sales training blog - startup sales mentor

Time to let the cat out of the bag. For the greater good of sales people everywhere, a group of 10 of people focused on sales training and development have united forces to compile and share the best sales content available on the web. We are still finalizing our name and our new blog site, and here is the jist.

Every quarter we will offer an E-book with an article from each of us focusing on a specific theme. Since each of us has a different niche in sales training and education, and all live in different parts of the world, he plan to deliver dynamic perspectives on subjects, instead of giving you a linear opinion on a topic. The first E-book will be out at the end of the summer, and it will be a free download for all list or RSS subscribers. I will share the topic in the same post that I announce the new site. My gut says, in a week or two there will be news.

Addi tonally, every two weeks we will have a blogging topic. Each of us will write a post on that topic during that period again offering you many sides to the same coin. Our aim is to elevate the possibilities and engage in dialog with our readers that helps them grow as sales people.

Here is the bio of each member on Brad’s Sales Management blog:

http://www.salesmanagement20.com/profile/TiborShanto

http://www.salesmanagement20.com/profile/CraigElias

http://www.salesmanagement20.com/profile/TimRohrer

http://www.salesmanagement20.com/profile/JimKlein

http://www.salesmanagement20.com/profile/SkipAnderson

http://www.salesmanagement20.com/profile/NeshThompson

http://www.salesmanagement20.com/profile/KarlGoldfield

http://www.salesmanagement20.com/profile/IanBrodie

http://www.salesmanagement20.com/profile/ColinWilson

http://www.salesmanagement20.com/profile/bmtrnavsky

As leaders in sales training, sales plan designers, pipeline experts, sales management consultants, business consultants, (man the list goes on) we intend to deliver something different than the other group blogging sites. If you have any ideas for topics or concepts you want us to explore, speak now or forever…ah you can share with us whenever you like. Sales training in the form of articles and blog posts is my favorite part of this Web 2.0 world.

For this installment, I must first state that this was a question asked on LinkedIn, so until we went back and forth it was truly an ask the coach. That said, it fits in perfectly into our conversations about messaging then gets a bit deeper.  The question asked is below, and the back and forth clearly outlines how hard it is to explain what is needed to define a clear entry message.

The question:

Fast = Hacky?

A little background:

In my business development efforts I often need to explain who we are and why you should be talking to me.  The “WIIFM” (what’s in it for me) value statement that opens the door making continuing the conversation worth your time.

One of our companies top values is that we build applications fast. (that’s it)

Which usually hits the experienced ears as: (great, another outsource provider that puts our work at a lower priority than their larger clients, delivers hacky code, over promises then under delivers time and time again)

I’m aware that there’s tremendous value in being able to deliver high quality work faster than our peers, but how do you say fast and “un-hacky” without sounding hokey or like a vacuum cleaner salesman?

Solid code?
Clean code?
Quality programing?
Robustly Written Code?
Efficient?
Concise?
Well-Written?
Accurate?
Scrumptrulescent?
Super-Fantastically Ultra-Marvelous Code
Omni Spectacular?

All of the above?

My first answer:

Let’s start with a big who cares? This is what you need to know before any of this matters.

Next? What do they care about. Fast is not important unless I care about fast, accurate is not important yada yada yada.

What matters? What your targeted prospects want. Who are your targeted prospects? Do you have customers? Find out why they bought and find people JUST LIKE THEM.

Short and sweet, but you get the point. For more check out the blog and sign up fpr the newsletter.I am talking about messaging this month and have answers for you.

The rebuttal:

Hi Karl,

Thanks for answering.  You’re right, but let’s assume that I’ve already done my marketing research, I’m calling the correct people, and I have a solution that they need.

Over and above having a valuable and competitive service offering as my steak, I need to get my foot in the door with some sizzle and smells of charcoal

(That’s why I posted this question under software development and not under a sales tech category.)

For the purpose of this question:

Mainly, I’m looking for the golden words that raise the eyebrows of my prospects on that first call (I doubt they exist but I’ll keep trying until everyone is our customer).  Proving we’re awesome is no problem after establishing that initial interest.

My next response:

Again, go back to your customers for two things.

1. What compelled them to buy
2. What benefits are they experiencing now

These are your razor blades to cut through the noise of a prospect’s day
Then he went to this blog and returned with this:

HI Karl,

This is excellent stuff,. after reading I thought maybe you could help me out?

When you looked your knowledge filled blogs have you found any flaws in your advice,. or pieces of the puzzle that you’re missing?

Besides the gaps in knowledge that you don’t know about,. (people don’t know,. what they don’t know),. what have you found that you’ve wanted to add, but just haven’t developed the content for?

My DEEP follow up:

Great questions and yes there is still lots to cover. Also, Sales in my opinion is not science but art. Like, art of other mediums, what is considered current and valuable changes with social paradigms. Sales is evolving and right now so quickly that many of the things I have written need to be amended just a year after they went to print.

Here is a question I received last week. It is from one of my previous team members in Pune, India.

Question:

Hello Coach,

My question is - “How do you decide upon the factor that a rep should make at least 49 dials or 8 connects per day, for the MBO.”
Is there a particular strategy or calculation to come up with this kind of target ??

My senior has asked me to set up 6 conference calls per week, and I am managing with only 3-4 call set ups per week.
He does not consider number of dials or connects, for performance. And, problem is that my prospect list is draining fast with majority of ‘Not Interested’ status comments.

Please suggest me about what i can do to improve my performance, in such a scenario .

Answer:

The answer to how to schedule more meetings comes in two parts. Before we dig into these answers, I want to begin by outlining the first question of how effective metrics are established. I was sitting in the office of the CEO of DreamFactory, and we were discussing the methodologies of the inside sales team and how to make them more effective. When we discussed metrics, I began explaining how you had to work backwards from the end result to the most minute activity. He saw this as obvious, and could not believe that anyone would see it another way. Unfortunately, many people design metrics based on other details, not just the end result. If you want to accomplish a goal, look at how many activities it take to get to that goal. In the case above, 980 calls produced 160 connects. 160 connects produced 3-4 meetings a day. It is from this that you can now build a plan.

The first thing to look at when trying to hit an objective is how successful you are at each leg of your activity chain. In the scenario for this question, the rep is only making 50-75% of their objective. The simplest way to improve this is to increase the number of dials and connects. If you look at the 980 dials to 4 meetings scheduled, this is around 243 dials per meeting. To get to 6 meetings, you would have to increase your monthly dials by 486 a month. This is an extra 25 dials a day. While this may be simple, it is also challenging in the amount of time it takes.

The other thing to look at, and the way I would recommend increasing your number of dials is to improve your ratios of dials to connects, and your ratio of connects to meetings. Let’s look at the connects to meetings ratio. If you are speaking to 160 people a month, and only 3-4 are interested, the message is poor. Work on scripting a compelling entry statement. Find unique reasons to talk to each company. 4 in 160 is a 2.5% close ratio, and frankly this is really poor. I would want to have at least a 25% close ratio in scheduling meetings, and this would mean that I could reduce my connects to 100 a month and still make 25 meetings. Now, how would I do it? I would start by looking at what accounts I target. Next, I would look for the right contact and only call people at the highest possible level. Third I would research the company for reasons they might want to talk to my company. And finally, I would create strong entry statements that sparked interest.

At first this will be challenging as you learn to gather this information and sharpen your message. If you can increase your close ratio to 10%, you only need 60 connects to make your MBO. Your choice is obvious, either increase your activity by 50%, or increase your effectiveness by 7.5%. I know what I would do.