Sales has changed so much over the years, and really dramatically over the past five years.

Having been in sales all my life and now presenting in 65 countries on sales and technology, I love the advances and opportunities.

Sadly, so many companies are still using outdated training or even worse, no training at all. How can you expect to be at the cutting edge of sales if you have not been trained in things like personal branding and marketing, advanced Google searches, Advanced LinkedIn strategies and moving from left to right brain selling…

When I started selling in the eighties, companies gave fantastic sales training and businesses like IBM were at the cutting edge. I remember my cousin who was in sales there being sent home to change his socks because they were the wrong color.

My first training course was three weeks long where we had numerous role plays, technical training and had to learn all kinds of scripts. 

In those days you could still cold call and I remember being told that activity was everything. I had to make at least 20 calls a day, see four people face to face and close one sale.

I did not question the training and did exactly as I was told and within a year was one of the top salespeople. 

When you were in front of a client you had a great chance of building rapport, asking questions and closing the sales. It is still the same today, except the route to getting in front of the client is very different.

Sales people now have to be versed in so many skills including:

• Sales skills
• Advanced prospecting skills
• Psychological skills
• Technology skills
• Marketing skills 
•  Content creation skills

For me the biggest change has been to identify your target prospect, connect with then in a non-threatening manner and educate them on your products and services through great content.

You also need to know about personal marketing and content creation as now the buyer is in control and will do their research and if they find your company or you, they will make a decision based on what they find and see in your website, LinkedIn profile, videos or articles.

Everyone one of us is a buyer and we know the process starts when we do a Google or LinkedIn search. If what we are looking for comes up on the first page, we will research the website and other social channels and then make a decision on what to do next.

How much content are you putting out there for potential buyers and how well is your website optimized. 

There is now a huge focus as well to using landing pages as many potential buyer get confused when going into a busy website and leave without taking any action.

For many salespeople the new way of optimizing and increasing sales is:

1 - Identify very clearly your ideal prospect. Are they the VP of sales in the medical industry in Florida, are they HR manager of in financial services companies in Australia…

Identify the industry, area and position of the person you want to sell to.

2 – Understand and learn about Advanced Google or Boolean searches. If you understand how this works, you can get unlimited data on the ideal prospects you would like to contact.

3 – If you are not using the paid version of LinkedIn and don’t have the advanced search capability, try using www.recruitin.net which has great search capabilities.

 To really understand Boolean Searches, please watch the video below.

4 - Take a look at the potential clients and if their profile fits, connect with them via LinkedIn.

5 – When connecting, customize your greeting. 

In my LinkedIn course, I show at least 5 different templates to connect, ask for a connection and reply when someone takes a look at your profile. 

These have been developed by some of the smartest LinkedIn specialists - www.linkedinmarketingforbusiness.com  

6 – Consider using a video squeeze landing page to reply to anyone viewing your profile. 

Take a look at how I have set this up, click on the image below to play the video:

7 – Create valuable content and share this on all the platforms. This way you become the authority in your area of expertise. By sharing the correct hashtags and keywords, you also make it easier to be found.

8 – Take a look at your Social Selling Index to see how well your profile has been optimized - https://www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi

 

Part 2 of the new world of sales will be out in January.

For great resources:

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel with 750 Sales & marketing Videos

Join 28,000 connections on LinkedIn to get my latest articles, posts, tips & strategies

Frank Furness is an International Keynote Speaker and Consultant on Sales & Marketing. Please take a look at http://www.frankfurness.com or email frank@frankfurness.com

#Sales, #marketing, #sales ideas, #sales tips, #linkedin tips, #linkedin strategies, #sales and marketing tips, #business, #sales, #linkedin

 

Boosting the Effectiveness of Cold Calling

As a sales technique, cold calling can be a pretty hit and miss affair. When not performed properly, calling a list of numbers, even if they are established leads, can be a scattergun approach that can be both unpopular and ineffective. However, quite often, salespeople and sales managers are not helping themselves by taking the wrong approach and making what can already be a difficult method of selling even harder. Correctly done, cold calling can be an effective sales technique, but just like any form of selling it requires skill, techniques and the right approach. Done incorrectly, and cold calling can be perceived as rude, intrusive and too impersonal.

Calculating the cost
Cold calling can be expensive, especially for businesses that have large call centres where dozens of people are going through the phone book and calling thousands of numbers a day. According to the Direct Marketing Association, even those companies that are good at it rarely have success rates higher than 5 percent. However, for those less proficient, the cost of phone calls alone could be astronomical and make cold calling as a sale endeavour pointless. Of course, cheap landline deals and lower tariffs during the evening can help save money, but even then, with only a couple out of 100 calls turning into a potential sale, this could still mean a company could be spending more on phone calls, paying staff and keeping the lights on than they are making in sales. This is one of the reasons that many businesses that rely solely on cold calling for their income, such as double glazing companies, have a reputation for being risky enterprises. However, by taking a more planned approach, you can maximise the potential success rate, and make the cold calling far more cost effective.

Timing
The thing about cold calling, particularly on the telephone as opposed to personal face-to-face canvassing, is that you never know if it is a potentially a good time to be approaching your intended customer. Somebody could be in the bath or otherwise preoccupied when you call. With cold calling, timing can be everything. When calling a business, making contact at lunchtime when somebody might be eating their sandwiches or calling late in the day, when people are getting ready to go home, is going to reduce the chance of making a sale. The same is true of domestic cold calling. Many cold callers prefer the evening when people are more likely to be home from work. However, this can often be a time when people are busy, preparing dinner or putting children to bed,
If it does turn out to be a bad time, simply trying to batter your way through with your sales pitch will get you nowhere. A good salesperson can learn to identify that it is an inopportune moment and switch the purpose of the original call from attempting to sell, to arranging an appointment to phone back at more suitable time.

The opening
The opening is by far the most important aspect of a cold call. It is within the first few seconds that you can either intrigue potential customers or completely alienate them, and if it is the latter, there is nothing you can subsequently do to change the situation. Many cold calling companies use scripts for their salespeople, and while these have their advantages, not all salespeople are great actors and so can’t be expected to sound natural or even human when reading a script or repeating well-rehearsed words. Either they sound as if they are reading, or they speak so fast it can be both difficult to comprehend or make them sound like a robot.
Sounding human, professional and warm, as if you are calling a colleague for chat rather than bombarding somebody with your sale’s pitch is by far a better approach. However, some cold callers go too far the other way and start trying to be too personal, such as asking how somebody is that day or evening. People see right through this. Nobody believes somebody on the end of the phone that they have never met is going to have any real interest in their health or wellbeing, so keeping it professional, saying good morning/afternoon/evening and introducing yourself is by far a better approach than trying to soft soap somebody.

The pitch
Once you have introduced yourself, you can start your pitch. While everybody has their own techniques and methods of explaining what they are selling or calling about one key ingredient is always essential: to the point quickly and succinctly. It may well be that the person on the other end of the phone will be interested in what you are selling, but by taking to long to get to the point, you risk frustrating them, especially if they are busy.
Another aspect of cold calling to understand is identifying when it is time to quit. While tenacity and perseverance can pay off, identifying a lost cause will save you from wasting your time. For instance, if you are selling double glazing and the person on the other end of the phone tells you they have had their windows done only six months earlier, there is nothing you can say, and no discount you can offer them that will entice them to buy.
As with all aspects of sales, cold calling is a skill that has to be learned and practiced. Perhaps the most important method of increasing the chance of success is to try new pitches and openings, and seeing what works and what doesn’t work for you. You have more chance at success by developing techniques based on your own personal experience rather than on some handed-down dogma that may be effective for one salesperson but not for another.