by David Matos

When you’re in the world of sales, it’s difficult to be on the ball 24/7.  There are days where you walk in and you’re “just not feeling it.”  When that happens, it’s easy to start digging into your head trash and make a million excuses as to why a prospect hasn’t gotten back to you.  I challenge you to start digging deep and instead of making an excuse, come up with a solution.  Here are two common scenarios and ways to overcome them.

I’m too expensive.  “My prospect was looking at another vendor who was cheaper.  I know they have sticker shock and that’s why I haven’t heard anything.  This always happens.”  Sound familiar?  If you believe you’re in a foot race over price then you have already lost your customer.  Everything should be focused on value.

If you get radio silence, call your prospect back and remind them of their needs.  This may even require you to talk about their pain.  People buy emotionally, not intellectually.  If you focus on price, you are only focusing on the intellectual part of decision making.

They prefer e-mail.  “I tried calling them before but it was tough to get ahold of them.  They told me e-mail is my best bet of reaching them.”  Although they said e-mail is your best bet, they didn’t say it’s your only bet.  Although e-mail is becoming a more popular means of communication than phone calls, it’s still just an e-mail.

In other words, it’s like a game of ping pong – you have to wait for the ball to be returned before you can swing your paddle again.  If the person doesn’t swing at the ball…well, then there is nothing to return.  No matter how uncomfortable, picking up the phone is the best bet for reaching most prospects.  Yes, I am advocating calling until you reach them and not giving up after one voicemail.

Radio silence is one of the worst things that could happen to a deal.  However, there is one thing that’s worse…excuses.  Move past your own excuses and start working on ways to overcome their radio silence.

What is the worst excuse you have given yourself?  What finally brought you out of your comfort zone?  We would love to hear your thoughts in our comments section. 

by Charles Bernard

Here’s a quick tip on scheduling tasks from your CRM system. 

Salespeople for the most part are used to scheduling tasks (prospecting calls, follow-up, etc.) from within their CRM system.  Usually they pick days at random to actually work the tasks.  They don’t normally track how many have been scheduled for a particular day, so when that day arrives, they can often find themselves overscheduled with a mountain of tasks.

I suggest a modified approach:

First, block out time in your calendar for when you will work the tasks, i.e. Monday 9am-11am, Tuesday 3pm-5pm, etc.  If you use Outlook, I recommend color coding these blocks of time.  I use green for prospecting.

Decide how many tasks you can realistically accomplish in a given hour.  My number is 6.

Refer to your calendar when scheduling tasks from your CRM, and allocate the correct number of tasks for each block.

This way, your calendar and tasks are in sync, and your workload is better balanced.

Let me know if you liked this tip!

by Elizabeth Frederick

I covered this topic briefly in a post back in November, but I think it’s worth a deeper look.

I’m writing this as I’m about to leave the office on a Friday evening, and I have three emails in my inbox.  All of them have been read, responded to if necessary, and are awaiting resolution next week.

I don’t have a magic wand (or an assistant!) that handles my communication, and I actually do receive quite a few emails every day, but years ago I learned a technique that I find absolutely essential:  as soon as something is processed, I prevent it from being a distraction.

I maintain a somewhat simple list of folders – one for each active client, for example – but you can make it as basic as having a folder labeled “Processed.”  As soon as you have read an email and responded to it appropriately, move it to the “Processed” folder (or appropriate folder from your list) and move on.  If it is something that requires a response from someone else, or further work on your part, leave it in your inbox!  You’ll avoid the stress of looking at a full inbox and wondering what important tasks have been lost in the clutter.

You can even take this a step further and put all of the tasks on your calendar, setting aside an appropriate amount of time for each.  There’s no better feeling, at least for me, than knowing you’re aware of what needs to be done and have planned when you will do it.

One other quick reminder of a tip we’ve all heard before – don’t try to read and respond to every email as it comes in.  It’s much more efficient to set aside time in your day to process your email, and handle it all at once.  If you must keep the little “new message” popup active, consider creating a list of the 3 – 5 people/topics that justify a “drop everything and read this email” reaction.  Once you’ve created the list, stick to it!

What techniques do you use to stay on top of your email?  I’d love to see your suggestions in the comments!

by Charles Bernard

Last month, I wrote about CEOs who function as the chief sales officer .  Since then I am proud to announce that we are producing an event on May 7th called I Don’t Want to Be a Salesperson; I Want to Be a CEO, which will feature some great panelists to share how they went through this process.

I thought it would be helpful to share with our readers the four key stages that we believe a CEO goes through on this journey.

Stage 1 – CEO is Sales
In this stage, the CEO is actively selling.  They are involved in everything from generating leads to creating proposals and closing business.  This typically occurs in the earliest stage of a business.

Stage 2 – CEO is Outside Sales
In this stage, the CEO closes most of the business.  They may have hired a salesperson, but the CEO is still heavily involved in closing the deals.  The salesperson mostly does lead generation and may sit in on meetings, but generally is unable to close a deal start to finish without the CEO.

Stage 3 – CEO is Sales Manager
In this stage, the CEO has a sales team and oversees them directly.  They are still brought into deals but far less often.  This is the most demanding stage for a CEO.  The longer the CEO remains as the de facto sales manager, the more his or her people become attached.  It then becomes harder to find an effective replacement that the existing salespeople will accept.  This could potentially detract the CEO from focusing on developing the business as a whole.

Stage 4 – CEO is CEO
In this stage, the CEO is no longer directly involved in day-to-day selling, often acting in more of a public relations capacity.  They have effectively delegated the selling responsibility and duties to the appropriate people in their company.