Month: November 2011

Are You Planning Every Customer or Prospect Contact?

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One thing I noticed with high tech world we live in – few people actually plan their customer or prospect contacts. Winging it is ruling the day due to the instant or urgency tendencies of text messages and emails.

GEEZ! Winging it is a bad thing. It does not work with b2b sales presentations and it definitively does not work with phone calls, texts and emails. Okay, you Xer’s are laughing too hard about the email comment. Old Boomers enjoy calling the most, emailing next and texting is new to us.

Okay, some of you are possibly wondering why should you be planning your contacts. Look if you are planning your face to face calls, it is not very different. With the exception of being even more strategic with your phone calls, emails and texts.

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The Lost Art of Qualifying a Prospect

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One of the most interesting challenges I encounter with b2b sales people is the Art of Qualifying a Prospect. It does not seem to matter if the b2b sales person is a newbie or an old pro, there seems to be a disconnect with qualifying a prospect.

The key factor is many b2b sales people losing this skill or art if you may – is due to their sales managers telling them that everyone is a customer. They just need to overcome all their objections and they will buy and become customers.

Interesting scenario if you believe the above statement is true.

Actually, this out dated belief comes from the Traditional Presentation Model of Selling since it is all about telling the prospect or customer what they need. Again, you need to unlearn old habits or old training tactics that are causing you more harm than good in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace.

To stand out from the thundering herd of b2b sales people who are calling on your prospects and customers using the same old school sales tactics, you need to revisit the Art of Qualifying a Prospect.

There are several factors or elements to consider while evaluating your prospects and customers.

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Five Reasons to Use the Questioning Model of b2b Selling

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Just reviewing several notes on effective selling and realized a few sales people keep asking me the same question…

Why Should I Use the Questioning Model of b2b Selling over the Traditional Presentation Model?

Therefore, I decided to point out five specific reasons to use the Questioning Model for b2b Sales. Here are the five reasons for using the Questioning Model for b2b Sales…

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How Emotion Wins and Loses Your B2B Sales

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Got to thinking about the role of emotion in our b2b sales world. Interestingly, emotion can be helping us win accounts or it can be driving a wedge between us and the decision makers. This is the classic case of a dilemma.

Okay, so we all know that all decisions are 100% emotional and we need to engage the emotional side of the decision makers brain. That is correct and this is an example of the positive side of using emotions in the b2b sales process.

So how can emotion be a problem for our b2b sales success?

Simply when we get too emotional in our sales process.

There are several ways this occurs, so let me review the negative side of emotion relative to our sales success.

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Changes for B2B Sales People to Consider

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Well, I’ve been “a-wall” for a few weeks doing the things I’m supposed to do – sell, market and find new things to share with you. So here goes…

First, have you noticed a severe disconnect with most buyers and decision makers lately? It seems to have started around five or six years ago and gained speed since the recession started in 2008.

Second, have you noticed how fast customers and prospects respond to any discussion You start about your products or services. This seems to be the most challenging issue for many sales people (including myself from time to time.). There appears to be Five Factors contributing to this issue for sales people…

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