SalesTag:

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Marketing & Sales, News & Trends
Leave a comment

Free Photo Guides from PhotoShelter

Guide to growing a wedding photography businessPhotoShelter, which provides portfolio websites and sales and marketing tools for photographers offers a range of free educational guides at its site. The latest is How to Grow a Wedding Photography Business, which offers tactics and strategies for brand building and marketing to and attracting new clients.

PhotoShelters e-book library of free downloadable guides includes:

For more information about PhotoShelter, go to www.photoshelter.com.

Posted on by Pete Petersen Posted in Marketing & Sales
Leave a comment

Make up Your Mind and Improve Your Sales Techniques, Part 2

In the introductory article of this five-part series, I introduced a sales motivation piece I uncovered years ago entitled Make Up Your Mind and the positive impact it’s had on me as a sales professional. I elaborated on the importance of being sold on yourself, your company and your products as a foundation for sales success. I also covered how critical it is to focus on the needs of your customers versus any compensation you might receive from them for doing business with you.

Effective time management techniquesIn this installment I want to cover the importance of efficient time management and knowing what your time is worth. These points, which are the third and fourth points in the Make Up Your Mind essay, are the next key building blocks you need to put in place as you work to join the elite corps of sales professionals.

3. That time is money and that learning to manage your time productively will be one of your most profitable achievements.

Many salespeople make the fatal error of mistaking activity for productivity. Even worse, they go through their entire career believing this illusion.

Let’s look at two salespeople we’ll call Jim and Joe. Jim wonders, “I’m just as busy as Joe is, but I don’t understand why Joe makes more sales, earns more money and has more satisfied customers than I do.” While both make a to-do list each day, Jim doesn’t prioritize his list and is constantly distracted by what he thinks are burning fires or “deal-with-it-now” emergencies. Jim is reactive, rather than proactive. He has what I’ve come to call Sales A.D.D. He lacks focus, organization and flexible efficiency.

Jim does more than just make a to-do list. Jim creates a daily plan that accounts for possible emergencies. His plan allows for flexibility when prioritizing daily selling            activities, but inflexibility on commitments he’s made to his customers. Jim manages his day rather than being managed by his day. Big difference.

4. To believe in the law of averages and the wisdom of knowing the dollar value of each of your primary activities.

What is meant by “the law of averages?” LexJet co-founder Art Lambert told me many years ago that sales isn’t complex math; it’s simple arithmetic. You start with the never-ending task of prospecting for new business. How many prospecting calls will I make today? Write it down.

Next, keep a record of how many no responses it takes to get a yes response. Write it down. Now, measure how many yes responses it takes to hit your assigned quota, or even better your personal stretch selling goals. Write it down.

Finally, adjust your prospecting call volume on a regular basis to get the number of yes responses you need. Pretty simple, huh? It’s the managing of your time, focus          and attention to constantly changing priorities that separates the average from the top sales performers.

Make your daily task list. Prioritize that list according to must dos, need to-do’s, and if I can get to it, do’s. Plan for possible emergencies in your timeline and re-evaluate your list after each task is completed.

Remember that anything having to do with satisfying customers and keeping commitments always come first. If necessary, that cigarette, water cooler conversation, or picking up your dry cleaning can wait. If you put your customers first, it’s a pretty good bet that they will do the same for you.

In part three of this series, I’ll cover the importance of working smart versus working hard and the benefits it will deliver in sales results. I’ll also share ways to make each customer encounter a win for your customer and for you.

Until next time…

Posted on by Pete Petersen Posted in Marketing & Sales
Leave a comment

Make up Your Mind and Improve Your Sales Techniques

I’m a big reader. I was fortunate enough to have worked for a company early in my career that put me through a rapid reading course. Their one-time investment in me has paid life-long dividends for my career. I’m able to read and digest large amounts of information efficiently. Why tell you this? Because I’ve used the training I received to find and read a ton of excellent articles on how to be a sales professional and not just a salesperson.

Sales techniques for sales professionalsOne brief, yet impactful piece I’ve come across during my 32 years in sales and sales management is entitled Make Up Your Mind. I’ve never been able to identify the author of this little gem, but following the simple advice it provides transformed me in several important and valuable ways.

The benefits it has given to me pale in comparison to the resulting value it has delivered to my customers. You’ll find the piece below. Over the next five weeks I will highlight and expand on two bullet points contained in the article per week. I hope it will be as beneficial and inspirational to you as it has to me…

MAKE UP YOUR MIND
Your power to persuade others originates from your philosophies and beliefs. Your selling philosophies determine the attitudes you develop and the habits you form. The principles of selling and living that you adhere to will move you up to join the successful people who get to the top and stay there. MAKE UP YOUR MIND to live by these principles…

  • That you are your most important customer. You must be sold on your job, your products and your ability to perform.
  • That your product and service, properly sold, is of considerably more value to your buyer than any commissions you can possible earn.
  • That time is money and that learning to manage your time productively will be one of your most profitable achievements.
  • To believe in the law of averages and the wisdom of knowing the dollar value of each of your primary activities.
  • That honest, intelligent effort is always rewarded.
  • That it is to always be a “win-win” encounter.
  • That the power of your sales presentation will always lie in its simplicity.
  • That the purchase must be “helped along” and is more often made because you guide the prospect’s behavior in an effective, organized manner.
  • That people buy today, not nearly so much because they understand your product thoroughly, but because they feel and believe that you understand them, their problems and the things they want to accomplish.
  • That almost all development is, in fact, self-development and that personal growth is the product of practice, observation and self-correction.

Let’s take a closer look at the first two important points…

1. You are your most important customer. You must be sold on your job, your products and your ability to perform.

This is the alpha and the omega. The lesson I learned is my success begins and ends with me. I must believe. Customers can sense insincerity, dishonesty and a lack of confidence from a mile away. They can also pick up on enthusiasm, integrity and self-confidence in very positive ways.

Have you ever lost a sale when you seemingly had the “best” solution and proposal? You may never find out why and the customer may not consciously   know why either. When asked they may say, “I just didn’t have a good feeling about that company.”

Since you are the face of your company to the customer, that means they didn’t have a good feeling about you. Think of it this way: You can’t take credit for a big sale and then blame a big loss on something else. The key word in the point above is sold. It only stands to reason that before you can sell, you must be sold.

The best way for you to believe that you’re a sales professional who delivers measurable value to your customers is to invest in yourself. Invest time to know more about your customers’ needs than anyone else. Invest time building on your business education. Invest time in researching your competitors, their products and how your solutions outperform theirs.

Investing in you translates into confidence in yourself. These investments will pay huge returns in your career over the long-term. Hard work equals seamless confidence. Do it for you and your customers.

2. That your product and service, properly sold, is of considerably more value to your buyer than any commissions you can possible earn.

A famous line from Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler croons, “You never count your money when you’re sittin at the table, there’ll be time enough for countin’, when the dealin’s done.”

If you’re thinking about you, you’re not thinking about your customer. This is another one of those things customers feel without anything being said directly. Our personal income goals are not our customers’ business goals.

Your customer pays for you to solve their problems, not yours. This is really a state of mind issue for us sales professionals. Focusing on the customer and genuinely caring about their satisfaction will result not only in financial rewards for us, but also in job satisfaction. You can’t buy that!

You can’t pay yourself a dime, but your customers can reward you handsomely. Sure, they will reward you by buying from you. But by caring about them and solving their problems, they will recommend you to other potential customers. You can’t buy that either!

What is meant by “properly sold?” I’ve found that this means the customer gets a lot more than just the products they purchase from you. They get an expert who understands their business goals and can represent those goals within their organization. They get an advocate who communicates to manufacturers/suppliers on their behalf.

They get a problem-solver who knows where to go and what to do to get things done without passing the buck. They get a pro that learns to anticipate their needs and solve problems they don’t even have yet. Don’t just deliver for your customers… over-deliver.

Commit completely to what you do, accept nothing less than your absolute best when you do it and do it for your customers, not yourself. This will lay a firm foundation for being a respected sales professional instead of just another salesperson.

Until next time…

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles, Marketing & Sales, Technology & Products
Leave a comment

More than a Sample: LexJet Sales & Applications Guides in the Real World

 

The initial results are in from LexJet customers who picked up the new LexJet Large Format Graphics Sales & Application Guides – one geared toward aqueous printers and the other toward solvent, low-solvent, UV-curable and latex printers (SUV) – and the Guides are performing as designed and beyond expectations.

Sales and application guides for large format inkjet printing“I’m really drooling over this Application Guide. As my rep, Jason Dragash, was describing it over the phone, it pales in comparison to actually seeing it in front of you,” says Les Blevins, owner of Palette Arts, a fine art and photographic reproduction company in Nipomo, Calif. “Just seeing what my options are for media opens up new doors for me, so I’m really excited about it, especially since I got a new Canon iPF8300 from LexJet. It blows my old printers away with the color spectrum. With the six-color printers I was using I would get up against the fence and pretty much stay there because their color gamut was limited. But when you add a true color wheel of red, green and blue, a couple of grays and another black to the mix, I’ve climbed over the fence with the Canon and I’m in pastures I’ve never been in before.”

Blevins says the Application Guide is more than a simple sample book, but a true sales and production tool. It’s simple, in-depth and provides a professional presentation so his clients are given real freedom of choice, he says. Moreover, the key component, at least for Blevins since the majority of his work is art and photo reproduction, is consistency.

“I’ve seen a lot of other sample books and they use different images for each paper. On the other hand, LexJet’s Application Guide uses one image and shows it across all the media offered, which shows me where the color may change and what it will look like across the different media, so that was a really smart move,” explains Blevins. “I can actually hold the Sunset Fibre Satin, for example, look at that image and go forward to the Sunset Velvet Rag and see the real differences between the two. I can see that the Sunset Velvet Rag is actually brighter and more contrasted than the Satin. It allows me to do a direct comparison because I now know as a printer that I’ll see the same differences using the same image on different media. Ultimately, it lets me and my clients gauge what kind of effect we want and choose the paper based on that, which is why I really like the guide.”

The Sales & Applications Guides are $89 and include sheets of banner materials, display films, vinyl media, fine art and photo papers, wall coverings, complete trade show and point of purchase solutions, and various laminates.

Each product includes a brief description, as well as features, applications and technical details. One half of the media is printed and the other is blank so customers can see how colors reproduce on each material and the texture, surface properties and base color of the material before it’s printed.

Supplies are limited, so to purchase a LexJet Sales & Application Guide (Aqueous and SUV), contact a LexJet account specialist at 800-453-9538 or you can order them on the Web at the links above. Like all LexJet products, the Large Format Graphics Sales & Application Guides come with a 30-Day Money Back Guarantee, $9.99 flat rate shipping anywhere in the U.S. and Canada and fast delivery from one of LexJet’s 15 nationwide distribution centers.

Posted on by Pete Petersen Posted in Marketing & Sales
Leave a comment

Selling Beyond Price

Your price is too high. These are five words that can strike fear into the heart of many salespeople. Yet it’s a known fact that the lowest-priced quote most often doesn’t win the business and that low pricing doesn’t keep the customer long-term. Why?

How to portray value to your customersWhat are the key differentiating factors you must be able to communicate to your prospective customer? How do you deliver this message so the customer will fully understand your added value? Let’s take a closer look at this important issue and how to win the business and keep it, not buy it and lose it.

Price, Cost, Value
You’d be surprised how many salespeople believe these three terms mean the same thing. They don’t. Let’s take a moment to look at the actual definition of these important words in the world of sales…

Price: The sum or amount of money or its equivalent for which anything is bought, sold or offered for sale. What did I pay to obtain the requested product or service?

Cost: The total expense incurred from owning or using a purchased item or service. What is the expense incurred by your customer for this product or service over its lifetime of use?

Value: A product or service’s relative worth, merit or importance when evaluated as a return on total investment. Were the amounts paid to acquire, own/use and retire a product or service exceeded by its performance toward the desired result? Did I get what or more than I expected?

Price and cost evaluations are based completely on the objective measurement of how much. Value evaluations are based on a complex combination of objective and subjective measurements that are unique to each customer. Price and cost are simple arithmetic.

Value is more like complex mathematics involving wants, needs and satisfaction. Customers will tell you that price/cost are all that matter, but they will leave you for failure to deliver them a good value as they perceive it.

What Determines Value?
Before we approach this topic it’s critical to remember who determines whether or not your product/service delivers value. That person is the customer. Period. It doesn’t matter what we think our value may be. It only matters if the customer believes it’s valuable to them.

Therefore, it stands to reason that the only way to know a customer’s perception of value is to learn it from them. You’ll need to dig and dig deep if you want to build a competitive advantage for your company. Here are some sample questions that will help you understand how and where to dig…

Know Your Customers
What level of commitment and performance do they promise to their customers?

What makes them different/superior to their competition?

Who is their customer and what are they trying to communicate with their graphics? Value is a downstream process. If you want to make your customer delighted with you, you need to make their customer delighted with them.

Who did you use for your last project? There are a host of reasons this question is important and why you must be completely prepared to address their responses. You’ll need to know your competition inside and out.

Know Your Competition
What do they sell to their customers versus what they actually deliver?

Do you have any former customers of theirs who now do business with you?

What was their experience and why did they switch? Are they willing to say so?

What did you like/dislike about their performance as a partner in profit?

Did they do the job right the first time?

Did they deliver on time and on budget?

Did they guarantee their work?

Were they flexible in meeting any changes to the project?

These questions are only but a few examples of those you should ask, but you can see how the more you know about your competitor’s ship the better you know where to aim your torpedo.

Know Your Company
The questions about your competition should also be asked about your own company. From there you will need to be able to communicate what makes your company stand out and provide examples to prove it… Experience with similar projects, your firm’s unique attention to detail, any satisfaction guarantees you provide, how your company’s commitment to them mirrors their commitment to their customers, and your professional assistance and expertise are important elements to include when helping them understand your value proposition.

Your goal is to be a valued partner they can rely on, not just a one-and-done supplier. What you know and what you say mean nothing if you don’t make it happen. You can’t just make the sale and then punt. Be active. Stay engaged in the project from start to finish. Over communicate. Solve problems. Be a key part of the difference between the price your customer pays and the value they receive. It doesn’t cost anything and it pays over and over again for you and your customer. 

Posted on by Pete Petersen Posted in Marketing & Sales
Leave a comment

The Art of the Serendipity Sales Pitch

Serendipity is defined as good fortune, luck, or an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. I prefer the Serendipity Pitch over the traditional Elevator Pitch.

If you’re in sales, you know the drill. A hard to reach customer just happens to get on an elevator with you. You both get on at the bottom floor and are headed to the top. It will give you a precious minute of uninterrupted one-on-one time with this impossible to reach customer. The clock’s ticking. What do you say that gets you the appointment, or better yet, a sale right on the spot?

In many ways, I’m old school when it comes to what you need in your sales tool box. Skills like active listening, strong questioning techniques and efficient time management are timeless. Perhaps the most important of these fundamental skills is preparation. Being prepared frees up the mind. It allows us to process information we are getting from a customer, without having to think about facts we should already know.

You’d think these key skills would be a must for today’s sales pros. Think again. In today’s selling environment, technology is making many salespeople lazy. Email and texts have served to erode the quality of writing skills. Smart phones and tablets flood us with data, but do very little to convert that information into knowledge. Attention to detail and well-honed skills are a mark of the 20 percent of salespeople who are doing 80 percent of the business.

Point of View
When creating your Serendipity Pitch, it’s very important to think like the other person in the conversation. While the traditional version of this scenario focuses on you speaking with a hard to reach customer, what if the person receiving the information isn’t a customer?

Imagine you’re attending a dinner party and one of the folks at the party (a lawyer) asks you, “So what do you do?” Obviously, the information you provide to the lawyer will be different than the information you deliver to the potential customer. Both are important. While the lawyer may not be a potential customer – though you never know; he may need courtroom graphics at some point – ultimately, he may know someone who would benefit from your product or service.

A well crafted Serendipity Pitch provides the lawyer all the information they may need to positively present you to their friend. It’s because of this fact that I always create two versions of my pitch. I create one for someone who fundamentaly understands the products I offer, and one for someone who doesn’t.

Get to the Verb
I love this phrase! This one comes from LexJet’s founder, Art Lambert, who’s a very successful sales executive and entreprenuer. I believe his phrase sums up the mind of the customer perfectly. Customers are busy, so get to the point.

What does he mean by the verb? It means you need to give the customer a reason to listen to you… now. Who are you? What do you want from me? Why should I invest my time listening to you? How does what you propose/offer benefit my business? How much will I save with your solution? When may I expect these savings to my bottom line? When speaking to our proverbial lawyer you want to convert his casual and polite inquiry into genuine interest.

Ditch the Pitch
When making their pitch, most people rattle off a list of their responsibilities or the products and services their company provides, kind of like Bubba Blue in Forrest Gump: “There’s shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pinapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That… That’s about it.”

Like Bubba, our tendency is to say everything we do because we do so much. There’s certainly value in everything you do, but here’s what happens… The more information you provide, the less memorable you become, unless you’re Bubba Blue.

So, the perfect pitch is not a pitch at all; it’s really conversational messaging. It’s relaxed, fairly informal and, most importantly, it boils everything you do down to its essense. Moreover, it communicates the value of what you do in practical terms to the person with whom you’re speaking.

Ask for the Order
Don’t waste your minute with meaningless chatter. Get to the point, be confident and be direct about what you want. It communicates to the customer you value his time, you know your stuff and Key sales pitch bullet pointsyou believe in what you’re selling. Regarding the lawyer, ask if he knows of anyone who might benefit from your solution.

I’ve included a graphic in this post that helps us focus on the key elements of our pitch. It’s called the Relationship Revolver and it includes the six “bullets” we want to communicate during our conversation.

Briefly, these are the descriptions of the bullet points:

  • We sell products
  • We help customers
  • We build relationships
  • We create value
  • We share knowledge
  • We invest to continuously expand our capability to serve you

I started this post with the defintion of serendipity and that I prefer it over the term elevator. Now I’ll tell you why… Invest time learning about your customer. Be well prepared. Be confident. Practice until it feels natural. When you’ve done these things, the customer lucky enough to have stepped onto that elevator will be the one experiencing serendipity.

Have fun, make money…