3 Deal-Killing Mistakes

Avoid these common blunders--or face suffering sales.

written by Mark Stevens

Okay, everyone in every career makes mistakes and salespeople are no different.

How salespeople differ is in their potential to score unlimited earnings. And that opportunity can be leveraged in spades. But the sword cuts both ways. Salespeople also have the least margin for mistake. If an admin assistant errs, a form gets filled out wrong. If a salesperson errs, a sale is lost. Mega difference.

Sales blow up before they are closed for many reasons, but three reasons top the list. Understand these--and equally important, how to avoid them--ahead of time and you will increase your production exponentially. Guaranteed.

The Deal Killers
You ask for the business. Old school, Willy Loman-style sales hack advice says you should ask the customer or the prospect for the business. No. No. No.

You are not a peddler. You are not a beggar. You are a problem solver, solution provider, advisor, consultant, expert and educator. Does your lawyer get on his hand and knees for your business? Does your doctor? No. And you neither should you. This isn’t a matter of ego or pride. It’s about being a sales professional. When you ask for the business, you:

· Appear desperate and lose professionalism.

· Rely on a stunt as opposed to creating a compelling sales performance. When you instill trust in yourself, you don’t have to ask for the business; your customers and prospects ask for you.

Reminding yourself of your prospects’ patterns before you walk in the room is critical. Replay the movie of your last meeting in your mind before you enter the room. Doing this provides you with strong and reliable signals and patterns for how to conduct yourself this go-round--this new opportunity.

Three times a year, I have lunch with the CEO of a major insurance company. I never bring anything to sell, there are no proposals in hand, no hidden agenda. Sure, I would love to walk away with a commitment for a major project but that is nowhere near top of mind.

He will ask me what is new at my firm, what interesting things are we up to. He always starts off that way. So, armed with the knowledge of his patterns, I prepared myself to talk about the most compelling, innovative and intriguing work MSCO is doing. These lunches may not be the biggest engagement, or the most profitable, but they are the most captivating.

In a dynamic the “ask for the sale” hustlers don’t comprehend, once you captivate prospects, they begin selling themselves on you. They’ll think, “Why don’t I have MSCO do that?” In essence, they do the selling for you.

At one of our luncheons last year, the CEO started out, as usual, with a request for an update. I had the perfect answer ready for him, wrapped up like a Christmas gift.

“Thanks for asking. We’ve just developed a system of identifying sales prospects, per industry category, on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Think of it as a lead generation tool that cultivates opportunities through the internet.”

Clearly intrigued, he asked me for more detail on how our e-system worked. I answered each query, never once suggesting that he think of using the system for his business. I didn’t have to.

“Mark, I think this could be powerful for us, don’t you?” he asked. “I mean, think of how our sales guys would respond if we could cultivate entire new funnels of leads for them. Have you thought about that Mark?”

I had thought about it; but as an idea man, a confidante and a solutions provider, I wanted him to sell himself. Suffice it to say, after one more meeting with a senior team of staffers, he asked MSCO to build a custom system for his company. Price tag: $1.1 million.

So don’t ask for the business. Make the offer so attractive the business asks for you.

You set an annual sales goal. From the standpoint of conventional wisdom, this goal-setting exercise makes sense. But look at it closely and you will see it is self-defeating. Here’s why:

· It puts an artificial ceiling on your expectations. Why aim for $500,000, $1 million, $10 million in sales when you can shoot for the moon?

· It puts pressure on you, leading to desperation. You’ll force the issue with prospects, and no one wants pressure from a salesperson.

I have witnessed this scenario hundreds of times: a salesperson sets a personal quota, starts falling short and its desperation time in Dodge City. Desperation is a virtual assurance you will fall short. Far better to go out everyday with a goal to educate, influence, and build trust. Then the dollars will come.

You rely on referral sources. Note I said “rely on.” Building a network of referral sources and having them recommend you to their friends and family, these are always good things.

But relying on them is a big mistake. That’s because you pass control of your own destiny on to others, who may or may not act on your behalf. There’s too much at stake for you to risk the “may not.”

Case in point: mortgage loan brokers often think the best route to success is through real estate agents. So they meet with agents, arm them with brochures, take them to lunch, and on and on. This “hope springs eternal” approach places its faith in agents advising their home buying clients to secure a mortgage with the brochure toting loan brokers. The problems are many:

· Agents are focused on home sales and purchases, their core business, not yours.

· Agents are inundated with brokers seeking referral business. Now you’re one of a crowd.

In this case--and in virtually all others--salespeople who bring their message directly to the source; don’t have to rely on others, can make a stronger case for working with them rather than patronizing the competition and can build personal brands as they make a strong case for the advantages of selecting them.

The sad thing about selling is that so many people do it the wrong way. The great thing about selling is that so many people do it the wrong way. Avoid the killer mistakes and you will stand out and watch your production soar.

Mark Stevens is the CEO of MSCO, a results-driven management and marketing firm, and the bestselling author of Your Marketing Sucks and God Is a Salesman. He is also a popular media commentator on a host of business matters including marketing, branding, management and sales. He is also the author of the popular marketing blog, Unconventional Thinking.

Retrieved on 2^nd October 2009 from http://www.entrepreneur.com/sales/salescolumnistmarkstevens/article203172.html

Credibility is King

In markets where every customer is an expert, authenticity is the key to success.
written by Justin Petruccelli

Most business owners would give just about anything to have a guaranteed stable of loyal customers. But imagine if almost everyone in that stable knew as much about your business as you do--if not more--and one slip-up could drive most of them away in one fell swoop.

That's the double-edged sword of the niche business owner. Wielded properly, it can be used to slice up the competition.

"It's so important that you're authentic for the market and audience you're going after," says Scott Tilton, co-founder and CEO of Loop'd, a social networking website based in San Diego that connects action sports enthusiasts with their favorite companies and athletes. "Action sports is such a niche audience, and they're so particular about who they let in. It's very important that you're in tune with that, or you'll immediately fall apart and you won't be accepted as part of that audience."
Boomer Lowe knows how important reputation can be to the success of a niche business. He's the owner of Hyde Park Records in Chicago, where the customers prefer latte to Red Bull, instrumental jazz to, well, whatever the kids are listening to these days and, most important, talking to texting.

"It's all word-of-mouth," he says. "When we opened the store, we wanted to make sure we had good stuff to offer, so we put all of our personal stuff in here. The stuff we had in here was stellar. That made a great first impression and we're still living off of that."

Crashing the Party
Tilton, 31, practices what he preaches when it comes to putting emphasis on credibility. He competed in BMX and Motocross racing for 10 years, and everyone on his sales and marketing staff has some form of action sports background. He says the proliferation of technology has given more momentum to an already ultra-dedicated market.

"These kids, they live online," he says. "They're texting and posting profiles and blogs and telling people what they're doing via the web. We applied that knowledge to the sports where these kids are highly passionate. That's what action sports is. It's a lifestyle. It's not something you do. It's something you live. We've tried to marry that passion with social networking that helps them explore the action sports lifestyle."

Loop'd, which, according to Alexa.com, averages about two million daily page views, works with some of the action sports world's biggest players, offering anything from traditional display advertising on the site to dedicated online communities that can be built around a company's brand. From a business standpoint, one of the biggest dangers in such a tight community can be the perception that comes with success. For already successful companies trying to jump on the bandwagon, Tilton says, getting a foot in the door can be even tougher because they're trying to appeal to tight-knit communities based on decades of camaraderie.

"You can't really set out to create that. You have to earn it," he says. "Nike is one of the better examples. They've learned from their mistakes of trying to enter the action sports community. Now they've done an exceptional job recently and staying under the radar--intentionally not overexpanding and making people think they're trying to buy their way in. They really want to make sure they're respectful of the other brands in the industry."

For business owners, the saying "hard work is the reward for hard work" is never truer than it is in niche markets. Because once they've allowed someone into their world, niche consumers want more than products and services. They want dialogue.
"It's really a two-way street," says Victoria Grantham, managing director of Rose Communications, an independent public relations firm with offices in New Jersey and Baltimore. "You have to pay attention to what's already happening. A lot of times, you're entering a robust existing community, so you really need to be listening and then interacting in a way that makes sense in terms of that community. It needs to be a continuous commitment. It can't just be a one-shot thing."

And it's not just about communicating, says Grantham. She says the timing and method of the communication are almost as important as its content.

"The medium is key," she says. "Social networks can be very useful for certain types of audiences. They just have to be used properly. For somebody who doesn't have a lot of experience online, I'd say really delve in there and find out where your audience is online. You don't just want to blindly throw things out there because that will undermine your authentic voice and your potential for establishing a good reputation."

Sales Rep
Lowe, 32, explains that, with the exception of the phone book, he doesn't do any advertising, and he doesn't sell merchandise on the store's website, save for a few eBay auctions. But knowing he has the "diggers"--collectors who go from store to store scouring the shelves for that rare find--hooked, and that they'll tell fellow collectors where to shop is all the advertising he needs. Besides serving a cultural community, Lowe says he also has the advantage of being able to cater to Chicago's distinct geographic dynamic, in which people tend to be very loyal to their particular neighborhoods.

"Where we are in the city, there aren't any good record stores," he says. "We're like the only game in town as far as a brick-and-mortar store. When dudes in the neighborhood want to sell records, they know we'll buy them. When we got here, people were like, 'That's where the record store is.' "

Once he had established his store's reputation with the locals, Lowe says, things started to take off on a larger and unexpected scale when some of his eBay bidders--from as far away as Japan--began showing up at the store. Many of them represent large record stores in Japan and spend twice what the entire store usually makes on any other day.

"There's actually a guy in Chicago who's a guide for these Japanese record store folks," Lowe says. "He loves us, so he brings those guys here. Now that our name is synonymous with good stuff, we get at least one or two foreign buyers in here every week. Before, we didn't even know they existed. Now they come in all the time."
For Lowe, like most niche business owners, dealing with customers who know so much about his product creates a delicate balance--he has to be fair enough to keep them, but shrewd enough to stay in business.

"In the record buying market, if you get the good stuff, it's how you present it and how you price it," he says. "There are some stores who don't know what they've got. Diggers love that. They say, 'Great, you're selling this for 99 cents. I'll sell it for $300.' There are other places, when they get the good stuff, they sell it through the roof. Because we get such good walk-in stuff, we don't have to do that.

Collectors appreciate that. It's helped us a lot that we price stuff fairly. If you gouge, people who really have to have something might buy it once, but they won't come back."

In addition to maintaining that balance within the business itself, Grantham says, it's also important for niche businesses to be transparent with their customers because the line between the business and the community of its customers is so blurry.

"When you have a financial interest in something, that's fine," she says. "But being upfront is very important. If something goes awry, fess up. Be honest about what happened and make it right as quickly as possible. If you violate that trust, it can be a real issue."

For now, Lowe seems to have it down. Either way, he's content to focus on his core customers and let the chips fall where they may--because that's what they want, and besides, he's one of them.

"We can't be all things to all people," he says. "The mom and pop stores that try to do that are all closed. We're going to handle what the neighborhood wants and that's it. If you want Celine Dion, go to Target."

Retrieved on 22nd October 2009 from http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/branding/article193322.html

Do a Sales Job on Yourself

Resolve to put your customers' interests first and watch your sales increase.

written by Charles H. Green

Let's get real for a minute. If you look up the dictionary definition of the word “sell,” you may not like some of what you find. There are unpleasant synonyms and usages, words like "persuasion," "inducement," "sell out," "hard sell" and "sell down the river."

Selling, in other words, doesn't have an entirely good reputation, but you probably already knew that quite well. You know some people who react negatively to being "sold" and even deplore sales as a career. You've probably spent some energy justifying the role even to yourself.

All this makes it hard to do a great job selling. Unfortunately positive thinking alone won't change people's perceptions. And crossing over to the dark side--accepting the role of con artist and hustler--is ugly, immoral and doesn't work well, anyway.

But there's a way out, a way of acknowledging the tough reputation of sales and overcoming it at the same time. It involves the most important sale you'll make--the sale inside your head.

Pick one of these simple ideas, however you say it:

· You get more sales by getting people what they want than by trying to sell them what you want.

· If you stop trying to control people, they'll cooperate with you.

· If you listen to people first, they will then listen to you.

· If you help people you increase your chances of making sales.

· If you put your customers' interests ahead of your own, you'll end up better off than if you tried to achieve your own ends directly.

There's a good reason most customers are suspicious of salespeople: Most salespeople are, in fact, more motivated by getting the sale than they are by helping their customers. And it's made worse by the sales professionals' relentless pursuit of efficiency, closing and objection handling--all of which are about the salesman, not the customer.

The idea is so plain it can be difficult to believe. It seems paradoxical: Stop trying to control your customers and you'll get better results than if you try every trick in the book.

People want to buy from those they trust. The best way to be trusted by your customers is simply to be worthy of their trust. Be trustworthy. That means truth-telling and transparency. Above all, a relentless focus on the best interests of your customers will earn their trust.

If you constantly serve your customers' ends, you'll gain a reputation for being trustworthy. When people trust you, they hassle you less about price, they refer you to others, you get fewer competitive and more sole-source bids, higher repeat rates and far more cooperation from your customers.

Successfully selling yourself on building a trust-based relationship is a win-win. Customers get their interests served better, and you get your interests served better. But this only happens when you don't lead from your own self-interest.

That simple, internal sales job is not all that easy. But the very best salespeople in nearly all industries have managed to make that sale. They have convinced themselves that everyone, themselves included, is better off if their primary focus is serving their customers.

Put it another way: Make your own sales not a goal, but a byproduct, a byproduct of making customer satisfaction your primary goal.

Charles H. Green is the founder of Trusted Advisor Associates and a speaker and executive educator on the role of trust in professional services. He's taught executive education programs at Kellogg and Columbia Business Schools. Author of Trust-Based Selling, and co-author ofThe Trusted Advisor, Charles has written for the Harvard Business Review, American Lawyer and the CPA Journal. He blogs at http://www.trustedadvisor.com/blog.

Retrieved on 12 October 2009 from http://www.entrepreneur.com/sales/customerservice/article203642.html

What Drives Entrepreneurs?

written by Jennifer Baszile

From the covers of magazines to the front of the business pages, entrepreneurs receive great admiration. But new entrepreneurs often make the mistake of putting successful people on a pedestal and then talk themselves out of their own greatness by saying, “I could never be like that.”

Think only “certain people” from “the right side of the tracks” are the ones who become successful entrepreneurs? A recent Kauffman Foundation report suggests that you think again.

Researchers from the University of Akron, the University of Southern California, and Duke University surveyed 549 entrepreneurs who founded businesses in some of the most dynamic sectors if the economy released the report in July 2009.

From computing to health care, aerospace to electronics, successful entrepreneurs reported some surprising things about themselves. What were some of the most surprising findings?

Most of these entrepreneurs came from middle class or working-class backgrounds and half the group and were the first in their families to start a business. Less than one percent of them came from extremely rich or poor backgrounds.

Why did they take the entrepreneurial plunge?

The report finds several top motivations. They wanted to build wealth, see an idea of theirs come to fruition, and they wanted to own a company. Also interesting, they found little appeal in working for someone else.

Think that entrepreneurs are hard-driving single guys? Not so, says the report. Most of them are actually middle-aged married folks with at least one child at the time they began their companies.

Resource Box: To find out more, go to http://www.OneMillionaireMom.com where more information is waiting for you. For more information about Jennifer Baszile, visit http://www.JenniferBaszile.biz

Retrieved on 24 September 2009 from http://www.articlesbase.com/entrepreneurship-articles/what-drives-entrepreneurs-1251224.html

10 Off-The-Wall Businesses

Retrieved on 1st December 2007 from http://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/169674.html