Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Start With Customer and Work Backwards

Since resources are usually limited, it is sometimes difficult to decide what to spend money on first. A simple rule of thumb might help when alternatives are difficult to choose between. When deciding how to allocate resources, begin at the customer and work backwards. In other words, view each alternative in terms of its ability to enhance the customer's experience with your company. Does spending money on one alternative enhance customer service in some way? Does it sell more products? Will it strengthen relationships with customers? Rank alternatives from most likely to positively enhance the customer's experience with the company to least. If you are looking for a second criterion for selecting alternatives ways to spend money, evaluate the alternatives based on how they could impact employee productivity.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Enhance Your Listening Skills

Arguably, the most important skill in business is listening. Some of us are better listeners than others, but we all must work on our listening skills if we are going to maximize our success in the business world. ...Read More

Monday, August 22, 2005

Compete on Added Value

Too many companies believe they can only compete on the basis of price. This leads to price-cutting and unacceptable gross profit levels. Unless your company is selling a true commodity product or service, it is not always necessary to cut price to compete. If your company understands how to deliver outstanding customer service, it is already far ahead of most businesses. And over time many customers will become somewhat loyal based on that fact. This loyalty can allow some separation between your prices and that of your competition. And there are other ways of adding value to a sale. Use your ability to differentiate your product/service as a means of competing. This will mean that sales people will have to work harder and smarter. They won't be able to simply cut prices to get the deal. They will have to sell value and benefits. Making unnecessary price concessions is one of the leading ways that businesses drop gross profit to levels that simply aren't acceptable.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

What Customers Really Want

With today's cutthroat competition from big business, trying to compete on price can be a quick road to ruin for a startup company. But here's a little secret you should know: contrary to common perception, customers will not go almost anywhere just to save a buck.

A dramatic new survey of over 100,000 small business and retail customers nationwide says that superior customer service will trump a lower price.

Learn how to give customers what they want. Click HERE for the full article.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Selling Power Sales Leadership Conference

Master the 4 toughest challenges facing sales leaders today!

Join Selling Power magazine publisher Gerhard Gschwandtner, 150 sales leaders, and leading industry experts at the Sales Leadership Conference on October 26, 2005 in Washington DC. This one-day, action-packed event will give you a blueprint of practical sales management solutions you can transform into higher sales and profits.

Request your spot at this invite-only event now! Click here to get your invite.

Friday, August 12, 2005

Airlines Screwing Me Again

Ok, ok. I know everyone’s had some bad experience with at least one airline in his or her life. But I need to vent since this is what I do for a living. When I see a company provide good sales or customer service, I like to talk about it and use it as an example. Likewise, when I see bad sales or service, I like to whine like a baby with diaper rash. So here goes my latest tirade.

A couple weeks ago, I was scheduled to fly back home to Las Vegas from Reno (a 55-minute flight) after 4 days with a new client, the State of Nevada (Yes! The entire State is now my client). I arrived at the airport well in advance only to find that my 8:30pm flight was delayed about 90 minutes due to weather. About an hour into this delay, we learned that they canceled the flight completely, and there were no more flights out of Reno that night, according to them.

Click HERE to read the full article....

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Making the Most of Your Time

Here's an interesting article from a colleague of mine about making the most of your time. In these days of quick results and limited time, I hope you find some of these tips to be useful. Regards, Russ
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Reclaim more of your most precious resource: Time. Outline your phone calls to minimize chit-chat; skip writing emails when a quick call will do; set personal time limits for conversations; and have an assistant sort your lower-priority communications. To stifle personal procrastination, tackle difficult tasks when you have the most energy and adopt a “just do it” philosophy. Focus on results rather than activities. Avoid wasting the first hour of each day browsing email or hobnobbing with coworkers.

Keep a daily “action diary” and manage your work. Take 20 to 30 minutes each Monday to plan the week, and finish each day by taking 10 minutes to map the next day’s to-dos. Implement the touch-once rule: If a new action item will take just a few minutes to accomplish, do it right away versus adding it to a mounting stack of tasks. Instead of multitasking, practice spotlighting by intensely focusing on singular tasks that move a project toward completion. To better manage the flow of documents, use TRAF (Toss it; Refer it (pass it along to someone else); Act on it personally; or File it).

Above all, always ask yourself “What’s the best use of my time right now?” As Ben Franklin said, “Lost time is never found again.”

Cynthia Weber
Senior Loan Officer
American Home Mortgage
(702) 217-1472
www.americanhm.com/Cynthia.weber

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

My New Book on Technology-Based Selling

After finishing my previous books, CRM For The Common Man and Smart Marketing, I am ready for my third. This one will be on how to use technology (specifically a Contact Manager or CRM product) to help you sell. The "you" here is targeted at the individual Sales Rep and Sales Manager, although I will probably cross over into discussions about departmental and team selling approaches, as well.

The book will cover many areas of selling and will include the sales skills and sales processes I have developed and teach in my sales training and coaching sessions. However, for each area or skill, I will discuss and demonstrate how your contact manager (or CRM product) can aid you in performing the task associated with each skill set. For instance, as you move from Cold Calling to Closing, and then to the follow-on Customer Retention activities, you will learn the sales skills needed to successfully accomplish each step, as well as how CRM can be used to help you move through each phase of the sales process.

I will also be using a popular CRM product as an example with screen shots included to demonstrate each step and point.

Consider that this book will include sections on using your contact manager/CRM to do the following:
  • Track prospects, clients, vendors, etc.
  • Run marketing campaigns
  • Improve communications with your clients
  • Manage documents (letters, emails, templates, etc.)
  • Schedule your activities (versus using a wall calendar or Daytimer)
  • Follow up on activities (no more dropped balls or missed promises)
  • Literature distribution (brochures, contracts, corporate presentation, etc.)
  • Forecast and Pipeline management
  • Report on your activities (pending and completed)
  • Share customer information in a team selling environment
  • Improve your image as a professional, organized sales pro who always follows up
  • Improve your time management and organization skills
  • Improve customer retention with automatic and continued follow-up
  • and more

These are just my initial thoughts on what I plan to cover. At this point, I would welcome anyone's inputs on:

  1. Is this an important topic to you as a sales professional or manager?
  2. What else would you like to see included?
  3. What might you not want to see included?
  4. Comments on any of the above topics?

So let's hear your comments please! This is your chance to help create a valuable sales tool and get some useful information out of this project for yourself, as well. Thanks.

Russ Lombardo

Selling to the right person

We always keep hearing the statement that if you "believe" in what you sell then you can sell almost anything, or you will be successful in sales as long as you believe in what you are selling. While that's true to a certain extent, I believe in a different version of this.

I believe that it's more important to sell what you believe in to the right person.

You see, while it is important to believe in your product, you still have to make sure that the person you are selling it to actually cares. Therefore, you have to make sure they are qualified and will have an interest to begin with. Otherwise, it doesn't matter how much you believe in your product, they just won't buy from you.

So make sure you have a passion for what you are selling, but before you start telling other people about it, make sure they are qualified candidates. If you don't believe in your product, you will almost be guaranteed to lose the sale. But believing in your product won't guarantee you will win the sale either. You have to believe in your product AND sell it to the right person.

Now, how to qualify them is yet another discussion that I'll have to discuss in another posting.

Russ Lombardo
PEAK Sales Consulting
919-559-2395
russ@peaksalesconsulting.com