Closing sales – people are managing it – so what have they done

Something to be positive about: An Irish services firm that has hit their revenue target month on month for the first quarter of the year this against a backdrop of:

• Tighter budgets in the sectors they are selling to
• Their local competition closing offices and cutting headcount

In Sept 08 the situation was as follows:

• This firm didn’t have to sell proactively in years
• They had very few new local projects to work on
• They faced stiff competition for international projects
• Making contact with past clients, prospective clients was at an all time low

Over a three month period this firm took a number of key steps to address the situation:

• Firstly they asked people at the grass roots to help with business development
• Secondly they held workshops with all customer facing staff to remind people about staying in contact with clients
• Thirdly they reviewed all their old contacts, centralised them and began to make proactive contact
• Finally they started to note conversations they were having with clients at all levels and got senior staff to come along to meetings to share their insights and expertise with contacts

All quite simple you might say. Well the results have been interesting to see.

• Activity levels have increased without hiring a single sales person
• Over a six week period four of their project team handled 20 proposals and won 7
• In-house experts without any background in sales are spending a few hours a week on business development
• Their sales target hit 3 months in a row
• A new pipeline of real work that will bring delivery headaches

I highlight this story because it shows that new projects can be secured despite all the doom and gloom we hear on a daily basis and as this company proved everyone can and should contribute to business development.

John O’ Gorman – Sales activity to accelerate sales growth

What a IT director looks for in a sales person

A short post that I thought would resonate with a lot of you.

We were hosting a sales workshop recently with some senior account managers and project managers and they seemed surprised at the characteristics buyers look for from their partners and suppliers. As a result I asked a director of IT who holds a size-able budget what characteristics he looked for in the vendors/service providers he meets. His answer

• Expertise
• Listening skills
• Someone who isn’t too pushy
• Someone who is willing to say they don’t know the answer buts knows someone who doea
• People who follow up professioanlly

The message: people want to meet experts not know it alls, people who are confident in their ability and people who know what they don’t know.

John O’ Gorman – Accelerating Sales, Increasing Sales Activity

Interruptions can ruin a sale

• Do your sales team interrupt each other when they are in meetings with prospects?
• Have you discussed questions you are going to get asked?
• Have you agreed who will answer them?
• Have you asked your perspective client about the things that will annoy/upset their peers/direct reports when presenting at the next crucial step in the sales cycle?

I hope you have answered yes to the short list above? If you haven’t I suggest you think about them. As we all know selling is not just about a process, people matter, and more traditional buyers don’t like to see people interrupting each other even if they are on the same team selling.

John – Accelerating sales growth, sales success, sales planning, sales process

Belief and conviction in your solution/service offering will affect your close rate

If you are responsible for selling, it really helps if you have total belief in the value your solution delivers. An obvious enough statement one might think. Well not so obvious, I can tell you from listening to vendors and service provider talk about their solutions lately. Consider three questions
1. Do you have conviction when you talk about the value of your solution
2. Do you sound like you understand what it takes to deliver the solution/service you are offering
3. Do you sound like you understand how as a buyer I am feeling about the change required to implement your solution or take on your service offering

If you answer yes to all three great, if you can’t, you need to sit down and review the actual value delivered to clients in previous engagements. In my honest opinion, conviction and belief gets built with experience and real world / practical understanding of how others have gained value from your offerings no where else. And please remember, it’s not the value marketing tell you about that will help build conviction and belief into how you communicate your overall value, it’s the value customers talk about that counts, this implies extending relationships beyond the point of order.

Food for thought
John – Accelerating Sales Growth, sales planning, sales effectiveness, sales process, sales coaching

Dump them to the side or KIT

For those of you who think selling is about just making calls and pushing your and getting someone to buy and think about the following.

You meet say Mr. x and they don’t buy from you and have no short term intention of buying from you, what do you do? Well 7 out of every ten sales people just push Mr X. to the side and forget about him.

Well I can tell you from personnel expereice recently that those 7 sales people need their heads examined. Mr X may not be in a postion to buy from you know but he may know someone who is and if you keep in touch with him and think of him he is likely to recommend you to his contacts. One of our customers did this recently and they now have a €100,000 opportunity in their pipeline that they wouldnt have had if they just forgot about Mr. X.

Lessons to be learned from this

Adopt a KIT mindset – Keep in touch

If you think of others and send them something of value from time to time they will more than likely refer you to someone who could buy your product or service.

John O’ Gorman - Director of Accelerate Sales Growth, Sales Management, Sales coaching