Qualifying Potential Clients or Customers

In order to increase sales results and ultimately reach their business goals, sales professionals must qualify potential clients or customers. One of the things that separate salespeople with high achievement from those without is that everyone is a “suspect” until you qualify. Only then do they turn into a “prospect”.

Qualifying is different than prejudging someone as not being a buyer because of the way they look or speak. To qualify as a prospect, look for key elements:

• The party must have a need for your services or products
• They must have the means and the desire to purchase what you are selling
• They must be able and willing to pay for it
• They must have the authority or ability to make the buying decision

If these factors don’t exist, the people you are talking to are only suspects.

There are suspects who at a later time may become real prospects. This happens when you find out they can’t commit to a deal before the next quarter or fiscal year. So during qualification, you need to know if the timing of their purchase is important, too.

Time is money to a salesperson. You need to qualify your leads so that suspects do not devour your time and then leave you hanging. They will ask for more and more information without ever actually committing to a deal.

If, after reviewing your business strategy and the key elements of qualifying, you believe the chances are low that the prospect is going to pan out, you need to move on. Too many underachieving salespeople hold on for too long to the belief that the prospect can be convinced to buy what they want to sell.

The time and energy (and sometimes financial resources) you devote to selling to an unqualified suspect is time you could be spending with a real prospect.

How do you recognize that you are nursing the false expectation of new business from too many suspects? Signs include a longer selling cycle and a low conversion rate — the number of prospects that actually turn into customers, compared to others in your sales organization.

If you do your job well in qualifying prospects, you’ve already addressed some of the excuses and obstacles that prospective customers commonly use to put off salespeople and you will not be wasting the time on suspects that you could be spending with prospects. Once you’ve qualified a party as a prospect, you focus your time and energy to make the sale happen knowing the chances are real.

Meeting Your Obligations

Last week, we discussed the traits of a visionary leader and the importance of being an effective leader in order to guide your company and its employees to where you want the company to go. During tough economic times like these, being a leader can mean making difficult decisions, taking different approaches or adjusting your business strategy in order to protect the well being of your company. TAB San Antonio business coach recently published a blog discussing a small business owner having to make a very difficult decision in order to meet his leadership obligations:

I spent some time this week with a client who was implementing his first-ever layoff. He has been in business for over 17 years and has become very close with many of his employees. Some were friends before they were hired. Others have become friends over the years of working together.

When the term "layoff" is heard, 99 percent of the world thinks about the impact on the downsized employee. That's understandable, but I think about the other one percent, the entrepreneurs who feel like their employees are family and that they are failing in their obligation to them.

Small business owners are generally a self-abusive bunch. They frequently work longer hours than any of their employees (especially Tweeners- see 3/22). They almost never compensate themselves sufficiently for their investment or risk in the company and usually take the first hit when cash flow is tight. Yet they frequently feel an obligation to sacrifice their own welfare in a futile attempt to save employees for whom they simply don't have enough work for.

As a business owner, you have an obligation to all of your employees. The long-term well being of your company and their livelihood depends on your commitment to keeping the business healthy and profitable. Like the captain of a ship, or a physician in a MASH unit, the burden of leadership sometimes entails making tough decisions.

Read more…

Do You Know Your Customers?

If you pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV, chances are you’re bombarded with news about diminishing sales and companies coming up with ads, sales and incentives to draw in customers and increase revenue. Is this the right approach in an effort to achieve business success? A couple of months ago, we posted a blog about the importance of using emotion with your messages to draw in your customers and increase sales.

A recent blog posting by Harvard Business reinforces the importance of understanding your customers’ emotions during these tough economic times to know how they’ll react and how this will affect their spending—in turn, affecting your bottom line. Read the article for timely business advice on how to market in a down economy.

Are You a Visionary Leader?

Given the current business climate, the concept of visionary leadership plays an integral part in the business strategy of every organization. The news of the suffering economy, layoffs, hiring freezes and budget cuts has taken its toll on workers—and possibly more concerning, on the leaders of companies.

As the leader of your organization, think about your own leadership style and the possibility of taking a new approach. It’s a crazy time. So, to achieve your vision, you may have to alter your strategies and change your tactics, which to be honest, just might be necessary.

Visionary leaders possess many traits, including:

• The unique ability to see exactly where they want to go. Plus, being emotionally connected to where they want to be.
• The ability to help people around them see the same vision with distinct clarity—as well as evoke an emotional connection to the organization’s goals. The key here is for them to understand what the benefits are to them—job security, monetary rewards, public recognition or better lifestyle at the organization.
• Being open to learning at all times. Visionary leaders realize they cannot pick and choose where and when learning will occur. Plus, they are open to learning from everyone on the organizational chart.
• Promoting and supporting creative thinking, risk taking and out-of-the-box initiatives. They do this knowing they could fail but that it’s important for business improvement. Visionary leaders understand that if they do fail—and the mistakes are not repeated—it is a great learning opportunity.
• Being extraordinarily conscious of giving credit to the individuals on their team. And, if something fails, visionary leaders take responsibility rather than pointing fingers.
  If you’re able to achieve all or even just a portion of these traits, you’re well on your way to being a visionary leader. Force yourself, your executives and your team to ask themselves the following question to help achieve business success, “Where are we going, how are you helping us get there and what are your rewards when we get to the other side?”
  

How Improving Your Sales Culture Can Improve Your Business Performance

Would you like to increase sales? Stand above your competition? Adjust your business goals? Do you feel like you have the right sales team in place to help your business performance? TAB-business coach, Joe Zente, recently discussed how YOU can make the difference to improve your sales culture—ultimately improving your bottom line:

“If your company is like many today, you may be experiencing the perfect storm of a shrinking market, shrinking margins and greater competition. You may also be trying to deal with this storm without a surplus of available cash, or under conditions of tight credit.

Many business owners are frustrated with the lack of new business and the fact that few, if any, of their people relish the role of obtaining it. Some currently have people in a selling role, but the results are sub-par. They feel they are being held hostage by mediocre salespeople who may have valuable information or relationships.

The answer to these seemingly perplexing situations is YOU. By virtue of a simple choice, you possess much more power than you might think to dramatically upgrade your Sales Team and grow now. Upgrading to a true Sales Culture will not only affect your top line revenue, but can also improve your margins and net profit. If you decide to go for it, here are simple steps that will be required:

1. Acknowledge the Brutal Facts: If you want to upgrade to a powerful Sales Culture and reap the rewards that doing so will bring, it is vital to realize that the very people you would like to change have chosen to behave in the way are currently behaving. They act the way they do for one reason–because they want to. So despite your strongest desires, they probably will not choose to do what you would like them to do – Hunt and Close.
2. Needle in a Haystack: Hunters and Closers represent a microscopic portion of the “salesperson population. In fact, only a very small percentage of people are really suitable for taking on any part of a sales or business development role.
3. Use Effective Tools and Processes: You must be able to identify that small percentage of people. This isn’t hard to do if you use the right types of business assessment tools and processes.”

Read more…

Meetings: Are They Hurting or Helping Your Company?

Do you feel like your work days are often spent sitting in a meeting rather than accomplishing tasks on your to-do list? Do you feel like you don’t have time to dive into a project because you only have 15 or 30 minutes in between meetings to focus on it? Do you feel like your meetings move your company forward to achieve business success or helps with your strategic plan?

Check out marketing expert, Seth Godin’s recent blog post discussing ways to solve your meeting problem, save time and accomplish more. Read the article.

Small Business Advice: What’s Your Stimulus Plan?

From TAB business coach, Marcy Turkington:

With all the discussion surrounding TARP, TARP2 and how to get the economy back on track, business owners are presented with a great opportunity in thinking about what they can do to stimulate their business’s economic position. What’s working (literally), what’s not, and what has the potential to generate the greatest returns – in other words, what’s your stimulus plan for business improvement?

As the saying goes “Necessity is the mother of invention”. Tough times invariably create new opportunity by encouraging businesses to take a hard look at current offerings, operations and approaches.

Historically, many businesses become stronger during downturns not due to competitor failure, but [instead] due to prioritizing the changes needed to adapt to the new environment, assessing where changes are needed and where resources should be refocused and then implementing these changes. To use this technique in your company, consider the following:

1. Ask your employees, if they owned the company and had only $1,000 to spend where would it go? $10,000? What if they had to cut a comparable amount? Their answers may surprise you.
2. Complete this sentence – “Our customers give us money because”: [and] then make sure you continue investing in that level of service, increasing efforts there where possible.
3. Spend time and money resources where you can get the greatest return – marketing and training are excellent investments during these times.
4. Talk to your customers – what are their pains during these times? How can you better serve them to help with their business goals?
5. Look to partnering with others who provide offerings to the same customer demographics that you do. There is strength in numbers.
6. Evaluate current partnerships and alliances – are you getting a good return on your investment in time and relationship and is it equitable?
7. Consider acquiring competitor(s).
8. Look at your current customer base. Are there any markets or groups of customers you should consider no longer serving? Are there new markets you can provide offerings to?

As with any stimulus plan, your stakeholders (customers, partners, suppliers and employees) must be supportive of changes to your business strategy, so take care to have an outside focus on changes you will implement. Down times are an opportune time to revisit how, what and where you’ll invest your resources – not only your capital and equipment, but your employees, your competencies, your time and your focus. Consider your economic stimulus plan as you move into 2009 and watch your company out-pace the competition.

What are you struggling with in this economic uncertainty? Send us your challenges or post them here so we can discuss.