The view from my 30th floor room

Today, I held a workshop at the Hilton Times Square with 3 sales representatives, each of whom wanted to become a more social seller.

Two of them launched websites today:

David Wodnicki, who’s met more than 1,500 lawyers in NYC (and plans to meet another 6,987!). David plans to blog about his daily escapades, as well as providing helpful marketing information to his clients.

Leo Franchi, who plans to “take the marketing out of law firms”. Leo will blog about marketing and social media to help his attorney clientele use the Internet for client development.

And the third, Greg Richards, is soon to launch (pending domain name selection). Greg’s our resident Mac expert, who plans to blog about Internet marketing.

Follow these tips to win over skeptical clients

Thanks to our long recession, once wary clients are now borderline paranoid when it comes to engaging sales consultants or other service providers. Our job of convincing them they need our services has become increasingly difficult over the past few months.

Here are a few ideas to win over more skeptics.

First, acknowledge your clients’ fears. If your pricing is high, then it’s OK to admit it. But you better be able to back it up with lots of data, and make an “apples-to-oranges” comparison with your competition. So instead of quoting a fee, quote in terms your clients understand — number of new customers, number of new inbound leads, etc.

Second, you’ve got to ask your questions without the conversation sounding like a cross-examination. Rookie sales consultants think they can go right to the pitch, but successful veterans do the business interview first. Asking questions around revenues, number of customers, earnings per customer, lifecycles of customer, etc. will set you apart from other sellers. Don’t forget, clients rarely believe anything you say, but they always believe what they say. So getting your business questions answered early on builds a foundation of trust.

Third, you can no longer pass off new business to your implementers or installers and move on. When you discuss the implementation schedule, find out how your client would like to stay in touch — by phone, email or face-to-face meetings. Promise to stay involved and make sure you keep that commitment.

Finally, give up the idea that you need to “win”. You can’t be successful in sales until you make your clients successful. So emphasize the value of working together, but don’t be so up front about it (especially since every other vendor on the planet is selling “value”). Build trust to stand out – be honest and don’t oversell your services.

Remember, if you show genuine interest, solve their problems, and most importantly, help them achieve their goals, you’ll not only please your clients, you’ll astonish them!

Photo credit by brainloc.

Be part of the conversation by helping, rather than selling

Word of mouth referrals from friends, family and other trusted sources have always been the best possible type of inbound marketing, but they’re truly brought to light in today’s social economy.

Referrals vs. traditional marketing
If you market your business the old-fashioned way, you’re probably using broadcast and outbound marketing, such as a commercial on TV or the radio. You’re hoping that: the masses watch (or hear) it, have the problem you solve, remember your name, and then go to the store and buy it.

The worst part? Besides the tremendous expenses of production and airtime, most of your customers won’t see or hear your message. And the ones that do, they won’t appreciate it. Outbound marketing has got to be the least effective form of communication. I don’t know many people who deliberately watch and pay attention to a sales pitch.

But today’s modern marketers are using the power of social referrals to put content and information about their goods in front of customers already shopping for an answer to their problems. For example, you could write a few articles, shoot informative videos and then optimize this content online. You get free traffic from both social referrals and organic search, driving well-qualified prospects to your landing page. And all for a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing!

How to cultivate referrals
The fastest and most effective way to build your referral business is through social media. But to participate, you’ve got to be part of the conversation. When I need buying advice, I immediately turn to social media—Facebook, LinkedIn and others—since I know my friends, family and business associates will give me unbiased testimonials about the brands they like.

Effective social marketers are part of these conversations already, offering advice, tips, and other informative content. They help, rather than sell. And that’s the difference between success and failure.

By creating great content, they are marketing the way people search for information. And it doesn’t have to cost tons of money to do it.

Fly-fishing is deceptively complex — what looks like a guy or girl flailing arms and fishing line around is really a well-coordinated effort to get a near weightless fly in front of a hungry fish. Just like social media! My sporadic blogging, LinkedIn network updates and drive-by Tweeting looks chaotic, but is all part of my personal branding plan…

Read more: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/social-media-fly-fishing.html

Could this book help your company find it's next competitive edge?

Could the Business Genome ® approach help your company find it’s next competitive edge? The answer is yes, and Andrea Kates clearly lays out the reasons why in Find Your Next (McGraw Hill, 2011). Her thesis is simple: traditional management, product development and marketing require radical change.

Follow her four-step blueprint to uncover your business’s DNA, evolve your strategy and build your future:

• Sort through your options and assess hunches
• Match your genome to other successful business models
• Hybridize your company by grafting new ideas with proven successes
• Adapt and thrive by breaking old habits and starting new trends

Kates’ reveals how our imagination, optimism and desire to connect are three very powerful levers for business success. It’s a totally new concept and helps us prepare for the unpredictable, socially connected consumer.

The book is divided into three sections, with a lot of informative sidebars. Read the chapter text first, and then go back to the call out boxes. Otherwise, you may find it difficult to follow along.

Part 1 details the Business Genome approach. When you uncover these patterns, you create a fresh lens to look at business. Winning businesses consist of components of great ideas that can be melded together to create and launch new business opportunities. I love that finding your “secret sauce” is part of this process — but is your brand still relevant? Part 2 lists and explains the Business Genome elements: product and service innovation, customer impact, talent / leadership / culture, process design, secret sauce and trendability. Finally, the case studies in Part 3 really tie all the elements of the book together with real world examples, including P.F. Chang’s, GE’s Ecomagination and GM’s OnStar.

If you’re a business owner, member of your executive team or an aspiring entrepreneur, then read Find Your Next . You’ll learn to recognize the new realities, shift your focus to new questions, tap into evolving patterns and guide your organization toward opportunities for competitive advantage and distinction. Or simply, as Kates’ asks in the Conclusion, “Which emerging forces should we be tracking right now to lead our companies toward a thriving future?”

Hang up the phone, get online and start selling more today!

There no doubt — the future of sales is in social media. The Social Media Sales Revolution by Landy Chase & Kevin Knebl (McGraw Hill, 2011), lays out the new rules for finding customers, building relationships and closing more sales through social media and online networking.

The way we communicate with prospects and customers has changed, and your sales skills need to change if you want to stay in the game. Traditional methods, like cold calling are no longer effective — social networking sites are now your best tools to get in front of clients. The opportunities for developing relationships and selling are enormous on social media, and is based on six simple, yet fundamental, shifts the Internet has created for the future of selling in the B2B marketplace:

• Abandon traditional marketing
• Become a marketer first, and a seller second
• Build your sphere of influence
• Become a value generator
• Build your brand for top of mind awareness
• Work the (temporary buyer’s) window

The Social Media Sales Revolution also includes very detailed activities for you to undertake on social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook as well as chapters on Blogging and time management. The letter of inquiry process found midway through is priceless; you’ll also learn the difference between TOMA and TOMATO (and why the latter is critical to your online success).

Buy The Social Media Sales Revolution — it’s the one road map you need to generate offline sales from online marketing.

What's feared more than spiders, heights or the dark?

Afraid of public speaking? My unscientific research proved the fear of public speaking more common than the fears of spiders, heights, darkness and flying. Learning to speak well is a surefire way to boost your business.

First, you’ll have to promote yourself as an expert in your field. I started out speaking and presenting to small, city- and county-based lawyer Bar associations, in front of as few as 4 attorneys. My pay was prestige, and I used these early events as currency for larger, more regional opportunities, such as my recent seminar at the State Bar of Alabama’s Annual Meeting & Legal Expo.

In your market, there are countless organizations welcoming new presenters and speakers. Volunteer whenever you can. Most won’t or don’t have a significant budget for paid professional speakers. They’ll be glad to have you, and you’ll get valuable experience (not to mention making great business contacts).

Once you get to speak in public, make sure you know your material. During one seminar, the person manning my laptop not only disconnected my slideshow mid-stream, but then skipped over my most important slide! Since only I knew it was missing, I kept going, shaken, but not completely off track. If it wasn’t for my preparation, and for rehearsing over and over again, I would have been sunk.

Here are a few more tips to get better at public speaking:

• Smile and make plenty of eye contact with members of the audience
• Show your passion and enthusiasm for the material
• Move around purposely on stage, instead of pacing nervously back and forth.

There are so many benefits to better public speaking — recognition from your peers and potential clients being just a few. Public speaking even helps you conduct better sales and client meetings!

Photo credit by neosiam.

What's your elevator speech?

Your personal branding statement, formerly known as your “elevator speech,” is often the only chance you have of making an impact on someone.

Here is a simple format that will help you create your own personal branding statement — and one that’s easy to memorize!

I help X do Y so that they Z.

X – Who do you work with?
Y – What do you help them do?
Z – What benefit or outcome do they get from working with you?

Some examples:

“I help people who are in over their head with debt eliminate bill collector’s phone calls” (Bankruptcy Attorney)

“I help small business owners localize their business so that they get better placement on Google Maps” (Internet Marketer)

“I help executives wade through complex land use contracts with ease so that they can make good business decisions” (Business Consultant)

For networking events only
If you want to take this a step further, include a call to action at the end. Imagine how powerful the Business Consultant’s personal branding statement would be if it ended with what he really wants: “I help executives wade through complex government contracts with ease so that they can make good business decisions I’m looking to be introduced to commercial property owners and real estate investors.” The person hearing this now has an assignment!

Make your personal branding statement more memorable and actionable by including a specific, clear call to action. I can’t guarantee you’ll get new clients, but you’ll certainly meet a lot more people.

Remember, when someone asks “what do you do” — don’t tell them what’s on your business card. Instead, become memorable with a personal branding statement.

Just like oil and water, sales forecasting and sandbagging don't mix!

Mark Twain once said that there are “three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” Little did he know how apropos this statement would be when it comes to sales forecasting, and the process of sandbagging (in general terms, you “sandbag” when you hold back a strength only to surprise your adversary with it later on).

So why do so many sales professionals, and sales leaders, like to sandbag the numbers? Maybe it’s because new business reps want to surprise leadership with a massively big week. Or maybe it’s because managers want to fire up the team – “we need $200k this week” when the real number is only $175k.

In both cases, sandbagging directly affects your personal brand. What does it tell your manager about your values when you deliberately hold back numbers for another week? And what do your subordinates think about you when you artificially inflate sales figures? Neither bodes well in my opinion.

Instead, why not just report what the real figures are? And be consistent in this approach? I’d bet that weekly meetings and forecasting schedules are met with excitement, rather than chagrin.

For new reps only
Do us all a favor, and report the real numbers. A zero isn’t the end of the world, so long as you can back it up with your plans and processes to see more clients, and close more business.

What’s your take? Do you sandbag sales? Are you misleading your sales force with unreal expectations, just to “hit” the real number?

Mark Twain quote from Wikipedia.