Posts by Mike Schultz
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- 5 Ways Strategic Account Management and Selling Are Different
What are the differences between Strategic Account Management and Selling?Ask the question, “What needs to happen at your company to maximize your success with your strategic accounts?” and you’re likely to get answers like this:
- The leaders at the account need to know about the value we can bring them besides what we’re doing for them right now.
- We need to penetrate different divisions of the accounts.
- Our relationships need to be deeper if we want to keep competitors out.
- We need to work directly with decision makers at the enterprise level.
Nice list, but not unique to strategic account management.
Indeed, the answers tend to be the same as those to the question, “What would you like your salespeople to do more of?"
Company leaders often ask the question, look at this list, and decide, “Okay – looks like we need sales training. Let’s put something on the agenda.”
This is a mistake.
While on their face, many of the outcomes of strategic account management and sales are the same (e.g. higher revenue, higher margins, longer contracts, deeper penetration, more mindshare, stronger relationships) and some of the concepts are the same, the paths to get there can be quite different.
Here are 5 areas where these differences stand out...
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- 8 Strategic Account Management Roles Every Company Needs to Know About
Is your account team playing all the right roles?Ask leaders at companies how much more they believe they could be selling to their strategic accounts and you don’t hear 5%, 10%, or 20%.
It’s usually more like, “We should be selling 2 times…3 times…even more.”
Ask what’s in their way, you’ll often get this answer, “Our strategic account managers just aren’t doing what they need to do to penetrate the account, cross-sell, and keep the competition out so we can truly grow our accounts their potential.”
The reasons vary why this is the case. But when it comes to the strategic account management team, eight of the reasons are predictable. This is because there are eight distinct roles that must be played for strategic account management initiatives to deliver at peak potential.
Few companies define the roles and play all eight well.
The first step to changing this is to know what these roles are. So here you go.
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- Creating a Culture of Selling with Rainmakers: Part Two
Are your rainmakers armed to succeed?In our last post about building a rainmaking sales culture, we discussed the three areas of organizationally-controlled influences you need to address in order to create the best sales environment in which your sales team can thrive and succeed:
Organizational Influences:
1. Expectations and Feedback
2. Tools and Resources
3. Consequences and Incentives
In this post we will discuss how to make certain you have the best rainmakers and potential rainmakers working in that culture. We’ll look at the three factors that are a part of who is on your team, who can sell, and, just as importantly, who will sell. These 3 factors are...
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- Creating a Culture of Selling with Rainmakers
Are there holes in your organization's sales culture?There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza. A hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.
- Harry BelafonteHere at RAIN Group, our advice to organizations looking to create a culture of sustained, serious selling: Make sure the bucket doesn't have any holes or it won't hold water.
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Time and again we see organizations doing a certain percent of what they need to do to help their teams achieve more sales success and increase sales performance (our favorite, “Can you come in and give a 90-minute speech that will charge up the team for the next 12 months?”), but rarely do they put forth 100% effort. If you're only doing 70% of what you need to do to increase sales performance, you don't get 70% results; you get much less. Like patching a leak in the bottom of a boat, if you don't patch it 100%, it still takes on water.
So if your charge is to create a team of rainmakers, those people responsible for selling who are bringing in three, five, or seven times more revenue than everyone else, make sure you...- 0 Comments Topics:
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- 7 Reasons Why Sales Training Fails
Is your sales training falling short?According to ES Research between 85% and 90% of sales training has no lasting impact after 120 days. At the same time, companies are spending billions of dollars on sales training each year. That’s billions of dollars being wasted on limited sales performance impact and only short-term boosts in sales at best.
Training can be a disappointment right away when it just doesn’t go well, or it can be a disappointment months later when results don’t materialize. Regardless, sales training strikes out a lot. When it does, it’s usually because of common and predictable reasons. But if you can avoid these mistakes, you can set yourself up for a successful training initiative that leads to increased sales performance and long-term revenue growth. Here are 7 reasons why your sales training might be failing...
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- How Was the Sales Training? 14 Comments to Avoid at All Costs
What does sales training failure look like? Hear any of the following comments after asking, “How was the sales training?” and you’re closing in on it.Failure is popular these days.
Seriously.
I’ve been reading (and recommend) The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. In The Lean Startup, Ries covers a number of concepts to help entrepreneurs and their new ventures to succeed. One such concept is ‘Validated Learning’.
Essentially, Validated Learning is a process by which you try a lot of things that you think make sense, measure the results, find that you made a lot of mistakes and hit on some successes, and keep on keeping on by avoiding the mistakes and testing new things.
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I like it. For a business.
For sales training, not so much.
I’m a fan of failure when...- 3 Comments Topics:
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- How to Build Fluent Product Knowledge and Improve Sales Success
Build product knowledge to improve sales success.Salespeople know what they sell, and they sell what they know. When it comes to salesperson knowledge, people know too little about their particular industry, their customers’ needs, and their company’s products and services to be able to sell the full suite of solutions. Without this knowledge they can’t:
- Ask the right questions to uncover the complete set of customer needs
- Match the right products and services to those needs
- Position the value of their company as superior to other options available to the customer
Indeed, they can’t and don’t hold masterful sales conversations with customers.
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The result: Lost sales and missed cross-selling opportunities.
Some of you may be saying to yourself, “Wait. We provide knowledge training. We even hold a retreat each year and classes focused on knowledge topics.”
Perhaps you’re the exception, but most often even if product knowledge training happens, it doesn’t get the job done. If there is some kind of test for knowledge gained, it’s usually only for accuracy.- 0 Comments Topics:
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- How to Lead a Masterful Sales Conversation
Part 3 of our How to Turbo-Charge Your Sales video series teaches you how to lead masterful sales conversations.Today I've released the third free video in the series How to Turbo-Charge Your Sales, and this is a big one. We’re talking all about how to hold masterful sales conversations so that your business can make millions of dollars. It’s can't-miss stuff for entrepreneurs, growing businesses, and anyone else who wants to see their sales go through the roof. You can check it out here: www.entselling.com/turbo-charge.html.
As you’ll learn in the video, the launching point of any good sales conversation is the ability to build rapport with your prospect. If you build rapport, you're well on your way to generating the kind of trust that will eventually lead to outstanding business relationships and more sales.
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- Know Your Value - Your Sales Will Thank You
- Part 2 of our How to Turbo-Charge Your Sales video series teaches you how to communicate your value to prospects. Don't miss it.
Last week I announced the launch of our new sales training video series geared specifically to help entrepreneurs and sellers at growing companies build their businesses. It’s called How to Turbo-Charge Your Sales.
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Since we launched the first video last Thursday, we’ve had a ton of positive responses, so I thought people might be interested in hearing a bit about the topic we’re covering in the second video, which launched today.
This video is all about communicating an effective value proposition. In short, it’s all about how to respond to the question: “What do you do?”
It seems like a simple question, but many entrepreneurs and salespeople get tripped up when trying to answer it, making it almost impossible for them to succeed in a sales conversation. After all, you can’t sell what you can’t describe. - 0 Comments Topics:
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- How to Turbo-Charge Your Sales
- Need to turbo-charge your sales? Check out our free new video series.
76% of leaders at small and medium sized businesses cited sales growth as their greatest challenge in 2011.
Having been through the process of founding RAIN Group with my business partner, John Doerr, I know just how difficult it can be for a young, growing business to get off the ground.
You’ve got a great idea that people have told you will succeed, outstanding value to offer, and the people in place to make it all come together. Problem is, when it comes time to launch, you’re just not generating the business you thought you would.
More often than not, this is a direct result of the fact that many entrepreneurs simply have not been taught how to sell. And even experienced salespeople struggle to sell in an entrepreneurial environment where there are unique challenges to selling new ideas or selling against big, well-branded competitors.
As good as your business idea might be, it’s not going anywhere if you can’t sell.
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- Want to Double Your Sales Opportunities? Focus on This One Thing
Only focusing on a prospect's pain? You're missing half the story.Most sales advice suggests that to sell products and services as solutions to needs you must uncover your prospect’s pain.
The reasons are simple:
- If the prospect communicates his business afflictions to you, then it is likely that he will want them to go away if it’s possible, and if it makes sense to invest the time, money, and brainpower to get rid of them.
- Each affliction you uncover gives you the chance to explore it fully to discover its true business impact.
- Uncovering and discussing one affliction can lead to other afflictions, which the prospect may not have been thinking about in the first place.
Uncovering your prospect’s afflictions is a crucial step in the business development process.
But focusing only on afflictions can do you a disservice because problems and pain are only half the story.
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- 8 Tips for Selling with Social Media
There's money to be made in social media if you sell the right way.There’s this age-old problem with selling: If we could only get more people to pay attention to us, we could build relationships that lead to sales.
Fortunately, social media offers an amazing source of business opportunities. If you approach it the right way, you can build many relationships that could be crucial to your business growth and success.
This article is about successfully selling (not marketing) with social media. And by selling, I mean the “two people getting to know each other and starting up a conversation that might go somewhere” kind of selling.
Here are 8 ways to strike up social media conversations with people you want to meet...
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- Q. I Hate Selling, So Now How Do I Convert Leads?
A. Green eggs and ham.
John Jantsch over at Duct Tape Marketing asked me and several other sales industry veterans the following question:
"I hate selling, so now how do I convert leads?"
His readers could then guess which sales author answered the question which way. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, I thought I’d share how I answered the question.
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- 7 Ways to Build Rapport in Sales and Connect with People
It's important to build rapport from the initial handshake. Take a look at these 7 tips for building genuine rapport with new prospects.Consider this: a CBS News / New York Times poll asked, “What percent of people in general are trustworthy?”
The answer: 30%. Pretty skeptical we all are, right?
Not necessarily. At the same time, the CBS News / New York Times poll asked a similar group the same question, but with a slight difference. “What percent of people that you know are trustworthy?”
The answer: 70%.
That’s a huge difference. Goes to show you: when people get to know you and people get to like you, people begin to trust you.
Of course, there’s a lot more to building trust than making a good initial connection with someone, but it’s sure a good start. And making a connection with someone makes them more comfortable sharing with you their aspirations and their afflictions, two things you need to know if you want to succeed in sales.
When you build rapport in sales, keep in mind you want to make a sincere connection. All too often chit-chat before a sales call seems contrived…because it is. Assuming you want to build solid and real relationships with people, consider the following...
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- 6 Building Blocks for Communicating Your Value Proposition
Even when people know their value, many find it difficult to describe it.Let’s say someone asks you the simple question, “What do you do?”
How do you answer? Of course, you need to get your value across, but as we note here, when communicating your value proposition, you don’t want to deliver the same canned speech for everyone.
What you need to do is first craft, then learn to deliver specific nuggets of information you can use to get your value across. Put all these nuggets together, and you have what we call a value proposition positioning statement.
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- Using the Power of Why in Needs Discovery
Why - a powerful word in uncovering need."It’s not that they can’t see the solution, it’s that they can’t see the problem.”
- G.K. Chesterton
One day the production line stopped suddenly, and the whole plant shut down.
It was horrible!
The company lost tens of thousands of dollars an hour by not turning out widgets as the staff stood idly by and waited.
The problem was in the ViperAssembly machine. No matter what they tried, they just couldn’t fix it for good. They replaced the McGurnkney nut and it worked for about a day. Then it stopped again. Then they tried realigning the Johnson rod, and that fix only lasted 3 hours.
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- 16 Principles of Influence in Sales
I really wanted a new basketball for my 6th birthday - so big sis went to the sidewalk to talk influence strategy...When I was 6 I wanted a basketball for my birthday. I didn’t ask my dad for it myself. I sent in the big gun: my sister Allyson.
I gave her the 411 on what I wanted and why, and we proceeded with a white board session where we mapped out all of the possible ways to get the decision makers to rule in our favor. (OK, as talented an 8 year old as Allyson was, maybe no white board. But we did talk about it, and she was a mean sidewalk chalk girl.)
Shortly thereafter, we green lighted operation Cedric Maxwell.
A few hours later, the qualified decision maker (a.k.a. Dad) came to see me. As he tells me the story, he asked me why I sent my sister in to lobby for me.
My answer, “She’s the better convincer.”
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- Not Hitting Your Sales Numbers? Do This One Thing Better
Are you giving yourself a chance of a bullseye?“Like a poor marksman you keep…missing…the target. Kaaahhhnnn!!!”
- Admiral James T. Kirk
There was this one sales person I know that worked very hard, but he always seemed to be middle of the pack when it came to results. He had good skills. He was a good guy. But the results just weren’t there.
One day I got a chance to watch him in action. Early in the day I asked him what his plan was for the day, and he said, “Sell, of course.” There wasn’t much rhyme or reason to it as he plowed forward.
At the end of the day, I asked him if he met his goals for the day, and if he felt like he was on the right track to hit his sales and personal income target.
He didn’t have much to say on either point...
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- Thank You for Helping Rainmaking Conversations Become an Amazon Bestseller
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Earlier this week we announced the launch of our new book, Rainmaking Conversations and we’ve been absolutely thrilled with the response so far. The book has reached the #1 bestseller spot on Amazon in a number of categories...- 0 Comments Topics:
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- 6 Questions to Prepare for the Biggest Sales Conversation of Your Life
Look in the mirror, and ask yourself these 6 questions.Imagine for a minute you’re a master carpenter. You’ve been building houses your whole life, trying your best to hone your craft and deliver the highest quality work every day that you possibly could.
Then one day, you’re presented with the opportunity to teach your craft – a craft you’ve been honing for 30 years – to someone else.
Let’s say for argument’s sake that this person has positively average talent! They have no better raw abilities than anyone else you might run into that barely knows the difference between a router and a miter saw.
But they’ve told themselves that they’re going to be the best carpenter that’s ever walked the face of the planet. They’re going to prove to themself, and in the process everybody else, that they will become a master craftsman, a craftsman with the skills that rival the best carpenters in the land.
Now imagine for a minute that they really mean it...
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- New Book: Rainmaking Conversations – Special Bonus Gifts When You Buy Today
Our new book is finally here: Rainmaking Conversations: Influence, Persuade, and Sell in Any Situation. After close to a decade of research, training tens of thousands of people, and a year in the writing process, we’re thrilled with how it came out.If you want a guide to leading masterful sales conversations this is it. We cover everything from generating initial discussions to uncovering needs to overcoming objections to winning the sale. We wanted to bring sales conversation to life, so each chapter is peppered liberally with examples, stories, and tips.
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- New Book First Look: Rainmaking Conversations – Free Chapter
- We haven’t said much about the launch of our new book on this blog, and it’s certainly not for a lack of excitement about it. In fact, we’ve been incredibly busy since the beginning of this year preparing for the launch of the book, which will be next Tuesday, April 19, and in the midst of all the activity, we haven’t even mentioned it yet here on the blog.
The book just hit bookstores! Thus you can buy a copy now. But if you wait until next week, you will have the opportunity to access a ton of special bonus gifts we’re putting together for you from ourselves along with authors and experts including Jill Konrath, Jeffrey Gitomer, Dave Kahle, Art Sobczak, Tim Wackel, and many, many more.
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- The 8 Buyer Personas (and How to Sell to Them)
Warp 9 Walt is a change agent with a strong sense of urgency. He's just one of the eight buyer personas...A while ago at a conference I had dinner with two people. The first, (we’ll call her Janine) I had known since we worked together six years earlier. The second person (Ed), Janine and I had just met.
Janine described a sales challenge she was facing. She’d been working with two prospects at two different organizations, one for over a year and one for almost two. The typical sales cycle is 6 to 9 months, and these were both well beyond. She felt she was nearing a sale with both, but for all she knew, “nearing” might mean a year or two to go.
This is a fairly common sales challenge: The sale looks good, but it’s taking forever. Janine happened to be facing two at the same time...
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- Overcoming 3 Common Cold Calling Objections
Cold calls don't always start perfectly. But learn to overcome these objections, and you'll instantly find more success in it.A business-to-business client we at RAIN Group work with recently closed a mid-six figure deal that started with a cold call.
But it started out rocky. Indeed, about 20 seconds in to the cold call it almost fell apart.
After the prospect answered the phone, Jim, a sales person that works for our client, began speaking and the prospect immediately said, “I’m not interested.” This is where many salespeople give up.
Jim didn’t.
He knew that this was just the first of three common cold calling objections. He persisted and, as a result, he got our client on the prospect’s radar screen and ended up winning a major deal.
If your initial attempt to capture attention and create interest on a cold call doesn’t work, don’t just wilt! It’s easy to say “okay” and just move on, but, then again, it’s easy to fail at cold calling.
All is not lost. You can overcome common objections and make saves.
Here are the three common cold calling objections along with examples for how you can overcome them.
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- 10 Rainmaker Principles and Keys to Sales Motivation
Tony Robbins, please accept my apology.About 15 years ago, when I was a budding manager in charge of my first strategic business unit, I dissed you pretty badly.
I'm sorry. I take it back.
My team and I were in a strategy meeting, trying to get something done—something really big that would literally change our fortunes and our lives.
We knew the goal, and were now trying to figure out what to do to achieve said goal.
A well-read young teammate of mine was a fan of motivational speakers, and was always looking for ways to increase sales motivation. At one point she shared, "Tony Robbins says, 'If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results.'"
To which I replied, "That self-help stuff…Bah-loney." So I dismissed what Tony said because I generally dismissed self-help gurus.
Why? At the time I had only been exposed to self-help charlatans spouting useless pap wrapped in cheese blankets. As I fancied myself a serious business person, I was anti-cheese. And thus, by mistaken proxy, I was closed to advice from the self-help world that could help us understand, and enhance, the sales motivations of top performers.
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- FAINT - The New Definition of a Qualified Prospect
It's 2001. You work for a new company in the search engine space. Let's call this company Shmoogle.Shmoogle has this huge new idea—businesses are starting to grow based on getting found on the Internet. Why not have businesses pay per click to get found? Brilliant!
You're a sales person at Shmoogle, and you know pay per click will be huge. You start prospecting on the phone.
You: Hello Ms. VP of Marketing. This is Lamont Sanford with Shmoogle. I'd like to speak with you for a few minutes about our marketing program that's helping companies like yours generate a lot of leads and new business on the Internet.
Ms. VP (who pleasantly accepts cold calls): Sure. Let's talk.
(FIVE minutes go by. Conversation goes great.)
You: OK, then, I think pay per click search engine marketing is perfect for you. How much budget do you have set aside for this?
Ms. VP: I don't have a budget for pay per click marketing—or a budget for marketing at all right now.
You: (Thinking to yourself: darn, not a qualified buyer.) Well, give me a call when you have one.
Of course, only a complete loon would finish a call like that. The wrong turn was the salesperson's fault, though, for asking the question about budget in the first place.
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- 4 Crucial Elements to Rainmaking Success
Salespeople that exhibit the 4 crucial elements are often the perfect fit.People often ask me, “Can rainmaking be taught?”
It can surely be taught, but the question that people must ask themselves and their teams is, “Can we learn to make rain?”
Makes me think of this one:
Q. How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?
A. One, but the light bulb has to want to change.
Same goes for rainmaking: if you want to turn on your rainmaking light bulb, you can.
If you’d like to discover if the rainmaking bulb can turn on for you (or for members of your organization), you need to know if the following four elements are in place.
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- 15 Must-Use Sales Questions that Get Prospects Talking
The right open-ended questions will often lead you down the right path...In order to successfully sell complex products and services you need to find out what's going on in your prospect’s world. You need to get them to really open up and talk about their wants, needs, and desires.
The best way to make this happen is through asking open-ended questions—the kind of targeted and well-planned sales questions that get prospects engaged and sharing all the relevant components of their situation.
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- 4 Things to Do When Clients Pressure You for Lower Fees
“Your fees are too high; can you do it for less?”In the highly competitive marketplace we hear dreaded phrases like this all of the time. The easy thing to do is to offer a discount, but that cuts into your profit margins and sets a precedent for the future. You don’t want to become a victim of discounting gone wrong.
So what do you do when clients push back on your fees?
The glib answer is: focus on your value. It's trite, but true. If it's worth it to the client they'll pay for it. But when faced with price pushback, many are at a loss for what to do at that moment.
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- 5 Guidelines for Writing Winning Proposals
Don't show your clients a windy, roundabout path to their goals. Make it easy.Like a Poor Marksman You Keep…Missing…The Target!
- Admiral James T. KirkIf you don't know your destination, any road will get you there. When prospects ask for a formal proposal, they are telling you their desired destination: a business relationship with you. And they're asking you to answer the question, “What road do we take to get there?”
Since it's your job to give directions, you want to tell them the straightest, shortest, and easiest route. After all, you don't want them to get lost along the way, or so tired on the path that they give up before they get to the end.
Why is it, then, that so many new business proposals that cross my desk take the long and winding road? They start off in the wrong direction, take side-roads that lead nowhere, and take forever to get where they're going. It's no wonder the success rate of these proposals is so low.
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Recent Blog Posts
- April 5, 2012
- The New Rules of Selling, Part 1: Play to Win-Win
- March 20, 2012
- Prospecting with Old “Friends”: Making Outdated Leads Work
- March 6, 2012
- Creating a Culture of Selling with Rainmakers: Part Two