TN2020: Problem solving through storyboarding (Photo credit: Zadi Diaz)

One of the must have competencies in the future of B2B is buyer predictability. Without it, there will be an inability to anticipate how to help buyers and customers. Creating the undesirable position of being old news.

Scenario Planning

Scenario planning, as a strategic tool, has been around for a while. It is used in several contexts. You will see its use in military, economic, and business environments. The use of scenarios in buyer persona and insight development is an important component. During the past dozens years, best-in-class organizations, from Fortune 500 to mid-size companies, have made use of persona-based buying scenario modeling to anticipate buyer problems and target the right decision-making response.

Purpose

The purpose of persona-based buying scenario modeling is to get a picture of how organizations uses systems, evaluates, decides, and interacts around challenging problems as well as objectives. What we seek to understand is the relationships of problems and objectives to people, systems, processes, and culture. Why is this important now? I have three reasons to offer:

» The use of a single view of one buyer – a single buyer persona – can fall short of what is needed to truly to have a understanding of how to help organizations.

» Organizational behavior is changing. B2B selling companies are falling behind in understanding how organizations are changing and what new relationships to people, systems, processes, and culture are forming. And, how purchase decisions are affected.

» B2B marketing and sales are not only struggling to understand buyers and organizations, but also struggling to define the value they must deliver. Knowing how their organization can deliver value to another organization is turning out to be a must have to survive the B2B buyer revolution.

To deliver value, one B2B organization must help another by understanding how their products, services, or systems will impact not only a buyer, but also the company itself. This means getting to know the relationships between buyers, users, stakeholders, and approvers. This includes their partners and other suppliers.

Avoid Being Blindsided

There is an important correlation, which B2B organizations need to connect the dots on. As organizational behavior changes while the digital age gathers steam, it is having a direct impact on decision-making. I often find when helping organizations this common dilemma. I will let a recent VP interview do the talking:

“I have to be honest with you, even after we’ve done surveys, win/loss interviews, and built a buyer persona, we still don’t know why the heck we lose to competitors at times.”

What this amounts to is getting blindsided. Lacking an understanding of how organizations behave – and – how they are changing leaves you wide open to being blindsided by unknown powerful forces. Key people, users, cultural differences, system incompatibility, and other unknown forces can derail the best efforts of B2B marketing and sales.

Decision-making is flattening also. New collaborative tools are making consensus building much easier. If you do not know how consensus building is taking place, you cannot be a part of it.

Two Scenario Types

There are two perspectives leaders will need to learn in order to make buyer predictability part of their game plan. One, what is the current situation. Two, what foresight can we bring to change it. This is where persona-based buying scenarios can be very effective.

There are two types of scenarios to craft. One is present day. This helps you understand what is currently happening and to spot where your organization can make a difference. The second is future-based scenarios. This allows you to paint a picture on how to predict buyer challenges and buying environments. And, helps you to show your B2B potential buyer or customer on how their situation can change.

Sound far-fetch? Not really. Here is a case in point for you:

A SaaS service provider to the financial industry conducted buyer research. Using present-day persona-based buying scenarios, they uncovered a new relationship between two newly formed roles, which hadn’t existed before until new regulatory requirements went into affect. The present-day scenario showed how they fit into new systems being used and how buying decisions were made. They crafted future persona-based buying scenarios to depict how their new service application would support these new roles and systems. Adapting this profound buyer insight and scenarios to content and sales presentations, they had nearly 30 preorders before their new service application was launched!

What You Need

There are four essential elements to make persona-based buying scenarios work for you. The following is a brief review:

Step One: Buyer Research and Insights Gathering

A true day-in-life type of perspective is needed. The focus should be on how the organization goes about using systems, how people interact, how goals are established, and what processes are affected. And, how do these factors affect decision-making.

Step Two: Develop Company Personas, Buyer Personas, and other relevant Personas

The purpose here is not only to develop just buyer personas, but to also develop a persona-based view of the relationships to buyer personas. This is shown through a company persona. A Buyer Persona Relationship Diagram™ can offer insight into relations and processes – which exist in the context of the organization.

Step 3: Develop Present Day Buying Scenario Models

What you want to do is put your buyer research understanding into archetypal buying scenarios, which were uncovered. Depiction of how people, systems, processes, and culture interacted in response to specific challenges or objectives. For example, in one scenario, we found the person who represented the power user, although not in the decision-making process, had a very strong influence on the final purchase decision.

Step 4: Develop Future-Based Buying Scenario Models

Here, it is important to map your marketing and sales approaches to specific archetypal scenarios, which are future-based. This is the point to turn buyer insight into buyer foresight. Using creativity to help your buyers and customers see the future, which your organization’s products, services, and people make possible.

Having as well as bringing buyer foresight to B2B organizations can help create powerful positioning. Persona-base buying scenario modeling is one of the important ways you can do so. Understanding these four steps and making them happen will get you on the path to buyer predictability. A path you will need to take sooner than you think!

(I welcome further conversations to help you and your buyers envision the future. I am very interested in getting your thoughts and perspectives on how persona-based buying scenarios can help us understand both organizations and buyers. Please share widely – your peers and colleagues are trying to avoid being blindsided.)

Referrals are touted as being the best prospecting tool in any salesperson’s toolbox. According to sales legend, referrals are the key to becoming a top producer.

Virtually within 30 minutes of entering the sales field, most salespeople are told that if they want to succeed, they must get referrals from their customers and clients.

Yet, the truth of the matter is that few salespeople generate very many quality referrals. Certainly, a few salespeople have figured out how to generate enough quality referrals to run their very successful sales businesses. These men and women are by far the exception, not the rule. Moreover, studies have shown that those men and women who have learned how to generate a large number of high quality referrals earn four to five times their industry average.

There are others who get a few names and phone numbers here and there and think they are getting referrals. Unfortunately, most of these “referrals” don’t turn into sales. They do, of course, get a sale out them every so often, but for the most part, these “referrals” are nothing more than names and phone numbers that are no more qualified than if they simply picked names at random out of the phone book.

Most salespeople, however, find that referrals are not all they’re cracked up to be. In fact, referrals have proven to be so disappointing that the majority of salespeople don’t even ask for them. Many salespeople quickly conclude that referrals just aren’t worth their time and effort. These salespeople determine that referrals are just a myth, or that their clients won’t give referrals, or that their clients don’t have referrals to give, or that they will irritate a client if they ask for referrals.

In fact, the problem isn’t with referrals or their clients. The problem lies with how the salesperson goes about asking for referrals. Here are the top 10 referral mistakes salespeople make:

1. Not asking
It shouldn’t be a big surprise that if you don’t ask, you won’t get referrals. Almost 70% of all salespeople don’t even ask for referrals. They don’t even bring the subject up! Of course, they don’t get referrals. Of course, referrals are a myth. How can you expect to get something if you don’t even try?

Seldom do referrals simply drop out of thin air like manna from heaven. Moreover, those who don’t ask have a legion of excuses as to why they don’t ask. They don’t ask because they know they won’t get them anyway; their clients don’t know anyone to refer; they will upset their client; their clients are too busy to give referrals; they don’t want their client to think they are begging for business or that they are needy. These are simply excuses. Salespeople don’t ask because they are afraid of asking. Pure and simple.

2. Asking only once
Studies have shown that those salespeople who do ask generally only ask once. Certainly, asking once is better than not asking at all. But statistically, asking once will only generate 1.47 names and phone numbers. Less than one and a half referrals per client. And since most of the “referrals” the typical salesperson gets are of poor quality, getting less than one and a half referrals per prospect is pretty discouraging. That means they’ll have to ask several clients to get a single sale.

However, the same studies that show salespeople receive less than one and a half referrals when they only ask once show that salespeople who ask for referrals twice receive 2.03 names and phone numbers from each client. That means for every 10 customers asked, the salesperson who only asks once for referrals will get 14 names and phone numbers, while the salesperson who asks twice will receive 20 referrals–almost 50% more. Now, these aren’t any better quality referrals than the ones the salesperson who only asks once receives, but at least they have many more opportunities to make a sale–simply by asking for referrals a second time.

And those who had the temerity to ask a third time? They received, on average, 3.28 referrals from each customer. Therefore, for every 10 customers asked, these salespeople receive 32 referrals, more than three times the number of the salesperson who only asks once. You think they might make more sales than the person who isn’t asking or who only asks once–or even those who ask twice?

Those salespeople who use the PWWR Referral Generation System(TM) averaged 5 referrals per customer. In addition, these weren’t the typical name and phone number but were high quality referrals. For every 10 customers, these salespeople received an average of 50 referrals, most to high quality prospects. If their close ratio is only 25%, they will close 12 sales without having to spend time prospecting and money marketing.

3. Suggesting instead of asking
Many salespeople “suggest” referrals instead of asking for them. Instead of making a direct request, they try to soft peddle the request by saying something like: “Mr. Client, if you happen to run across someone who could use my product or service, would you give them one of my cards?” Alternatively, “Mr. Client, if you know of anyone I might be able to help, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell them about me.”

This is the chicken’s way out. They don’t want to offend, so they don’t ask. But they don’t want to miss the opportunity for a referral. The solution is to suggest that the client pass their name along. If this is your referral generation format, don’t hang around the phone waiting for the calls to come in.

4. Waiting until the sale has been completed to bring up referrals
Most who do ask wait until the sale has been completed before they even bring the subject of referrals up. One of the issues salespeople have with referrals is they believe based on their experience, that asking for referrals makes their clients uncomfortable. The request seems to be an unwelcome one by most of their clients. And it is–not because the request for referrals is itself an intrusion, but because of the timing of the request.

By waiting until the last minute to bring the subject up, the salesperson has given the client no time to think of whom to refer and they have waited until the client has mentally moved beyond the sale. The sale is complete. It’s over. The client has already mentally moved on to other issues. They’re simply waiting for the salesperson to leave so they can begin to take care of other business. And, bam, here comes a request out of the clear blue that tries to pull them back into the sale. What should have been a simple request is now an intrusion.

5. Focusing on their needs, not the client’s
The typical referral request goes something like this: “Mr. Client, let me ask a favor. It would really help me if could give me the names and phone numbers of a couple of people (or companies) that I might be able to help as I’ve helped you.” Or, “Ms. Client, do you know anyone else that might be able to use my services? It would be a great help to me if you could give me their names.”

Clients don’t give referrals because they like you, because they respect you, or even because you did a good job. Clients are human beings. Therefore, like most human beings, they do things because they perceive them to be in their own best interests. For the most part, clients don’t really care what will help you; they care about what will help them. That’s not to say that a few clients won’t give referrals for no reason; there are a few who will. Most will not.

The majority of salespeople focus on themselves when requesting referrals instead of focusing on the client. To be successful in generating referrals, you must give the client a reason why giving referrals is in their best interest, not yours.

6. Not defining what a good referral is
As basic is it is, few salespeople let their client know what a good referral is. Instead, they assume the client understands what a good referral is. Bad assumption.

Although you know what a good referral for you is, your client doesn’t. They need direction. While you are standing there thinking, “Give me someone just like you,” they’re thinking “what does this person want and how do I get rid of them.” If you want a quality referral, you must let your client know who you’re looking for. If you don’t, no telling what you’ll get.

7. Not understanding the psychology of the referral
Getting a large number of high quality referrals from clients and prospects isn’t easy. In fact, less than 15% of all salespeople generate enough quality referrals to significantly impact their sales.

In order to become a successful referral salesperson, you must come to understand the psychology of referrals. Clients and prospects assume that whomever they refer you to will be more demanding and more critical than they have been. They assume that whomever they refer you to will be less forgiving of the little issues that come up in a sale. They assume that whomever they refer you to will be less satisfied with the sale than they have been.

In addition, clients and prospects will refer you to people whom they have various types of relationships with. Some of the people they refer you will trust and respect them. Others will be casual acquaintances who neither trust nor distrust your client. Some will even be people who distrust and disrespect your client.

To make matter even more complicated, you must understand your psychology of referral selling. What goes on in your brain is just as important as what goes on in your client’s and the prospect’s brain.

Unless you have a thorough understanding of the psychology of referrals and the relationship between your client and the referred prospect, your likelihood of massive success is minimal.

Like much of selling, the process is more psychological than physical.

8. Calling the referred prospect
The natural inclination when you’ve received a referral is to pick up the phone and call the prospect. Wrong move. When you simply pick up the phone and call, you’re giving the prospect the opportunity to determine you’re nothing but another tele-marketer and to mentally cut you off before you even have the opportunity to bring up your client’s name.

There are a number of ways of contacting a referred prospect, but the key is to get a personal introduction, not just a name and phone number.

9. Not helping the client give referrals
Despite their best efforts, even mega-producers who make huge incomes off their referral-based business have clients and prospects who claim not to know anyone to refer. Yet, these men and women still walk away with a fistful of high quality referrals.

How do they do this? They don’t rely on their client to come up with people or companies to refer. Instead of hoping that their client has referrals for them as most salespeople do, they are proactive and help their client make high quality referrals. They discover whom the client knows that they know they want to be referred to and they ask to be referred to those people.

10. Not earning the referrals
If you want a large number of high quality referrals, you can’t just ask for them–you must earn them. They’re not just given, they’re earned.

Successful referral salespeople understand that the number and quality of the referrals they receive is dependent upon giving their client the purchasing experience the client wants, not the one the salesperson wants to give the client. Consequently, they find out what the client wants and expects to happen during the course of the sale and then they give the client the exact purchasing experience the client wants, thus earning the referrals.

You cannot ask and expect referrals if you haven’t earned them. And you don’t get to determine whether or not you’ve earned them–the client makes that decision so you must give them an objective way to determine whether or not you have earned them.

Obviously, generating a large number of high quality referrals is difficult. If it were easy, every salesperson would do it. However, by understanding the issues that kill referrals and then learning how to eliminate those issues, you can generate a huge volume of high quality referrals. Referral selling isn’t dependent upon luck, or having the “right” clients, or using bribes or incentives. It is dependent upon knowing the process that will overcome the issues associated with getting referrals, implementing that system, and then honing your referral selling skills. And once you’ve learned the system and honed your skills, it becomes a natural part of your selling process.

No matter your product or service; no matter whether you sell to individuals or businesses; no matter the cost of your product or service or the length of the selling cycle, you can build a referral-based business. It simply takes knowledge, skill, and practice.

As we witness selling becoming increasingly commoditized and commentators like me predict that only the top 20%  of sales professionals will still have a job in five years time (although it could well be three) I thought I would share what exactly “selling consultatively” means to me.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that 80% of front-line sales professionals around the world sell in the “traditional” way: There isn’t anything wrong with that if their market sector or industry demands – or tolerates -that style of selling.

For example, you cannot sell consultatively if you are operating in the B2C arena, and 99% of all sales made every day are actually B2C.

And going completely off-message for a moment, have you ever wondered why virtually 100% of recognized “sales gurus” are training and consulting in the B2B sector? I have!

The real problem is that 80% (of that 20%) of so called consultative salespeople are actually still selling in a “traditional way” – which leaves us with … you do the math!

So before we identify a typical “Consultative Sales Cycle” let’s discover if you are currently selling in a traditional way or if in fact, you are already selling consultatively.

Vending or Traditional Selling:

• You ‘sell’ to purchasing managers/consumers

• You ‘sell’ product

• You defend price

• You fill-out order forms

• You detail features and benefits

• You are a salesperson

• You sell ‘to’

Selling as a Consultative Specialist:

• You plan & consult with business managers

• You sell profit improvement systems

• You offer a return on investment

• You present a partnered profit plan

• You design improved performance

• You are a business development manager

• You sell ‘with’

News: It really is a complete myth that nobody buys anything in the summer months – do companies close down for three months? No! Do those companies stop having a requirement for your products/services/solutions/support/help/advice during the summer? No! If your competition really believe that and take their foot off the accelerator, what a wonderful time for you to increase your activity and harvest the market place?

Why not join Lori Richardson and I today for the next module of Top Sales Academy - “18 Ways to Keep Sales Momentum Going Through the Summer” at 1:00pm Eastern (6:00pm GMT)

This session will be fast-paced with ideas and strategies to keep focused on growing your (or your sales team’s) pipeline, making the important connections and closing business while others might down shift due to distractions. Handouts included.

Learn (or be reminded) about:

What is most important for success during the summer months

Who is most likely to succeed during this time?

How break time can really be beneficial to sales growth

When to reward yourself or your team

Why you should have a “Summer Success Plan” to attain team goals

Register for FREE

Digital marketer Mitch Joel has coined a new term for today's career trajectory: squiggle. In his just-released book, "Ctrl Alt Delete," Joel says the squiggle is a somewhat random, non-linear process that involves constant career tweaking and iterating — and it's the path we should all embrace to stay employable in today's "business purgatory."

Embracing the squiggle and getting over the "lazy" straight path can be scary, but Joel says success has never been easier.

We summarize his "squiggle" concept in detail here.

Below are some broader lessons for succeeding in a rapidly changing workplace.

Be a perpetual entrepreneur. 

"If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will." Joel refers to this memorable line from Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs as an example of innovation stemming from a perpetual entrepreneurial spirit. As proof, two-thirds of Apple's revenue come from products that were invented from 2007 onwards. 

Joel says having a constant zeal for invention and innovation will separate those who create the future from those who are left behind. 

"Business owners think a lot less about creating the future because they are much too concerned with both mitigating risk and minimizing mistakes. There's nothing wrong with being a business owner, but it's an important distinction to make as we lurk in these moments of purgatory."

If you want to break out of the purgatory, constantly look for new projects and problems to solve. Be an entrepreneur. 

Make yourself indispensable. 

At a time when budgets are being slashed and jobs are not in huge supply, moments of purgatory (in the form of layoffs) are more prevalent. The ones who survive will make themselves indispensable beyond their current role at their company.

"Your resume no longer solely exists on a white 8.5'' x 11'' sheet of paper. It's 3-dimensional. You are not just the employee of a company ... Write blog posts, podcast, get your name beyond the confines of that 8.5 x 11..." says Joel. "If you don't like to blog, that's fine. But at the end of the day, the world is still creating content whether it's on FB or LinkedIn or Twitter. It's an important part of who we are. Your presence and what you've accomplished needs to be available so the people who can affect your life in terms of finances and success can see."

Take a digital-first posture.

Rather than be distracted and overwhelmed by each shiny, new platform, turn your attention to the overall digital landscape. Stay aware of technology, trends and the impact they are having on the world.

"I've really struggled to find an industry where there hasn't be a dramatic digitization of the industry (either on the front or back end) ... whether you blog or not, there is a social scoring system that has started and will continue to affect your life. If you go blasting an airline on Twitter, the airline's ability to see who you are, who you're connected to, and how much your message amplifies, will be indicative of their reaction and what they do to fix it."

Find your blend.

Forget about work/life balance. True superstars work constantly but do so willingly. If you love what you do, the work will merge with your personal life into a "healthy blend".  

"The most adaptive path for you to find your success in these times of purgatory will be in your ability to forget about the notion of work/life balance and find the blend in your work, personal, and community life."

Get in the mode of 'why'

Marketing guru Seth Godin made an appearance at Daniels' book launch in New York and offered several nuggets of advice, including one on how he manages to write on his blog every day: 

"I notice things for a living. If I see something that I don't understand, like, 'Why is there a line in front of Mission Chinese restaurant?', I try to figure it out. Get in this habit and ask why.....By observing, you can see a teacher fail in real time. You can see a student ending their educational career in real time. Why does that happen? And by asking that question relentlessly, you'll see how things work."

If there's any other message at the core of "Ctrl Alt Delete," it’s that none of this can wait. The world is changing as you read this. So, get comfortable with the squiggly.

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Savvy workers know that salary isn't the only thing that matters. We want the flexibility to make a living, have a life, and raise a family, without compromising any of them.

Some employers have figured out how to offer this rare balance.

Glassdoor, an anonymous employer rating site, identified the best companies for work-life balance, even as ratings for work-life across all companies have declined in recent years.

"What set these companies apart over the past year is employees speaking favorably about flexible schedules, work from home options, and having managers who understand life outside of work," Scott Dobroski, community expert for Glassdoor, told Business Insider.

Top companies have a culture that encourages balance, like at FactSet, where "working 8-hour days is the norm and your career will not suffer if you don't put in 60-hours," an employee says.

This year's list saw eleven newcomers, including Yahoo, Nokia, and Mastercard, as well as a new number one: Cary, N.C. software company SAS Institute.

25. NetApp

This data management company is based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Work-life balance rating: 4.1

What employees think:

“Company gives a lot of flexibility. The work is very very good and the people are extremely good. No middle management politics.” – NetApp Employee (location n/a)

“Flexibility and supportive management. Good global exposure and travel opportunities.” – NetApp Program Manager (Bangalore, India)

Source: Glassdoor

24. STMicroelectrics

This semiconductor company is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Work-life balance rating: 3.9

What employees think:

“Direct managers take in consideration their employees, work/life balance is good, payed time off is more than adequate.” –STMicroelectronics Employee (Santa Clara, CA)

“Provides an opportunity to balance work and life - usually a relaxed work culture, typically European. Good company time policies - employee friendly.” – STMicroelectronics S/W Developer (Greater Noida, India)

Source: Glassdoor

23. REI

This retail corporation is based in Kent, Wash.

Work-life balance rating: 3.9

What employees think:

“Flexible schedule, employee discounts, incredible co-workers, company values.” – REI Analyst (Kent, WA)

“Great work/life balance, especially for people with families and kids.” – REI Employee (location, n/a)

Source: Glassdoor

The "prisoner's dilemma" is a familiar concept to just about everyone who took Econ 101.

The basic version goes like this: Two criminals are arrested, but police can't convict either on the primary charge, so they plan to sentence them to a year in jail on a lesser charge.

Each of the prisoners, who can't communicate with each other, are given the option of testifying against their partner. If they testify, and their partner remains silent, the partner gets three years and they go free. If they both testify, both get two. If both remain silent, they each get one.

In game theory, betraying your partner, or "defecting" is always the dominant strategy as it always has a slightly higher payoff in a simultaneous game. It's what's known as a "Nash Equilibrium," after Nobel Prize winning mathematician and "A Beautiful Mind" subject John Nash.

In sequential games, where players know each other's previous behavior and have the opportunity to punish each other, defection is the dominant strategy as well. 

However, on an overall basis, the best outcome for both players is mutual cooperation.

Yet no one's ever actually run the experiment on real prisoners before, until two University of Hamburg economists tried it out in a recent study comparing the behavior of inmates and students. 

Surprisingly, for the classic version of the game, prisoners were far more cooperative than expected.

Menusch Khadjavi and Andreas Lange put the famous game to the test for the first time ever, putting a group of prisoners in Lower Saxony's primary women's prison, as well as students, through both simultaneous and sequential versions of the game. 

The payoffs obviously weren't years off sentences, but euros for students, and the equivalent value in coffee or cigarettes for prisoners. 

They expected, building off of game theory and behavioral economic research that show humans are more cooperative than the purely rational model that economists traditionally use, that there would be a fair amount of first-mover cooperation, even in the simultaneous simulation where there's no way to react to the other player's decisions. 

And even in the sequential game, where you get a higher payoff for betraying a cooperative first mover, a fair amount will still reciprocate. 

As for the difference between student and prisoner behavior, you'd expect that a prison population might be more jaded and distrustful, and therefore more likely to defect. 

The results went exactly the other way for the simultaneous game, only 37% of students cooperated. Inmates cooperated 56% of the time.

On a pair basis, only 13% of student pairs managed to get the best mutual outcome and cooperate, whereas 30% of prisoners do. 

In the sequential game, far more students (63%) cooperate, so the mutual cooperation rate skyrockets to 39%. For prisoners, it remains about the same.

What's interesting is that the simultaneous game requires far more blind trust from both parties, and you don't have a chance to retaliate or make up for being betrayed later. Yet prisoners are still significantly more cooperative in that scenario. 

Obviously the payoffs aren't as serious as a year or three of your life, but the paper still demonstrates that prisoners aren't necessarily as calculating, self-interested, and un-trusting as you might expect, and as behavioral economists have argued for years, as mathematically interesting as Nash equilibrium might be, they don't line up with real behavior all that well.  

SEE ALSO: 9 books to read if you want to be a billionaire

Join the conversation about this story »

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We were recently putting together the interview script for a sales hiring project we are working on and I was thinking about some of the nutty questions that have been popular over the years.

“What would you say was your weakest attribute?” This is not an uncommon interview question and I can remember asking this myself back when I was a young hiring manager. I had replies ranging from the lame, “I try too hard” (but what did I expect?) to the forthright, “not having time for silly questions.” (She got a job, by the way!)

Not that long ago “cute” questions were considered illuminating and insightful. I am not quite sure what interviewers get from questions like, but there was a time when, “how do you fit an elephant in a VW Beetle?” or “how would you move a mountain?” were popular. There is no “right” answer but how the candidate replied was supposed to shed light on the personality of a candidate and into how they would perform in a certain role.

Things have evolved since then and today we rely more on “behavioral interviewing” techniques; asking people to describe how they have behaved in relevant situations in the past. This line of inquiry gives us insight into how a candidate will react when confronted with a similar situation in the future. For instance, describe the activities you engaged in to open new accounts in your previous role or describe how you won over a customer that wanted to buy from an incumbent supplier.

We also tend to avoid “imaginary scenarios” because they aren’t that useful for separating the weak candidates from the strong ones. For example, any sales rep can provide a great textbook answer to a question like “if you worked here, how would you open up a new account?”

Quirky questions might have a place in trying to see measure someone’s level of creativity or fit with an unusual culture, but for the most part they won’t give you much proof of a candidate’s ability to excel in the sales role for which you are hiring.

The instant Internet access afforded by smartphones has changed the way people use search. Not tethered to computers and home networks, searchers now tap into the Internet on the go to fulfill their immediate needs — like finding a good restaurant, a tow truck, or a public restroom. Search engines and social media have adjusted and expanded to take advantage of this newer, decidedly local clientele. If your local business isn’t doing so as well, you might be missing out on some business.

Search engines, including Google, are devoting more space to local search results, which can be your business’s chance to connect with prospective customers in your area exactly when they need your product or service. To do this, you need to focus on the ever-evolving discipline of local search engine optimization (local SEO). Here are five things you can start doing right now to tap into local search and get more customers in the door:

Make Your Website Mobile-friendly

Because so many people are accessing the Internet from their smartphones, you need to make sure that your site looks good and works well on the small, small screen. You might need to hire a mobile optimization expert to get it just right, but the boost it can give to your local SEO efforts will certainly be worth the cost.

Add Your Business to Online Directories

Yelp and Foursquare get a lot of press, but it doesn’t stop there. Add or claim your business on Google Maps, Facebook Local Search and Yahoo Places — these will help people find your business as they wander around town. Also add or claim your profile on places like YellowPages.com, CitySearch, and SuperPages.

Ask your current customers where they go to look for business recommendations in your industry. This can lead you to more great sites where you should add your business.

Join Social Media

Social media is where people talk about your business and your industry, whether you’re there or not. There are a lot of social media options these days, so do a little research and find the ones that are best for you.

Having a Twitter account lets you find people in your area who are looking for a business just like yours and speak directly to them. It’s also a great medium to let your fans know about great deals or goings-on happening at your place.

To really tap into SEO, though, you need to have a Google+ Local Page (which is what Google Places has become). The information put there — your business address, phone number website and more — will appear in Google results, along with a link to get directions right to your door.

Upgrade Your Website Code

The code behind your website is getting smarter and making it easier for search engines to find particular types of information, such as addresses and phone numbers. Do some research on semantic markup and the new HTML tags added to HTML5 to learn how to take advantage of them.

Add Great Local Content

Search algorithms love great content, and the more your content focuses on your local community, the easier it is for both those algorithms and your prospective customers to find you and see that you are a part of that community. A business blog is a great way to get your business out there and talk about local issues and happenings.

Improving your local SEO can help new customers find you and get them to your door, but that’s only half the battle. The greatest things you can do for local SEO is to do good business. Wonderful customer service and a great product are what keep people coming back. They’re what turn customers into fans, and fans will recommend you to their friends, both on online ranking and reviewing sites and the real world. Word-of-mouth is the best kind of marketing, and today’s new technologies take word-of-mouth recommendations directly onto the Internet, where search engines and new customers can find them.

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Words set expectations for buyers, and they impact the way sellers act and execute their sale.  Words are a big part of sales, and it is important that sales people think about which words they use, when and how.  As in other parts of life certain words have meaning in some context while not in others, words become fashionable, and then become over used.  Make sure you use words that complement your actions and have meaning and engage the buyer, rather than turning them off or worse.

Here is what I mean:

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

No matter what you sell or who you are, one theme that has always stood the test of time is this:

But people get referrals wrong… they wait for the referrals to come to them.

Top sales people do it differently. They create their own referrals. One of the best ways to do this is the “forward-able email introduction.”

Email Sales Tips: here’s how it works:

Step 1:
Find someone you want to meet and somebody you know who knows them. Stop! Don’t just ask for an introduction. That requires thought and time from your referrer. You want to make this dead simple so…

Step 2:
Write them an email like this:

See what we did here? We wrote our referrer in the top half of the email and made mention of why there is a good fit. Then we dashed a line and and wrote directly to the prospect.

We kept it short but included:

• Who we are
• Why there is fit
• The specific “ask”

The moral of the story: make it stupid simple and be kind to your referrer. All Dharmesh had to do in this case is forward the email. It literally takes someone less than 5 seconds to do that.

Referrals are the lifeblood of the most successful sales organizations. Don’t sit on the sidelines. Make them happen.

Every salesperson wants to think of him or herself as powerful but, if asked, would have no idea where their power actually comes from.

Most salespeople fail to understand their own power. The reason they don’t is that there is a heavy concentration on what cannot be controlled or what is not being done.

This manifests itself in complaints about: price, unreturned phone calls, bidding, loyalty to others, and other various excuses about why a sale does not take place and the relationship isn’t being built.

As a salesperson, you have all the power in the world to make your own success happen. It’s not market conditions; it’s you’re mental conditions. It’s not customer conditions; it’s your failure to perform in a powerful way. And it’s certainly not the competition’s conditions; it’s your inability to prove value beyond doubt and risk.

Let me share with you the 20.5 powers that you do possess and how you might be able to use them and take advantage of them to build sales, build relationships, build referrals, earn testimonials, and achieve the sales success that you are striving for…

1. The power of a positive attitude. The way you dedicate yourself to the way you think creates the foundation for your entire life. Sales is part of your life and requires a positive attitude as fundamental and foundational to success.
2. The power of daily attitude actions. These are actions that you take both in your favor and in the favor of others. They’re not just positive; they’re powerful. Attitude actions create sales actions.
3. The power of belief. Belief in who you work for, what you’re selling, your ability to differentiate yourself from your competitor, and belief in yourself create the four cornerstones that enable your belief to be transferred to the customer.
4. The power of self-confidence. The power of self-confidence comes from thinking about past wins, and thinking about past accomplishments. Those thoughts become your inner confidence builder and manifest themselves in the self-confident appearance.
5. The power of thinking YES! The difference between thinking you can and thinking you cannot, will determine outcome and fate. KEY: Think yes to get yes. 
6. The power of keeping conversational control. Salespeople have very little idea about what it takes to keep control of the sales conversation. The answer is in one word: ASK. When you ask you’re in control of the conversation. When the customer asks you, you have given up control. Control keeps you on the path to the sale. Want more control? Easy! Ask more questions.
7. The power of preparation. Most salespeople make the fatal mistake of only preparing in terms of themselves, when in fact the customer only cares about him or herself. They want ideas, value, and answers – not your canned slide show. They want to know how THEY win. Why not spend twice as much time preparing in terms of the customer? Preparation determines outcome.
8. The power of creativity. Creativity is a science, and you can learn it. It’s based on the perspective from which you see things. And once you begin to see things a little bit differently than others, you’ll become more creative. Your customer wants to know why and how you’re different from your competition. Creativity makes it evident.
9. The power of being memorable. For years I have said, “Find something personal. Do something memorable.” It’s all about a random act of kindness that has a direct emotional trigger to the heart of the customer. Whatever it is, it must relate to the customer and their passion. Whatever it is, it has to have a WOW impact.
10. The power of value. My mantra is, “Give value first.” That way the customer forms an impression of you that’s both positive and powerful. The more value you provide, the more powerful you will become, and the more sales you will make. And just so we understand the word value, it’s preceded by the word “perceived.” If the customer perceives value, then it is. 

That’s the first ten powers of sales success. Study them to get a better understanding of your sales power sources. Implement them into your sales process, start to feel the boost, and get ready for the next 10.5 next week.

I have created a page of ideas to get your attitude rolling in the right direction. If you’d like them, go to www.gitomer.com and enter the words ATTITUDE STARTERS in the GitBit box.

A stunning 70% of U.S. workers say they are "not engaged" or "actively disengaged" with their work, according to Gallup's ongoing study of the American workplace from 2010 through 2012. Sales reps — the people who represent your firm with customers — are not an exception. What must you do, at a minimum, to regain the trust and recharge the talent of sales people? Two steps are foundational.

1. Understand and communicate, in the C-Suite as well as with the reps, the crucial role played by the sales force in strategy implementation. Some might say that sales forces have less relevance because customers are buying more online. In 2012, according to U.S. Department of Commerce data, online spending reached almost $200 billion. That may sound like a lot, but it's less than 5% of total retail spending (even in a recession) and less than half of what just one retailer, Wal-Mart, sells annually. In fact, if you peek behind the server farms of online firms themselves, you will find traditional face-to-face sales organizations as the engine of revenue acquisition and firm value. At Groupon in 2012, over 45% of employees were in Sales; at Google, it's over 50%; and at Facebook the sales force's ability to translate "likes" into advertisers will make or break that company's valuation and fortunes going forward.

The issue facing most sales forces is not disintermediation. What is true is that online options are realigning sales tasks. Consider the century-old practice of selling cars at dealers. Relatively few cars are actually bought online. But an estimated 80% of Americans first research the purchase via Edmunds.com and other online sources. They visit dealers less frequently and sales reps must be better at closing the sale with more-informed customers. Selling skills are now even more important. The options available to customers put greater pressure on the rep's value-add during the sales experience, and this engagement has implications for the next foundational element.

2. Redesign processes with sales tasks, not the technology, in mind. Many C-suite leaders, years removed from actual customer contact in the field, welcome "Big Data" but don't understand the realities facing their salespeople during an information revolution. It's estimated that each U.S. firm with more than 1,000 employees already has more data in its CRM system than in the entire U.S. Library of Congress. The role of data is not to make a manager sound "analytical." In business, it's more important to be contextually right and make decisions that people can execute effectively than it is to be school-smart or statistically significant.

New technologies can improve lead generation and qualification (through Search Engine Optimization techniques and tailored online communities), determination of specifications (the use of third-party websites, webinars, and online demo's), and price negotiations and closing (online tracking systems and pricing algorithms). But despite good intentions, many Big Data transformations are failing because firms haphazardly download data onto sales reps. Communication is mainly one way and there is too little of it. Smarter firms complement training with use of resources like Darwinator, a web-based tool that enables individuals to vote on ideas in a fast and effective manner. Others help reps cope with the growing analytical requirements of sales tasks through tools like visualizing.org, which helps to convert big amounts of spreadsheet or correlational data into value propositions that can be communicated to customers. Equally important, firms should use these capabilities to off-load administrative tasks from salespeople to increase selling time. And that's a managerial and organizational issue, not simply a data or sales issue. According to Gartner Research, chief marketing officers will soon spend more on IT than CIOs, increasing the need for coordination between marketing and sales throughout the buying cycle at many firms. At a minimum, these groups need a shared understanding of their firm's strategy, value proposition, key sales tasks, and relevant selling behaviors.

Ultimately, companies don't execute strategy; people do. And talented sales people remain the key lever for strategy implementation in most firms. But companies must be worthy of real talent and, to benefit from that talent, provide the right environment for those people to flourish.

If you work in sales long enough, you’ll eventually have a bad day where you just want to throw in the towel. Over the last few years, I’ve seen many good days and a few bad. One thing I’ve noticed is that depending on the organization; the number of bad days is often directly related to your manager.

After talking with several sales managers over the years, I noticed a trend in those who stand out as true sales leaders. The most extraordinary sales managers constantly strive to keep their sales teams motivated.

Why? Because they recognize that a motivated sales team will be more likely to meet quotas and more likely to become a team of extraordinary sales people. For the last few years, I’ve chatted with tons of sales managers who strive to motivate their teams and these are the three things that they expressed were to key to keeping their teams motivated:

Try to Over Communicate

A sure-fire way to make a team second guess their stance in an organization is to keep them in the dark. Effective, open and honest communication is an extremely important part of business and team management. Engaging your team on a regular basis to ensure that they feel connected to the organization and each other is very important. In fact, if I could make any suggestion it would be to try and over communicate!

Build a relationship with your team that is based on appreciation and respect. From there, you will be able to be more open with your team as the foundation of your relationship has been laid. Your team should feel comfortable to discuss any issues they have with you and know that you will try to help them get through it. Great sales managers are constantly working to keep the lines of communication open and embrace two-way dialogue instead of a dictator’s monologue.

Be A Walking & Talking Inspiration

One of the most important aspects of developing a successful sales team is the ability to ensure that the team is aligned. Creating an team that has a mindset that is align with the organizations values and beliefs is a sure-fire way to keep the team motivated. It allows each individual to achieve personal fulfillment and be willing to put in the extra hours when necessary to move the organization forward.

As a team manager, it’s important that you foster deep relationships with your team. Sales is no longer just about building relationships with customers but also building relationships with your team. Sales people respond to individual feedback on performance and embrace the idea of monthly one-on-ones to help them evolve.

A common mistake that sales managers make is they focus on their teams strengths while ignoring their weaknesses. The best approach to keeping a sales team motivated is to help them develop their weaknesses and tackle them head on. For example, if a team member is strong at relationship building but struggles at generating leads; help them improve and figure out how they can help their team with relationship development.

Strive to make your sales team better by investing in them and helping them grow. In doing so, you need to strive to keep them motivated with praise and leading the pack into the trenches. Take blame when necessary and never throw your team under the bus.

Create Friendly Competition

Sales is a business vertical that was built on competition. The best sales people are competitive by nature and are motivated more by winning than anything else. They see money as a scorecard and their quota as a challenge.

Internal competitions and contests can spark sales people to increase morale and spark a bit of friendly competition. These contests can drive not only great results for your bottom line but also drive great results for developing a sense of team morale. Contests can also help in the development of new skills for your team such as collaboration and creativity. Overall, it’s a great tactic to generating a bit of conversation around the office and ultimately driving your sales team to be motivated and improve their morale.

Empower Them with Process & Technology

Get out of the way.

That’s what organizations need to tell their sales managers if they want a team to be motivated and succeed. There is very little that can cause as much frustration in an organization than a sales personal having to wait to ask their supervisor for permission to close a deal or “bend the rules” to a certain degree.

As a sales manager you need to empower your sales team and trust them. Whenever possible, let your sales team know that you trust that they will do what’s right for the company and the business. If they need to “bend the rules” and give a discount or free shipping to close a deal, allow them to make the decision.

Another way to empower your team is to ensure that they have the tools they need to excel. Does your team use old computers and have outdated sales tools? Does your sales tracking, CRM, and order fulfillment tools empower your salespeople or make it harder to do their job? Ask these questions and see what tools they feel they need to do better.

What other ways can you keep a sales team motivated?

Sales Training Article: Reasons Why They Buy from You

By Geoffrey James, INC - Sales Source

To appeal to a B2B customer, your sales message and approach must address one or more of these issues.

There are eight (and only eight) reasons that companies buy things from other companies.

You ability to sell B2B is directly dependent upon your ability to appeal to one or more (or all) of these reasons:

1. Revenue improvement.

Every company is interested in the "top line" of how much money is flowing into a company through sales of their own products and services. Sales angle: show how your product makes it easier for the customer to sell to their own customers.

2. Cost reduction.

Every company is also interested in the "bottom line," which consists of the revenue minus the costs of producing that revenue. Sales angle: show how your product reduces R&D, manufacturing, marketing, delivery, support or sales costs.

3. Market share.

Some companies (especially startups) often take the view that building market share is more important, or as important, as current revenue or immediate cost reduction. Sales angle: show how you can help the customer increase their customer base.

4. Investment.

Whenever the economy is uncertain, some companies sit on their cash reserves. That money's not earning anything so they may want to invest it. Sales angle: provide opportunities to buy other companies or product lines.

5. Quality improvement.

Poor quality products and services lose customers and result in costly reworks, scrap, overtime and corrective action. Higher quality products and services attract new customers. Sales angle: show how you can help them reduce errors.

6. Delivery improvement.

Some companies spend big money getting their products and services into the hands of their customers. Sales angle: show how much would the customer will save in canceled orders, expediting costs, airfreight charges, and so forth.

7. Risk reduction.

Most companies are understandably frightened at the possibility of public relations disasters or major legal problems. Sales angle: show how you can help them eliminate potential PR problems or avoid penalties, legal fees, and litigation.

8. Career enhancement.

Finally, companies sometimes buy because decision-makers are positioning for another job in the industry that's selling to them. Sales angle: make it clear this is a long term relationship between you and the decision-maker.

Need some help with your sales performance? Take a look at the sales training workshops available to you and improve sales performance.

Read more sales training articles from CustomerCentric Selling® - The Sales Training Company.

We always wonder why people put up signs with “Today: Fresh Sushi.” Who would ever eat sushi that is not fresh?

It’s kind of like social selling. We have never met a successful sales person who is not social. So what then you ask is all the hype around social selling? It would have been clearer if “social selling” had been called “social media selling.” In essence what it is now called social selling describes how to best take advantage of social media channels to better listen and understand customers and engage with them. And that is exactly what really successful salespeople have always done: listening to and understanding the customers’ needs and requirements and responding at the right time.

Success in today’s social world means you have to also be listening to and communicating through new channels — social media channels like LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. If you are wondering how to add that to your workday, then you are asking the wrong question. To be social is a primary task of the successful salesperson and customers today expect you to listen and engage with them through those channels.

Also, useful tools like Nimble make it easier to manage different social accounts and channels at once. Email, phone, and personal visits are not enough anymore because customers and prospects are using different channels to become better informed, to ask for recommendations, and to express their thoughts. Because the customer has changed, sales people will have to adapt. It may sound ironic, but this is reality: Social selling is using tools to improve on one of your key selling KPI’s — “being social.”

Before getting into the different easy steps to apply social selling in your sales process we would like to share the following illustrations, which summarize the difference between the old sales guy versus the new sales rep 2.0.

Here’s the Old Sales Guy:

And here’s the New and Evolved Sales Guy!

Many of the new qualifications have to do with social selling. To be able to really leverage the social web, you will need tech to make it easy.

So why wait? If you’re just starting we recommend you follow the following five easy steps.

1. Identify

What does the digital journey of your customers and prospects look like? On which networks are they active, who are the key influencers, and in which groups are they most active? Where do they go for recommendations? Determine the most critical channels for your customers and start with these first.

2. Plan

Without a clear plan many of the social selling activities become random and ad hoc. A tweet here, a Facebook post there. If you are not well organized you’re missing most of the impact you could have. Make sure you know what you want to achieve through social selling and what is expected (profile, updates, etc.) from each of the sales team members. Set up a single-page social selling policy that formalizes this. Sales will need to build up a virtual reputation on the social network just as they need to in person. Both will help with getting the deal done.

3. Listen and engage

This can take some time but here it is important not to be a broadcaster but rather someone who creates value by listening and providing relevant and timely information. This is how you gain credibility in the community and your intent here is twofold. When people are ready to buy they know how to find you, and you have the credibility you need to make the sale when the time arises. Marketing can help to make it easy to share new updates by providing a marketing content calendar with daily or weekly suggestions to the sales team about content to share.

4. Use social media throughout the sales cycle

Here your goal is to identify the lead and leverage social media throughout the sales cycle up to the close. Look for triggers that might indicate there is a window for additional opportunities. Examples are a job change, customers talking about competitive products, or buzz around your products or services. The earlier sales is involved in the buying cycle, the higher the chance is they will close the deal.

The actual use of social media once the lead is generated and qualified should be decided on a case-by-case basis.

5. Leverage social media for retention and advocacy

Leverage social media as a customer retention and customer advocacy tool. You can motivate your customer to share positive information, reward them or complement them using social networks and maintain a close relationship in person and through the social network. The same applies to possible negative remarks made by your customer. You have to monitor these and react adequately. Ignoring negative remarks can have negative implications.

So to close the loop from our opening premise, social selling is like fresh sushi. Eat it now! Don’t wait with social selling. If you do, you will have a proven advantage over your less social competitors. By implementing a solid social selling strategy you will enhance that never-changing KPI of selling — being an emphatic sales person.

Laura Nuhaan and Robert Hylkema are both partners at The Andeta Group, a consultancy firm focusing on increasing sales results through the effective use of innovative technologies and sales and marketing alignment. With buyer behaviors changing due to the increasing use of online, social, and mobile technologies, The Andeta Group has found a niche in helping organizations take advantage of these changes.

Jeb Brooks
President, The Brooks Group 

The vast majority of the programs we put together are in-house sales training programs. After 36 years of creating these programs, we've learned a lot! So, if you're building an in-house sales training program, avoid the mistakes we've made...

Not every program we deliver is at a client's location, though. Every few weeks or so, we get the opportunity to host a group of salespeople or sales managers at our training center in Greensboro, NC. This week was one of them. The excitement around the office increases dramatically because 20 or 30 salespeople generate a lot of energy. We kept the energy positive by watching the little things.

There are a few tricks to make an in-house sales training program effective. As basic as some of this might sound, it truly is the little things that will make your event successful or a flop.

Successful In-House Sales Training Programs

Aside from being delivered by highly skilled facilitators, successful in-house sales training programs require successful execution on some fundamental logistics. You might not think some of these things are that important, but trust us. They are. How do we know? We've learned the hard way!

Preparation: Participants in your in-house sales training program should know where to go, how to get there, and what to expect well in advance of the program. Sure, they may have last minute questions (or forget to look at the directions until the last minute!), but it's much better to prepare them early than to scramble at the last minute.

Comfort: Make sure everyone is comfortable. This includes everything from the chairs to the temperature of the room (depending on the room, 70 degrees is usually perfect).

Food: Having ready-access to food is an important component, too. Keep some snacks in the room. Oh, and lay off the carbs. Bread and pasta put people to sleep -- avoid them.

Breaks: Make them plentiful and tell participants when they're coming. Salespeople need time to make calls, check emails, and touch-base with customers.

Content: If it's an in-house sales training program, it better be highly customized! For more information about that, check out this post.

Exercises: Involving participants is important. But their involvement better not be "cheesy." The exercises you include should be real-world application of the principles you're teaching.

Facilitate: Don't lecture. Rely on the expertise in the room. Work hard to highlight the knowledge, experiences, and abilities that participants have. Incorporate them into the session.

Shipping: If people are flying in, be prepared to ship materials back for your participants. Sure, they might miss the chance to review the materials on the plane, but at least they won't have to cram them into an already overstuffed bag.

How else do you make sure an in-house sales training program is delivered effectively?

- @JebBrooks

The post In-House Sales Training – How to Make it Effective appeared first on Sales Evolution.

A referral blitz can be a great way to jump start your business.

When you call up current customers and mention your company is doing a referral blitz, you will be surprised at how many people will give you names of people you could contact.

Key is to frame the wording in a specific way that will increase the likelihood that your customers will help you.

Check out the below video to see how a two-week “referral blitz” could boost sales for you and your company:

Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. 

Much has been written about what makes for a good sales manager and effective sales management strategy. But as every sales rep, manager and executive knows, it’s often the intangibles that separate good sales managers from the great ones.

Below are seven key attributes I most often find in the best, most successful sales managers. In this case, I’m defining success not only by how well they hit their number, but how well they inspire, empower and prepare their teams for sustained success as well.

1. Creativity

Even with a well-defined sales process, a consistent brand position and standardized tools, successful sales managers are constantly innovating and improvising to get more out of the market and their teams. This goes for everything from objection-handling to internal contests and more. The very best sales managers are both creative and disciplined, meaning they’re able to not only come up with great new ideas to test, but also effectively triage and measure their effectiveness.

2. Consistency

You can’t play favorites. You can’t adjust expectations too often. When your sales reps are facing adversity and a highly-dynamic selling environment (often where “no” is the most commonly-heard answer), consistency on the part of the sales manager is extremely important. Consistency drives trust and credibility for sales managers, which allows them to get away with occasional bursts of creativity without implying that the entire ship is turning a different direction.

3. Curiosity

Great sales managers drive their bosses and often their marketing counterparts nuts. They’re always asking questions – why is it like that, how did that work, why didn’t we try it this way, should we participate in this new user group, etc. Similar to creativity, however, curiosity is best executed when there’s a level of discipline and accountability behind it. Asking questions is one thing – having a productive opinion and volunteering to help identify or execute the answer or solution is quite another.

4. Conflict Management

No matter the size, age, nature or overall make-up of the sales organization, there will be conflict. I’ve heard some inside sales managers describe their culture as somewhat akin to middle school. Ineffective sales managers, this environment, take up the role of that vice principal you remember who was always in charge of discipline. More effective sales managers enforce behavior and discipline standards but do it in a more productive way – leveraging their standards of both consistency and fairness to get the team back focused.

5. Confidence

Don’t mistake this for optimism. Great sales managers don’t need to be glass-half-full people all the time. But they need to exhibit confidence in their teams, their products, their companies and the daily/weekly/regular processes that deliver results. Sales reps look to their managers daily for guidance and direction – not only in where to focus but in how to act. Confidence from the top down drives behavior, effort and results.

6. Can-Do, Will-Do Attitude

I’ve worked with sales managers who have great ideas but rarely get their hands dirty. The best sales managers lead by example, regularly roll up their sleeves and work right along side you. They join you on sales calls, build the next-month sales promotion, dig through lead list options with the marketing team, and otherwise focus plenty of time and energy not just on managing but also doing.

7. Calm

Not necessarily calm as in quiet or shy. Calm as in patient. Even-keeled. Passionate at times but generally a combination of consistent and confident, steady when the day or the last sales call or the markets are roiling. This provides a foundation for the entire team to drive from.

The sales field is suffering.  Customers are suffering.   Sales forces lack buyer-centered tools for success.  When will Sales catch up with Marketing?  

Sales field alignment with the modern day buyer requires more than lip service.  This blog is focused on the transformation of Sales to incorporate buyer-centered tools.   CMO’s can help sales make the number in 2014.

Download 8 Strategic Imperatives of Buyer-Centric Selling.

Marketing Leaders Guide the Way

A strength of the marketing discipline is a natural thirst for buyer insights.  Understanding how the prospect thinks is part of the CMO’s DNA. 

In contrast, the Sales industry in general has been dragged kicking and screaming to buyer-centricity.  The evolution to needs-based solution selling helped.  But for the most part needs-based selling has been used as a technique to better ‘tell’ the prospect what they need. 

A-Player sales reps use intuition to figure out how to approach the modern buyer.  A-Players typically have an acute sense for the needs of their customers.  Top performers often evolve ahead of the rest of the sales force.   They operate successfully in spite of company-centered sales processes.  They ‘smooth’ the friction between a prospect and your company’s stone-age sales process. 

The sales field evolution to user-centricity has been occurring at the grassroots level.  The major gap is at the sales leadership level from the top-down.  Sales organizations lack the support and guidance to transform the entire sales field.  Today’s marketing leaders are poised to help. 

WANTED: CMO’s to Guide Sales to Make the Number in 2014

Sales leaders need support from marketing to make the transformation to buyer-centricity.  There are three major areas of support marketing can provide sales.  Sales leaders can bring in a consultant and perform this without marketing.  Ideally marketing and sales align efforts to quicken the pace. 

Three steps to fast track buyer-centered selling: 

1. Buyer Process Maps – BPM’s are a sales tool that maps the decision-making process used to purchase a product or service.

• Provides the sales team a blueprint so they can get into deals early enough to win them
• Increases win rates through Buyer and Seller alignment

• Role of Marketing:
• Facilitate the creation of BPM, and/or manage the selection of a consulting firm who specializes in developing Buyer Process Maps
• Vet the prototype in the field through audience interviews and field observation
• Contribute company and/or 3^rd party executed audience research to validate BPM findings

2. Social Selling Guidance - A modern prospecting methodology that fills the funnel with opportunities. 

• Generates meetings with decision makers inside of your target prospects
• Frees sales from day-to-day dependence on marketing for leads
• Role of Marketing:
• Training and quick reference guidance on social selling best practices
• Company profile text and support to create LinkedIn profiles
• Introduction and referral templates for InMail, Email and Connection messages
• Nurture content for LinkedIn status updates

3. Sales Process infused with Buyer Insights – Allows a sales team to sell the way the customer wants to buy.

• Selling in a different way based on a specific understanding of the way buyers buy
• Higher close rates and reduced cycle times due to alignment with the buyer
• Role of Marketing:
  • Participate in expert panel sessions to map the buyer’s process to the sales process
  • Validate expert panel suggestions through the lens of audience research
  • Develop external audience-centered sales aids (Case Studies, product comparison grids, etc.).

These three buyer-centered tools work in concert together.  Social Selling provides expanded access to decision makers.   The Buyer Process Map gives sales insights to get into a deal early.  The BPM and sales process together give sales the highest probability to win. 

Fast Track to Success

CMO’s can help sales make the number in 2014.  Move quick to stop the bleeding. The sales field is suffering.  Customers are suffering.   Sales lacks buyer-centered tools for success. 

Take action now to evaluate the depth of business impact.  Drive positive change in the organization.  Leverage the tool 8 Strategic Imperatives of Buyer-Centric Selling  to identify the business impacts.  You will be surprised at the depth of impact to your company, sales force and customers.

Author: Vince Koehler

Vince Koehler on Google+

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Use These LinkedIn Tips to Grow Your Business

By now, you know that LinkedIn is a key networking tool for any business. A marketing plan just isn’t complete these days if you don’t include time to make and maintain a presence on LinkedIn. This networking platform has become essential for B2B marketing, and the feature that has proven itself to be most valuable in boosting B2B sales is the Groups feature. Taking advantage of this feature provides the potential to get your brand in front of a lot more people than relying only on your company page. If you haven’t already gotten involved in Groups, here are a few LinkedIn tips to get you started and give you a boost in sales.

Be Directly Involved in Your Group

Being active in your group means that you will attract more prospects. Would-be customers feel much more confident about brands that are obviously invested in their clients’ experiences and opinions. Express your interest from the get-go by setting up automated messages to send to LinkedIn users who join your group, giving them a warm welcome and inviting them to contact you freely with any questions or comments. Think of your members as prospective clients or customers. When they have questions, answer them promptly to exemplify the type of timely, quality service you provide for your clients.

Encourage Group Members to Get Involved Too

You will want to provide topics of discussion from time to time, but it’s also important to let group members lead a good number of discussions. This shows potential members that you are interested in what they have to say. Instead of seeing a slew of topics provided by you with a list of responses from members, they will see a group full of members engaging in interesting discussion with useful information. Make sure you participate in member-led discussions as well. Again, you want your members to know that you value them and their perspectives.

Keep an Eye on Activity

While member participation is key crucial to the success of your group, you must ensure that activity within the group is appropriate, informative, and doesn’t annoy current or prospective members. For instance, say there is a member who is constantly posting messages for self-promotion. This kind of spamming can get very old, very fast. When group discussions are littered with promotional jargon, people get bored and sometimes annoyed, which means they might possibly leave the group. If there are members who are acting inappropriately or posting the same things over and over again just to get their names out there, consult with them privately and let them know that their behavior isn’t conducive to the group’s purpose.

Keep Content Relevant

People join groups for a reason. They are interested in a certain topic and either want to be involved in discussion on said topic or just get as much information and advice as they can from the sidelines. Therefore, only relevant content should be posted to your group. The best thing about groups is that you’ve got a ready-made audience there for the taking—possible future clients or customers who are interested in your topic and have joined your group voluntarily. These folks are there to read information that pertains to the category under which your group falls. Don’t post (or allow others to post) anything that might take away from relevant subject matter.

Search for Leads

In addition to managing your group, you should also be looking for prospective members that could turn into clients. LinkedIn now has an Advanced People Search, which is extremely useful in farming for a specific group of people. For example, you can search for people who have a specific job title, such as CFO, or perhaps those who run companies with less than one hundred employees. LinkedIn helps you find the exact audience you have always desired but never knew how to contact. Inviting these people to join your groups will give them a small taste of what they can expect from you and your company.

Advertise

LinkedIn now has an advertising feature. It is a paid feature, but the cost is comparable to Facebook’s ad feature, and the possibility of reaching your target audience is greater. The Groups feature allows your ad to be placed front and center on the pages of a group. For example, you can specify that you want an ad to be visible to members of corporate real estate groups or inbound marketing groups.  These ads are customizable and are written by your company, but they do have to meet certain criteria to be accepted by LinkedIn.

Participate in Other Groups

In order to integrate your group with your profile and get more exposure, join other people’s groups whose topics fall under the same umbrella as yours. In addition, you might find that you can generate leads within other groups that have nothing to do with your actual business. Joining a group with members who have the same interests as you—golf, for example—might give rise to business relationships. Cultivating friendships with like-minded individuals can lead to talk about business, which gives you an opening to see if you can be beneficial to one another in B2B sales.

LinkedIn’s Groups feature has grown by leaps and bounds since it was first introduced, especially where group management is concerned. Many tools have been implemented to help you lead and monitor your group efficiently. Starting a group is easy, but you must be committed to managing it as well. Participation and consistency are key if you want your LinkedIn Group to help boost B2B sales.

photo credit: ntr23 via photopin cc

New research shows that reps prefer content relevance over frequency when it comes to enabling sales.

While I believe content is one of the keys to increasing sales productivity, not all marketing content serves the same purpose. Some content resources are geared toward brand awareness, SEO, demand/lead generation – and on and on it goes.

When it comes to sales enablement, however, reps are most interested in the content that is specifically relevant to them. The question is – what does that look like?

Recently, sales training and performance company Richardson conducted a survey of over 400 sales managers and reps to learn how helpful they find their organization’s content strategies. The results were interesting, as you rarely hear about the value of content marketing from a salesperson’s perspective (or at least not as often as you hear about it from marketers).

Not all the feedback was positive, as a surprisingly small percentage of sales managers felt their companies’ content helped generate qualified leads (33%) or motivated customers to buy (44%). It’s important to keep in mind, however, that numbers like these reflect A) the biases of the people being surveyed and B) the overall quality of the content strategies they are working with. To me, such a low opinion of content as an effective lead gen tool speaks more to the poor implementation of those strategies than content marketing as a whole.

In other words, those organizations might just be doing a lousy job.

With that said, some data in the survey speaks very loudly, particularly the section on how salespeople think marketing content can be used to better support their selling efforts. Most notably, reps seem to care little about the frequency of content being published; they mainly care about content relevance (See? Quality over quantity!).

So how can organizations improve in that area? Here are three things respondents said they’d like to see more of, with some additional thoughts on each.

“Create a stronger link between the content and the solutions we sell.”

This really speaks to the silly belief that content marketing can’t be promotional (one of several myths that drive me crazy). While thought leadership content (or “thought provoking”, as the Richardson survey describes it) is a great way to drive traffic, increase brand awareness and invite more people to learn about your business, it’s still marketing content.  If you write a blog post about a unique challenge your audience faces, don’t be afraid to mention the fact that you have a product or solution that helps solve this issue.

Also, don’t forget that these types of resources are only part of the content marketing puzzle. Product demos, webpage copy, data sheets and testimonials are all very promotional – and very valuable to sales reps. They are constitute types of content.

“Help me understand how this content relates to our customers.”

This can be an issue of simply losing sight of your audience when developing content. Obviously, you want to have a clear idea of who you’re writing for in all situations, but there’s also an opportunity to create resources specifically for different personas and industries.

Think about it; even the most narrow audiences can be segmented down into more specific targets with their own unique challenges and needs. This can lead to content that doesn’t just imply, but flat our states how your products or services can help X Persona in Y Industry. Promotional? Sure. Valuable content marketing for sales enablement? Absolutely.

“Help me better understand how to use thought provoking content to prospect.”

A deeper understanding of personas can also help with prospecting and email outreach. If a salesperson is given a lead, they need to know what content to share with that individual. An open line of communication between sales and marketing can help increase awareness of these resources (and save time in the process). You can also house content in an organized sales enablement portal to simplify access for reps.

This also coincides with another request from respondents in the Richardson survey, which is to be better informed of when new content is released. But once again, content relevance needs to come first.

You can download the full Richardson report here, and visit our What We Do page to learn how Brainshark solutions help companies develop and share content for sales enablement.

Download Our Sales Enablement eBook

Sales coaching

Selling – technology definitely provides new opportunities for sales managers and sales reps. However, as relayed in the WSJ there are some pitfalls.

The article made us recall a scenario raised by a sales manager when customizing a sales coaching program for first-line sales managers. The sales manager suggested this scenario:

I just walked out of a sales call with one of my sales reps. During the call, the sales rep’s smartphone buzzed and he checked his phone. The customer looked at him and then at me. What probably lasted a second or two felt like an hour.

The sales manager went on to say, “I hadn’t thought much about it before, but I’m sure this happens more often than I might suspect. So, let’s include it in the program as one of the sales coaching scenarios our sales managers should address.”

Although glancing at a smartphone might seem to be a harmless act, it might not be that harmless.

Sales calls and the importance of eye contact

Research studies report that adults make eye contact 30% to 60% of the time in an average conversation. But if you make contact more often – 60% to 70% of the time – you create stronger connections during the conversation.

In sales calls, making a stronger connection matters. Looking at someone when speaking also conveys confidence and respect. Withholding eye contact can be interpreted as a sign of carelessness or disrespect.

So why are salespeople looking at their smartphones during sales calls? According to Quantified Impressions a communications-analytics company, it’s become more culturally acceptable among twentysomethings to answer the phone no matter where they are or what they are doing. But it’s not only the twentysomethings, many of us, regardless of age, have just become used to responding to our smartphones reflexively.

Eye contact and business meetings

Interestingly, eye contact issues move beyond reflexively looking at smartphones to other behaviors in business meetings that can be interpreted adversely by others at the table. For example:

• Table talkers who constantly look at their notes or down at the table when talking.

• Gaze grabbers who intensely look into others’ eyes when talking can make the listener feel like the salesperson is trying to dominate the conversation [ideally, holding eye contact for 7 to 10 seconds in a one-on-one conversation and 3-5 seconds in a group setting is ideal]

• Eye darters are salespeople who look in all directions except the listener.

Remember, it’s not just what’s said during a sales call – or in any business meeting - that matters – it’s how you say it and how you say it can include more than just verbal behavior.

If you found this post helpful, you might want to join the conversation and subscribe to the Sales Training Connection.

I love the nuances of baseball. Unfortunately, for many, baseball is perceived as a slow-moving game that lacks the excitement of sports like football, basketball or hockey. Personally, I believe it’s because they simply don’t understand the nuances of baseball.

Take, for example, all that could be going on during a single pitch during a baseball game. Here’s the scenario: With a runner on first and one out, the batter at the plate is facing a count of one ball and two strikes.

Here’s the nuance of the play: The infielders, knowing that the batter has a tendency to hit the ball to the right side of the field, cheat slightly to that side. The runner on first, looking for a chance to steal second, takes a slightly larger lead than normal testing whether the pitcher will throw over to the base or pitch the ball to the batter. The catcher, knowing that the man on first wants to steal, crouches down with his feet at an angle which would give him a faster release on his throw to second. Given that the batter has two strikes, the pitcher could throw a slider in an attempt to get the batter to chase it when it slides across the plate and potentially gain the strike out. Or the pitcher could throw a shin-high fastball or curve ball in an attempt to get the batter to swat a weak infield hit thereby inducing a possible double play.

Did you know that so much can be going on during a single pitch? That’s the wonderful nuance of baseball.

In a similar way, many salespeople and even some sales managers don’t realize that in sales, there are dozens of nuances or techniques that can be the difference between winning a sale or losing it.

Most sales organizations have a call flow that the sales staff have been trained to follow. It usually looks something like this: 1.) Establish rapport, 2.) Determine the prospect’s needs, 3.) Present your product or service, 4.) Introduce a trial close, 5.) Uncover and overcome objections, 6.) Go for the close, 7.) Close!

Sound familiar? Yours may not look exactly like this but chances are it’s pretty similar.

Having a call flow is good because it gives the sales meeting structure, direction, and is a good way for the salesperson to maintain control. However, going into a sales call only understanding the call flow misses the nuances that go into making an average sales meeting a successful sales meeting.

It’s a good general statement to say that 99.5% of all sales calls begin with a barrier between the sales person and the prospect. Some barriers may be higher and others lower based on the prospect’s eagerness to meet with you, but they’re there regardless. It’s the nuances of sales that bring down barriers and give your salespeople a better opportunity for success.

Here’s one such nuance: Do your salespeople understand the impact tone has on a prospect? By tone I mean what do your salespeople sound like during the meeting? If they’re good, their voice is relaxed and conversational. Or do you have salespeople who come across as hurried, monotone, and strictly business in their tone? The reason tone is an important nuance is because good tone can engage the prospect whereas a bad tone can maintain the barrier between them. Having an engaging tone helps lower the barrier.

How about listening? Do your salespeople have good listening skills? Do they write down what they hear and do they occasionally respond when the prospect is speaking with words such as, “I see,” “That’s interesting,” or “Tell me more about that?” Do they have good listening posture and does their face convey interest in what the prospect is saying? Practicing and using good listening skills are a valuable way to continue lowering the barrier.

How good are your salespeople at matching the features and benefits of your product or service to the needs of the customer? I’ve suffered through many sales calls where the salesperson performed the obligatory ‘needs analysis’ so they could get to their favorite part of the sales call talking about how great their product is. As someone who loves sales training, the agonizing part for me is the salesperson doesn’t even realize they aren’t selling!

A good salesperson listens intently to a prospect’s needs while taking notes. All the while, they’re circling or highlighting where the prospect’s needs match up especially well to the product or service they’re selling. When the salesperson begins talking about their product, they mention the features of their product, then make a point to highlight how the benefits of their product line up with the prospect’s needs. In this way, the prospect can more easily see themselves or their company using the product or service.

When a salesperson does a good job of matching the benefits of their product to the needs of the customer, do you know what they’re actually doing? Building value! Yes, building value! Strong sales leaders know that the key to more productive salespeople is their ability to help the prospect find a high level of value in their product or service. Building value is one of the biggest barrier busters in a salesperson’s arsenal and sadly, many salespeople don’t even know it.

I could go on and on about things such as creating a sense of urgency, communicating a value proposition, matching pace, clearly stating differences between features and benefits, the value of energy and excitement and so on but I think you get the point. It’s not the call flow that brings down sales barriers; it’s the nuances of sales that bring down barriers.

Try this: Role play with a few of your salespeople where you’re the prospect and they’re trying to sell you your company’s product or service. As they’re selling, make a mental note of the subtle or not-so-subtle nuances that would move you, the prospect, closer to the sale. If you don’t at least see some of the things mentioned here, you may have work to do with your staff. You may need to coach them on the finer skills or nuances that will bring them success.

Coaching the nuances of sales (or as some refer to it, the art of sales) is a great investment in your salespeople because it can be an instant shot in the arm to the performance of your sales team.

Good luck and happy selling!

This week, we will review a solution that helps you optimize sales funnels through the usability focus. This focus translates into quick response times for your leads.

Let’s look at SalesExec, a SaaS-based lead management software.

In this SalesExec review, we will look at its features, interface, and see how it can be of use to you.

The Need for a Separate Lead Management Solution

While the jury is still out on optimal sales lead times, research has shown that the quicker you follow through on a lead, the greater your chances of converting that lead into a paying customer.

Quick conversion, however, is function of several factors. These include lead details entry by your sales teams and follow up by call agents. The binding agent for these two teams is generally a CRM software.

However a CRM software can be complex and bloated. Sales lead tracking features are generally hidden in a vast and often confusing array of features promised by the solution. As a result, most salespersons rarely use those features.

“Realistically, how many times do you have to ask your sales team to manage their leads in a CRM?” asks Gabe Buck, chief executive officer at SalesExec. As a former sales manager himself, Buck knows what he is talking about. “Lead tracking is too important to be thrown in as an afterthought solution,” he says.

Buck’s previous experience provided him with a context into pain points for the Sales lead generation process. According to Buck, the statistics for companies that abandon CRM due to usability issues is staggering. “It’s pretty easy to see why,” he says.

Buck says simplicity is key to designing a SaaS solution. “There are very few CRM solutions in the enterprise space that have focused on making their solutions simple,” he says. “It’s like you have to have thought of everything and thrown it into your CRM to be considered a heavyweight.”

In Buck’s case, usability translated into a combination of choice, speed, and ease-of-use. “We don’t care about anything other than sales agents closing deals from the leads they are given or that they create,” says Buck. “Our system removes all of the noise and helps a salesperson do what they do best, close deals.”

For example, SalesExec enables businesses to test and choose optimal sales workflow for their needs. The drag and drop editors make it easy for businesses to customize their workflow without technical knowledge or hiring of expensive technical resources. Similarly, the application has a simplified interface based on customer feedback. The clean interface enables salespersons to quickly categorize their leads and follow up accordingly. For example, they can immediately call hot leads and convert them into paying customers. Similarly, they can nurture potential customers through emails and phone calls.

“All of our features are aimed at helping sales agents in call centers and in sales teams maximize their output so that they win more deals,” says Buck.

Managing Sales Leads With SalesExec

As I mentioned earlier, SalesExec is focused on simplicity. In feature terms, this focus translates into fewer menu options that display more information and allow you to multiple things at the same time. The solution uses role-based access to segregate between user options. This segregation results in tighter focus (and less distractions) for SalesExec users.

“What you won’t get from us is a ton of features salespeople don’t need to make their life difficult,” says Buck. Thus, advanced customization features that enable workflow control, options for distribution of leads and customized permissions are available for managers but not for salespersons. Instead, salespersons are provided with a clean interface with just the required buttons and menu options that helps them focus on the task at hand.

In interface terms, however, the focus translates into options to upload, process, and close leads. In addition, you can generate a number of reports associated with your lead tracking efforts.

You can upload or enter leads into SalesExec. Each lead has an assigned status. The statuses correspond to actions as well as strategy for that lead. For example, there is a left message/callback status that informs salespersons that they need to call back their sales leads. The Dead/Nurture status informs them of sales deals that are, otherwise, dead and need to be revived or need nurturing.

Clicking particular leads/contact names displays an informational snapshot for that name. Thus, you can view number of emails sent to that lead, appointments, calls, and sales made to that lead. All of this comes together on the homepage for the solution, where you can view comprehensive information and statuses for each lead. Predefined and custom filters allow you to sort through displayed leads on the homepage.

Besides this, there are a number of options within the solution that enhance productivity and quicken the lead generation loop. The most important one is the power dialer, which allows call center agents to call leads without leaving the solution or having to manually dial.

A calendar within the solution enables you to lead generation records and times. Salespersons can add notes, compose emails, or attach custom templates to email potential customers from within the solution. You can also view important statistics related to lead generation from within the solution. For example, you can see the number of emails sent, appointment calls and sales, if any, made to that contact.

The activity log compares your activity to the average activity log for the day and, also, to the most productive team member or leader. Finally, SalesExec has a comprehensive reporting database that details numerous reports using information or data contained within the solution. Managers can customize permissions and edit layouts before generating analytics for their solution.

Pros & Cons

The biggest advantage of using SalesExec is its simplicity. The application is extremely simple and easy-to-use and can be used for a wide variety of sales techniques, including drip email marketing campaigns or complex campaigns with multiple feedback loops and long sales processes. I also liked the fact they have integrated with multiple third-party solutions, enabling a two-way flow of information. Finally, there is the productivity and cost-saving argument to recommend SalesExec. Because it is such a tightly focused and easy-to-use solution, it enhances productivity and leads to cost-savings.

There is scope for further simplicity, however. For example, although they have whittled down the number of menu options to just three, the team at SalesExec should consider further simplifying the sub-menu options. The elements and information displayed in these options are fairly similar and can be integrated into one screen. As an example, the Leads and Dead/Nurture menu options can be integrated into a single split screen with collapsible borders and custom filters. This will provide users with an instant comparison point for their efforts.

Pricing

SalesExec has an extremely simple pricing structure. Besides the 14-day free trial, you can pay per agent seat. Each customer gets premium support and features for this price. A word here about their support, which is pretty impressive and goes beyond conventional support offered by software companies. SalesExec has a comprehensive knowledgebase and university that educates and informs customers about lead generation and the role of software in such efforts.

The Bottom Line

By separating lead management from other CRM activities, SalesExec has enabled greater focus and returns for this activity. SalesExec scores highly for its simple interface and sophisticated functionality. It might be interesting for businesses to try out the free trial and see if they get promised returns.

Ratings: ease of use 5/5, features 5/5, value 5/5 and ease of deployment 4/5

Satisfaction drives loyalty. More importantly, it drives retention. The key to a healthy bottom line is the ability to keep your customers.

According to the book Outside In [click here for infographic] by Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine, retaining customers drives revenue in three ways:

- Incremental sales from current customers.
- Retained sales as a result of lower churn.
- New sales driven by word of mouth (referrals).

Can small improvements in retention make a big difference? Absolutely. According to Gartner Group, “A 5% improvement in retention can increase profitability by upwards of 25% to 125%.”

The Revolving Door Effect

Too much focus in marketing is on acquisition. The vast majority of spending is focused on getting prospects through the door and converting them to customers. Little attention is paid to their retention. For most companies this door represents a revolving door. Let’s use the insurance category to illustrate the point. The average insurance company maintains a retention rate of 80%. USAA, a leader in customer experience, retains customers at a rate of 97%. I recently heard Christine Moorman, the T. Austin Finch Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, discuss how this plays out over a three year time frame. The results are eye opening.

Companies with 80% retention will have to replace over 50% of their customers every three years. Comparatively USAA only needs to replace less than 9% of its customer base over a similar three year period.

Retention of the Vital Few

Based on the Pareto Principle, for the vast majority of companies, 80% of profitability is driven by 20 percent of customers. These customers are your key accounts. Retaining these customers should be your top priority.

Over the next ten months, I will be exploring how companies utilize the Goldfish Rule to retain these vital few. Little extras that drive loyalty and referrals. My findings will complete the third let of the Goldfish trilogy. Purple Goldfish focused on customers, Green Goldfish focused on employees, and now the Golden Goldfish will focus on 20% of customers and employees.

Any good examples or best practices to share? How do you work towards retaining your Top 20%?

There is no better time than the present to learn from those who possibly have been in the sales industry a bit longer than you.

Today you can jump on over to the Salesforce blog, where I and other sales speakers and leaders were asked to give tips for young salespeople.

Regardless of how long you have been in the sales industry, I think you will discover some insights in the post that you can apply to strengthening your sales skills.

Advice for Young Salespeople from 9 Sales Veterans

Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.