Blog:
The Competitive Advantage
November 3, 2020
How to Define Sales Territories for Larger Sales Teams
I started my career as a technical sales rep for the DuPont Company (a long, long, long time ago). Back then, the de facto way of structuring a sales team was to give each sales rep his/her own territory. And those sales territories were almost always built around geography… whether the company was selling regionally, nationally or globally. It made it easy for ‘road warriors’ to visit a lot of clients and prospects on a single road trip.
But today, with so many geographically-dispersed companies working virtually – and so much selling being done by phone and on tools like Zoom™ – defining sales territories by geography is not your only option. It’s also likely not your best option.
Continue ReadingOctober 28, 2020
Sending cold emails? Then take the time to do it right.
I received a cold email this morning from a company pitching its products. It happens all the time. But this one was especially bad.
First of all, it was like so many of the other cold emails I’ve received over the years – selling products or services I simply don’t need. This happens so much that I started writing about this phenomenon as early as 2016 (read the first post here). This salesperson was just lazy. They likely found my name on an industry list somewhere and assumed I needed what they’re selling. Uh-h-h… no!
Continue ReadingOctober 20, 2020
Should You ‘Pivot’ During the Pandemic?
If your firm is like 99% of all other firms, your business in 2020 is not what you thought it would be when you were planning for it a year ago.
Clients are placing a ‘hold’ on projects or canceling them altogether. Some of your clients might have gone through layoffs and are not spending a dime. Perhaps you work in a certain industry vertical that has taken a real hit this year (travel, restaurants, etc.).
And when that happens, as business leaders and managers, we are obliged to take a step back and ask, “Should we pivot and be looking outside of our core business for other opportunities?”
Continue ReadingOctober 13, 2020
Stop the Typical Capabilities Presentation… You’re Wasting the Buyers’ Time
We’ve been in business for 8½ years… and in all that time, I have never given a single capabilities presentation. Why not? Because every prospect already knows what we do. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have been invited in to present. How do they know? Simple… they’ve been to our website, downloaded our materials and checked us out on LinkedIn. They already know who we work with… it’s on our website. They know the areas where we’re subject matter experts. You guessed it… also on our website. So, if they already know all of that, why would we waste their time (and ours) re-presenting it to them?
September 30, 2020
Stop Selling… Start Helping!
I generally empty my spam folder every day, but for some reason, I had skipped a few days… and had a mountain of emails to be deleted.
As I was looking through them and getting ready to hit the ‘delete’ button, I noticed a consistent theme across all of them. Other than a couple of “I’m a barrister in Dubai I need your help to claim $20 million,” every single one of them was a hard sales pitch: SEO services, website design, app creation and so on and so on. And most from companies I had never heard of.
Even though this was my spam folder, I think there’s still a lesson here… if you want someone to take notice of you – in an email, over the phone or in person – stop selling and start helping. Or as one of my clients likes to say, “bring value to the relationship.”
Continue ReadingSeptember 15, 2020
To Excel at Virtual Selling… You Need to Master Video Chat; Part 2
For the foreseeable future, using video chat for virtual selling will be the ‘new normal.’ So, if you want to be successful at selling, you’ll need to master one of these platforms. Last week, we explored the fundamentals of video chat. In this blog, will discuss how it applies specifically to the sales process.
To help, here are 9 guidelines to help you become a virtual selling superstar…
Continue ReadingSeptember 8, 2020
To Excel at Virtual Selling… You Need to Master Video Chat; Part 1
Even when the pandemic is behind us, the use of video chat platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype, etc. will continue to be an important tool for virtual selling and maintaining client relationships. And while all of these platforms are pretty easy to use, it’s also very easy to do a bad job while you’re broadcasting to a sales prospect or client.
To help, in this blog post (and next week’s, too), we’ll share a number of easy-to-implement actions you can employ to take advantage of video chat technology.
Continue ReadingSeptember 2, 2020
“I’m a sh*tty guesser!”
This morning, our monthly enewsletter went out to our database. And as I often do, I ran an A/B test on the ‘subject line’… always trying to find the right kinds and grouping of words that get the highest ‘open rate.’ As usual, as the email was being blasted out, I guessed which subject line would be the winner.
And as usual, I was wrong!
Continue Reading