Send every networking contact, prospect, customer and referral agent a personal email wishing them a Happy Holidays. But, you can’t say “Merry Christmas” because not everyone believes in or celebrates Christmas. If you broadcast an email, make sure it’s personalized.
Visit all your customers and bring a gift. If your company provides you with gift baskets or cookie tins, use those. If not, shell out your own dough and write it off at tax time.
Make sure you send a nice gift to your biggest referral agents. If someone has sent you business during the year or could send you some business, make sure you honor them. Use services like Proflowers and have gift baskets delivered to their homes. If you’re dealing with a man, send something he can give his wife or girlfriend. It will make him look like a big shot and he’ll want to help you out in the future.
Sponsor a holiday party. Many businesses are cutting back. If there’s a large sale that you’ve been trying to land, sponsor that company’s onsite holiday party.
Prospect. It’s easy to say that it’s the holidays and no one is working, but if you look, rush-hour is still taking place every morning and afternoon. Someone is working. If you’re out there working it, you’ll set yourself apart from the competition, business owners will admire your tenacity and everyone is in a better mood during the holidays, so they should be nicer.
Plan ahead. Write down a strategy for success to follow throughout the next year.
Set goals. Write down a list of goals you want to accomplish during the coming year.
Don’t disappear. Nothing is more frustrating to a customer than calling or emailing you and then hearing an away message or receiving a “Out of Office” email. Imagine if someone wanted to buy, called you and heard an away message? Who do you think they would call next? Your competitor, that’s who. In today’s world, with Black Berries and web based email, there’s no excuse to not check your messages. You’re in sales, if you want to disappear over the holidays, get a job at a college.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Selling in a Small Town
If you’re ever assigned a small town for a territory, here are some tips:
• Visit as many businesses as possible. When you visit a business, don’t solicit as much as mine information; act like you’re a detective solving a crime. What you’re trying to determine is the state of the market place: who are the key players, how your company and its competition are performing and what issues the business community is facing.
• Identify all the key vendors servicing the community. Small businesses rely on vendors and it’s important to work through them. Typically, you need a way to compensate the vendors for referred business. At the same time, you want to reach out directly to the businesses in the community. Word will get back to the vendors that you’ve been proactively looking for new business and that should provide you with more leverage in your dealings with them.
• Use the phone as little as possible. Small town people are wary of outsiders. Outsiders pester them with phone calls. Showing up in person means a lot.
• Attend Chamber and other networking events. Normally, I think Chamber events are a waste of time, but not in a small town.(1) In small towns, business leaders actually attend events and will talk to you.
• Make regular visits and keep in touch with existing customers. This shows that you care and will lead to referred business. Small town business people know each other and if you perform and prove to be trustworthy, they will recommend you to their friends.
• Find something, anything, to connect you to the town. If your wife is from the town, if a relative of yours lived there or is married to someone that grew up there…mention that information when you are talking to the business people. Know the area; throw out names of local businesses and business people. Use their terminology. I sold in Yuma, AZ and there was a part of town called the “big curve”; they had an “old mall” and a “new mall”.(2) If I was asking where a business was, for instance, and it was near the “big curve”, I would say, “big curve”. It helped make the people there feel more comfortable around me.
(1) I went to a Chamber breakfast in Yuma, AZ that started at 6:30 am and when I showed up at 6:35 it was already packed and I had to scramble to find an empty seat.
(2) The “new mall” was over five years old and will probably be called the “new mall" until an even newer mall is constructed, sometime in 2020.
• Visit as many businesses as possible. When you visit a business, don’t solicit as much as mine information; act like you’re a detective solving a crime. What you’re trying to determine is the state of the market place: who are the key players, how your company and its competition are performing and what issues the business community is facing.
• Identify all the key vendors servicing the community. Small businesses rely on vendors and it’s important to work through them. Typically, you need a way to compensate the vendors for referred business. At the same time, you want to reach out directly to the businesses in the community. Word will get back to the vendors that you’ve been proactively looking for new business and that should provide you with more leverage in your dealings with them.
• Use the phone as little as possible. Small town people are wary of outsiders. Outsiders pester them with phone calls. Showing up in person means a lot.
• Attend Chamber and other networking events. Normally, I think Chamber events are a waste of time, but not in a small town.(1) In small towns, business leaders actually attend events and will talk to you.
• Make regular visits and keep in touch with existing customers. This shows that you care and will lead to referred business. Small town business people know each other and if you perform and prove to be trustworthy, they will recommend you to their friends.
• Find something, anything, to connect you to the town. If your wife is from the town, if a relative of yours lived there or is married to someone that grew up there…mention that information when you are talking to the business people. Know the area; throw out names of local businesses and business people. Use their terminology. I sold in Yuma, AZ and there was a part of town called the “big curve”; they had an “old mall” and a “new mall”.(2) If I was asking where a business was, for instance, and it was near the “big curve”, I would say, “big curve”. It helped make the people there feel more comfortable around me.
(1) I went to a Chamber breakfast in Yuma, AZ that started at 6:30 am and when I showed up at 6:35 it was already packed and I had to scramble to find an empty seat.
(2) The “new mall” was over five years old and will probably be called the “new mall" until an even newer mall is constructed, sometime in 2020.
Monday, December 14, 2009
5 Ways to Beat the Stress of Sales
Selling can be very stressful and eat at your psyche. What other occupation regularly subjects you to hang ups and abrupt emails, requires you to walk uninvited into businesses, compels you to reach out to so many people and expose yourself to so much rejection?
Typically you need to make ten phone calls to make one appointment and four appointments to make one sale. That means you will hear the word “no” thirty-six times before you’ll make one sale. Many times, you would love to hear the word “no” because so many prospects just stop returning phone calls and communicating with you.
Making a sale can expose you to a whole slew of other issues. These include: botched installs, missing signatures or paperwork, mispriced products, serviceability issues, delayed or canceled orders, sales and commission disputes.
A manager once told me that sometimes you just need to go home, get some rest and come back the next day ready to go.
So, sales can get rough. Here are some ways for you to stay strong and positive:
• Get a dog. There’s nothing like coming home to your dog. A dog greets you like it won the lottery and you’re delivering the check. There’s no way you can’t feel better when your dog goes crazy each time you walk in the door. Dogs love to go for walks, which brings me to my next suggestion.
• Exercise. Exercise burns off stress, will make you feel better about yourself, keeps you in shape and energized and releases endorphins in your brain. Depression seems to be a modern phenomenon. Before the 1900’s people didn’t have time to be depressed, because they were working their asses off. So now things are easier and we’re all living like kings, so you have to move your body and get your blood pumping. At least you’re not digging graves or cleaning up after horses.
• Avoid alcohol and tobacco. When you drink and smoke, you might feel better but it’s only temporary; you’re only delaying the effects of stress. If you feel bad and drown your sorrows, you’re going to feel even worse when you sober up.
• Live a healthy lifestyle. Get your sleep and eat right. If you’re stressed and you aren’t sleeping enough and eating garbage, you’re going to be a stressed out, sleepy, fat person.
• Enjoy yourself when you’re not working. Don’t live to work, work to live. Don’t be one of those people who sit around until they have to work again, live your life. It will make you a more interesting person when you’re in front of clients.
Typically you need to make ten phone calls to make one appointment and four appointments to make one sale. That means you will hear the word “no” thirty-six times before you’ll make one sale. Many times, you would love to hear the word “no” because so many prospects just stop returning phone calls and communicating with you.
Making a sale can expose you to a whole slew of other issues. These include: botched installs, missing signatures or paperwork, mispriced products, serviceability issues, delayed or canceled orders, sales and commission disputes.
A manager once told me that sometimes you just need to go home, get some rest and come back the next day ready to go.
So, sales can get rough. Here are some ways for you to stay strong and positive:
• Get a dog. There’s nothing like coming home to your dog. A dog greets you like it won the lottery and you’re delivering the check. There’s no way you can’t feel better when your dog goes crazy each time you walk in the door. Dogs love to go for walks, which brings me to my next suggestion.
• Exercise. Exercise burns off stress, will make you feel better about yourself, keeps you in shape and energized and releases endorphins in your brain. Depression seems to be a modern phenomenon. Before the 1900’s people didn’t have time to be depressed, because they were working their asses off. So now things are easier and we’re all living like kings, so you have to move your body and get your blood pumping. At least you’re not digging graves or cleaning up after horses.
• Avoid alcohol and tobacco. When you drink and smoke, you might feel better but it’s only temporary; you’re only delaying the effects of stress. If you feel bad and drown your sorrows, you’re going to feel even worse when you sober up.
• Live a healthy lifestyle. Get your sleep and eat right. If you’re stressed and you aren’t sleeping enough and eating garbage, you’re going to be a stressed out, sleepy, fat person.
• Enjoy yourself when you’re not working. Don’t live to work, work to live. Don’t be one of those people who sit around until they have to work again, live your life. It will make you a more interesting person when you’re in front of clients.
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