We all love repeat business, referrals, and inbound warm leads. The problem is you can’t scale warm leads. When these run out, so does your ability to grow your revenue, unless, of course, you prospect and drive new leads in the pipeline yourself.
Email prospecting is a hot topic these days—and it should be because it works. Or at least, it works when it's done right.
In 5 Sales Prospecting Myths Debunked, we found that email is the #1 way buyers prefer to be contacted by sellers.
When it comes to business development for professional services, one of the biggest challenges professionals face is finding time to do it all. After all, you don't sell full-time. Your work, whether it's consulting, accounting, IT, financial services, or engineering, is what you do full-time. And that makes it very difficult to find time to create and develop the relationships necessary to bring in new business.
Breaking into new accounts and setting meetings is one of the most difficult tasks sellers face. But if you want to be successful in sales, you need to be able to build your own pipeline and drum up your own business. You need to be able to prospect for new business with great success.
To increase your odds of landing initial meetings, follow these five appointment-setting tips:
I recently returned from an industry conference. The speakers were excellent and it was great to get away from my desk, connect with the attendees, and have the opportunity to step back and think big picture about what I need to be doing to drive success in my position. I returned with all sorts of notes, to-dos, and grand visions for change.
Talking about the differences between men and women is a tricky thing. But we need to deal with tricky things if we want to be good sales managers.
The recently published book, Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, has a nugget of knowledge every sales manager should know. As the title suggests, it’s about the science behind why some people win and others struggle.
"It's impossible to get serious face time with senior executives."
“Even getting 15 minutes with a senior executive can take 15 months.”
I hear things like this all the time from professionals, sellers, and other business leaders who want to get more time with decision makers, but haven’t yet cracked the code.
If your firm is like most, you've been using CRM software for years now. Name after name, title after title, data point upon data point, you've likely stockpiled a huge amount of prospecting information through various lead generation activities. You’ve created countless records and guided each one through your sales pipeline.
What do you do with those records once you can no longer push them forward? Again, if your firm is like most, you probably leave them languishing in your database, perhaps with a sad "lost – chose competitor" or "dead – no budget" tag attached.
But these are more than just dead data. You probably have years of information on individuals that ran into budget issues, delayed decisions, or even hired a competitor. Now, months or even years later, departments may have allocated bigger budgets, industry dynamics may have changed, and competitors may not have lived up to expectations.
Master the 4 types of sales objections, and you'll be on the road to much greater sales success.
An objection is not a rejection; it is simply a request for more information. - Bo Bennett
Are you the type of person who quickly deals with sales objections, providing answers immediately, trying to overcome them as quickly as possible and move towards the close?
Not meeting expectations hurts salespeople during the sales process... and foursomes that don't have a fourth.
Last Friday, I was looking for one more person to round out a foursome for a Saturday golf date. That evening I bumped into an acquaintance, mentioned we needed an extra, and he agreed to play.
Confused why your value prop doesn't work? You shouldn't be.
“We build brands…”
Back in the late 90's when I was a running a marketing firm, this was the beginning of our value proposition. We thought it was brilliant… until we started using it.
I had the pleasure of meeting Ed Rendell when he was the mayor of Philadelphia. He was pointed and direct, quite different from the other politicians I have met over the years. So it came as little surprise when early this winter, Rendell, then Governor of Pennsylvania, called NFL officials “wimps” for canceling a game between the Eagles and Vikings due to snow.
Your sales staff is underperforming, but you can't figure out why. You're pretty sure that you've hired the best possible talent, but some days it seems like your sales staff is the gang that can’t shoot straight. Where did you go wrong?
Sometimes buyers don't know how to buy. Don't be afraid to show them.
