Here’s what you might have missed from No More Cold Calling this month.
“I don’t discount, and I don’t run fire sales.” That’s what I’ve always said. But sometimes, even when a program has helped people, it’s time to retire it and make room for new programs.
It’s that time for my “Getting Started” package for individual salespeople. So now I’m offering one last chance to get 12 hours of my best advice on referral selling for a discounted price of $47.
“Getting Started” includes:
➤ 7 audio downloads (MP3)
➤ No More Cold Calling™ audiobook, which I narrate (MP3)
➤ “Referred: Rediscovering the Power of the Original Social Network” (eBook)
➤ 5 Referral Tips (Webinar)
I will no longer be offering this package after midnight Pacific on Thursday, October 6. Act now to jumpstart your referral selling.
For more on referral selling, check out this month’s blog posts from No More Cold Calling:
Are Your Salespeople in the Top 90%?
More than 90 percent of salespeople convert at least half of their prospects to clients when they get referrals. And another 60 percent report a conversion rate of more than 70 percent. These stats are from a recent webinar I conducted. There’s been a huge jump in referral conversion rates. They held pretty steady at 50 percent until the last three years. Now the majority of sales reps say they convert more than 70 percent when they get referrals. Why are sales reps even more successful when they get referrals? I haven’t found any research that provides a definitive answer. But I have a theory. (Read “Are Your Salespeople in the Top 90%?”)
Beware This Really Big Gap in Your B2B Sales Strategies!
“Mind the gap” is a famous phrase in London. It alerts travelers to the potentially dangerous space between the platform and train on the London underground system. This gap occurs on curved platforms. There’s a gap at the end car on inside curves, and a gap in the middle car on outside curves. When crafting your B2B sales strategies, think of the sales process as a curve. Unless you sell a commodity, no sale is a predictable straight line. We can be derailed in the middle of the curve (oops … new buyers, acquisition, change in leadership, new company direction) or at the end of the curve. We thought we had a deal, but we never saw the gap in our strategy. There’s always something we neglected to do, to assess, or to include earlier in the sales process. More often than not, the gap that gets us is back at the beginning of the curve: qualifying leads. (Read “Beware This Really Big Gap in Your B2B Sales Strategies!”)
Are You Derailing Your Prospecting Success?
It’s tough to shut up. We’re salespeople. We get paid to talk up our solutions. But we must also sell them. We’ve all made this prospecting mistake: The customer told us her challenges. She described in wrenching detail what consistently goes wrong and how these problems are affecting her business. Aha, we’ve got the answer. We know our solution will fix everything. We jump in and demonstrate (in wrenching detail) how our product will solve every one of her problems in no time. The customer nods enthusiastically. We leave knowing we got the deal. Well, no. We didn’t. What could possibly have derailed this slam-dunk deal? We jumped ahead to the easy part of prospecting—offering solutions—and didn’t take time to demonstrate the impact our solutions could make on the client’s business. (Read “Are You Derailing Your Prospecting Success?”)
Is Your Online Brand Different than Your In-Person Brand?
You are your brand. Your company has a brand, but people buy from you, not your company. If you’re a jerk, it doesn’t matter how great the business is. Buyers will find another salesperson from your company or go to your competitor. Today your online brand is just as critical as your in-person brand. You must show up online like you show up in person, because digital first impressions are as important as the real thing. Ian Moyse, an executive sales leader in the U.K. cloud software industry, discusses the importance of your online brand—and how to protect it—in this month’s guest post. (Read “Is Your Online Brand Different than Your In-Person Brand?”)
Test Your Referral Savvy
I’m conducting a study on referrals, and I need your help. Please take my 14-question Referral I.Q. Quiz. The questions are mostly “Yes/No,” and it should take less than four minutes to complete. Rest assured, it’s completely anonymous, with no forms to fill out.
Once you’ve finished, you’ll be bounced over to a results page, where you can see the aggregated answers from everyone who has participated.
My goal is to get a 1,000-person sample, so please invite your network to take the quiz as well. Participation is anonymous, and I promise you won’t be added to any lists. Thanks in advance for your support!
