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The Golden Nugget vs the Mother Lode

iStockPhoto © Joe Belanger

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.

Your word, your message, your solution, and the caliber of your presentation and delivery surpass what even the best sales and marketing icons in the business could only dream of bringing to a prospect’s table. Surely, if you describe the mother lode – some gem of pure revelation within the prospect’s scope of desired outcomes – will radiate that glorious spark of, ‘we must have this,’ in their eyes.

Indeed, your meeting seemed to go well. But after the meeting, your prospect will have an hour’s worth of snippets, thoughts, and ideas floating around in their heads, which will never fully coalesce into the vivid focal point of your message or mission. Somehow your prospect’s cognitive ability to acknowledge the broadest extent of your message seems to have gone the way of yesterday’s Twitter time-line, out of sight, and out of (their) mind.

My point here, if I still have at least your valued attention, is that 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.

iStockPhoto © Bruce Smith

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?

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 digestwith 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.

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Spring cleaning to rejuvenate sales.

Spring is here. As the weather heats up, I feel a jolt of energized motivation. I’m re-thinking those projects for which I’ve hit the snooze button – repeatedly. Spring is a time when the world begins the process of renewal and rejuvenation. The sun takes a bit more time to fall below the horizon, and the chill-shrouded days of the previous months begin to fade from our memories, and our bones.

Almost without being aware of it, I found myself moving furniture to get at the dust and debris hibernating behind. I surprised myself with how good the furniture looks in its new arrangement and wonder why I never saw things in quite that way before.

Spring is a time when we begin to lay siege to the dirt and detritus that has accumulated in our work life as well. Whether it takes the form of an immense pile of neglected receipts on your desk, an ever expanding to-do list, or account strategies that – after months of execution – have grown dis-organized and unfocused, these sometimes invisible yet very present obstacles will drive your productivity deeper into the ground than the spring bulbs you planted.

Is this where you find yourself in the middle of Q2? Over time, and if left unattended, the inevitable accumulation of ‘stuff’, the clutter that permeates, penetrates and defines your motivation and attitude, will distract you from your objectives, will keep you from focusing on the right activities, and will undermine the vital integrity you have so carefully nurtured with your customers.

Spring cleaning in your personal life requires an array of mops, buckets, boxes and bins. If you find a renewed sense of purpose emerging from the all-too-long winter months, here are several tools you’ll surely want to consider for rejuvenating your sales life.

Plan2Win

The relationships you have with customers represent the absolute foundation of any measure or achievement of success. It is vital not only to identify account goals at the beginning of the year, but to re-evaluate these goals periodically (spring is a good time!). How can you alter, or refocus your sales plan accordingly to optimize your efforts? Plan2Win software helps salespeople like you develop territory and account strategies. Reviewing your plan regularly enables you to make better use of your time and resources and produce better results. With Plan2Win, you can plan how to best optimize your territory and win the most business from your accounts.

Gorilla Expense

The adage “time is money” can most definitely be applied to selling. If you’re behind in your expenses it’s most likely due to this philosophy. Completing expense reports sucks precious selling time from your day. Gorilla expense lets you record expenditures with your smartphone or laptop as you incur them.  The receipts can be added to reports electronically, thereby eliminating the need to carry or accumulate paper receipts. And Gorilla Expense keeps things organized and up-to-date for sales managers and finance. Users that are designated as managers can view, save and approve/decline reports that are submitted by subordinates from within the application. The application also allows managers to redirect reports to other managers/stakeholders including Accounting for the final approval. This is all managed electronically within the application.

Bloomfire

Spring cleaning has become a kind of inspiration-fueled engine of social therapy. It can serve that same purpose for your sales team. There should be a place for everything, and everything should be in its place. Bloomfire gives your team fingertip-access to all the sales documents they need to spike sales fast — videos, presentations, selling tools, docs, spreadsheets, etc.

Sales reps can ask questions – and get answers… from product managers, sales managers and each other. They’ll be swapping slides, tips, and proposals. No rummaging around for the right presentation. No fire-drills looking for quick answers. Bloomfire works whether your people are in the office or in the field, using PCs, Macs, smartphones or tablets.

Yesware

Managing email, from an administrative viewpoint, is an area that seems to undergo the highest degree of neglect, and consequently generates a proportional degree of inefficiency, pressure, and tension.  Email is the medium where most sales-relevant communication takes place. You cannot live without email, as much as you might wish you could. Yesware is for Gmail users who want to lasso the horse-power of email to improve the quality and timeliness of prospect communications and reduce the hassles of logging prospect activity.

With Yesware you use email communication as a means to record prospecting activity in the CRM system. It’s done in a way that it’s helpful for both reps and managers. Yesware provides a quick way to see how you are spending your time. Organize your team’s’ templates to match your sales process. If you use a sales methodology, have those stages appear right in your team’s Gmail.

Spring Cleaning

Over time, the residue of unfinished tasks, sub-optimally executed plans, and missed deadlines, distract us from our objectives and keep us from peak performance.  The sense of accomplishment and invigoration we feel after spring cleaning is no accident. It is an integral part of the natural order of things. And it is most definitely an integral and essential part of enthusiastically reaching our highest level of sales achievement.

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 digestwith 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.

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Sales-ready leads

Marketers, as we all know and understand, are responsible for many critical business tasks. Not the least of which is to ensure that the company’s vision, brand, and most importantly its solutions become not just known to, but ultimately acknowledged by as many of the right people as possible, and that its solutions are recognized as being viable and competitive options. From a philosophical standpoint, Marketing’s role is the transformation of a company’s mission – through the successful integration of brand awareness, solution credibility, and calls-to-action – into a broad base of satisfied customers.

Today’s post is not to delve into those many responsibilities, or even their significance, which we invariably place on Marketing’s broad shoulders. Instead, I put forth the proposition that all of us – Sales, Management, everyone who is not in Marketing – are guilty of asking and expecting Marketing to do the wrong thing – to generate “sales-ready” leads.

To lay the foundation of my argument, let me first list each type of lead, and therefore propose the most suitable definition.

Dubious Lead:
You have a name and contact information, but you have little to no history of interaction, nor do you know anything about the suitability of your solutions for that specific contact. All too often, typical sources of dubious leads are purchased lead-lists, and names extracted from business cards that were tossed into a “fish-bowl” by people hoping to win a tempting trade-show give-away. The definition of dubious is “of doubtful promise or outcome” and there should be no surprise that the true nature or quality of these leads will be questioned by Sales.

Unworthy Lead:
You have a name and contact information, and perhaps there has even been significant lead activity, but based on their buyer profile^[1], the lead is not someone for whom your solution would provide an impetus for change – which is the first immutable law of selling. Likewise, they would not likely recognize or realize a substantial benefit, and therefore becomes a violation of the second law. They are not, in other words, a worthy or sustainable match.

Marketing’s activities will often generate unworthy leads, for which they should not be blamed or held accountable. The best analogy would be very much like casting a net from the deck of a fishing trawler. You are likely to reel in a load of fish you cannot sell, along with the fish you can sell, because both types of fish happen to swim in the same area. While Marketing should not be blamed for generating unworthy leads, they most certainly convey a misguided conviction when demanding that Sales should follow-up on these leads. It is my sincere belief that much of the contention that exists between marketing and sales can be eliminated simply by reaching a detente on the precise definition of an unworthy lead, and subsequently lifting the ill-conceived requirement for productivity-deficient Sales follow-up.

Unqualified Interest:
The lead fits the profile of a typical buyer. However, there has been no lead activity – no website visits, no conversations, and no previous or substantiated display of interest. The lead should be interested in your products or services, given their buyer profile and position, yet no interaction has taken place with your company to indicate interest. It could be that the lead just doesn’t know about your solutions. It could also mean that, although they are certainly aware of your company or your solutions, they have not yet recognized a need – never mind, a critical sense of urgency to meet the need.

Unqualified Suitability:
The lead has demonstrated an interest in your product or service but has not yet been qualified for suitability. These types of leads are often (and should be) run through a qualification process by Marketing, Sales Operations, Inside Sales, or Business Development teams before they are passed on to Sales. Qualifying high-interest leads for suitability is neither an effective nor an efficient use of Sales’ time. Understandably, not every organization has the manpower or resources for such a division of labor, and therefore Sales must ultimately take ownership. When this happens, Sales has two choices: they can either call and qualify the prospect for suitability over the phone, or they can conduct the research necessary to determine suitability via online services like OneSource.

Sales-worthy Lead vs Sales-ready Buyer:
The lead is a suitable match and they have shown a high level of interest. This seems like an ideal situation! There can be an issue, however when “sales-worthy” is confused with “sales-ready.” A sales-worthy lead is good: A sales-ready buyer, on the other hand, may not be so good. A sales-ready buyer is someone that is prepared to make a decision in the near-term. How could that be a bad thing, you might ask? For B2B sellers, with high average-deal-sizes and long sales-cycles, sales-ready indicates that a salesperson – at another company – has converted the prospect into a ready buyer for their solution.

For B2B sales as described above, a lead will rarely fall into our lap, ready to make a deal. If they did, there wouldn’t be a need for salespeople. Instead, buyers will get to the point where they consider moving forward with a purchase only after a lengthy sales process. No B2B buyer will abide by the 5 immutable laws of selling without the assistance of a dogged salesperson stepping them through the process. The key is for that salesperson to be employed by your company and not a competitor.

Simply put, a salesperson must be involved for a lead to convert from any stage into a sales-ready buyer. If they are “sales-ready,” they have already been sold.

These leads are no good!

When sales organizations proclaim “the leads are no good,” they are most certainly talking about dubious or unworthy leads. In the case where Sales refers to Unqualified-Interest leads as “no good” – they are simply unjustified in their premature conclusion. These leads could become good, however, they must be sold.

And selling is Sales’ responsibility, not that of Marketing.

Sales-ready leads are what Sales generates at the end of a sales cycle. It is Sales’ job to help the prospect recognize that their need is compelling, to help the prospect persuade internal influencers, and to build the prospect’s confidence in the process.

These sales skills must be employed by a salesperson before a lead will become ready to buy. Putting the focus on sales-ready leads and insisting that Marketing identify and deliver sales-ready leads just sets Marketing up for failure. Most importantly, it could be setting your sales team and your company up for failure as well. While you’re waiting for sales-ready leads to materialize, your competitors are creating them through well-executed sales strategies.

The primary hurdle faced by both sides of this often adversarial relationship is one of finding the most appropriate and agreeable definitions of lead-types and corresponding expectations of follow-up.

Marketers may always encounter the aggravating expectation of converting suitable prospects into sales-ready leads. But Sales would be better served with leads that are at an earlier stage in the sales cycle. If the successful symmetry can be achieved between marketing activities and sales mechanisms, then failure will not be an option. Both sides can surely find the common ground, and therefore reap the most lucrative of rewards – a healthy pipeline and a broad and growing base of satisfied customers.

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AA-ISP Inside Sales Summit

Four hundred Inside Sales leaders attended the 2-day American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP) Summit last week in Dallas. After an inspiring opening by Bob Perkins, AA-ISP Founder and CEO, Jill Konrath got the audience roaring with her skit that deftly demonstrated the reality of today’s sales world, all the while making a very serious point.

The Summit is the only conference dedicated exclusively to Inside Sales Leadership. I soaked in the information presented at the breakout sessions that covered relevant topics such as,  how to lead a Gen Y team and drive results, effective on-boarding, compensation and incentive strateiges, account planning; and the art and science of online sales calls. Josiane Feigon, President of Tele-Smart led a panel on inside sales tools you can’t live without which gave me the opportunity to talk about my favorite topic!

The gathering offered Inside Sales leaders a rare opportunity to learn, share, and network with like-minded sales professionals. I flew back home to Sacramento, with a blizzard of thoughts and ideas whirring around in my head. With new terms like “sales stench” (when a cold call is so trite and annoying that the prospect can smell the spiel coming through the phone), to new ideas that-even if a little sarcastic-just might make a lot of sense (like using emoticons to indicate forecast probability).

Here are a few of the startling statistics that were mentioned:

- On avg, less than 1.5% of leads will close. (Anneke Seley)
- Decision to delete: 5-7 seconds for voicemail; 2.7 seconds for email (Jill Konrath)
- Prospects that never take a cold call or email – 92 percent (Michael Gerard)
- Fax is 7x more effective than email (Ken Krogue)
- Top 20% of reps close 60% of the biz: CSO insights

I took-home a smorgasbord-sized, mental doggy-bag, filled with ideas to consider. But there are five things that really stood out as essential tasks for every Inside Sales leader’s to-do list.

Evening out with my gal pals

1. Sign up for an AA-ISP membership
The association has un-matched resources and an un-equaled dedication to the field of Inside Sales. There is simply no other source or organization that provides the connections, insights, education, or opportunities for inside sales professionals. Their Summit events are truly “not to miss.” If you strive to master the management skills, the processes, or the technologies to be at the forefront of the inside sales movement, join the AA-ISP and get involved.

2.  Buy Jill Konrath’s book “SNAP Selling.”
Jill was the keynote speaker at the AA-ISP Summit. She’s a popular speaker, a savvy sales strategist, and the author of several best-selling sales books. Jill‘s latest book, Snap Selling, gives you an inside look at how your prospects actually make (or don’t make) decisions within the confines of one over-riding factor – today’s buyers are crazy-busy! How can you get them to take your call, how can you get them to consider change, and how can you help them choose your solution? All of these challenging tasks must be done against a back-drop of what Jill calls – and we have all experienced – the Frazzled Customer Syndrome. Her book is one book that you will dog-ear, highlight, and scribble notes on, but most importantly, you will refer to Snap Selling regularly and incorporate into your sales strategies.

3.  Explore sales tools that can significantly impact your success.
Whether you want to get 71% of your contracts signed within 1 Hour like Salesforce.com does by using DoguSign, or whether you want to triple the number of qualified leads you get like Biscom did by using TimeTrade, or whether you want to reduce the length of your sales cycle by 50% as Carrier IQ has done using Pipeline Manager, you owe it to yourself, your sales organization, and your company, to explore the many tools that can help you hit your numbers.

4.  Commit to continued learning.
With the Inside Sales industry (often referred to now, as “remote selling”) growing at the speed-of-light, more and more research is available to help sales leaders identify and adopt best practices. CSO Insights is the top research organization for the sales management profession and they, along with the AA-ISP will soon be releasing ground-breaking research to guide inside sales leaders in their quest to run best-in-class organizations. And firms like the Bridge Group, Phone Works, Tele-Smart, and Vorsight each are recognized as go-to firms in the field of Inside Sales operations, best-practices, and training. There’s simply no excuse for not staying on top of leading research and industry trends or for not employing organizations such as those mentioned, to sharpen your team’s selling skills and improve their performance and job satisfaction.

5.  Prepare to participate.
The AA-ISP offers many opportunities to participate. Join a local chapter, attend an upcoming Inside Sales Front-line Conference in Dallas, San Francisco, or Atlanta, and join any one of their informative webinars. Whatever you do, don’t insulate yourself within the confines of your own organization. Get out and talk to peers. Share with, and learn from others.  You are part of a movement.

Not long ago, inside sales was perceived as the place where salespeople begin their career and learn the ropes. An inside salesperson typically aspired to move “up” to an outside or field sales position. Rarely did it work the other way around. Inside sales was, in two words, “less-than”.

Today, inside sales is an integral part of many organizations’ overall sales strategy. Customers accept and often prefer virtual communication through e-mail, phone and online meetings. Today, it’s not unheard of for inside sales reps to build and manage multi-million dollar accounts and to close six-figure sales without ever meeting their customer in person.

AA-ISP and the many people and firms mentioned in this article are leading the way. It will only get more exciting from here.

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The street sellers of Santiago.

I have just returned from a long-anticipated trip to Chile– my husband’s native land.

Chile is a wonderful and extraordinarily vibrant country, with remarkably friendly people, great food, and lots of interesting and memorable things to do. It is also known for its wine ( a tour and wine-tasting is always on my short-list of activities) and is the world’s fifth largest exporter of wine and the eighth largest producer.

Chile’s central region, characterized by its glorious Mediterranean climate, produces some of the country’s most celebrated wines, from the Colchagua, Aconcagua and MaipoValleys.

The nation’s capital of Santiago is heralded as one of the most energetic and modern cities in Latin America, and it is poised against the spectacular backdrop of the Andean mountains. It boasts an impressive array of world-class museums and galleries, an enticing culinary atmosphere, and many renowned tourist attractions.

Chile’s population,  just as it is everywhere else in the world, is divided by the haves and have-nots. For the millions living in poverty in Chile, providing for the necessities in life is a constant struggle. This social divide is made constant and inevitable by its educational system, where excellence can only be acquired by wealth. While state-operated schools are inexpensive or free, they are nothing like the pricier facilities of the middle and upper classes.

Existence is exceedingly difficult for anyone without stable employment, or those who belong to the underground economy without a social net to sustain them. They reside in make-shift hovels in slums, or in dilapidated housing projects on the outskirts of the cities, where they exist far beyond the view of the more affluent population. But Chile’s socio-economic issues are only part of the picture, and are also due, to a greater extent perhaps, to its history and landscape.

Of the approximately 18 million people living in Chile, just shy of eight million people live in the capital city of Santiago: An area of just 22.4sq miles! Since this article is about necessity, allow me now, to provide context. The national percentage of people living below the poverty line is approximately 15.1%[1].  While you’re letting that sink in, you might be shocked to learn that the United States, whose percentage of people living below the poverty line in 2010 rose to its highest level in the 52 years the Census Bureau has been tracking it, shares the same percentage “below the poverty line” rate of 15.1%[2].

As I soon learned traveling the streets of Santiago, Valparaiso, and Vina del Mar, NECESSITY, while identified as the mother of invention, – is just as certainly, the mother of selling.

And here are some of the incredibly inspiring examples I discovered during my travels throughout the environs. At stop lights, jugglers would rush to the front of the cars, perform their amazing feats, then collect money during the red light. They found a clever way to sell entertainment to a very captive audience.

At each grocery store, you will find one person who has nominated themselves to be the overseer of the parking lot. They have created a service to sell: They direct you to a parking spot upon your arrival, and block traffic for you to back out of your space as you depart. For this, they earn your gratitude and the all-important tip.

Managers of parking garages allow people to sell car washes to busy shoppers with dirty cars.

Tennis club owners let young boys and girls collect tips fetching balls during the matches.

And on every downtown street, the sidewalks are painted with a colorful patch-work of people selling home-made art, jewelry, and wide varieties of tasty and exotic food. Standing on buses, along street corners, and outside metro stations everywhere in the city are multitudes of creative and crafty entrepreneurs selling all kinds of wares. Amiable, and generally amusing, these ever-present characters are a fundamental part of the teeming social fabric of Santiago.

Everyone is selling something in order to fulfill their needs.

Seeing the ingenuity, perseverance, and industrial cunning of Santiago’s street sellers made me quite proud, and blessed beyond what mere words can convey, to be not only a member, but a staunch advocate of the sales profession. And yes, you can certainly argue that everyone ‘sells’. But, no matter what their profession might be, it takes a definitive type of individual to bet their livelihood and their ability to meet the needs of their family, on how well they can sell a product or a service.

Sales: A Noble and Noteworthy Profession

“I hate salespeople”. All too often, this statement is heard from every corner of our society, and probably across the globe as well. The reason is not too hard to justify, and most likely comes from a slew of unfortunate, though ironically memorable personal experiences. It comes from endless stereotypical portrayals in movies, on television, in any kind of printed or digital media. And it comes from far too many real-life occasions when we are confronted by sellers displaying less-than-noble intentions.

And while I certainly would never dispute the fact that lousy salespeople do exist, it in no way lessens the tremendous contribution and commitment made by the vast majority of dedicated salespeople around the world. They perform and personify their often difficult roles in this business profession with nothing less than highly dignified and extremely laudable objectives. I am also proud to say, that regardless of a few bad apples, the rest of the tree represents the fruit of an immense majority, who persistently demonstrate that selling is indeed a noble profession.

The business of selling is one of the primary mechanisms that helps to build and maintain the infrastructure of commerce within this civilized world, and therefore represents a direct relationship to the very principles in which we not only sustain ourselves within a global marketplace, but as consumers, how we provide for one another. Virtually every product or service used in this tapestry of trade has been actively sold by someone, somewhere, after its moment of assembly, construction, or fabrication, before it can ever find its way to the consumer.

The very best of us, the really smart sellers, are not looking for the one-time sale. We strive to build a long-lasting business relationship that brings the customer back time and time again. These are the absolute best references we can ever cultivate, as well as becoming the bane of every one of our competitors. The ultimate success of our endeavors also depends on the undeniable foundation of trust, and trust can only be achieved by the constancy of our genuine care for those we serve, the customer.

Yes, there will always be people who snicker and sneer at our profession. I wonder: Could they never imagine themselves as a ‘seller?’ It is invariably true that many of us choose the sales profession, for better or worse, and without ever looking back. There are many others, like the street sellers in Santiago, that do not have the luxury in deciding their career path, and must sell as a matter of – not only survival – but to provide the necessities of life for their loved ones. They probably never imagined themselves in a sales role.

We all have it in us to be successful sellers. The real measure of this success, however, is not how good we think we are. It is how well the rest of the world perceives us, and the integrity that defines our purpose, behind every deal we make.

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To stimulate your ongoing and by now thoroughly ravenous appetite for more delectable sales leadership fare, the name hovering up in the article heading will surely set this particular table in fine culinary style.

Owners of a once thriving and popular restaurant are struggling, in vain as we know, to keep their establishment from going down the drain, literally. As is often the case, they have owned the restaurant for a good many years, successfully satisfying their loyal patron’s palettes with consummate skill and dedication, for a good part of its existence. But something, somehow, somewhere along the way has changed, and the restaurant is inextricably failing – fast! Customers have quietly but decisively disappeared. The staff has grown complacent and combative, and no one has any real clue about what or who to blame. The bills go unpaid and teeter atop messy piles of unopened mail in an over-stuffed office. In the dining room, tables and chairs remain eerily vacant, night after night.

The restaurant owners are truly perplexed, yet remain characteristically defiant. “The food is not the problem” they stubbornly insist. “Customers never complain!” They remain genuinely baffled by the mysterious deterioration of business and the continuing decline of morale among seasoned staff.

The scene I am describing is from the reality TV show called “Kitchen Nightmares”, starring renowned and irascible chef Gordon Ramsay. At the beginning of each episode, Chef Ramsay – after a brief introduction to the owners – routinely follows the same tried-and-true procedure. He sits down at a table and orders food. Lots of food.

One by one, he sends each plate back to the kitchen with his patented grimace of distaste. The food is completely, and on occasion, horrifically inedible. It is either flat, flavorless, or flawed in some fashion. After tasting the array of noxious victuals, he goes back into the kitchen to meet the chefs who have noticeably lost their passion, or at the very least, their appetite for customer satisfaction.

In the kitchen, the owner claims total ignorance to what is going on. He did not know that the pantry is crammed with inventory – and he is certainly unaware that much of the food spoils before it can even be served! He is blind to the obvious fact that the kitchen lacks any semblance of organization, that it is filthy, disgusting, and downright unsanitary. He literally did not, and does not, see it.

After watching a few episodes of Kitchen Nightmares, you will realize that Chef Ramsay follows the same recipe to serve up a consistently tasty creation of drama that unfolds in exactly the same way:

Step 1: Chef Ramsay meets with the owners, and discovers they are defiantly in denial, and therefore bizarrely desperate for some solution to magically appear on their menu.

Step 2: Chef Ramsay tastes the food, and discovers it is inedible at the very worst, unsatisfactory at best (and who, in anyone’s mind, needs another less-than-mediocre restaurant.)

Step 3: Chef Ramsay visits the kitchen, and discovers the so-called chefs have lost their passion, and the kitchen itself is in disarray and thoroughly dysfunctional.

Step 4: Chef Ramsay’s team revamps the kitchen and the dining room. The décor and kitchen equipment are both brought up to date, and food preparation ethics undergo a transformation.

Step 5: Chef Ramsay creates a new menu of local, rustic culinary delights that reignite a passion for the restaurant that both the chefs and the patrons thought were lost forever.

It is not hard to notice a trend here, and to guess how each restaurant will be miraculously saved from the chopping block.

So, if you are wondering just how I plan on transitioning to some perfectly pointed relevance to sales leadership principles, here goes: It really doesn’t matter whether your enterprise depends on culinary expertise, or whether you happen to be a tinker, a tailor, or a candlestick maker. No matter if your product or service is on the cutting-edge of cool, or rests upon the time-tested standards of superior craftsmanship – without effective leadership and attention to fundamentals – your enterprise will eventually falter. While you admire your past achievements in the mirror, if your sales goals are slipping below targeted levels, then it is time to move on from the denial stage, and embrace the ugly reality.

If your sales are not where they should be, consider the three main lessons of Kitchen Nightmares.

LESSON One
Something is wrong and it is your job to fix it: Sure, you employ experienced sales managers and capable sales reps who know exactly what they are doing (and they’ve been doing it for a long time). To be very blunt, it doesn’t matter. Without demonstrating a clear sense of leadership from the top (that’s you!) even they will begin to falter. You own the responsibility, and are accountable, for the end results.

-          Get out in the field
-          Go on sales calls
-          Call customers
-          Sit in on internal sales meetings
-          Know your numbers and verify!

LESSON Two
It always comes down to the fundamentals: If you are perplexed as to why sales are not where they should be, start with the basics. You will find your answer there. Never assume your customers are happy just because they don’t complain. Most will not take the time, or bother to voice their concerns. Instead, they will simply stop buying from you. Your first clue, that customers and prospects aren’t satisfied, will hit you in the head when it hits you in your bottom line. There are other clues that lay hidden under the cloak of what appears to be day-to-day normalcy. Unfortunately these are much easier to miss and more easily go un-noticed. For instance:

-        Reps are extremely loyal to their managers. Therefore, you don’t notice that managers are not providing the quality coaching and mentoring that reps need.

-       Reps are calling on the right prospects and deals are closing. In this case, it’s easy to miss that reps may not be sufficiently identifying real needs or communicating the proper degree of value required to close a higher percentage of deals.

-       Managers express optimism with no indication of underlying concern. Remember that a lack of leadership thrives in a vacuum.

LESSON Three 
Staff and customers deserve processes and technology that change with the times: Using processes that have been in place since the beginning of time, and by default, neglecting to keep your systems up to date, are two sure-fire ways to not only frustrate your reps, but alienate your customers. And without them, your enterprise is dead in the water. Reps (and managers) need the right tools that ensure peak productivity and performance in today’s highly competitive world. Your customers, thanks to Google, are far more knowledgeable than ever before. And CRM alone is not enough. Revamp your business with top notch tools like Cloud9 for forecast and pipeline management, count5 for sales activity reporting from the field, and Active Conversion for marketing automation and lead follow-up.[1]

In any successful organization, and specifically one whose very existence is driven by the engine of its sales force (and whose isn’t?), the leadership role is defined by an instinctive ability to transform knowledge and energy into a cohesive and collective call-to-action in order to achieve goals.

And to come full circle with my culinary illustration of resurrecting a failed enterprise, successful leadership is not about dealing with nightmares that arise in your sales organization. On-going, successful sales leadership relies on a consistent demonstration of accountability, and an unwavering attention to the fundamentals. Combine those ingredients and customers will flock to the table.

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 digestwith 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.

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Customer Relationship Management

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Our world, along with the entire cosmos in which we reside, is governed by what we understand as the laws of physics. And whatever affect these forces may have upon the course of our day-to-day endeavors, they are as unchangeable, and indeed as unstoppable, as time itself. All else is not only dependent upon, but is made constant and inevitable based on these realities.

And just as there are laws governing this vast enterprise called the universe, there are also laws of selling. The straightforward and bold-faced revelation in the heading of this article will stand as a commandment in its own right. And for anyone needing a quick glance at a Webster’s or thesaurus, the term ‘immutable’ means unchallengeable, undeniable, and certainly absolute. Need I say more.

The pentagon is used to illustrate the specific ‘rules of engagement’ that substantiate the laws of selling. It is constructed of points and planes of dimensional perspective. So too are these five decrees dependent on a seller’s adherence to their visual dynamic when it comes down to the ultimate objective – the sale. You will also note that it moves with the inherent precision of clockwork. Simply stated, if a seller starts on the top, and follows the ‘flow’ of these truths, he or she will end up at the top, which, I believe, is the point.

I.      Impetus for Change:

It doesn’t matter how great your product or service is, and the presentation is just a means to serve the end. What really matters, is that it will provide your prospect with a substantial and tangible result of either realizing a gain, or avoiding a loss – the impetus for change. The seller’s true purpose is to act as the catalyst, the enabler, the mechanism for the benefit of change to take place.

II.      Substantial Benefit:

To actually qualify as a substantial benefit, it is the prospect who must acknowledge they have a problem. Then, they must determine that it does in fact need solving, and ascribe levels of priority and urgency above and beyond all other problems.

 III.      Outcome Confidence:

The prospect must have the highest degree of confidence that the predicted success can and will be realized. The seller’s task is to assist in the visualization and actualization of the entire process, from inception to fruition.

IV.      Evidential Persuasion:

The prospect must be capable of persuading other decision-influencers with rock-solid evidence in the accuracy and soundness of their decision. They must be armed with the strategic information and tools needed to communicate the impetus for change, the substantial benefit, and the unassailable reasoning behind their outcome confidence.

V.      Process Visualization:

The prospect must have a clear visualization of the process once they make a decision to buy. They must be comfortable with the details of exactly how and when the change will take place, and what transformative benefits they can truly expect. Uncertainty not only kills the deal, but will also slay a seller’s credibility in the process.

All too often, we as sellers try to fight against, or ignore these laws of selling. Plowing ahead by asking qualifying B.A.N.T[1] questions is one good example. If you think about it, asking about budget (the B in BANT) doesn’t help the buyer, it just begins to erode confidence. Asking about whether he has authority (the A in BANT) doesn’t help the buyer either, affecting confidence again. BANT questions do help sellers qualify the buyer, but they don’t help the buyer understand their need or desire for a product or service. A seller must keep the buyer’s objective focused on the only track that matters – whether the need is compelling, whether the solution outcome is credible, how to persuade internal influencers, or what will happen if a buy decision is made.

No seller can successfully operate outside the laws of selling, nor are they immune to the detrimental affects if the laws are ignored. It is time to acknowledge these underlying forces that determine whether a prospect becomes a buyer, and whether or not a seller truly represents not only an impetus, but an instrument for change.

Special note: Click here to get a downloadable Infographic on the 5 Immutable Laws of Selling

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.

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Walk into any bar or party. Grab a strategically situated stool at the far end of the action, and watch the tapestry unfold.

The usual and predictable cast of characters slowly comes into focus. There are the loners, the lonely, the packs, and the predators, all cloaked in their guise of the evening, and all in some fashion or another playing out a set strategy. Finding a spark of a ‘meaningful’ relationship by the end of the night is as remote as finding a cure for stupidity.

Then, strutting with a practiced blend of seductive swagger and poise, more confident than anyone deserves to be, and knowing they have a bit of something that everyone wants, in walks someone we all recognize as the ‘player’.

In the game of selling, it’s the salesperson that is often pegged as the ‘player’- clever and crafty in the art of persuasion and manipulation. ‘Coming on too strong’ faded from their vocabulary after their third sale, being replaced by an unspoken ‘well, you must be an idiot’ look in their eye when a polite ‘no thank you’ is offered up. Somehow, they just don’t get it.

Courtship builds trust
Selling is like dating and no one trusts a player. If you want to win a prospect’s affection and trust, you must prove that you have a genuine interest, and that requires courting of the most sincere kind. There are absolutely no short-cuts. You shouldn’t be ready to wrap a teacup around the moon if that’s what it takes, without finding out if the prospect prefers coffee, or perhaps offering just a little ‘getting acquainted’ conversation to find out what they really want, instead of what you think they need. And to take the gloves off for a moment in a fit of brutal honesty, if you have any intention of being regarded as a superb salesperson, especially by any potential ‘mark’, it’s time to shut up and listen to your prospects.

When you start pitching product, right at the get-go, it’s no different than talking about yourself on the first date. Nothing could be more counter-productive than having the prospect feel as though they are being ignored, or that their own interests are of ‘no interest’ to you. Common sense dictates that a prospective client will more than likely take an interest in what you’re selling if they detect a real connection with you, and feel good about responding to your manner and quality of attention.

No one wants to be ‘played’
To put a sharper edge on my point, it’s no different than telling people why you (or your product) are so great – instead of showing them through your actions. The old adage of ‘you can bring the horse to water, but you can’t make it drink’ applies here. No matter how thirsty you may think a prospect is, they won’t touch what you are offering until they know and trust the hand extending the cup. Just because you believe in yourself (and your product), you can’t expect your prospect to just swoon at the sound of your oh-so gifted pitch. They don’t know you. And much more importantly, they know you don’t know them, nor have you yet demonstrated that you even care. They will correctly assume you say the very same things to all your dates (prospects) regardless of your contrived level of ‘interest’, simply because you are trying to score a sale. Besides, you are dealing with a far more knowledgeable and market-savvy consumer these days. Google put an end to ‘born yesterday’, and, a ‘sucker born every minute’ went the way of the Edsel.

Integrity counts
What a prospect wants is a bit of sincerity added to the mix, a blend of exceptional product knowledge and information combined with a dash of personal integrity, and dare I say passion, to spice up the sales routine into the makings of a bon-a-fide, long-term relationship. Dating (and selling) is one thing. Sensing an atmosphere of commitment is what will get a prospect to ‘buy the farm’. The best, fastest, and most effective way to build the necessary trust is to take things slow on the first date. Approach the entire process as some form of walk in the park, or even a dance, but make your moves as though it were a seductive tango, instead of a mosh-pit of personal achievement or inflated levels of expertise.

Ask your prospects questions that demonstrate your genuine interest before you launch into the hard sell. Take the time to explore your prospect’s needs. Ask questions that will move or invite your prospect to explain what he or she is looking for, or what problem is in need of attention, or what dilemma requires a solution that, as it just so happens, only you can provide. These tactics are the fundamentals of relationship-building, and the more skilled you are at reading a prospect’s ‘wish-list’, the stronger the relationship you will be able to create and nurture over the long-haul.

Set yourself apart
Show them that you are different from all the rest of the competition by asking questions that no one else has bothered to ask them before. Make them feel that their situation and concerns are unique, and that you offer a more personal brand of targeted solutions. Begin to ‘court’ them into regarding you and your product differently from the rest of the field of ‘players’. With a more visible display of character you will build a stronger and more solid relationship and seal the deal much faster in the end, but only if you take your time in the beginning. In the realm of dating, it’s about sowing the seeds of love with a patient and caring hand. And so it is with selling.

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 or by email nancy@smartsellingtools.com. To schedule a free 30 minute consultation click here.

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I am a genuine, bon-a-fide, card-carrying numbers freak. Not a statistician, but certainly a fanatic bordering on the extreme when it comes to breaking things down to the lowest possible level, or searching for the most common denominator. The word ‘denominator’ literally means the number of parts that comprise the whole, and the whole, certainly means the big picture. In order to effectively visualize the big picture, that means I have to do the math.

To ‘zero’ in on my point: how many leads are enough? “Ah” you say, with a shrewd, all-knowing smile, “that’s a trick question,  because it depends on the quality of those leads, not the quantity.” True. And yet, not true. To examine the question in detail, and using my typically ‘digital’ frame of mind, let us say we are discussing an organization where salespeople handle the complete spectrum, from front-line lead follow-up all the way through to a close. Let’s break it down into the key elements, beginning with quantity.

Here we go, calculators poised.

Part 1 of the equation:

How many phone calls can be handled in one day?

Let us assume these particular reps have been allotted 8 hours a day to originate and receive phone calls, and that is all they are tasked to do. Let us also assume that some of their calls result in meaningful conversations, and some are simply quick hang-ups or voicemail messages. I will pick some less-than-random numbers, remembering that this is all just basic SWAG, but hey, I am really good at it, and we have to start somewhere.

To establish a base-line average, only 3 phone calls an hour result in conversations, and the rest are voicemail and hang-ups. Conversations take an average of 15 minutes, dialing and hang-ups come in at 20 seconds each, and dialing and voicemail messages consume 60 seconds each. There, you can see how quickly it turns into a numbers game, and yes, my sphere of influence.

From this point on, I will make a few more critical assumptions, and skip all the details for the sake of space and time. If you want to know the math lurking behind these numbers, send me an email, and I’ll fill in the gray areas.

The answer?

Each rep can make a total of 22 calls an hour.

So, how many leads are enough?

Based on the answer above, the 22 calls that a rep makes every hour, multiplied times the 8 hours, yields an astonishing 176 leads. That is the total number of leads each rep can handle effectively in a single day. So, theoretically, 176 leads are enough.  Any more than that, and reps cannot get to everyone, leaving vital new prospects untapped, opportunities unrealized, and no numbers entered into the ‘plus’ column.

Part II of the equation:

How effective are the calls?

Just how many leads it is possible to contact in one day is only part of the math, and only a portion of an efficient production formula. It doesn’t even come close to revealing the full story. Ask yourself these fundamental questions, “How many leads ultimately result in an significant conversation? How many conversations ultimately result in a critical opportunity? How many opportunities ultimately result in the essential reality of a closed deal?” If the answer is “zero”, then 176 leads per day, per rep, is nowhere near the mark! If the answer is any ‘prime’ number “above zero”, then ‘doing the math’ will surely determine whether or not you are getting a sufficient return on your lead follow-up investment. The imperative principle underscoring this formula dictates that if you had fewer leads to follow-up with, you would achieve far better results, simply because reps could better prepare and ‘organize’ themselves before each call.

Part III of the equation:

How good are the leads?

In Part I of our example, we determined that it is indeed physically possible to contact 176 leads. Moving on to Part II, we also determined that reps would conceivably have better call outcomes with fewer leads to deal with. In this, Part III of the equation, we will boldly posit that only half as many leads or fewer are needed. The actual percentage will be evaluated based on the all-decisive quality of the leads. It does not require rocket science to understand that making 176 phone calls to ‘leads’ that are unlikely to buy now, or at any time in the future for that matter, just doesn’t add up. In fact, it subtracts from the desired objective.

Take the time to critically and objectively analyze call outcomes. See if there is any correlation or ‘tell-tales’ revealed between the outcome and the specific type of lead. Are you getting more appointments with companies or prospects that meet a certain classification or criteria? Are there any commonalities or characteristics defining those leads with poor or indeterminate outcomes that you can use to better categorize leads in the future?

Conclusion

Despite the overall simplicity found in the equation, there is no easy answer to the question “How many leads is enough.” However, one thing is certainly crystal clear. The question cannot be answered just by determining the number of calls a rep can make in a single day. The other key factors revealed in this grand game of numbers are not only how effectively each call is handled, but whether or not those leads are of a high enough quality or caliber to begin with. After all, the numbers will never lie, and the numbers become useless if they fail to provide a foundation for careful and objective evaluation. And that evaluation, can only be measured by the quality of the results.

Special note: Raw leads without the tools to manage and convert them to opportunities, are of little use. Go sign up now for our $100,000 Sales Software Sweepstakes for a chance to win one year licenses to top sales software for your team. Hurry! Sweepstakes ends March 31st!! www.salessoftwaresweeps.com