Voss Graham

Your Knowledgeable Partner for Business Success and Achievement. Dedicated to helping others get to their next level of success. Award winning business advisor; coach to executives and business owners; Business Growth Strategist; and experienced using assessments for hiring & selection, evaluation of teams and improving communication. Voss is available as a Speaker for your conferences or company meetings contact him at 901-757-4434 or use the LinkedIn or Facebook direct messages.

How Are You Getting Hot Leads?

Had a dialogue with a client this week about where their new leads are coming from that lead to new business. The client kept using the term “referrals” as their major driver for new business.

Now on the surface this sounds great and exciting news – referrals are driving all their new business opportunities. Then the dialogue went deeper and the news was not as great.

It appears they were not doing anything to create or control the flow of “referrals.” They just happened to show up from “word of mouth” situations. Is this a real strategy for leads?

This issues happens to most sales people and especially to professional services groups. And, it is similar to the “instant gravitation” found syndrome which is a short term fix. Making matters worst is the continued reliance on this “false” strategy.

The truth is their are two types of “lead generation techniques” which appear to both be labeled as “referrals.” Actually, only one of the techniques is actually a referral.

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5 Tips for Sales Meeting the CEO.

Often Sales People ask me about meetings with a CEO or President and if there are specific differences relative to these meetings. And, the answer is a huge – yes, this is a different level of sales meetings.

Yet, b2b sales people continue to meet with the top level executives and immediately fall into feature spouting machines. Whenever this happens, the opportunity has crashed and burned and the only person who is unaware is the yakking sales person.

Really people, do you believe the CEO cares about the details or features of your product or service? The CEO is only concerned with improving results. It is really that simple.

So here are a Five Tips for Meeting with a CEO or President in a selling environment…

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Top B2B Sales Book – Must Read

We are off to a new year so I trust you have first done the following…

  • Reviewed Your Results from the Previous Year
  • Thought about Your Key Accounts and Their Current Direction of Revenue
  • Identified and Related Your Key Targets to Your Ideal Customer Profile
  • Set Some Exciting and Challenging Goals for the New Year

If you have done the above list with some time and energy, then you are ready to execute on achieving those goals.

However, if you are continuing down the road of doing your sales process the same way you have done it in the past – well, you may be in trouble. The Buying Landscape has changed. Have you noticed some of things you have used successfully in the past are not working as well or even at all?

Welcome to the new world of b2b selling.

The Buyer feels more in control and is using their new found power (occurred since the Great Recession) to control our efforts as successful b2b sales people.

So if you are sincere about taking back control of your b2b sales success, you need to take a moment and read an exciting new b2b sales book. Personally, it has changed my success since I began following the recommendations found in the book.

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Game Changing B2B Sales Book List

One of my most common questions from my clients involves “what sales books should I read?” or “Do you have a List of Recommended Sales Books?”

So today I’m sharing what I consider to the B2B Sales Books which are all considered “Game Changers.”

Okay, someone is probably asking “what makes these books Game Changers” which is a great qualifying question (Very good if you asked this question to yourself).

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5 Reasons Team Selling Fails

Team selling is still a hot topic in the world of B2B Sales. One of the most important reasons is higher performance due to larger account buyers feeling more confident in the selling company.

The bigger the company you are selling, the more important it becomes to be seen as the “safe choice” or “low risk” provider. These big companies have a track record of firing people who make mistakes – either immediately for impact or during the next round of cost cutting.

Therefore, team selling allows your company to be seen as stable and having multiple “faces” in contact with them. Throw in an extra variable such as a complexity relative to what you are selling, and team selling becomes a necessity.

While many organizations are very successful with Team Selling, there are a larger number failing at the Team Selling effort. Why do Teams fail in the world of selling? Here are the five common reasons for Team Selling Failure…

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B2B Selling has Changed – Have You?

I don’t know if you have noticed a major change in selling, yet, I started to notice some major changes in the B2B Selling World during the past four years. And, yes, the Great Recession has a major role in the changing dynamic of our world of selling.

First, let’s look at some of the trends started during the past four to five years.

  • Consolidation of Industries and Niche Industries
  • Customers demand lower costs
  • Product Knowledge is known by our customers & prospects
  • Old techniques and tactics are basically useless
  • Real Decision Makers have disappeared from the Sales Process

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How Discover the Information You Need

Since I am a total proponent for the Questioning Model in Sales, how do you use this model to learn the Information you need to successfully make the B2B sales?

Obviously, you use questions during your discovery process as you want the prospect or customer doing most of the talking. Their answering questions allows you to learn about what is going on within their organization.

Note: even the very best b2b sales superstar is NOT an insider for the prospect or customer company. While it is important to have a coach or champion who wants you to win the account, not all the time will you have this person in place. And, sometimes (this has definitely happened to me) your inside champion leaves or is promoted away from your target area.

Now what do you do?

You plan your questions carefully to uncover the answers to several important pieces of information.

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Improve Your Trade Show Results

I was having a long dialogue with several clients during the past two weeks and the subject of Trade Shows came up. Seems there is concern over the return on investment with participating in trade shows.

So I did a little research to check out what the experts were saying about Trade Shows and got some interesting information.

So, first, trade shows are still considered a valuable investment due to three factors…

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The Single Best Question to Ask in Selling

Recently I have seen an increase of the number of requests for “the single best question to ask a customer or prospect” when engaged in b2b selling.

Truthfully, I really do not believe there is one single question that covers everything as sales situations will vary in circumstances.

Yet, there is one question that I always have ready to use with any customer or prospect I’m calling on. Sometimes I refer to this question as the million dollar sales question since it has the ability to open the door of an objective conversation with the customer or prospect.

The question to use is…

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