Your Role In History As An Entrepreneur

I M A G I N E     S A L E S $ $

Adapted from the book 30 DAYS TO THE NEW ECONOMY written and published by Peggy Salvatore

Organizations frequently couple sales with marketing, and we’ll do that here, too. When you’ve defined your markets, you have the basis of a sales program. When your market is global, your sales program can actually be UNcoupled to some extent.

As noted yesterday in “Imagine Marketing,” your customers are connected to you by a personal communication device that delivers content which is highly individualized. Your sales strategy needs to be the same.

For example, if you are selling a weight loss system, you aren’t reaching a single imagined customer concerned about his or her weight with standardized sales material content. You reach an individual with personalized content. You can deliver emails customized with the name of prospects by leveraging the power of email lists.

(We’ll explore the mechanics of this in the next book.)

You can also individualize your approach using your website with a “click here for patients”, “click here for physicians”, “click here for caregivers” approach to sales. As your potential customers “click here”, they can further individualize their search for your products and services by drilling down into your website.

It is possible to individualize your approach to customers for a very low cost per touch using email and websites.

As discussed in earlier posts in this 30-Day series, this is where Internet Joe holds an advantage over large corporations as an entrepreneur. By leveraging social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram, your product automatically has viral potential. Internet Joe makes personal connections with people around the globe and they are all potential customers.

With a few power users among your followers,

you can get exposure to 250,000 people . . .

which very quickly expands to millions.

 On a planet with already 3 billion Internet-connected individuals, you have tapped into only a small fraction of potential customers and already have exceeded a 20th Century salesperson’s wildest fantasies.

Bricks and mortar . . . Uber-ized* and Bnb’d**

Even if your business is based on live customer interactions, such as with a restaurant or hair salon, your bricks and mortar enterprise needs an Internet presence to exist. If someone visits your town and looks for pizza, they will search for restaurants online and your business needs to be there. As a plumber, you may not think you are an Internet Joe, but online presence still makes the difference between survival and massive opportunity.

• *Think of the online/chargecard-based Uber* (private driver car service) business model . . . for drivers plugged into the system, Uber provides income previously only possible with the reach of the old “looking for a ride to California” bulletin board postings.
• **Consider the online/chargecard-based Air Bnb** (temporary home rentals) business model . . . for homeowners plugged into the system, Air Bnb provides income previously only possible for local realtors.

Sellers can be anybody with an Internet connection, but Internet Joe is a true entrepreneurial businessman leveraging the power of the Internet to grow sales opportunities with the immense power of global markets.

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C’mon back MONDAY 10/5 for Day 20 —

Do you believe humanity’s advances solve humanity’s problems . . . OR

that problems are not solvable because all that can be

known doesn’t meet everyone’s needs?

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S P E C I A L    A N N O U N C E M E N T

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For more information on Peggy Salvatore’s book: 30 Days to the New Economy [© Peggy Salvatore 2015. All Rights Reserved.] click on ENTREPRENEUR NEWS or visit ow.ly/RysnP for the E-book

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Hal@Businessworks.US      Peggy@Businessworks.US

Open Minds Open Doors

Thanks for your visit and make today a GREAT day for someone!

Only 10% of salespeople

make more than 3 contacts

with a prospective Customer.

80% of sales are made

on the 5th to 12th contact.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the message behind these stats from the National Sales Executive Association, as brought to the surface on LinkedIn by

Douglas Green, National Field Market Manager, Healthcare at LanguageLine Solutions, Austin, TX.

Take the bitter pill! If you own or manage any part of a small or medium-size business, or if you are part of an individual or group professional practice, like it or not, you ARE a salesperson! If you can’t accept that and move forward, your business or practice won’t move forward. It is that simple.

So let’s explore this for a minute:

As a salesperson, what keeps you from making more than three contacts with a Customer or prospective Customer? What makes you stop short? Hint: It’s not likely to be the prospect or the circumstances. It’s your CHOICE — active or past– that’s holding you back!

If you’re so easily discouraged in representing your ideas/products/ services more than three attempts, imagine your credibility–never mind the credibility of your ideas/products/services–plummeting in the eyes of someone or group or entity after you’ve made only three attempts.

But whom, you may ask, wants to visit with someone five to twelve (12!!!) times to make a sale? A top performer, that’s who! The top performer you are capable of being, if you CHOOSE to be!

Frustration doesn’t fall from the sky and land on your shoulders. It’s something you intentionally or inadvertently CHOOSE.

Here’s a cage-rattler for you, from the good-fortune experiences I’ve had working with and learning from some of the world’s greatest salespeople: IT IS at least AS easy to choose to make the challenge of 5-12 contacts easy as it is to choose to make the challenge be hard.

And you must be lost in the Stone Age if you interpret “contact” or “visit” as a physical movement of your being back and forth to a prospect’s space. It’s true that physical back-and-forth trips may actually be called for in the case of high-ticket projects, but most of the time, contacts and visits take the form of phone calls, emails, text messages (when requested or agreed to ahead of time), or –Heaven Forbid!– a handwritten note or two (Huh? Handwritten?). Yes really! It’s all about Communication.

It should go without saying, but I’ll pop the comment in anyway: It’s not probable that 5-12 prospective Customer contacts will succeed if they constitute a bombardment or avalanche anymore than if they are as far apart in time as most dentist visits, so common sense must be paired with choosing persistence.

The bottom line: If you want to rise above the rubble, make a conscious choice to rise and a conscious choice to not be sidetracked.

Play the 10%-80% odds! Remember that Consistency Sells! And guess what else? Repetition sells, repetition sells, repetition sells. Repetition . . .

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 Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US        or comment below

“Git yer shovel and

hipboots, Mollie;

that slick sales guy’s

back agin.”

     When did you last encounter a slick, fast-talking salesperson who answered your questions like he was snapping a towel? A car dealership? Discount furniture store? Stereotypes? Sure, but the examples serve a purpose because they bring the worst images of sales to the surface. If we can know the worst case scenario, it’s easier to strive for the best.

     The problem is, it seems to me, that many salespeople who appear to be best case scenario salespeople on the surface are actually worse than the worst underneath. They are the ones who are smart enough to recognize that nobody likes or buys a “sales hustle” anymore, that today’s consumers are more enlightened shoppers, so they blanket the truth with a snow job and hope no one notices the slippery ice below until the check clears the bank.

     These are the same hot-shots who ignore or trivialize prospects’ concerns and create diversions by instead emphasizing the strengths of the product or service being shopped, to the exclusion of the weaknesses. It’s a throwback sales attitude that no longer tweaks the twitter, if you know what I mean. 

     But, hey, doesn’t every one in sales do that? No. True sales professionals treat prospects like family (well, not including the dysfunctional cousins). True sales professionals may not dwell on weak sales points, but they won’t smoke and mirror the negatives into some dark corner either.

     Professional salespeople build high-trust reputations at every opportunity. They are invested in selling as a career. They get the big picture of life. They seek to build a reputation for honesty, not deal-making. They want to be able to establish long-term repeat-sale relationships once the sale is made.

     If you’re serious about sales and you should be… if you’re a rep or business owner or manager (of ANY part of ANY business), or an entrepreneur… because your very existence depends on how effectively you listen to customers and respond to their needs and concerns.

     This includes being as open and honest about your product and service weaknesses as you are about the strengths. Leave the one-sided boasting to the advertising and PR people. YOU are the company! Customers and prospects expect and deserve truth as well as benefits.

     When a salesperson tries to give someone a snow job, he or she is starting out with the assumption that the customer or prospect is stupid. Frankly, ANY assumption is dumb (We can all stand to be reminded that expectations breed disappointment), but starting out with a snow-making machine — and not first handing the prospect a shovel and hip-boots — is particularly self-destruct-targeted.

     It doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes with Bing or Google to learn as much if not more than any sales rep about a particular brand or product or service… and whether snow is in the forecast! 

Comment below or reply direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US  Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day!  Blog FREE via list-protected RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Great VALENTINE for GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

SPIT IT OUT,

ON PAPER!

Literally?  Well, not unless it’s a tissue, or maybe a paper towel or napkin.  Figuratively, then?  Hey, you may be bright enough to stay employed after all.  Are you being a wise-guy?  Of course, this is a blog, isn’t it?  So what’s your point? 

     Unless you’re in a high-stress, time-crunch job location like the ER, the battlefield, the deck of an deep sea fishing trawler, an air-traffic control tower, or the floor of the stock exchange, anything that’s important enough for you to say is important enough for you to say in writing. 

[P.S. If you’re a tree-hugger worried about your green reputation going down the tubes because you use too much paper, stop reading here and have a nice day!] 

     Once you get your basic thoughts down, edit them carefully (sleep on them if possible), then deliver them in writing (or printout), on paper (or occasionally, online via email)! 

     Now, wait a minute, I’m just a landscaper; the only paper I handle’s a time sheet, and my brother says his company makes all decisions by email! Ah, all the more reason to carry a pen and pocket pad.  How many times a day are you interrupted?  How much of where you were, do you remember after a series of interruptions?

     Every minute that you spend taking notes on the boss’s instructions and putting your ideas down on paper is an investment in your self-success, and the success of your business.

     You simply won’t believe this until you do it consistently for 60-90 days.  But that time period will make a believer of you. 

     As for your brother’s email-crazed company, and my note earlier that occasionally online communications work, is not a condemnation of email.  It is a warning flag that when you email important ideas, you are suggesting they are not so important because you’ve presented your thoughts in the mad rush, snap decision making “delete/save/file/reply” environment that emails breed. 

     Even when an important communication is carefully constructed and edited, it can fail because it was zipped off without enough attention to proper subject line wording, or careful thought given to the who’s who of Cc’s and Bcc’s, or just because the use of email can give the impression that the contents are not well thought out and have been shot from the hip. 

     Sometimes being more personal is better.  I hand deliver proposals to clients when possible because I can be there to see their faces and judge responses they may not express in an email reply or even a telephone discussion.  

     You can read and hear words in a response, but when you can’t see the facial expressions, the posture and the attitudes involved, you’ve only got half the answer.  How confident would you be of making a sale the customer agrees to while hand signaling or winking derisively to a co-worker as you’re babbling away to them on their speakerphone.  And emails are even more distant.

     Whether you’re a contractor making a mental “punchlist,” a law enforcement officer reconstructing an accident scene, an engineer struggling with an architect‘s lack of reality, an administrative or salesperson working with other’s deadlines and expectations, or a physician explaining a procedure to a patient, put it in writing! 

     By writing out what you observe, hear, think or propose, or by drawing a diagram to explain yourself you are taking giant steps toward improved communications.  Improved communications win job promotions, bonuses, customers, comeraderie, industry and professional attention, and management (and, yes, even family) support.  halalpiar

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