Sales day

Today is sales day. No particular reason. There never is :)

I was talking to some of our friends in Philadelphia. Nick Bertolino and his team are hard at work on a web based application that can help you manage your sales process. I’ve been helping them out with usability consulting. While I’ve spend only a small amount of time on the project, Nick and his team were able to make great progress in the past three weeks. As always it is important to focus on simplicity; the way your application will be used and by whom. What I like about their application is how they’ve targeted a wide market with a niche product. Nick and his team say they could use some help with beta testing so head over to PipelineDeals.com and click Sign Up.

As Nick and myself both have backgrounds in sales, it was fun talking shop together. While we were talking I came across Eric Wolfram's Writing, How To Sell -- Converting Leads from your Sales Pipeline.

Eric has some great tips to help you qualify your sales pipeline. While most of his sales books taught him to not close over the phone or through email and always meet in person, he’s had so much success; he’s reluctant to change that.

Still he sends out a lot of proposals and between 30% and 50% of them close. What a waste of time on those unclosed proposals! So to help qualify active leads and reduce effort on writing proposals Eric has started asking for meetings with his leads. He’s found that 95% of the leads that are willing to meet him, willing to make an effort close by the end of the meeting.

A similar technique that works well is called “Bargain for access to power”.

All prospective companies will at some point in your sales cycle want you to write a proposal. Writing proposals costs you time and effort. If you agree to write a proposal say that you feel it is fair that if you invest time and effort on writing a proposal, it would only be fair to receive something in return for your efforts. 99% of prospects will answer this question with:

“That sounds fair. What are you thinking of?”

Ask for an opportunity to talk to the person(s) in power, someone in the organisation that is empowered to make a buying decision, like the CEO. If you put in the time and effort to write the proposal they want, do you think it is fair you get a chance to present it to senior management?

Most prospects agree to have you see the “Big Boss”. This keeps you in control of the sales process, as opposed to sitting idly by the phone as they are giving your proposal “serious consideration”.

Using this technique, you get to stand by the prospective buyer to pitch his idea to senior management. All clients are apprehensive of this. It means you’re not trying to sell them.

You’re helping them buy.

Hey, you can be a buying consultant!

Ps. For more sales tips checkout the Think Pipeline Blog where Nick has some wonderful sales tips for you.

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