15/08/2010 23:07:59
topic: Reaching upper 'C' level decision makers Newbus Posts 8	This thread has been a great read. With any product with a substantial value or strategic in nature, C level contacts are a must in the sales process and involving them as soon as possible increases the possibility of defining an opportunity. For my part, the best way to engage with these contacts is still plan and simple, but hard work requiring both time and dedication. Pick up the phone and ask for them ..... Sure you will encounter gatekeepers, voicemails etc but you will also end up speaking to the people you wish to do business with as well. Only this week I have spoken to 1 CEO, 7 Financial Directors and 7 Marketing Directors of companies with turnover in excess of £100 million. From this I have arranged 3 sales meetings for my clients. I know that telemarketing like this seems old fashioned, but still there is no other form of marketing that permits a true live 1 to 1 interaction with your prospect where you have the ability to speak about their needs, how you can assist and to agree the next sales actions. There are many other forms of marketing that you can deploy to help raise awareness of the brand and product and over time these will also have value, but none of them deal with the quandy that was originally posed. How to make contact with C Level contacts and engage them in a sales process. To do that you always need a conversation. Is it not better to take the initiative and drive the message to them then build marketing noise and hope they pick up the phone to you?
	11/08/2010 09:57:46
topic: rookie salesman cold calling old-time customers Newbus Posts 8	You touch on the first task with something like this "data cleansing. Before you do any type of telemarketing or marketing for that matter it is vital that you have a fit for purpose data set to work from. By this I mean that you have accurate information as to the company, in this case does it still exists, how to contact it (phone, email address) and who is the decision maker. From your description I would not rely on the information but use it as a guide to companies that are more likely than not to have an interest in your product. (We know that as they have bought in the past.) From then on you just approach them as anyone else, Put across the benefits they will get from the product, differentiate yourself from the competition and remember to close. You can also use the list to provide a model / specification of the type of companies that are likely to buy your products. This will provide you with the guidance to search wider than this list to uncover other potential prospects. Good Luck
	10/08/2010 14:06:06
topic: Telemarketing and the dreaded "No Names Policy!!!" Newbus Posts 8	I have recently placed this artical on my telemarketing blog, b ut it has far wider appeal and hope that people find it useful on here. If I ever hear “no names policy again”……..I’ll screeeaaaaaammmmmm If you were to believe the receptionists or as we tend to call them “gatekeepers” that we speak to every day you would be under the impression that companies are holding meetings with senior execs making decisions about whether they can release the name or not of the directors, which are already in the public domain, but the truth is there is rarely ever such a thing. Instead there is the receptionist making up the immaculate excuse to shift us telemarketers off the phone as quick as possible with an excuse that we cannot argue against. So, if you want to proactively get ahead of your peers and develop proactive sales meetings from your target audience then you need to "put your body on the line". By this I mean get stuck into the calling and not allow any form of obstacle "gatekeepers" get in your way. We know that before we speak with a senior exec it is likely that we will have to pass through reception & the PA. Both have the potential of presenting you with barriers that may appear difficult to overcome. Here are the most regular blocking techniques that we see everyday in our lead generation and our basic approach to them. 1. "No names policy" – Don’t waste time debating. Just ask for the CEO's PA. Then ask them the same question. You will be amazed how many time this works. If not call back every few days and ask again and again, and again. It is highly unlikely that this is "Company policy". It is most likely the personal choice of the person you are speaking too and they have to take holiday etc eventually. Then someone else will answers the phone and hey presto. 2. "Send me information and I'll pass it on. If they are interested I will call you back" - WE NEVER AGREE TO THIS. The moment that you release information gatekeepers can block you unilaterally. We call with the express intention of holding a business discussion. Stand your ground and call back another time without sending information. Otherwise you might as well have just had a direct mail campaign. 3. "They never take cold calls" - Ask / insist the gatekeeper attempts to put the call through. This works about 30% of the time. For the balance thank them and just call back and try again another day. 4. "Tell me what’s it about and I'll let you know who would be the best person" - DON'T DO IT. Again gatekeepers will never tell you that you intended to speak to the right person, and end up palming you off to a subordinate. Ultimately, this just sabotages your sales process. Just stand your ground and if necessary call back another day. If telemarketing was easy companies would be overwhelmed with new business. The facts show it is not. You need to be dedicated, consistent and persistent. If you are going improve any one skill, concentrate on getting past gatekeepers. It is the single biggest factor that will increase the number of meetings you create. Basis lead generation stats show that for every 100 calls to a director of a £100million+ company you will speak to 10 people and then make 1 meeting. Speaking to just 2 extra people a day would increase the number of meeting you can make in a full working week from 5 to 6. Take a moment to calculate through what that would mean to your business based on sales value, margin and close ratio. Then you can see the impact it makes
	07/08/2010 21:55:56
topic: Tales of the Unexpected... NeilWarren Posts 645	Maybe, having watched Nat Geo on the TV this afternoon, about how Orca Whale CA2 (check the dorsal fin baby - you all look the same to me too!) from the LA Pod had learned how to rush and stun and then turn a Great White Shark (of Jaws fame), her own size, on its back so that it went into a trance, where she held it for 15 minutes until it drowned, before she and her crew had a 3 course lunch on it - which simultaneously sent all nearby Great Whites 2,000 miles around the oceans to try some slightly less risky fishing in the Bahamas - I shouldn't have found a few dolphins entertaining the dumb animals on the other side of the glass all that "unexpected"... http://wimp.com/dolphinbubbles ...but I did!
	07/08/2010 13:49:23
topic: TACK buyers survey NeilWarren Posts 645	…continued Finally, and absolutely key to the success of this, will be the mutually agreeable communication channels that either “side” can agree upon, which also have to carry the new burden now of containing that magic potion of “re-establishing trust” (both ways). Because any market place, from the souks of old to the digital-social-media “commercial centres” of the 21st Century, once they are filled with con-men, slave-traders or charlatans of either the “buyer” or “seller” variety, will not be an attractive place for “proper” people to go, to try and get some mutually beneficial trade going. But so much of it, as ever, seems to be a consequence of B2C (big “advertising” and “marketing” money?) being in the driving seat with B2B being a mere passenger and therefore ending up on some very alien playing fields (market places) where equally distorted “rules” appear to apply. (E.g. if you are in “Procurement” and you want to consolidate the outrageous global expenditure on rubber bands, fair enough, but if you think the same rules apply to assessing the replacement 21st Century CRM/CMR/FSM/Social CRM/ERP system your 5,000 sales staff and the rest of the company are going to need – forget it!). P.S. Or "Global Sales Training, Continuing Professional Development & Team Performance" - come to that! edited by NeilWarren on 07/08/2010
	07/08/2010 13:48:52
topic: TACK buyers survey NeilWarren Posts 645	How true and observant Jay & Gents – and how tragic that such an apparently small percentage of UK PLC even vaguely understands! I’m watching (with barely disguised glee, I’m almost ashamed to say) as the majority of the “no names”, “no cold calls”, “no emails” Great-Wall-of-China players – particularly those that are heavily sales-leaning organisations – struggle to close the un-closable circle of why their prospects are treating them in the same way. For example, why their “command & control” production-line selling of pre-packed, price-effective “solutions” to the pre-conceived “problems” of their prospects, are only ever reaching a smaller and smaller percentage of the possible markets they could serve. And, only then, as part of some kind of cheap whore beauty parade - wearing £5-per-hour price tags round their necks (“plus 50% off if it’s really a quickie”) – and with no mention of whatever unmentionable diseases you might end up with as your real take-away! The worst of the “sellers” who are still being successful are, indeed, the “commodity” sellers of things like banking or telecoms services where their various, numerous and inevitably “nasty” (if not downright illegal) after-the-event-bear-traps, make us all part of some theoretically inexhaustible supply of muppets, to be mugged and abused until at least The Board and shareholders can retire, with their fortunes intact – so what do they care for ongoing business relationships? Cold-calling, to make appointments, to deliver an elevator pitch, to a BANT (Budget Authority Need Timing) qualified “buyer” are but mild symptoms of the B2B version of this B2C world-flu, in my opinion. But yes, all too “systemic” in so much of UK PLC business life, as you say Richard – just maybe not always quite so blatant or deliberate. The “World-is-Flat” (Thomas L Friedman) “connect & collaborate” buyers/sellers, on the other hand (no room for Great Walls in a Flat World – so let some light in for a bit of that “transparency” we all theoretically love), will continue to seek each other out, explore whatever fantastic opportunities the future might hold, agree they ways they can work together (including “how much?”, of course – but much more “for what – and why?”, beforehand), and leave the vultures to pick over the dinosaur bones left behind. And I agree therefore with the general view of you all that any “buyer” who does not know, or care, about the “for what – and why?” bit does not deserve that role – or at least the company that puts him/her in that position, with that brief/job spec, deserves to end up being matched with the comparable “sellers”. (E.g. Who decided your “Preferred Supplier List” folks, when, and why? And has anything “changed” since then?) continued…
	06/08/2010 11:43:43
topic: TACK buyers survey Mike Aitken Posts 1	I'm a great fan of Neil Rackham, and had the pleasure of meeting him and seeing him speak recently. He suggests that buyers are polarising into one of two types - transactional and consultative. A transactional buyer has already designed his "solution", knows what he wants, and he's aiming to get the right quality of product at the right price. And price is one of his number 1 buying criteria. A consultative buyer needs the seller's expertise in order to design, develop and deploy the solution. I've written a blog post about it, here: http://cchangeuk.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/commoditisation-the-nature-of-selling/ If you can spare a little more time than that, it's well worth checking out some of Neil Rackham's videos on Youtube.
	05/08/2010 10:09:15
topic: TACK buyers survey RichardNolan Posts 68	Interesting points you’re making and I’m sure the wiser buyers understand ‘you get what you pay for’, but for me it comes back to understanding the opportunity. If the buyer is only interested in price and not interested in ROI, or at least willing to invest some time understanding what you can do for their business, then what can you do? Do you blame the buyer/s, or do you try and find another way to get your point across? It’s difficult to generalise but if we’re winning more than losing then most people are happy with the status quo, but there’s still room for improvement. If we’re losing more than we’re winning then there’s plenty of room for improvement. For sure there are lessons to be learnt; what did the winning organisation do to actually win the account? Why did they win and we lost? If it was all about price, then did we really lose? I have to say I especially liked Jay’s point about the winning solution having to be re-engineered after the purchase, at additional cost. I thought this was only standard practice in government funded project s but worryingly this trend appears to be increasing with quite a number of B2B ‘market leaders’. What does this say about ethics, confidence and above all trust?
	04/08/2010 14:59:30
topic: TACK buyers survey Jay modern Posts 2	Yes, absolutely. but often the process is less than ideal for that approach to work in practice. Two example problems that I encounter often: 1. The buyer (in particular the procurement person) often doesn't understand the value brought by a particuar package, and focuses on price exclusively, and is often more influential than the Line of Business buyer, who is too scared to go out on a limb and say "This represents the best value", because if it doesn't work, it's their job on the line. 2. The procurement process is driven by silly timescales (again, set by procurement), which slip on the buyers side, leaving the seller to take up the slack, which inevitably results in less time to understand the clients needs, less quality response, and less time to convince the buyer of the value argument. There is a lot we can do as sellers, but there are also things that the buyer can do to improve procurement outcomes, and insisting that sellers "give their best price on the first quote", is NOT improving buyer-seller engagement or procurement outcomes in practice (in my experience). In summary, the point I should really have made is: In the TACK survey, the buyers' comments suggest to me that a) there are other things to focus on if the goal is to improve the value of the procurement to the buyer, and b) the focus suggested in the survey (which is in line with my experience), is actually COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE from the buyer's point of view. So we could just go in with our "best offer" at our "best price", but in practice that is nearly always impossible because buyers are often not available enough to have quality conversations, and are too precious about insisting "it's all in the RFP", so determining the "best solution" is almost always impossible to do before the deal is sealed. The result is that either the solution is sub-optimal, or it ends up being re-engineered after the purchasing decision has been made. Buyers need to understand that this drives the wrong behaviours in sellers: namely that they try to "win at any price, then clean up the s*!t afterwards". Conclusion: buyers' behaviour is directly or indirectly responsible for the seller behaviour they are complaining about.
	04/08/2010 11:58:48
topic: TACK buyers survey RichardNolan Posts 68	Surely it's all about fully understanding the opportunity, which includes your strengths and weaknesses, plus what to expect from your competitors (is the prospect influenced by price, what Louise is saying is that most are currently). If you truly understand these (and still want to win the sale), you should also be confident at which price to go in with.
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