces of information and insight they need in any one place because search engines don’t work that way.

According to an interesting infographic created by CSO Insights on behalf of Lattice Engines, reps search an average of 15 sources before picking up the phone. Can you imagine the amount of time that this requires?

To start, salespeople will go to a prospect company’s website to learn a little about the company. They may go to the Management page to look for the right contact and to the Contact page to get a phone number. They may go to the news section to learn about current events. Then they might do a web search to determine who the competitors are and yet another one to learn about the industry.

Salespeople need information from internal sources as well. They might need to learn what successes your company has had with similar companies. They might want to know what salespeople have sold to similar companies and what the key selling points were. They might want to discover whether there are resources of particular relevance to the prospect. Are there any presentations, does anyone know the right questions to ask, what objections are common for the type of prospect.

It’s easy to see how information gathering is one of the largest consumers of a salesperson’s time. It has to be done because they can’t be effective in their sales conversations unless they’ve done the research. They only get one first impression.

On the flip side, spending all that valuable selling time on researching is a problem when it comes to productivity because gathering information keeps salespeople from holding more sales conversations.

No doubt about it, it’s important to gather information and prepare adequately for a call. But it’s equally important to find ways to improve the efficiency of the task.

Here’s why. First off, if you have a sales team, your revenue is derived from the prospects they interact with. Therefore the most revenue you can possibly generate has an upward limit, bound by the percentage of time spent engaging with prospects. If you don’t increase that percentage, you will have a tough time driving more revenue.

What are your salespeople to do? What are you to do? You might start by going to Colleen’s upcoming presentation at the  Sales Management and Performance Exhibition (#SMP2013) in London this week. Attendance is free. In case you won’t be in the vicinity, you should consider registering for the event anyway. I suspect they will make the presentations available online to those that registered.

There is an amazing line-up of speakers. Along with Colleen, one of my dear friends and consummate sales management expert Dr. Jonathan Farrington will be presenting. It looks like there will be 5 seminar venues and more than 60 fantastic speakers in all.

If you want your salespeople to spend more time selling and less time on everything else, reducing the time it takes to search for information and insight is a great place to start. OneSource’s iSell product along with Bloomfire are two great tools to help you get the job done. iSell is a one-stop research tool that tells salespeople who to call, what to say, when to call and how to call. Bloomfire is a one-stop information sharing platform for organizations to collaborate and share important information, documents, and videos.

Without the right tools, how will you unchain your salespeople and give them the freedom to make more sales calls before the year is over?

Nancy Nardin is the foremost expert increasing sales productivity through the use of tools. As President of Smart Selling Tools, she consults with many of the top sales productivity software vendors as well as end-user organizations looking to select the right tools. Click to get Nancy’s What & When weekly digest with invitations to complimentary webinars and informative publications. Follow Nancy on Twitter @sellingtoolsor subscribe to her Sales Productivity blog. Nancy can be reached at 916-596-3035. To schedule a free 30 minute consultation click here.

You know everything there is to know about your products. You stand before your prospects fully armored, battle-ready, and poised for a stunning and mind-numbing display of the vast and all-embracing array of your knowledge. Meeting after sales meeting, you’re able to spark the prospect’s imagination and excitement and your opportunity momentum takes off.

Unfortunately, within mere hours of your meeting, the mother-lode of  thoughts and ideas floating around your prospect’s head will cease to coalesce into the vivid focal point of your message.  It made perfect sense when you spoke the words. Now that it’s time for them to articulate why your solution seems so perfect, they can’t put their mental finger on it.

Your prospects won’t know what to remember most, unless you tell them.

You have got to define, and then convey, the one golden nugget you want them to remember, above all else.

• What should they take-away from the discussion?
• What is the most critical must-have element of your message?

When it is all said, and nearly done, you cannot leave it up to your prospect to decide what that one thing is. More than likely, their focus will be fuzzy as they try to understand the entire panorama of your offering without focusing in on your main message.

Because their mental lens was set to the widest aperture, they will have a general sense regarding their own reaction to what you have described; yet be unable to mentally nail down exactly how to describe your solution or its impact and effectiveness.

That is a problem you must not create for yourself. If they cannot articulate – much less remember – the main sales proposition then they cannot sell themselves, or their colleagues, on why action must be taken.

And that is a tactical melt-down when you are trying to get someone to buy something from you.

It is certainly permissible and necessary to talk about a broad spectrum of concepts – the advantages, the features, and the benefits – as long as you always bring it back to one unforgettable element of insight. This is what they will deliver to the decision-makers. Their focus will remain on this key component long after your presence and presentation have faded from their immediate agenda. Here are some simple, though invaluable, questioning techniques to help your prospects remember the golden nugget:

• “If you remember one thing about us/our solution, it should be this” It’s ok to come right out and say it. Here’s an example: “if you remember one thing about this blog post, it should be this: it’s essential to help your prospect recall the one golden nugget.”
• “ We’ve talked about many ways we help clients, but it really all comes down to this [one golden nugget].”
• “Can I ask you a question, what would you say is the main thing you’ll remember most from our conversation today? Is it the [golden nugget]?”

This last approach – asking your prospect to tell you what the one golden nugget is – helps in two ways.

1. It is the absolute verification that you are focusing in on the one thing that is most important to your prospect.
2. It helps them think it through, via their own framework, so the message sticks.

You have so much to tell your prospect about, and so many questions to ask. And that is okay, and certainly a vital piece of the sales process. Just be sure that you bring it all back to the one golden nugget they should take with them. After all, considering the time you have personally invested in this prospect, leaving behind that carefully-crafted and perfectly-polished golden nugget for them to admire, is worth its weight in . . . well, the deal.

Now that you have read this blog, what is the one thing that you will remember?

Note: Having taken time to enjoy the  holiday weekend, I decided to freshen up one of my favorite posts from the past for this week’s issue. Hope you enjoyed your holiday. 

Author, Nancy Nardin is the foremost expert in sales productivity tools. As President of Smart Selling Tools, she consults with many of the top sales productivity software vendors as well as end-user organizations looking to select the right tools. Click to get Nancy’s What & When weekly digest with invitations to complimentary webinars and informative publications. Follow Nancy on Twitter @sellingtools or subscribe to her Tool Talk blog. Nancy can be reached at 916-596-3035. To schedule a free 30 minute consultation click here.

Almost a year to the date, I posted a blog called Dumbing it Down: 5 Secrets for Getting Smart People to Buy. It was one of our most popular posts breaking the 100 tweet barrier. That post, along with the one you’re reading now, is aimed at complex sales. The characteristics of a complex sale are typically wider and deeper business challenges that require longer sales-cycles and result in larger average deal sizes.

Complex sales are to be contrasted with transactional sales where decisions are made in minutes or days rather than in months or longer. Buyers often need help understanding available options for solving their business challenges as well as what they should consider when talking with potential solution providers. They don’t wake up one day and say, “I know the exact extent of my challenges, who I should talk with, and what I need to know in order to solve them.”

Because they lack this insight, it’s natural to want to start slowly. They will likely start by searching the web for informative content and by attending conferences. They may form a committee or ask colleagues and business associates for input and advice. At some point, however, they will make a decision to contact a solution provider and have an actual conversation with a salesperson. Whatever it was that led them to engage with you you can be sure of one thing: they will turn on their heels and run the other way with the slightest provocation.

Are you unwittingly provoking buyers to look elsewhere (or to give up altogether)? You are indeed, if you haven’t considered these four reasons why dumbing it down is the smartest way to sell to buyers.

1. Complexity = Risk
   B2B buyers are smart people, especially within the framework of their roles and responsibilities. That framework is the lens from which they will view all information. They know and care about their business not yours. They don’t care to know everything you know about your solutions.  They want to know how you can help them with their business problems. Taking them outside their interest (or comfort) zone will be a disservice to both you and the buyer. Too much information often adds deal-killing complexity. Complexity adds uncertainty and uncertainty equals risk in the minds of – oh, just about anyone.  You don’t need to dumb it down because of a buyer’s lack of intelligence. You need to dumb it down because buyers are risk-averse. Gauge the buyer’s ability and patience for assimilating information being careful not to introduce too much information or too quickly.
2. Change = Fear
   In order to make a decision to buy something, people need to be willing and prepared to embrace change. Change is certainly required for a buyer to solve existing problems and to implement new technology or processes. No one likes to be pushed into making a change, however. The best way for you to reach them effectively is to help the prospect self-discover. You can participate in that self-discovery step by carefully-crafted step, by asking a series of ‘phase-specific’ questions. People learn by answering questions that get them to think for themselves—much more than when they’re told something. If buyers themselves create the mental transformation from problem to solution (with strategic ‘cues’ offered by you at the right moment) the change process will unfold naturally and therefore with less trepidation. Don’t tell buyers what they need to know. Help them discover it.
3. Analysis = Paralysis
   Rational analysis requires time and energy. When people consider how to dove-tail solutions with complex problems, their rational side takes over to process the data. Rationality requires focused analysis which requires an abundance of both time and energy. The key is to simplify the buying process so that your prospect’s “buying stamina” never starts running on fumes or worse yet, flames out altogether. When that happens, your buyer has fallen into a black-hole of inertia. It is very difficult to ignite interest momentum once a buyer’s stamina is spent. When it’s gone, it’s typically gone. Recognize that buyers have a limited supply of energy and do what you can to help them reach a decision before it dies.
4. One Big Step = lots of little steps
   Big changes come from a succession of smaller, more easily enacted changes. Asking buyers to focus on the end-goal may be too overwhelming. It’s important to focus on ‘next-goals’ because it’s the totality of an endeavor that often short-circuits a buyer’s ability to envision reaching their end-objective. You risk a deal when you make buyers focus on making a decision at the expense of taking a next step. Be warned however, that the buyer putting one foot forward won’t automatically result in them picking up and placing the alternate foot forward. Each step needs to be earned. It helps if you have diagrammed a road-map of the steps to take and in what order. No one likes to walk with a blindfold on. Make sure your buyers know what the typical path is and instill confidence that you’ve made the trek successfully with others in their shoes.

These are reasons why you should dumb it down. For ideas on how to dumb it down, you’ll want to refer to the original post. In the end, it really all boils down to this. Don’t scare buyers away with too much information that they can’t yet process or will never need to process. Recognize that change induces discomfort and vow not to feed into that. Time kills deals and considered thought based on rational analysis of a complex problem is nothing if it isn’t time-consuming. And finally, don’t expect your buyer to enthusiastically accompany you on your long trek to a sale without understanding what to expect along the way.

I recommend considering each of these four areas, how they relate to your sales cycle, and specific ways to dumb it down so your buyers don’t go running for the hills.  I’m not professing it will be easy to do. But it is the smart thing to do.

Author, Nancy Nardin is the foremost expert in sales productivity tools. As President of Smart Selling Tools, she consults with many of the top sales productivity software vendors as well as end-user organizations looking to select the right tools. Click to get Nancy’s What & When weekly digest with invitations to complimentary webinars and informative publications. Follow Nancy on Twitter @sellingtools or subscribe to her Tool Talk blog. Nancy can be reached at 916-596-3035. To schedule a free 30 minute consultation click here.

In February, I posted the first of a 2-part Sales Leaders’ pledge. I’m creating this pledge as much for my benefit as I am for yours. You see like you, I’m not immune to the centrifugal force caused by the dizzying array of ailments that plague our profession.

Determined as we all may be, it is rare to NOT fall short of the lofty goals we set for ourselves and our organizations. It’s not sales goals or quotas I’m referring to (although a CSO study revealed that 37% of reps did not hit their plan last year — so we are falling short on those as well.) I’m referring to our convictions and intentions for improving upon the status-quo in order to radically increase revenue. I’m talking about making what seems like the impossible, possible.

In part-one, I outlined the first five challenges of which our profession has long suffered. I wrote them in the form of a pledge to take and commit to wholeheartedly. In this issue, I’ve outlined the last half of the top ten pledges. Will you join me?

Repeat after me…

1. CRM is not a productivity tool
   I recognize that we may be one of the 50% of organizations with a failing CRM system. I pledge to learn why it’s not working and fix it. CRM should help salespeople sell more — either by helping them to get more done in less time, or by helping them to spend their time more wisely and effectively. If it isn’t doing either, I will find something that does.
   I will honor salespeoples’ complaints about CRM and learn what’s needed to actually help them sell more. ______ (initial)
2. Forecasting has got to change
   Multiplying opportunity amounts by a deal-stage percentage in order to calculate total forecasts makes no sense and I will no longer pretend that it does. Opportunities shouldn’t make it onto the forecast unless we can answer positively to three questions: will the deal close at all, will it happen this month (or quarter), and will we be the\r?
   I will be brave and take a stand on outdated forecast methodology. ______ (initial)
3. Time-Use Matters
   In order to accelerate revenue growth, I will shine a bright light on how salespeople spend their time. I’ll analyze what they’re doing when they aren’t talking with a prospect and then determine which of those tasks can be delegated, which can be made easier and thus faster, and which can be eliminated altogether.
   I will figure out how salespeople can spend more time talking with quality prospects. ______ (initial)
4. Mobility changes the game
   The times, they are a changing. Mobile technologies like smart phones and tablets should be deployed so salespeople can; be more responsive to clients, present information in a more interactive manner, engage with prospects in a personable and collaborative way, have any needed information at their fingertips, and enter and log call reports and customer interactions faster.
   I will no longer ask salespeople to deal with log-in connections and laborious laptop boot-ups when what they need is fast, always-on access to content and the ability to quickly collaborate with clients and colleagues. ______ (initial)
5. Social is Personal
   I know that salespeople have an opportunity to engage on a much more personable and relevant level. I recognize that buyers expect our salespeople to know something about why we’re calling and to provide relevant ideas on how we can help.
   I will make sure salespeople have knowledge of the right verbal and written content to build trusted relationships. ______ (initial)

None of the challenges I’ve mentioned in this two-part pledge are easy to address. As is the case with other long-lived challenges, the key to solving them is to focus with a fierce resolve. It will be easy to get distracted. It will be tempting to give up. It will take guts. During the process, however, you will learn a great deal about yourself and your ability to pioneer deep changes that make a difference for your company and for you professionally. What will you do? Will you take the oath?

Author, Nancy Nardin is the foremost expert in sales productivity tools. As President of Smart Selling Tools, she consults with many of the top sales productivity software vendors as well as end-user organizations looking to select the right tools. Click to get Nancy’s What & When weekly digest with invitations to complimentary webinars and informative publications. Follow Nancy on Twitter @sellingtools or subscribe to her Tool Talk blog. Nancy can be reached at 916-596-3035. To schedule a free 30 minute consultation click here.

There’s something watching our every move. It casts a dark, deceptive and often destructive shadow upon each and every salesperson as they go about their day. It threatens to wreak havoc in the most insidious and unexpected ways. It is the perfect ally to have on your side, but it often stands as a formidable and unforgiving adversary. It cannot be bought or owned, yet it is yours to use as you like.

 As you may have guessed, I’m talking about the most scarce resource of all – ‘time’.

Obviously, if you had more time you could talk with more prospects or better prepare for your calls or presentations. More time would make it possible to set more goals and put more check-marks in the ‘done’ column. Time is the enemy however, when it comes to creating opportunities and closing deals in the pipeline. That’s because time is a deal killer. This is the one factor you can’t afford to ignore.  In general, the longer it takes for a party to sign-off on your paperwork or proposal, the more chance there is of the deal ‘going south.’ Time flying by gives rise to many potential deal-killing events:

• Prospects’ priorities change
• Budgets get down-sized or eliminated
• Decision-makers change roles, or jobs
• Doubts or reservations set in, the competition seizes the opportunity
• Prospects lose focus (on your products or solutions and the value they bring)

The imperative is to generate more time for some things (creating more opportunities) while reducing or eliminating the time spent on others (chasing paperwork to close deals).

Boost the Time Available for Creating Opportunities

The ability to create net-new time defies all laws of the natural world. It just isn’t possible. On the other hand, it is possible to free-up time by becoming far more efficient, thereby accomplishing or producing more in the same amount of time. Here are 3 tricks and tips for improving efficiency when it comes to creating opportunities:

1. Use tools: Tools like Social Selling and Marketing Automation (to name just two) can increase the likelihood of contacting the right people at the right time—when they have the highest propensity to buy.
2. Evaluate your processes: Identify which tasks in your workflow consistently slow you down and which can be eliminated. For instance, eSignatures can eliminate up to 10 steps in the signing process reducing the time it takes to obtain a signed contract from weeks to hours.
3. Eliminate and delegate: Don’t contact prospects that will never buy. If your solution isn’t applicable to companies under a certain size, don’t call them! If you don’t know the company size of each prospect on your list (in this example), delegate the task of finding out.

Time vs momentum

“Went radio-silent.”
“Fell off the radar.”
“Disappeared into thin air.”

If you say similar things to describe a prospect, it’s a pretty good sign that the deal is either losing momentum, or has vaporized altogether (and you didn’t get the memo). The more time that passes—especially given every prospect’s ultra-busy agenda—the more the deal-momentum is at risk of slowing to the point that your prospect forgets why they were interested to begin with. To protect against that happening, here are 3 pointers for slashing the time it takes to close deals:

1. Implement intelligent persistence: Know where your contracts are in the signing process and stay on top of each step with confidence.
2. Eliminate barriers: Every deal will have bumps in the road-to-closing. Make sure you’ve foreseen and eliminated any and every bump that can be reasonably anticipated.
3. Provide Ammunition: Anticipate uncertainties and doubts your prospect may face from colleagues and decision influencers. Give them the ammunition they’ll need to address each one.

No matter how intensely interested your prospect professes to be and no matter how far down the sales process they have endeavored to go, every opportunity is at risk of falling victim to time. Manage every deal in your pipeline as if an invisible force was plotting to turn it into stone. Remember, time isn’t a friend or a  foe. It’s both all at once.

Author, Nancy Nardin is the foremost expert in sales productivity tools. As President of Smart Selling Tools, she consults with many of the top sales productivity software vendors as well as end-user organizations looking to select the right tools. Click to get Nancy’s What & When weekly digest with invitations to complimentary webinars and informative publications. Follow Nancy on Twitter @sellingtools or subscribe to her Tool Talk blog. Nancy can be reached at 916-596-3035. To schedule a free 30 minute consultation click here.

At Smart Selling Tools, our goal is to make it easy to find tools that will improve sales productivity. Plain and simple – except we know that for most sales leaders and business owners it’s in fact, very complex. That’s because you’re either running the business or the revenue engine, and you have little time (or patience) to catch up on the latest technology.

Even if you are interested (which, come on, you know you are), there are so many sales tools – including more than a hundred CRM systems – that it’s enough to drive a smart person crazy. That’s why I’m excited to announce the launch of our new sister site, The Sales Productivity University.

This new eLearning site is a place where you can take short-courses to learn about different types of sales tools. Our goal is to keep it simple, and to stay away from industry jargon that over-complicates things.

Ease any inferiority complex you may be feeling about sales tools and cut through the hype. At Sales Productivity University, you’ll complete your course in 20 minutes or less.

It’s free to register and it’s free to take the courses.  You’ll have all the knowledge you need so you can decide with confidence, which tools will be useful to you or your organization.

Look, every week I hear from dozens of people that feel overwhelmed and under-prepared when it comes to sales tools. They feel they’re behind in the game when it comes to understanding what’s ‘out there’ and what they should consider. It shouldn’t be so complicated. That’s what Sales Productivity U is all about. Our first course is on eSignatures. It’s a great place to start. Try it out and let me know what you think. Follow us on Twitter @SalesProUniv for the latest on course curriculum and daily updates.

I just returned from attending DemandCon in San Francisco. DemandCon’s purpose is to offer education and insight into the art of aligning and accelerating the sales and marketing funnel.

Unfortunately, I was only able to attend the first of the two-day event. I say ‘unfortunately’ because it turned out to be a great networking opportunity. But most importantly, it proved to have a number of really great speakers along with relevant and interesting topics.

In case you missed the event, I’ve jotted down my key take-aways from three of the most compelling sessions.

Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView spoke of better lead conversion through ‘enrichment.’ He was referring to the importance of relevant knowledge about your prospects and buyers.

Most interesting stat: 92% of prospects NEVER respond to a cold call or email. Why don’t they? Engaging a prospect in a quality conversation requires that you have something of interest to offer and most salespeople don’t. I’m not saying they don’t have an interesting product or service. I’m saying they don’t have interesting knowledge, insight, or relevancy to offer. Those are the 3 kings that will influence your prospect to engage. On a relevant side-note, be sure to attend the upcoming webinar I’m moderating on April 24th “Be More Interesting: Get More Sales.”

Most interesting quote:  (the 92% stat) means most salespeople are competing for business among the 8% of prospects that will reply. This comment is what I found most interesting because it drives home a point that would otherwise go unnoticed. Do you really want to slug it out with competitors for the attention of 8% of your prospects? Are the 8% of prospects that do respond even the right people to talk with? I think he made his point that there has to be a better, more effective way to get prospects attention so the 8% figure becomes much higher. What if you could get 20 or 30% of prospects to talk with you? This could make an obvious difference in sales productivity. This is exactly what they aim to help their clients do with their Sales Intelligence and Customer intelligence products.

Meagen Eisenberg, VP of Demand Generation at DocuSign described how she accelerates the pipeline with a content marketing and lead nurturing system. She was generous enough to share how she maps content to each stage in the buying cycle and what the leadflow looks like.

Most interesting stat: Every day, 50,000 new, unique users sign up for Docusign’s esignature solution (27million users to-date).

Most interesting quote: It’s not just about email analytics (number of opens, click-throughs, etc.) It’s about whether or not the end goal of the content/nurturing program was achieved (did you shorten the cycle and did you influence opportunities that lead to deals). You do have an end-goal defined, right?

Atri Chatterjee, CMO of Act-On Software took us through the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Marketers.  The Information derived was from a Forester Research Study of 208 small and mid-sized companies done on their behalf .

Most interesting stat: When asked how they performed against revenue plans over the last 12 months, 44% were below plan while 56% were above plan.

Most interesting quote: Companies are spread thin as evidenced by the fact that over 50% said they used more than 13 different marketing techniques. Perhaps most surprising is that the top 5 marketing tactics were traditional (trade-show events, print ads, etc). Even so, the study found that nearly 3 out of 4 marketing automation users enjoyed ‘top performer’ status . That’s telling.

Conferences like DemandCon are where you go to learn what the best of the best are doing. It’s a place to get ideas and to feed your own thought process. When you return back to your daily routines, be warned that it will be easier to sweep  the new ideas to the side or to file them away in your mind then it will be to figure out how you can apply them to your organization (that’s the hard part). Pledge instead, to explore one or more ideas immediately. Assign someone in your staff to conduct further research. If you don’t have the staff, then pencil the more compelling ideas into your demand generation strategy. Where do they fit? Which are the more obvious fits? Which would be easiest to test? It’s not enough to have the new insight. Figure out what you can DO today with the insight you’ve gained and what steps you can take immediately to put the insight into play.

The title of my post is a play on one of the most famous advertising headlines of all time. John Caples, was a fledgling copywriter in 1926 when he wrote a headline for Ruthrauff & Ryana on behalf of  the U.S. School of Music. Caples ad, “They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano” became known as the 20th century’s most successful,  mail-order copy because of it’s stunning results.

The goal of the ad was to capture interest and gain attention so that the entire sales copy would be read and then acted upon. Interest and Attention are pre-requisites of any sale of course. That’s easy to understand. The hard part to understand–especially back then–is that the only way to capture interest and attention is TO BE INTERESTING!

Tell a story

So why was Mr. Caples copy so interesting?  Instead of focusing on features and benefits, Caples introduced us to Jack, a budding pianist who was taunted by a fellow pianist then booed by the crowd before he eventually silenced everyone with his masterful music.

Caples told a story we could all relate to. When we read that Jack silenced his skeptical audience with his skillfully played “Moonlight Sonata,” we applauded. Stories are powerful. They help us to understand, relate, remember and believe.

The ad didn’t talk about the U.S. School of Music, neither did it proclaim the superiority of the music correspondence course it offered. It told the story of Jack who gleefully shouted, “Before I knew it, I was playing all the pieces I liked best. Nothing stopped me. I could play ballads or classical numbers or jazz, all with equal ease! And I never did have any special talent for music!” Even though Jack is a fictional character, we could see ourselves in him and believed we could accomplish the same thing.

Although a lot has changed in the world of sales and marketing since 1926, much has remained constant (if not all too often over-looked). Stories have the power to move people to action. Today, story telling is but one tried-and-true technique that sellers and marketers can use to be interesting and induce action.

Be More Interesting, Get More Sales!

Be more interesting and get more sales is the title of an upcoming webinar that I’m moderating on April 24th, and you’re invited!

I’ll be joined by three of the most interesting women in sales for an hour-long, highly interactive webinar; Trish Bertuzzi of The Bridge Group, Inc., Lori Richardson of Score More Sales, and Barb Giamanco of Social Centered Selling. We’ll tell stories about the technique that got one seller a meeting with Ken Chenault, the CEO of American Express. Perhaps you’ll also be interested in how one sales leader discovered that her prospect liked the same music she did and what she did to capture his attention.

The key to being interesting is to find interesting approaches. We’ll share an example of how a sales leader connected her prospect to a speaking opportunity and what happened as a result, and how one of us grew her business through the roof by messaging CEOs about what she learned about them on social channels.

You can break through the noise and engage with prospects previously unavailable to you. You just need to know a few secret techniques and come up with your own unique approaches.

Shock your boss, your colleagues, loved-ones, and the world! Get those impossible-to-get appointments and close deals you never thought possible.  Register now for the free webinar.