Townsend Wardlaw

10 Ways Sales Pros use LinkedIn to Win!

2010-09-17T06:40:00.001-07:00

My position on using social media in sales is simple: It's a fantastic tool for building relationships and an absolutely awful environment to deliver your pitch!

Think about it...You wouldn't walk up to someone at a 'real-life' networking event and pitch them so what makes you think this works online.

As I often say: relationships are a function of the number of interactions over time multiplied by the value of those interactions to the receiver. So...
Make it your intention to add value in every interaction. Hint: conversations about YOU or YOUR product or YOUR company do not add value to the other person.

Every sales person worth 2 bits knows that LinkedIn is an invaluable tool for identifying and contacting potential buyers. The most basic (and overused) use of LinkedIn is the 'get introduced' feature but. I fear this has become less effective than a traditional cold call.

Here are some other gems you might not have thought of. Please use the comments section or email me to add tips and tricks that have worked for you.

1) Join industry-relevant/vertical groups that your customers and prospects belong to. Other than Wikipedia, there is no faster way to increase your fluency with the language of your customer. I once worked for a client that sold to building engineers. Try a search for groups associated with building engineers...you'll be amazed at what you find

2) Identify and join groups that your prospects belong to. People participate in social media for recognition right? Responding to content your prospects have posted as well as comments they make are great ice breakers.

3) Find every prospects 'public profile' and keep this handy. Ideally, get your company to create a custom field in Salesforce.com or whatever tool you are using (this is easy!) Check their profile before every call. Recent status updates, Twitter feeds, and recommendations are all great excuses to reach out. 'I see you are knee deep in a major SAP upgrade' is far superior to 'I'm calling to touch base...' - doesn't it?

4) Send every prospect a request to connect. Why wouldn't you? Be sure to include a personal note (rather than the pre-populated one) Be honest about your relationship and intent - Let them know you are a sales professional hoping to eventually present yourself and your company to them. Tell them you are hoping to connect in order to connect to learn more about them and what might be relevant to their world.

5) Connect with each and every existing customer your company has done business with. This sounds obvious but I am amazed at the number of sales professionals that fail to do this. It's an easy way to expand your network and you have a ready made excuse to invite them. Again, be honest about your relationship and intent and be sure to include a personal note. I suggest asking them to connect in order to understand why they purchased ABC product from your company and to better understand the XYZ industry.

6) Get a recommendation from EVERY customer you have ever worked with. Rather than using the standard request, be sure to include a personal note telling them exactly what you hope the recommendation will contain. Better yet, draft it for them! Rather than taking offense' most people will be grateful to edit and refine rather than create from scratch.

7) Ask your customers if it is ok for you to write a recommendation for THEM. It s a great way to 'get back in' and who is going to say no? It is more comfortable (and far more polite) to ask for a recommendation once you have provided one of your own.

8) Get a recommendation for every PROSPECT you have every worked with as well. 'But they didn't buy from me' you say? Who cares? Ask them to reference your professionalism and industry/technical knowledge. The vast majority of opportunities you work will result in a 'no decision.' After you have put in all that effort your prospect probably feels bad they 'lost budget' or 'priorities shifted' - This is the perfect time to ask for a recommendation! If you are providing a draft for them (you are aren't you?) then words like: Professional, knowledgable, experienced, responsive, and doesn't waste my time should be in there.

9) Make sure that recommendations talk about you not your company or product or service. People by from people based on relationships and trust. Make your LinkedIn profile a source of the 'social proof' for prospects to know that you are someone they want to do business with.

10) Proactively market your recommendations to prospects! The best way to build a relationship with prospective buyers is to share what others like them have to say about you. Make your LinkedIn profile part of your email signature. Send links to your recommendations. Cut and paste quotes into communications with the headline 'Here is what others have to say about working with Your Name.'

Customer Intimacy

2010-09-01T08:43:00.001-07:00

In my work as a sales coach and mentor I often speak about Customer Intimacy

For many, Intimacy is an awkward word to use when referring to your customer (or prospective customers) relationships.

Awkward in the sense that most people are uncomfortable with the dynamic of intimacy in their personal lives. For most, Intimacy is actually an element they seek to avoid or extract from their professional world.

This makes sense when you think about what the word intimacy suggests.

It conjures images of closeness... connectedness... trust... the sharing of hopes and dreams and fears... our deepest darkest secrets... Right?

How does this contrast with a typical buyer-seller relationship?

What words come to mind when you think about your 'normal' customer interaction?
-Adversarial
-Closed
-Guarded
-Distrustful

Often, the most important information - that which would enable us to truly help - is not shared (or worse... Concealed) by the prospect.

Why?

Because they fear we will use information gained to our advantage instead of to their benefit. This should sound familiar as the primary barrier to intimacy in our personal lives is the fear that others will use our hopes and dreams to hurt us...either intentionally or by accident.

People spend years...sometimes decades in therapy trying to open up and connect with others. It shouldn't be surprising then that this dynamic carries over to their careers.

How them are we to overcome this challenge in the professional realm?

Should we even bother trying or should we resign ourselves to shallow, guarded, and transactional customer relationships.

I am going to save my approach to this conundrum for another post...a series actually. In the meantime, I'd love to see your thoughts and have you share some experiences.

Stop Using the B-Word!

2010-06-15T06:38:00.000-07:00

One of the common barriers for sales professionals is understanding if (and how) a prospect intends to pay for our product or service. Unfortunately, most attempts to qualify prospects default to using the dreaded B-Word!

The most common questions include:

Do you have budget?
What is your budget?
Is there a budget established?
Can you share how much you have budgeted?

These are ridiculous and worthless questions!

At best, they provide limited or inaccurate information: yes or no answers are common. More likely, these questions invite the prospect to you they cannot or will not share that information.

Four realities you need to accept:

1) Most 'buyers' have not actually established a budget. In fact, it is likely they have no idea what 'something like this costs.' Any number they provide is only a guess.

2) For most people, budget is an abstraction... a concept they have little real knowledge of. In most cases, the person you are talking to has NO idea how money is actually allocated and spent in their own company. Think about it... Unless you work in finance; I bet you have no idea how your company's 'budget' process really works.

3) In most cases, direct questions about budget are met with resistance because buyers have an inherent fear that any information they provide will be used against them later. This is particularly true early in your relationship before any real trust or rapport has been built.

4) The response: 'We will spend whatever it takes' is a lie! Companies do not spend whatever it takes. Speaking from a psychological standpoint there are always price 'Anchors.' These are defined as the amount below which a buyer will not perceive any value can be derived and the amount above which they will not perceive any additional benefit can be gained.

Overall, the budget conversation sets us up for a Catch-22 situation: We need to understand if a prospect has the means to pay. At the same time, the prospect either doesn't know the budget or is too concerned that whatever they say will become the price. Prospects may be fearful that their budget number - if too low - will cause you to walk away or not treat them seriously.

The Solution:

As a simple first step: Never ask your prospect about their budget!

Better yet....avoid using the B-word at all in your sales conversations! Instead, use open ended questions which position money much more broadly in the context of investment and decision-making.

What is your department's plan for funding this initiative?
How have you approached funding investments like this in the past?
What process do you personally follow to secure internal investment

You can use the following questions to get a very granular understanding of how formal the organization funding process is as well as uncover your contacts true level of knowledge and experience. Note: in most cases, your prospect will NOT have answers to these questions and that is ok. It lets you know that there is more to the story and you will have to keep digging.

Who is your typical finance liaison?
What level of sign off is required for an investment of this size?
Walk me through your company's process for funding technology initiatives?
What internal rate of return is typically necessary to justify funding?
Walk me through your typical business case development process?
Does your company have a preference for funding initiatives through capital or operating expense allocation?

Go Get ‘em

Oh great.... a 'process guy!'

2009-12-21T04:38:00.000-08:00

When I begin a new professional relationship, it doesn't take long for people to get the sense that I am what can be referred to as a ‘process’ guy. I place the term ‘process’ in quotes because I believe it is often misused and, even more often, misunderstood. Most of the time, coming on board as a 'process' guy generates equal amounts of euphoria and dread - both of which are unnecessary and usually the result of bias - for or against - process.

One of my mentors said: ‘We live our lives through our language’ and I believe the key to working well together is alignment of language. With that in mind, I wanted to share my definition and perspective on ‘process.’ Your thoughts/comments are always greatly appreciated.

To begin, lets start with a simple definition: A ‘process’ represents an agreed upon way of performing work (pretty simple huh?)

The goal of any ‘process’ is to ensure repeatability, measurement, improvement, and fault tolerance of that work function. The first three goals are pretty obvious but I believe the concept of fault-tolerance deserves some explaining as it is critical to long term organizational growth.

To embrace the concept of fault tolerance, think about the electrical wiring in your home. If for some reason one of your outlets or circuits blows (either because of a malfunction or perhaps being over-loaded) what happens? Does your entire house go dark? Do you shut down the entire neighborhood? Of course not. The problem is isolated and in most cases the remedy is straightforward (reset the circuit breaker!)

In my view, a ‘process’ must be documented (written down) to even be considered a ‘process.’ Undocumented processes are called ideas or concepts. They may be effective or even brilliant but they are difficult to share. We refer to the document used to describe a process as a ‘Process Document’ (very creative) and these typically include six sections or elements:

1) Overview – Every process document should begin by describing the process in 2 or 3 sentences that your mother would understand

2) Workflow ‘Map’ – This is a one-page visual representation of what is going on. It is a great place to start, because it helps everyone quickly see how work moves (flows) through the system as well as identify bottlenecks.

3) Major Components – This is the ‘meat’ of any process document. Workflow Maps can get pretty intricate. However, in most cases, you really only need to define and describe 4 or 5 critical elements. For example, a process document for sales might contain the following major components:

- Prospecting (finding, contacting and scheduling an initial meeting with a prospect)

- Needs Assessment (understanding of customer pain and their buying process)

- Solution Presentation (articulation of specific customer benefit as well as demonstration of product)

- Proposal (development of a solution configuration and presentation of specifically how we plan to help them)

- Negotiation and Contracting (the external and internal elements necessary to bring a deal to closure)

4) Interface Points – While the Major Components section describes how we will perform the most important aspects of the process, Interface Points describe specific hand-offs both within the process map (from prospecting to Needs Assessment) and between other processes (from sales to implementation)

5) Audit and Measurement – This section is obviously about metrics that will be used to assess the process. In short, it must answer 3 questions

- How will you know the process is actually being performed as intended?

- How will you determine that the process is producing the desired output or results?

- How will you identify and prioritize areas for improvement

6) Tools – This section takes a broad view of the word ‘tools’ and uses it to catalogue and describe almost anything that is necessary to perform the work. This includes, but is in no way limited to, documentation, user guides, training, technology, calendars, cheat-sheets, and sub-process documents