B2BBuzz Team Blog

(What follows is an excerpt from David Shedd’s book Build a Better B2B Business: Winning Leadership for Your Business-to-Business Company, which is available at Amazon.com)

Most likely, a number of potential new customers are contacting your business today to see if you can help solve their problems: they will walk through your doors; they will call you on the phone; they will contact you by E-Mail; they will connect with you through your Website.

• How will these potential customers be treated? 


• Will your company be easy for these customers to do business with?


• Will your company’s professionalism show through?


• Will their phone calls or E-Mails be returned?


• Will you solve their problem?

We are all aware of how difficult it is, at times, to buy from companies.  In fact, I experienced just this in the last two weeks.

My wife discovered some old style 3.5 inch “floppy” disks with pictures of our children when they were very young.  We wanted to be able to access these photos and keep them in our digital library.  But, we no longer had a drive that could read the disks.  My first stop was the local Audiovisual store which promises to help with “all things audio and all things video.”  The uninformed clerk at the store had no idea what I was talking about.  But, he took my information and promised that the manager would call back as soon as he got back to the store.  I am still waiting for the call.

Now, it was time to buy a 3.5 inch disk reader that could connect to my computer allowing me to transfer the photos myself.  So, I went off to three different electronics chains, two of which specialize in uncommon pieces of electronics.  None of them had it in stock.  And none of them gave me any assistance or suggestions to help me find what I was looking for.  In further research, I found that one of the chains had what I needed at a neighboring store.  And another chain had it on their website.  Alas, this was too late; I had already bought it on Amazon.

Each of these companies had the opportunity to receive my money.  But, they all dropped the ball.  To them, I was a simple inconvenience, not a customer with a problem to be solved.  Yet, they lost something bigger than the $20 I eventually spent; they lost me as a potential customer the next time that I have a similar, somewhat out of the ordinary, request.  And they do not even know that they have lost my potential business.

Most B2B businesses proactively manage the sales funnel to make an unqualified prospect into a potential customer into a completed sale.  But, what about those potential customers which are not on the sales funnel or not on the sales plan?  What about the unknown customers who have already taken the initiative to contact your business?  How many times a day do we drive away these customers because of our lack of responsiveness or inability to even begin to help solve their problem?  And how much does this cost us in terms of lost business and lost growth that is all but invisible? 

Two further anecdotes:

The Good: One $4M a year customer helped lead us into a new growth market.  This customer initially contacted us and a few others with a phone call after the customer had done an Internet search.  We were the only ones that responded promptly and professionally.  Thank goodness.

The Bad: A few years ago, I met a potential customer at a local networking event.  After we got to know one another, he remarked that his company purchased a lot from our local competitor.  I asked him why he had not considered buying from our company, especially as we were well-established in the market.  His response was sobering: “Oh, I tried to buy from you.  First, no one ever returned my call.  Finally, I did manage to speak with someone.  But, he told me that since my request was not a standard product, he did not have the time to help me.  So, I went to your competitor.”

Three takeaways:

• If you can, track all calls that come into your office, even those from new and unexpected customers and ensure that you are doing your best to serve them. 


• Consider following up with these new customers a little while later.  These customers could be fruitful; they already know you exist, and they have already taken the initiative to contact you.  And if you have helped them, they may already think positively of you.


• Even if the customer request is tangential from your business, you can help them down the path of solving their problem.  It rarely takes that much extra effort and, if need be, “you can always say ‘No’ later.”

By Alice R. Heiman

No matter what industry you are in, generating revenue profitably is most likely the most important thing your company does.  With that in mind the most important job for sales managers is to coach their salespeople to close business.  Unfortunately most sales managers can only spend about 20% of their time doing that.  If companies want more business, they need to make sure their managers have time to coach their salespeople to close business.

So why don’t they?  It may be that they don’t know how to coach, or that it has not been set as a priority.  But most likely they just don’t have the time.  Imagine if every CEO in America changed their sales culture to make sure their sales managers could spend 80% of their time coaching their salespeople to close business. 

If it is true that your company wants more sales, the quickest way to get those sales is to focus on sales! Sales management needs time to do that.

A good way to determine what is getting in the way of your managers having time to coach is to have them write down everything they do on a daily basis for about 5 days and determine what percentage of that time was spent coaching salespeople to close business.  Then determine what percentage of time was spent doing other things, especially note those that generate absolutely no revenue.  (Hint – that is almost everything else unless the sales manager is also responsible for selling himself.)

Most sales managers spend 80% or more of their time doing work that doesn’t generate revenue.  So what are they doing with their time?  They are doing paperwork, writing reports, reading and sending email, attending meetings, putting out fires as well as many other things.  Instead of proactively managing salespeople they are doing a long list of other things that are required by senior management.

Have you ever wondered why a salesperson doesn’t hit his quota?  There could be many reasons but it may be because no one is coaching him to do so.  Just as every tennis player needs a good coach to win tournaments, every salesperson needs a good coach to win sales.  They may have plenty of potential, but with no coaching they can’t win.  Who is coaching your salespeople?  I believe that salespeople can and should be coached to improve their performance and increase their success.

What can be done to change this situation?  First and foremost, the senior executive team needs to understand and believe that sales managers should focus their attention on coaching their salespeople.  Next, the senior executives need to make it possible for the sales managers to focus on their salespeople.  Then the sales managers need to be trained to focus their attention on coaching salespeople.  Why?  Because they may never have been afforded the time to do that and may not know how.  Sales managers need to learn to be successful coaches.

What does a coach do?  Let’s take an example straight from sports.  A football coach takes his team to victory one game at a time.  He sets the strategy and then helps his players understand how to implement it.  He never plays the game for them but may demonstrate needed techniques.  When a player is doing poorly, he gives him a pep talk.  When the game is over he helps the team analyze the results so they can continue doing what they did right and learn from the mistakes.  The coach is constantly providing training experiences that improve the players.  He keeps the players and the team motivated.

Coaching salespeople is really no different.  A manager helps his salespeople reach their quota one sale at a time.  He sets the strategy for the territory and helps the salespeople implement it.  He never does the selling work for them but demonstrates sales techniques when needed.  If a salesperson is having a tough time, he gives him a pep talk.  Whether a salesperson loses or wins a sale, the manager helps him analyze the results.  The manager constantly provides training in the area that the salesperson needs improvement and keeps his sales team motivated.

In order to do this successfully, the ratio of managers to salespeople needs to be about 1 to 10.  Sales managers need to be taught to be good coaches and also need to be rewarded for coaching to success.  Every ten salespeople should be able to pay for the “coach” ten times over if the “coach is doing his job properly.

So, do you want more business?  One sure fire way to get it is to make it possible for your sales managers to focus on SALES.

Alice Heiman is the founder and Chief Sales Officer of Alice Heiman, LLC (www.AliceHeiman.com). As a sales expert, Heiman mentors sales executives, transforming them into proactive coaches, while helping management establish a sales culture that will continue to grow the bottom line. Her blog can be viewed at http://smartsalestips.com/

By Casey Mulqueen, Ph.D.

Some people say that selling is an art. But according to Neil Rackham, selling has more to do with following a process and having a good plan than it does with any inherent abilities. The SPIN Selling model was developed by Rackham based on his extensive research on what differentiates successful from less-successful salespeople. The model outlines a time-proven strategy that any salesperson can implement to become more effective.  Awareness of individuals’ behavioral styles can be used with SPIN Selling to further increase sales success by showing how people’s styles, including the salesperson’s, affect the sales process.

The original research for the SPIN model highlighted one critical aspect of successful selling; the buyer does most of the talking. This is not because talkative people are more likely to buy than un-talkative people, but because successful salespeople are skilled at using questions. The questions used in selling situations can be categorized into four types, described below.

Situation: These types of questions are used to discover facts about the buyer’s existing situation.

Problem: These types of questions ask about problems, difficulties, or dissatisfactions that the buyer is experiencing with the existing situation.

Implication: These types of questions are used to inquire about the consequences or effects of a buyer’s problems, difficulties, or dissatisfactions.

Need-payoff: The final technique involves asking questions about the value or usefulness of a proposed solution. These questions help buyers focus on solutions and how the product or service can help them solve problems.

In the book “SPIN Selling,” Rackham notes that “Asking questions that are important to the customer is what makes the SPIN model so powerful.” In other words, consider other people’s behavioral styles when interacting with them. Customers’ styles can influence the types of questions that are important to them. We’ll look at a few examples of how behavioral style influences questioning techniques.

Salespeople who understand and consciously monitor their behavioral style can become much more effective questioners. For example, outcome- or solution-oriented salespeople quickly move the buyer’s attention to solving problems, especially if they are skilled at using Implication and Need-payoff questions. Their focus on results benefits buyers by providing them the solutions to their problems without wasting much time; the solution comes quickly and efficiently.

However, such salespeople may suffer from an inability to listen carefully, and they are often impatient. Since the SPIN model clearly shows that the most effective salespeople are those who talk less and listen more, outcome-focused salespeople who do not monitor and control their behavioral style will be at a disadvantage. They will rush buyers through the selling process at an uncomfortable pace, and they will not take the time to listen to important information from buyers. Not only will this annoy buyers, but it will almost certainly result in decreased success for the salesperson.

Salespeople who can monitor and control their own behavioral style have solved one half of the selling equation.  To ensure success, they also need to consider their buyers’ behavioral styles and how these affect the SPIN Selling approach. For example, some buyers make decisions based more on intuition and opinion than on objective facts or information. They want salespeople to support them so they can succeed and look good to others. Since they are big-picture thinkers, if a salesperson spends too much time asking Situation or Problem questions, these buyers will become quickly annoyed and will not hesitate to end the sales process. This is because these questions are very fact-based, require detailed responses, focus mostly on the past, and do not give any hints about solutions or how the situation can improve. A salesperson who overuses these questions can come across as an interrogator instead of a problem solver, and success-focused buyers have limited patience for this. Therefore, with these buyers it is critical to move quickly into the Need-payoff types of questions, since their purpose is to focus on the advantages of the sellers’ products or services. This will excite such buyers and communicate to them that the salesperson is their partner and will help them succeed.

The SPIN Selling model provides a framework for salespeople to increase their effectiveness. It has proven the test of time and has been used by tens of thousands of sales professionals. Behavioral style awareness has also been used successfully by countless salespeople over many decades. The two methods naturally complement one another by arming salespeople with concrete tools for working more effectively with their clients. An awareness of behavioral style helps salespeople understand the effects their behavior has on clients, while also helping to understand how to interact with clients based on their client’s styles. In this way, salespeople will have a much better chance of asking the right types of questions, and have a much greater likelihood of success.

Casey Mulqueen, Ph.D., is the Director of Research & Product Development for The TRACOM Group, creators of the SOCIAL STYLE model of behavioral style awareness. Casey has experience developing a wide variety of assessments such as personality inventories, 360-degree feedback programs, performance appraisal systems, and employee opinion surveys. He is a writer who has authored a variety of materials including books, book chapters, and peer-reviewed journal articles. Casey has an M.S. in clinical psychology and a Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology.  Visit www.socialstyle.com for more information. 

By Matt Berndt

In tough economic times, internships can be an important, cost-effective way for small businesses to achieve their business objectives.

So why don’t more small businesses work with colleges and universities to bring in qualified interns?

One reason may be that they aren’t sure how to create an environment for success. While not exhaustive, here are several factors that small businesses should consider, culled from more than 20 years of experience in the field:

Scope of Work: Internships should offer students the opportunity to get substantive experience in a professional field. Employers should put as much thought into their internship descriptions as they put into their job descriptions.

Compensation: In a perfect world, all internships would be paid internships. Since we don’t live in a perfect world, I still encourage employers to pay their interns when possible, regardless of professional field.  The reality is, many students have to work to pay their bills, and taking an unpaid internship does constitute an economic hardship.

Schedule/Work Hours: Most internships require students to complete at least 150 hours of work over the course of a semester; approximately 10-15 hours per week during fall and spring semester and 15-20 hours per week during the shorter summer semester. Internship start and end dates should coincide very closely with the start and end of the semester during which the student is receiving the academic credit.

Resources: If you wish to take on interns, don’t expect them to bring their own tools! Provide a desk, phone, email address, online access, computer, parking permit, etc. Reimburse them for approved expenses; including mileage if they have to run any errands or travel to off-site meetings in their own vehicles.

Facilities: Provide physical space in a professional work environment where the intern can complete her assigned task in close proximity to her direct supervisor. Most “home offices” are not professional work environments, so most home offices are not suitable facilities for internships.

Supervision: Interns should be supervised by experienced professionals. A receptionist or administrative assistant cannot adequately supervise, mentor or train an intern to be anything other than a receptionist. The supervisor should be on-site, and physically present and accessible to the intern on a regular basis.

Performance Evaluation & Feedback: Internship supervisors should conduct mid-term and final evaluations of the intern’s performance and the results of these evaluations should be shared with the university’s faculty/staff internship coordinator and the intern. Interns should evaluate their internship experience and share this evaluation with their university faculty/staff internship coordinator. Learning and performance development should be the objectives of the student evaluations. Quality control should be the objective of the internship evaluations.

Two More Things

What about “virtual internships”?

In very rare instances, our college will award academic credit for virtual internships; in VERY rare instances. Every once in a while an internship comes along that clearly deserves consideration. I know the world is changing and that more and more people are working remotely and in virtual environments. But remember, an internship is first and foremost a learning experience, and an intern left on her own to learn by herself 10 or 1000 miles away from a supervisor she will rarely if ever meet is not engaged in a learning experience.

Please don’t ask University staff or faculty to select your interns for you.

That is your job. Require that students submit faculty references or letters of recommendation; require and only consider students with certain majors amounts of experience or skill sets; require specific application materials and only review complete applications; require statements of interest, cover letters or work samples. Do any or all of these things; just don’t ask us to select candidates for you. We can’t.  The law doesn’t allow it.

Follow this advice and you really will be in a position to attract the ‘best and brightest” candidates, and when these student interns have positive experiences with your organization, they will tell their friends and fellow classmates and help you recruit their successor interns. Do this right and you may never need to post an internship again.

Matt Berendt is Director of Communication Career Services at the University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at mattberndt@austin.utexas.edu

By Diane M. Hoffmann, ph.d.

For years now, I have been talking and writing about the fact that sales and marketing are not the same.  Some time ago, I came across an article somewhere on the Net about advertising and marketing not being the same.

So, now, I talk and write about sales, marketing and advertising not being the same. Well, we know they are not the same, but we often lump them together as one function of business. In a corporation, the three activities have evolved to be separate departmental functions. But in a small company, they usually are muddled within one functional boundary.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re in an ONline or OFFline business. How will you know to whom you are advertising without having done the marketing research first? How will you sell effectively if you don't know your target market?  Just placing an ad in the paper or on radio is throwing one message to a large audience that is not even looking for your product - usually 90 percent. The equivalent in Internet terms is putting up an untargeted web site – without knowing your niche.

In OFFline business, if you do a direct mail, it's better to do 100 mail-outs in a specific postal area that you or your sales team can follow-up personally within a week, rather than to send out 1,000 or 10,000 just anywhere that you cannot follow-up. Because the sales are always in the follow-ups!

In ONline business, you target specific niche -- people who are looking for x information or z product. Then you advertise or promote within that specific target market by means of keyword-specific PPC ads, web sites and web-pages.

“Marketing” is the activity of studying and researching the product/service markets, the competition (What do they do right and wrong?), the demographics, the prospective target market of your business and products, etc.  It is the crunching of these results into the tools that the sales people use to do effective selling.

"Sales" is the direct activity of selling -- telephone cold callings, face-to-face presentations, personal follow-up, talking or inter-acting with prospects, point-of-sales merchandising... ONline, it is the landing page -- the web copy that leads to the link that leads to the buying, or the e-zine or article copy that speaks to the prospect as if in person. It is the actual selling!

“Advertising” is the newspaper, magazine, postal medium, radio or TV copy that leads to the prospect taking action towards a purchase or sales process. In ONline business it is the Adwords, e-zines and articles that carry the copy communication to the prospect.

So, not only are the sales, marketing and advertising activities not the same, they are three specific and separate functions that work in this order: 1.Marketing, 2.Advertising and 3.Sales, each building up in their own essential ways to the goal of the business which is to sell what it's in business to provide to customers. Remember no Sales, no Business!

Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of http://www.build-your-internet-business-now.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training." Diane has recently shifted her primary focus to helping entrepreneurs start and grow their own Online or OFFline business. Copyright(c)2011 Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio

By John Leavy

Nurturing your prospects will double or triple your conversion rate. Just consider: The average click-through rate for pay-per- click ads is 1 to 3 percent. The average click-through from an e-mail campaign is between 1 and 5 percent depending upon the industry. Most of the people arriving at a website are not ready to buy. These are people that are showing an interest in your product or service but not purchasing or signing up. You can expect to harvest between 3 and 5 percent of those that click-through. If 10,000 people click on your Google ad and 2 percent or 20 people click-through to your offer, only 2 percent, or four people will actually purchase your service or product. Four out of 10,000 is only a .0004 percent conversion rate. To get the conversion rate up, you should entice more of the audience of 10,000 that click through to purchase your product or service. Remember, there is not an unlimited supply of prospects interested in purchasing any product or service.

Lead Nurturing

So how do you entice and persuade more people to click-through and make a purchase? According to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing are able to generate 50 percent more sales-ready leads at 33 percent lower cost- per-lead. Lead nurturing is a process by which unqualified leads are tracked and developed into sales-ready opportunities.

The marketing tactics used to turn these unqualified leads into sales-ready opportunities could be webinars, podcasts, whitepapers and other education-based materials, blogging, free trials, newsletters, or e-mail campaigns.

Thought leadership means you have to have something of value to say. Focus implies that each piece of collateral, whether an e-mail, blog post, or news article, needs to be centered around one specific pain point and include the remedy, benefit, and a strong call to action.

The subject line or story header needs to grab the reader’s attention in five to eight seconds. Don’t clutter the e-mail with extraneous links and other offers. Don’t get off subject when writing the blog post or article. Stay on message.

Natural progression means don’t rush the sale. Design an e-mail nurturing campaign or series of blog posts to take the prospect through a logical educational process. The nurturing campaign should be designed to cause prospects to move down the sales funnel at their own pace. The campaign should also be designed to cause the prospect to make a stronger commitment. For instance, at first the prospect gives her e-mail address. Later on during the nurturing campaign the prospect is asked for her company name, phone number, and a few pieces of information that will help qualify her as a potential buyer.

Measurement is the key to any successful inbound marketing campaign. Measurements give you the opportunity to fine-tune the calls to action, the offers, and the content, which in turn increases the click-through and conversion rates.

Keep in mind the difference between spam and nurturing. Spamming is when someone just compiles a list of names and e-mail addresses (who knows from where) and thinks there’s some benefit to jamming his message down the recipient’s throat. Nurturing a list of names means that those people have, in some way, touched the company in the past. Perhaps they took a free trial, signed up to receive a newsletter, or downloaded content (a case study or whitepaper) off the company’s website.

Nurturing campaigns need to be timely and consistent. Run the campaign over weeks, not months.

Running an E-Mail Nurturing Campaign

As an example, say you run a 17-day nurturing campaign while people are using a free trial of your software product. You’ll send out eight e-mails focusing on pain points, remedies, and benefits and how they relate to your product. The 17 days could look like this:

• E-mail 1. Sent out upon subscribing to the free trial. Confirms they have signed up.
  
• E-mail 2. Sent out on Day 1. Welcomes them to the free trial process.
  
• E-mail 3. Sent out on Day 3. Focus on a pain point/the remedy/the benefit.
  
• E-mail 4. Sent out on Day 7. Focus on a pain point/the remedy/the benefit.
  
• E-mail 5. Sent out on Day 11. Focus on a pain point/the remedy/the benefit.
  
• E-mail 6. Sent out on Day 13. Focus on a pain point/the remedy/the benefit.
  
• E-mail 7. Sent out on Day 15. Lets people know their free trial is expiring.
  
• E-mail 8. Sent out on Day 17. Tells people about a special offer if they decide to purchase the product.
  

In this instance, you write your blog posts ahead of time and schedule the posts to be published as your nurturing campaign unfolds. The posts concentrate on pain points, remedies, and benefits. This nurturing campaign runs for 20 days. People that have subscribed to your RSS Feed will automatically be notified each time a new post is published. A campaign might be:

• Day 1. You write a post that gives prospects the 10,000-foot view of your online service.
  
• Day 5. You write a post about a pain point, remedy, and benefit.
  
• Day 9. You write a post about a pain point, remedy, and benefit.
  
• Day 12. You write a post about a pain point, remedy, and benefit.
  
• Day 17. You write a post about a pain point, remedy, and benefit.
  
• Day 20. You sweeten the pot by offering the first month of service free to those that sign up within the next 24 hours.
  

It’s easy to see now that nurturing takes time, patience, and consistency. The returns will be greater than starting over with a new batch of prospects. Remember to treat these prospects as perhaps interested but not ready to make a purchasing decision.

John D. Leavy is the founder of InPlainSite Marketing, a leader in developing and delivering digital marketing strategies. John consults and presents to Fortune 100 and 500 companies. He is the author of Outcome-Based Marketing: New Rules for Marketing on the Web and a regular contributor to leading publications and nationally known speaker.

By Reb Risty

Social media can be mean, and there is no avoiding her.  You treat her like a friend—fun, easy going, and someone you look forward to seeing.  Surprise! As in high school, one day people are talking, and everyone knows what you did last weekend. 

It seems most social media talk these days is about the good. But what about the bad? Do you know what to do when an unhappy customer voices his or her complaints on social media?  As the use of social media grows, businesses can’t ignore this very real and growing situation. 

For many B2B organizations there is still hesitation about the value of social media.  The company I work for is no different.  Six months after implementing a social media strategy, we find our customers using it to communicate with us.  By the way, our strategy includes daily monitoring to ensure that we hear what is going on.  We use a couple of tools—HubSpot and Hootsuite. 

During the past six months, our social media interaction has been very casual without much excitement, until last week.  Even though it is accepted that customers are free to voice the good and bad, we really weren’t expecting it. “It,” being an angry customer calling us out on Twitter and YouTube.  An excerpt from the twitter feed is below.  Once I saw the post, I put together a quick powwow with key decision makers regarding this customer.  There were suggestions to just call or email instead of responding via Twitter.  It was even suggested deleting the tweets. Yikes!  Since the customer had chosen Twitter as the medium of communication we had to respect that.  We agreed to respond via Twitter and a phone call.  The customer chose Twitter.  With our first “ugly head” incident brought to light, we needed some internal education on social media as well.

Here’s a quick walk-through our Twitter feed with the customer:

Customer: What will it take to get Vintalk SIP trunks up?  Does anyone at your company have a clue about customer service?

• This is actually a great example of how a customer can get a company’s attention.


• Because of our proactive approach, of monitoring our social media, we were able to catch this comment and respond quickly.


• To add a note, the customer never utilized the customer portal.  Doing so would have opened a trouble-ticket to address the issue within 24 hours with tech support, instead of the marketing department.  In other words, the most well-thought-out customer support process can and will be ignored.  Customers are going to communicate the way they want.  Be prepared.

• It’s best to respond even if you don’t have an answer.  This will help reassure the customer and hopefully stop any more nasty tweets. 


• Also, I wanted to discuss our response with the account manager and the COO.  This is the beauty of working in a smaller organization--people are easier to assemble.   

• Good answer, direct and to the point.  It only took a few minutes with tech support to get these directions.


• The customer did move to working with tech support via the phone after this tweet.

• At-a-boy … score for us!


• Not only is the customer happy, but the company looks like a champ.  Reaffirmation from the customers is the best PR you can get. 

• Know that you do have control and can win the customer back.


• Respond immediately, even if you don’t have the answer or resolution.  The fact that you are listening will help ease the situation.


• Realize there is a whole world of customers and potential customers watching.


• If the conversation should be moved to a private platform, that’s ok.


• If you know an issue is going to arrive, get the message out first.  This will mitigate nasty posts and comments.  It may even help with customer support calls.

Risty, the Vice President of Marketing at Vintalk (www.vintalk.com), is an expert in corporate brand management and online marketing with a focus in SEO, inbound marketing and lead generation.  She is responsible for developing and executing clearly defined marketing and communication strategies to support Vintalk’s growth objectives, while creating and enhancing brand awareness and equity.

By Sharon Drew Morgen

Do you work hard at creating a dynamic and motivational presentation, assuming that with the right data, presented professionally, your prospect will buy?

Do you send out, or ‘drip’, massive amounts of data via your marketing automation capability, to ensure the prospects have the choice of the right data for when they need it?

Do you assume you need to get an appointment so you can ‘get in front of’ your prospects to give them a presentation that will wow them enough for them to buy?

Then, why are only 1 percent of your prospects buying through marketing automation, and 7 percent buying when using consultative sales approaches?

INFORMATION DOES NOT TEACH SOMEONE HOW TO BUY

Imagine if buyers don’t need information from you until the very end of their decision making.

Imagine if you were responsible not for just placing a solution, but for helping buyers navigate through their entire decision path so they get the buy-in for a purchase… and then you send them the exact information they need.

Imagine if you could provide something other than information and double your sales and halve the sales cycle.

Think about moving house. Details of any specific houses are moot until the adults decide if and when and how and where and why to move; until they know how to manage the payment; until their current house is sold; etc. It’s not about the house. It’s not about the trust. It’s not about the relationship. It’s not about the information.

Don’t get me wrong. Buyers need data and need to trust you. But they can’t effectively use the data until everyone who touches the solution buys in to making a purchase: if their sales and marketing team don’t get along and don’t want to share budget; if the IT folks don’t want that new piece of software, and the users are going through a re-org; if the leadership team is changing… your data is unnecessary.

FIRST HELP BUYERS MANAGE CHANGE

You could be closing 40 percent of your prospects. You close far less because until or unless they figure out how to buy in a way that will not disrupt their status quo, and all of the people and policies that will touch the new solution have a voice in the choice, they cannot buy. There is nothing wrong with your solution.

What the sales model doesn’t teach us is that somewhere around 85 percent of a buyer’s pre-purchase, back-end decision issues get addressed privately, outside of the seller’s purview, and a seller has no place at the table. Here is where we lose our sales, as buyers must first manage the internal politics and strategic/change issues.

The sales model itself is at fault. It doesn’t handle this aspect of the buyer’s decision path. Sales was designed to do needs assessment and solution placement, and it was developed for a time when the buying decision process was far simpler.

HOW BUYERS BUY

Historically, back in the days when the ‘modern’ sales model was designed, it was easy to drive Joe out to see the backhoe in the next county. But the buying decision process is far, far more complex these days.

Now we have Buying Decision Teams made up of folks from several countries who might be supersensitive to managing price and risk, or new folks from different teams making decisions on personal criteria that have not been agreed to by the Team. Indeed, until prospects deal with the politics, market drivers, shifting relationships, initiatives, etc. they cannot buy regardless of the need.

Whatever the facts about how these Buying Decision Teams buy, be assured that

• it’s idiosyncratic and different in every situation;


• it’s focused on figuring out the easiest way to solve a business problem;


• you’re not on the team;


• your sales skills don’t manage this;


• the Buying Decision Team doesn’t know the criteria they will use to choose a solution when they begin their information gathering; and


• your solution data will not fit with their discovery process until they have put together the entire Buying Decision Team, comprised of everyone who will touch the ultimate solution.

Buying Facilitation® is a change management model that will give you an additional set of tools to help buyers manage their off-line buying decision issues. Once they know what they need, how they are going to address change, who needs to be on the Buying Decision Team, and how to manage the change a new solution will bring, then you can give them the data they need.

Sharon Drew Morgen is the visionary and thought leader behind Buying Facilitation® the new sales paradigm that focuses on helping buyers manage their behind-the-scenes, non-need related issues necessary to get the internal buy-in they need to make a purchase. She is the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity as well as 6 other books and hundreds of articles that explain different aspects of the behind-the-scenes issues buyers must manage before they can buy. She can be reached at info@sharondrewmorgen.com

By James Werner
I’ve got bad news for you.  Unless you are selling food, water, or shelter, your customers and prospects don’t really need your product.  Which is to say, for them to buy what you are selling will require some estimation of its total costs and benefits.
I call this analysis the “Scales of Selling.”  Imagine the Scales of Justice – two sides connected at the middle and tilting in the direction of whatever weight is placed on either side – and you will get the idea.  In our case, however, one side of the scale is labeled “Buy” and the other is called “Do Nothing.”
When you begin the sales process, there are already three heavy weights on the “Do Nothing” side of the scale.  These weights are Inconvenience, Uncertainty, and Inertia.  Here’s what each of these items really means:
·         Inconvenience – Adding something new…or swapping out something old…requires work.  It can mean planning, mobilizing teams, training, and changing the way people think and do business.
·         Uncertainty – The question that worries your prospect is, “Can your product or service really do everything that you say it can?”
·         Inertia – A combination of the two items listed above, Inertia is the physical and psychological propensity of all things to remain immobile until acted upon by an outside force.
Absent significant pain, all three of these items are typically working against you.  Your prospect doesn’t want to rock the boat.  He doesn’t want to twist other people’s arms.  He doesn’t want to add yet another project to his plate.  In short, it’s extremely easy for him to decide that his current situation is “good enough.”
The formula for overcoming this inertia is actually quite simple. 
First, you must recognize and honor your prospect’s discomfort and uncertainty.  For example, it’s OK to tell him, “I understand that implementation will be a pain.”
Next, you have to bridge the gulf between the “Good enough” of today and the better results that you propose.  “Nothing worthwhile gets done by itself – but we will work with you to insure the most effective, efficient, and painless upgrade/implementation/purchase possible,” is a good message to convey.
Finally, you need to do the one thing for which sales people really get paid.  You need to paint a clear and convincing picture of life after implementation.  Describe the wonderful experiences of other similar customers.  Itemize the daily improvements in your prospect’s life.  Show convincing evidence of enhanced revenues, greater efficiencies and/or improved company morale.
In short, translate your features and functions into a (much) better life for your prospect.  Only then will he see his way past the inconvenience, uncertainty, and inertia that are holding him back.
James Werner has over 20 years experience in consulting and sales. Employing the exclusive Activated Selling™ technique, James trains staff, crafts new-market strategies, and offers unparalleled strategic sales advice to individuals and to companies of all sizes. You can contact James at www.activatedstrategies.com

By Dave Haviland

I had a mid-year Board meeting last week, and it was déjà vu to hear the executives from other companies talk about the economy.  What did they say…again?

One theme was making sure you’re selling smart – focusing on your best customers and your best offerings – and doing more of what is most profitable and less of what isn’t.

An even bigger theme was to get lean, and stay lean – don’t do things the way you’ve always done them.  Instead, look for ways to get more efficient – whether that means changing people, moving people to new roles, redesigning processes…

In the meeting, my mind couldn’t help but go to the ads with Terry Tate, Reebok’s Office Linebacker for Felcher & Sons:

How do you get lean – besides hiring a linebacker?

There are 5 different levers that I use with my clients to get lean, or leaner – people, processes, structure, compensation, and measurement.

Why measure?  Virtually every measure I’ve worked with has told me something about the business that our instinct didn’t (and couldn’t) tell us.  It’s what really is happening in your business – what do you really sell, who are really your best customers, how much time do people really take to do that.  It shines a light that almost always tells you something – and often something useful and surprising.

Unfortunately, as anyone who has tried to create metrics will tell you, it is not as simple as it seems.  Most people start with good – and big – intentions, but they typically run into trouble in 2 ways.  Either they aren’t clear about what to measure, and so they create too many measures; or they don’t take into account the time that measuring is going to take, and so they create an administrative nightmare that collapses after a month or two.

So, how do you create metrics?

First, plan to spend some time on it.  This is going to take you and your team 5-10 hours to talk about and think through.

Second, ask yourself what the 3-4 activities are that you have to get right to be successful.  This will take some time – your first answer might be “Serve customers well,” but after some time (and asking yourself how you’re going to measure that), you’ll get to, “Meeting with the VP of Marketing once a quarter and with the CEO once a year” or “Completing the customer needs assessment once a year.”

And lastly, look for simple ways to administer the measures.  I read a great example a few years ago about a company that gave everyone different colored marbles, and each day people dropped the appropriate marble in a jar as they left for the day.  At the end of the month, someone counted the different color marbles.  Similarly, I often recommend using a simple sheet of paper with check marks when possible.

The value of metrics is in their specificity, but that’s also what can make them so challenging.  It’s almost assured that you will not be able to have the specificity you want, because it’ll take too much administration.  So, once you’re clear on what you should measure, then think about what easy measuring system can give you most of the information you need to know whether you’re on track or not.

Getting back to the Board meeting, let’s combine the two thoughts – selling smart, and getting lean.  What are some measures that could track how well you’re selling:

• Proportion of customers who buy more than one offering


• Proportion of proposals accepted


• Profitability of each job/project (if it’s hard to measure, just use High/Medium/Low)


• Number of hours needed to close a prospect


• Number of hits on the web site

We’ll talk about all 5 productivity levers – besides hiring an office linebacker, that is – on our teleseminar.  Feel free to register here.

Dave Haviland is Founder and CEO of Phimation Strategy Group, a management consulting firm for Stage 2 small businesses.  More information about Stage 2 sales and marketing is available in the firm’s book, The Stage 2 Owner’s Manual, and on the firm’s blog.

(What follows is an excerpt from David Shedd’s book Build a Better B2B Business: Winning Leadership for Your Business-to-Business Company, which is available at Amazon.com)

Face Reality: Most companies in most industries will not discover the “silver bullet,” the “magic elixir” that returns them to the exciting growth track of the past.  As Yogi Berra said:

The future ain’t going be what it used to be.

Instead, growth will come from serving current customers better and (as a Bain and Company study found) “finding profitable opportunities within the boundaries of current operations.”

Thus, your most likely success strategy will come from growing outward from your current customer base.  To do this, you need to turn your current satisfied customers into your biggest allies and best friends.

How?

• Survey them


• Listen to them


• Team with them

Institute a simple customer satisfaction survey.  GE and others have used a two-question customer satisfaction survey with success:

On a scale of 0 – 10, how likely are you to recommend this supplier to other people?

0 – 3: Negative

4 – 7: Neutral

8 – 10: Positive

Do you have any comments or suggestions for ways that we can serve you better?

With such a survey, you learn whether your customers are satisfied or not.  This can be a yellow warning light to make you aware of problems or of your company’s need to enhance or improve your product or service. 

The key is to make this survey or any survey as easy to respond to as possible so that your customers actually respond to your survey request.  Alas, many companies try to make it easier for them to collect and collate the survey results while making it harder and thus less likely for the customer to respond.  Instead, stick the short survey in an E-Mail and ask the customer to answer the questions and hit the Reply button. Personally, I am glad to respond to a survey like that. It takes me two minutes and I get a chance to share my thoughts.  But, I rarely click on a hyperlink to take me to a survey. It takes too much time, and I dread that the survey is going to be 30 questions long.

For those customers who are uns`atisfied, follow up and redress the issues raised; make sure that the customers know that you have heard them. For those customers that are very satisfied, ask if you can use them as references or ask for testimonials.

2.         Listen to Your Customers

Your current customers are a gold mine of information if you listen to them.  If you pay attention they will give you a deeper understanding of their industry and your competitive position as a supplier.  They may tell you about:

• Upcoming changes at their companies and other companies in their industry


• Your relative competitive position in the market


• New opportunities in their industry or in other industries

(The section on how to team with your customers will appear in a future entry.)

By Kathryn MacKenzie, Editor, Hoover’s, Inc.

You can see them coming a mile away,  slouched shoulders, clothes rumpled, feet dragging, aura of defeat; the disenfranchised worker. As a small business owner or manager, it’s up to you to find ways to keep your employees, not only engaged, but left with a feeling of ownership over their work at the end of the day.  There are a few simple steps every small business leader can take to give workers a sense of dominion over their daily tasks.

First, and probably most obviously, reward employees who are engaged. It’s sounds simple, but if you look back over the past few weeks or months, can you remember a time when an employee stayed a little later than she had to or spoke up in a meeting when he usually doesn’t, and you, as their boss, didn’t recognize those efforts? Those may seem like minor examples, but even the smallest bit of recognition can give employees a greater sense of belonging to their workplace. So the next time Sheila stays late or Sam speaks up, take a moment to stop by their desks to let them know you appreciate their efforts. The more you reward engagement, the more engaged your employees will become. This is clearly an example of a very small “stick-and-carrot” approach, but as your workers begin to show more ownership, the rewards should become commensurate.

Second, if you really want your employees to feel ownership over their jobs, include them in important strategic decisions. By collaborating with them to solve problems or make decisions about the future direction of the business, you are giving them a connection to the greater cause. The concept of participative leadership may be tough for some leaders to swallow, especially those who believe in strict separation between employee and employer. But increasingly managers in businesses of all sizes are realizing that there is a wealth of untapped skill and creativity among employees of all ranks, and the smart ones are taking advantage of that talent by involving employees in planning meetings and seeking advice on important agency decisions.  Ask yourself how you feel when someone seeks your advice; your answer to that question should help guide you toward creating a more participative workplace environment.

Step three toward fostering employee ownership: Allow your employees to step outside their regular roles. The day-to-day grind gets to us all. From executive, to middle management, and on, doing the same thing day after day does little to foster creativity or inspiration. Agencies with employees who have a sense of ownership and attachment to the business as a whole are far more likely to succeed than those with employees who simply punch the clock. By giving workers the chance grow professionally, you are giving them a sense of empowerment that they will bring to work with them every day. How do you do that? Try delegating. As a manager or business owner you have a lot on your plate and you may be loathe to relinquish control, but the payoff for doing it could be great. Look at your to-do list and your calendar and see where you can create projects to pass along. Also, take the pulse of your workforce. Elicit ideas and suggestions for process improvements and reward (see step one) those who become involved by giving them the resources they need to follow through on their ideas. But remember, this is not about creating “busy work,” it’s about giving your employees an outlet for their creativity.

Short of actually handing over a stake of the company, there’s no quick fix for inspiring ownership in your workforce. But businesses that have owner-minded employees have a few things in common. They allow their workers to step outside their everyday role to help advance the business’ goals, they encourage participation in important decision making, and they reward those who go above and beyond.  Try these tips and you just might see improved production (not to mention posture) in your workers.

• The full scope of organizational, process, and technology changes and investments required to succeed


• Executives' comfort level:   Executives who are unfamiliar with or lack expertise in some aspect of the strategy may be slow to give their support.


• The expected time to profitability or ROI: Determine how much time you have to show revenue growth before the initiative is perceived as a failure and management attention and investment move elsewhere.   


• Impact on key contributors:  Identify the changes to decision-making processes, individuals’ levels of power and input, and daily job responsibilities.


• The relative lobbying power of supportive and opposing internal organizations: Identify people who may oppose the new initiatives and how likely they are to influence others to withdraw support.


• The risk-tolerance of the board of directors.  Some boards pro-actively press for action when revenue growth doesn’t meet expectations.  Create timelines that give the new strategy sufficient time to take hold and succeed.

• Take time to educate the organization about new technologies, processes, markets, and business models. Build understanding ahead of demanding changes in behavior.


• Set expectations early and often. Make sure the executive team and the Board are all on the same page about the timeframes required to penetrate a new market or launch a new solution or product line.  Establish milestones to measure progress and correct course. 


• Identify the places within your own organization where a new revenue growth approach is likely to meet with resistance, or simple apathy.  Meet individually with key stakeholders in Sales, product groups, and the Geo’s to build relationships and to understand their objectives and concerns. Enlist them to find ways to address their concerns or even extend the initiatives to meet their own objectives. 


• Communicate openly about any changes to decision-making processes and why they are necessary.  Be clear about how individual and group participation, input, and day-to-day involvement will change.


• Acceptance by Sales and/or channel partners is key, and its lack is frequently the primary obstacle to the success of marketing-driven initiatives. Judy Ko, then VP of  Product Management and Marketing at Informatica summarized it perfectly: “Half of sales is selling to Sales.” 


• Find low-hanging fruit that can deliver incremental results quickly.  A great way to win over objectors (or their bosses) is to show positive results. 


• Have a plan to promote early successes.  When you put the word out about successes, take extra care to acknowledge everyone’s contribution. It’s difficult to object to a strategy once you’re getting praised for its success.
  Lilia Shirman is the Managing Director of The Shirman Group (www.shirmangroup.com) and can be reached at lilia@shirmangroup.com

By Kirk Hulett

Given the high cost of turnover, good managers know the value of retaining and motivating employees on their marketing team. Deepening the relationship with these employees will help them reach their full potential, and your marketing team meet or exceed its expectations.

Employees will be motivated by different things – and those motivators will change as the employee’s position within the company evolves and his or her life changes. Motivators can include money, positive feedback, time off, taking care of family, attaining new levels of responsibility within the company and all kinds of variations on these themes. The trick for a good manager is to find what motivates each individual while keeping those motivators fair and consistent throughout the company.

Good managers also look for each employee’s demotivators. Just like motivators, demotivators are unique to the individual. The type of work assigned can be a demotivator. For example, some people are sluggish if they have to do rote or repetitive work. A leader’s particular approach can be demotivating to an individual. Some people are very sensitive, so any sort of direct and succinct communication can be misconstrued as confrontational. Environment can be a demotivator. Some people thrive on a noisy, chaotic environment, while others work best in an ordered, quiet library-like setting.

Methods for getting to know employees vary with the size and culture of the company and the manager’s personality. A good place to start with new and existing employees is with the professional side. Ask employees to describe their ideal job as well as past jobs and good and bad experiences they have had at work. What areas of your business would they like to learn more about? What areas do they think need improvement – and what ideas do they have for those improvements? What are their career goals?

By exploring the employee’s existing and future roles in the company, you can better identify their job-related motivators and demotivators. Keep in mind those two can be polar opposites for different employees. Additional responsibilities may be exciting to an employee seeking advancement yet be overwhelming to an employee who has difficulty dealing with change. Based on these conversations, create a professional development plan for each employee that focuses on moving them toward their goals. The plan may include job training in hard skills, like getting a particular industry license or designation; soft skills, like improving communication with coworkers; and technology, like becoming the office guru for a particular application. It may also include attending college courses or industry conferences, or perhaps joining an industry organization.

As part of your discussion of their career, you will most likely learn more about your employees’ personal lives. Personal goals and background can be more sensitive areas of discussion, so be attentive to verbal and nonverbal signals that a certain area may make them uncomfortable. At the same time, watch for those topics that make an employee’s face light up and really get him or her talking – those are areas where your motivators can be most effective.

An informal lunch with a different staff member each month can be a fun and informal method that allows the employee to disclose more each time you meet. Remember to use the time to talk about the employee, not about business. If you find yourself stuck for conversation topics, start with “Tell me more about –” and add a piece of FOOD:

• Friends and family – Spouse, children, parents and siblings; where they grew up, went to school, went to college; pets.


• Outside interests – hobbies, collections, recreation, travel, entertainment, sports, church and volunteer organizations, restaurants, favorite books, movies, music.


• Occupation – If you didn’t cover in your career discussion, find out what other jobs they may have held; as a kid, what did they want to be when they grew up? Did they try that or change course?


• Dreams – Where do they see themselves in 5, 10, 20 years or more? What would they do if time and money were no object? What would it take to achieve their dream?

A slightly different take on the questionnaire is to have each employee go through a formal discovery interview like many planners use with their clients. You will learn more about your employees’ goals, and they will gain first-hand exposure to the client experience.

The financial services industry can be a busy and often intense business. Planning fun activities for your employees helps reduce the stress and gives you another opportunity to learn more about them. Again, your office culture and your employees’ daily lives will play a part in the types of activities they embrace. Some employees enjoy spending free time with coworkers. Others want to leave work at work and save their free time for family and friends. Theme lunches for employees only may go over well in an office of super-commuters, while those with families may appreciate a day at a theme park or bowling. Some practices have a highly developed sense of community service, so closing the office for a day or an afternoon to help at a shelter kitchen or paint an elderly person’s home might be appropriate.

Let your employees give their input into what activities they would enjoy, but work in some surprises, too. A spontaneous game of office golf on a rainy day or a catered lunch – particularly during a stressful time of year, like tax season or year end – can remind your staff that although they are employees, you value them as individuals.

Kirk Hulett, the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Practice Management, Securities America Financial Corporation (www.SecuritiesAmerica.com). Kirk is leader and consultant for Securities America's Practice Management Group, which provides consultation to investment professionals on how to improve the efficiency and profitability of their practice. He consults with investment professionals on issues related to strategic planning, staff compensation and leadership development. The author of two books on hiring and managing people, Kirk earned a Master of Science degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Nebraska at Omaha where he is currently an adjunct instructor for the College of Business. He is also part of the team that produces innovative practice management content for www.AdvisorPod.com.

By Laura Patterson

A study by Temkin Group last year revealed that only 57 percent of large North American firms have a formalized VoC program. The premise of VoC is to collect and analyze customer data to transform an organization into a truly customer-centric operation. VoC is a market research technique designed to help a company better understand customers’ wants and needs and to be able to prioritize these in terms of importance and satisfaction with current alternatives in order to positively affect the customer experience.

VoC research should be more than a customer satisfaction study.  Customer satisfaction studies are usually designed to measure how an organization’s products and services meet or surpass customer expectations. VoC research should enable you to make customer-focused decisions. When executed well, a VoC program enables you to acquire business insight about customers and what is important to them.   You can then use this information to enhance the customer experience.

It may seem obvous as to why this information is important. But if it were so obvious more companies would be implementing VoC initiatives.  What are the business benefit of making this type of investment of time and money? Research by Forrester indicates that a better customer experience drives improvement for three types of customer loyalty: willingness to consider another purchase, likelihood to switch business to a competitor, and likelihood to recommend to a friend or colleague. Improvements iin these areas have been found to directly affect a company’s bottom line three ways:

1. incremental purchases from existing customers


2. lower churn and


3. new sales due to referrals

Once you decide to move forward with a VoC study, the next question is what do we ask? VoC studies are typically designed to learn the answers to these kinds of questions:

1. What are your customers “saying” about your company, brand, product/service? And where are they saying it?


2. How do your customers “feel” about your company, brand, product/service? And how does this affect their intent to buy?


3. Why do they feel the way they do and what is the root cause of this sentiment?


4. Are there differences among different types of customers and if so, what are they and in which customer segments?


5. Who or what influences your customers’ perceptions and feelings?


6. What are your customers needs, wants, desires and intentions and how do these relate to your company, brand, products/services?


7. What are my customers  saying and feelings about your competitors and what are their perceptions of your competitors and how well do the competitors meet their needs, wants, and desires?

Getting Started

To succeed at VoC studies, you need a minimum of two things:

a)     a robust voice of the customer (VoC) process

b)     people who are properly trained to implement the study

One of the challenges of analyzing the results of a VoC study is that customer voices are diverse.  There are multiple customer voices for most organizations, even those that work in only one market, such as the voice of the procuring organization, the voice of the user, and the voice of the supporting organization. These diverse voices must be considered, reconciled and balanced during the analysis of the study.  One technique to accomplish this is to set in advance of the study different priority ratings associated with each customer voice.

This often raises the question as to how many customers do we need to talk with?  While there is no hard and fast rule because  the number will depend upon the complexity of the product, diversity of market, product use, and the sophistication of customers, experts in the field suggest that with 20 customers you can capture 90 to 95 percent of your customer needs.  The first source of information if you are trying to address your current market should be current customers.  But it is also a good idea to talk with prospective customers, especially if you hoping to address a new market. And we often recommend talking with competitor’s customers.  Use ranking and paired comparisons to aid to prioritizing customer needs.  Remember the ultimate objective of a VoC initiative is to understand how satisfying a particular need will influence the purchase decision.

Laura Patterson is president and co-founder of VisionEdge Marketing, Inc, a recognized leader in enabling organizations to leverage data and analytics to facilitate marketing accountability and operations, measure and improve marketing performance, develop dashboards, and enhance marketing and sales alignment in order to accelerate revenue and create a competitive advantage. For more information, go to www.visionedgemarketing.com.  Laura’s newest book, Metrics In Action:  Creating a Performance-Driven Marketing Organization, provides a useful primer for improving marketing measurement and performance.

By Alice R. Heiman
Are you a better coach or manager?  As a sales manager you are directing, supervising, managing, delegating, appropriating and reporting.  While these are important tasks, they may not lead directly to sales.  In some of my previous articles we discussed how important it is to coach your salespeople and how little time and training you may actually have to do that.  This article will give you some tips on how you can build your coaching skills and spend more time coaching.  Let’s start by defining coach.
Defining Coach
“A coach is someone who tells you what you don't want to hear, who has you see what you don't want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.” --  Tom Landry
Coaching is an interactive process that helps individuals and organizations develop more rapidly and produce more satisfying results.
Professional coaches are trained to:

• Listen and observe


• Customize their approach to the individual's needs


• Elicit solutions and strategies from the individual

• Set better goals


• Take more action


• Make better decisions


• More fully use their natural strengths

• Help salespeople set goals and then make a plan to reach those goals.


• Ask salespeople to stretch more than they would have on their own and give them the encouragement to do so.


• Focus salespeople on productivity not activity so that they produce results more quickly.


• Provide salespeople with tools, support and structure to efficient and effective.

• Have each salesperson choose 10 customers with whom they feel they can increase business. 


• Ask them to create a plan for increasing business with each customer. 


• Discuss some of things that will need to be done, like checking on current satisfaction levels, asking questions to learn of needs, educating the customers on ways you can serve them and closing the deal. 


• Then meet with them one-on-one to determine how they will execute their plan and how that will be measured. 


• Check in with them weekly to see how their plans are working and give them coaching if they are stuck. 

Photo by Tim Hipps

By Holt Hackney
A new study commissioned by specialist insurer Hiscox has found that small business owners are fairly optimistic (24 percent) prior to starting a business that they have a “million dollar idea.” That level of confidence, however, nearly tripled after launching their business, with 69 percent saying they feel as though they have the million dollar idea.
This highlights the importance of research and how entrepreneurs can tweak their ideas once inside a niche.
Other key findings included:
•             Being your own boss and living the dream: Half of small business owners cited either being their own boss or living their dream as the reason for taking the risk and starting their own business, with 29 percent wanting to be their own boss and 21 percent wanting to live their dream.
•             Not new, just better executed: Eighty percent of small business owners and operators surveyed said that their business idea was not new, but an improvement on existing offerings. Over half (51 percent) reported that offering a higher quality of service or product than their competition was their key differentiator - rather than lower prices. A further 20 percent differentiate themselves by investing time in meeting face-to-face with clients.  However, for startups there was a low investment in R&D (6 percent) and even less in marketing (3 percent).
The research also revealed that 15 percent of new businesses were started after a layoff.
“Whether it’s due to a layoff, or to pursue a life’s passion, entrepreneurs are starting businesses to take control of their own destiny. Also, they don’t need to invent the next new hot idea, but need to put in hard work and provide higher quality service than the competition to succeed,” said Kevin Kerridge, small business insurance expert from Hiscox (http://www.hiscoxusa.com/small-business-insurance/?CID=GPPC), which helps small businesses with their insurance needs. He added that it is important that small business owners use proper planning to protect their million dollar idea and reduce their risks while they grow their businesses.
“Starting up can be scary, but if you work harder than the competition, understand your risks and keep believing in your idea, you can succeed.”

Photo by Tim Hipps