The Sales Insider

It’s been on their Web site since September 2010, but I loved this blog from lead generation company Green Leads revealing some “superstar” tips for doing outbound prospecting over the phone.

It spoke to me because when push comes to shove, when the rubber hits the road, when its put-up-or-shut-up time (okay, you get the picture) outbound phone prospecting still happens.

A lot of people talk about the end of the cold call, that “inbound” is the new panacea. That “real” sales reps build pipeline through a steady stream of referral business. No more of those itchy-scratchy uncomfortable sales calls, no more angry prospects tired of our pitch, no more “dialing for dollars.”

To which we at InsideSales.com add, “Yeah right.” Don’t get me wrong, if you’re in the right vertical, with the right connections, with the right product at exactly the right time, maybe you can get away without doing outbound prospecting in B2B.

For the rest of us it’s a reality of life, and is going to stay that way for a long, long time. “No More Cold Calling!” has gained a lot of traction because people want to stop making cold calls. But the real truth is, they don’t need to stop making cold calls, they need to learn how to do them better.

Outbound marketing still happens.

According to Forrester, prospecting via the phone is still one of the top two ways of driving demand generation for B2B companies, along with executive seminars. And what do the two have in common? They’re both about getting in front of important decision-makers and having real conversations.

Webinars have value, true. Social media is a great way of getting insight into customer mindsets, finding niches to fill, and exploring markets. Blogs let you share expertise, stories, data, and build connections.

But when you need to get in front of the person that signs off on the deal, the person you know will be a great prospect and customer, because your service or solution really solves their problem, outbound prospecting makes that happen.

Check out the tips from Green Leads here.

Bumped into an interesting video interview, posted on The Brand Builder Blog about a new book buy Guy Kawasaki called Enchantment.

Anyone who’s spent any time in Social Media has probably at least heard of Guy through his voluminous Twitter account(s), as “one of Apple’s old marketing gurus,” or in his role as a venture capitalist.

I haven’t read the book, though it sounds interesting but the video itself had a fascinating take on building a business. In the video, Guy and the interviewer, Brian Solis, talk about the three pillars of creating a business that “enchants”: Be likeable, be trustworthy, and back it up with a competent (or better) product.

But here’s the interesting part: Guy says that to be an “enchanting” company, we don’t have to succeed wildly at all three. Using Apple as an example (based on his first-hand knowledge), he states that contrary to some people’s perceptions, Apple is in fact a very anti-social company. They don’t actively engage with customers, they don’t go out of their way to “listen” to the public.

In Guy’s mind, the reason Apple is popular is because they hit the product portion of their business so far out of the park that no one pays attention to anything else. The products provide such a great experience that no one pays attention to the fact that iTunes is actually a really clunky piece of software, that the iPhone was saddled for a long time to the worst U.S. domestic phone carrier (AT&T), or that the iPad doesn’t play Flash video.

He goes on to say, however, that other businesses compensate for less-than-perfect product with stellar “likeability” and trustworthiness. We go to restaurants all the time where the food is only “okay,” but we “enjoy” it because the experience and service are so great. Does Zappos really have the greatest selection of shoes, anywhere, ever? No, not really, but the level of trustworthiness is so high, that Zappos’ customers don’t even think about it. Their customers’ experience is based on something other than having every possible combination of boot, shoe, and color on planet earth.

So what does this mean for us?

It seems pretty obvious, but it’s about focus. There’s very few companies producing product at the level of Apple. If it was easy to build customer trust like Zappos has, more of us would.

So—do we know where we stand? Do we have any of the three right?

Every good business has to be competent, but to have any chance of “enchanting” our customers, we have to be excellent in at least one—and striving to build all three.

We forget sometimes just what exactly it is all this technology in business is supposed to be doing for us.

The point of it all is that ultimately we want to replace the aspect of human intuition….or do we?

On the surface you’d think that was it, right? If anything, we want sales to be predictable. It’s all the variables that get us tangled up, nervous.

Which source of leads is working? Which rep is doing the calling? Does that rep know the target market? Is the prospect really a right fit, or are they just a pie-in-the-sky, wishful thinking opportunity? Are we going too fast, too slow?

How do we sound to our prospects? What are they talking about behind our backs? In their budget meetings? Are we on the top-5 vendor list? The top 2? How’s our collateral look? Is our product demo up to snuff? Why’d they say that on our last call? Were they really looking for Feature X, or were they just feeling out our response? Why does it take X days instead Y days to close deals?

How much of a difference does technology make in answering these questions?

The answer, of course, can be “lots,” “none at all,” or occasionally both.

Sales technology is, and should be designed to replace guesswork. There’s dozens, maybe hundreds of points along the sales process where real, hard data makes a big difference. Knowing, for example, what your highest-converting pay-per-click ads are tells you where to focus energy, time, and money on your marketing. That’s hard metrics–”We convert 22% of clicks into contactable leads.” Then using your software tools, you track lead conversion: “We convert 55 % of contactable leads into opportunities within 30 days, and another 16% within a year.”

Here’s what the numbers don’t tell you:

How the prospect/customer perceives you in your market (though the numbers can be trailing indicators). Why you have a strong presence in a particular vertical. Which features of your product are most in need of update, which need to added, and which need to be dropped. Why you just lost a deal when the prospect was an ideal candidate. Why you just won a deal when the prospect is nothing like any of your existing customers.

Data is data, intuition is intuition. Data is only meaningful when interpreted, and that requires the ability to recognize the reality of what is being measured.

Technology produces data designed to answer classic If/Then statements: “If I do Action X, the data shows me Result Y should happen.”

It just won’t tell you why the prospect thinks Result Y is important, or if Result Y is even going to matter in 6, 12, 24, or 144 months.

Something short and sweet today for teams doing lead generation:

We’ve all heard the concept of the “elevator pitch”–A concise, high-impact statement designed to convey the identity and value of your company/product/brand in the space of 30 seconds or less (some say as little as 10).

For example, “At InsideSales.com, we empower sales reps to take control of their prospecting and fill their pipelines faster, and give managers better insight into the process while it happens.”

The value of such a statement, obviously, isn’t that it’s actually going to be used to pitch a VC board member on an elevator (although if you’ve actually done this and gotten funding, that would be a great story and I’d love to hear it). The value is that an “elevator pitch” lets you boil down a core message into something easy to digest, but still demonstrates key touch points that communicate how you serve a prospect’s potential needs. It’s the exercise itself that’s important, though the end result can be useful in prospecting.

But I recently ran across an interesting update to this concept, which is that not only should you state what you do for the people you serve (“We do X thing for people Y”), but at the end you should include a qualifying statement that directly connects to a prospect’s condition, typically a pain you’re addressing (“We do X thing for people Y, even if Z”).

So in this case, our updated pitch would read:

“At InsideSales.com, we empower sales reps to take better control of their prospecting, fill their pipelines faster, and give managers better insight into the process while it happens—even if the sales reps aren’t dynamic ‘closers.’”

It’s that last hook that adds a subtle, longer-lasting impact on the prospect’s mind. Prospects hear basic benefit pitches all the time, but when you can qualify the benefit against a condition the prospect is actually experiencing, it carries more weight.

Play with your “elevator pitch” and qualifying “condition statement” in your presentations until you find one that works. The exercise and practice will help you better get inside the minds of your prospects.

On February 16, 2011, the Salt Lake Chapter of the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP) had the distinct pleasure of hearing from renowned performance psychologist Dr. Craig Manning. Dr. Manning has been a key performance consultant for the U.S. Olympic Ski team, and professional and amateur athletes in dozens of other sports.

As the keynote speaker at the meeting, Dr. Manning presented a powerful overview of how high-performance athletes create a mental platform for success—and how those same principles apply to businesses that want to break through their own performance barriers.

Using principles and practices from his ground-breaking book The Fearless Mind, Dr. Manning stated that most performance models begin with a simple formula:

P + T = Pf.

Potential + Training = Performance

However, Dr. Manning continued, as the highest achievers in all aspects of life have discovered—athletes, business professionals, doctors, performers—”High performance is a way of life, a mindset. If you’re not performing, you can’t simply put a band-aid on it.”

To change performance levels, he stated, a third element needs to included in the formula:

P + T – I = HPf

Potential + Training – INTERFERENCE = High Performance

In observing world-class athletes for decades, Dr. Manning has noticed that in most cases the difference in potential between athletes is often narrow.

“The difference between the guy who finishes #16, or #32, or #44 in the World Cup Ski standings, and the guy who finishes #1 is almost never about potential and training,” said Dr. Manning. “All of them have nearly equal potential, and all of them are training at the same intensity. The difference is that the guy in the #1 slot has learned that the mind is a muscle. It can be trained, conditioned to power our success, or create interference that impedes performance.”

It is this element of “Mental Interference,” Dr. Manning believes, that is the key differentiating factor between mediocre and high performers. “Negativity, focusing on what we do wrong ruins our ability to reach our potential. That’s not to say that we should be unrealistic, and think that everything is sunshine and roses when it’s not. But too often our mental barriers are self-created, and then we live in them.”

The keys to getting out these “interference patterns” is to first have clear, constructive goals. “Having clear goals, goals that are difficult yet attainable, gives us the confidence we need to achieve them,” Dr. Manning said.

Next, having established goals allows us to focus on things “in the now,” and stay engaged with the task at hand. “Too often we can get stuck looking to an outcome in the future that ultimately saps our confidence and effort, ultimately becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. If something can’t be done, our tendency is to immediately slip into a mindset of negativity.” To make true changes in behavior and performance, Dr. Manning notes, it’s not effective to simply think, “Don’t do that.” To really increase performance, one mindset must be replaced with another, along with a new course of action.

Doing so allows us to build confidence and improve performance because our focus is entirely on the things we can control. Along the way, Dr. Manning’s system requires athletes to keep a daily log of their training goals. Each is required to state three things they did well during their training sessions, and one thing that needed improvement, and then to revisit the pattern the next day in preparation for their next session.

“Fear is always based in the future,” said Dr. Manning. “The best performing athletes learn to put the fear of the future, and the guilt of the past into proper perspective. When you can stay focused on the task at hand, the past and future disappear into simply doing what we can do NOW.”

Tennis image courtesy of Boss Tweed: http://www.flickr.com/people/39027316@N00. Licensed under the CC Attributions 2.0 generic.

Somewhere between 2008 and today, the phrase “Aligning Sales and Marketing” went from hot topic to overused buzzword. The last year especially it’s been discussed ad nauseum: online, in print, during webinars, trade shows, executive meetings . . . the list goes on.

But as Adam Needles at Propelling Brands reports, a 2010 research study by SiriusDecisions showed less than 10% of companies are deploying the right processes and technology to actually create the type of alignment needed for high-powered B2B demand gen.

Lots of talk, very, very little action.

There’s a host of reasons for the gap, a big one being that even in spite of the talk, many companies still don’t see the value of a true Sales and Marketing alignment. But I’m discovering that even if an organization understands the need, they often have a hard time “aligning the alignment”—in other words, they know what they need to do, they just don’t know how what they’re doing (or buying) is going to get them there.

Ultimately, regardless of avenue, there’s really only 4 ways to increase sales:

1. Greater lead quantity – Expanding into new verticals and markets, approving more ad spend to drive traffic, opening up more avenues, referral and affiliate programs.

2. Greater lead quality – finding better markets, better targets, better qualified prospects, and linking ad spend to actual conversions and revenue.

3. Greater sales rep effort – phone calls, appointments set, collateral delivered, etc., linked to management tools that show how the process is actually running.

4. Greater sales rep skill – coaching, scripting, needs analysis and qualifying approaches within each step.

Whatever it is you’re investing in, it should be designed to increase, monitor, and evaluate one of those four things.

CRM is about tracking and monitoring #2 and #3, and on some qualitative levels, #4. Marketing automation is about tracking #2, some of #1, and a tiny bit about #3. Lead Management and lead nurturing systems are about #1 and #2 (you get the idea).

The worst problems in sales and marketing alignment happen when a company invests in a technology, consultation, service, or product—but it’s not even in an area that the company was really addressing. Misdirected efforts cause pain and hinder growth, because everyone is chasing after results that can’t be had. Conversely, real growth happens when process changes and metrics are based on improvements that can actually be made—and the technology investments back it up.

Each of the four elements can increase sales depending on the actual need—just don’t invest in something that isn’t designed to fix your real problem. Making more phone calls doesn’t improve lead quality; tracking and managing the things that create better quality leads does.

By the same token, “coaching up” sales skills doesn’t increase your lead pool, setting hundreds of prospect appointments doesn’t fix poor sales skills, and getting amazingly high-quality leads makes no difference if your reps only make 3 total contact attempts to reach a decision-maker before they give up.