8 Ideas For Sweeter Sales.

Forest Gump said it best: ‘Life’s like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.’ Sales results often share the same fate. Here are a few ideas that might help you chose the best chocolates!

• A big part of any sales function is continuous and rapid prospect qualification. The key measurement is whether or not they are going to buy. This differs from what they want to do, as compared to what they can do.
• Focus on what you have to offer, and not just what you are selling.
• Continually expand your product applications to new markets and/or customers. This minimizes your reliance on fragile markets or domineering customers.
• Focus your creative energies on strategies that promote consistent wins. By doing so, you will lessen your natural tendency to fall back on the blasé behaviors that just can’t produce the long-term consistency you need.
• If your pipeline seems to be managing you, then manage your prospects much earlier in the sales cycle. Two aspects of managing prospects are rating them as a company and the value of their opportunities. If either doesn’t fit your business, move on.
• Once you have your customer’s attention, keep it focused only on them.
• Simple selling techniques work. If nothing else, try something simple to improve, innovate and demonstrate your product.
• Promote customer satisfaction, but sell loyalty. Loyalty is the reason customers want to buy from you.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner

Nobody said CRM is sweet but here are a few ideas to keep your sales process on track:

• Qualification: Set out predefined Rating and Profile descriptions for your Account and Contacts. How well  each fits the ideal target can speed up this all important sales step.
• Customer Retention/Loyalty Process: Don’t leave retention and loyalty programs to chance. MosaicCRM offers ‘Marvel’ a unique system of multiple contact processes that keep your organization in front of customers.
• Daily Activity Manager: This eloquent system makes daily activities a breeze so sales staff can concentrate their energy and time on selling.
  
• Deal Nurturing: Nothing is dropped or forgotten with PipelinePro methodology and alerts systems.
  

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Written by
Bill Noonan, Founder & CEO, MosaicCRM

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Pre-CRM Planning Tips for SMB’s

I’ve put together this slide presentation that covers a number of key elements that can help in your CRM Plan or Re-Start program.  Some of the topics include Beware of ‘Quick and Easy’ CRM promotions, The Human Factors, Competition Applications, Abilities, Resources and Sales Process Design, Budgeting and more.
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“If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” Patton

Motivating your customer to buy the world’s best doodad requires some different thinking in this economy. Understanding what a client really thinks can help. Having good answers helps even more! Automating the thinking task.. not possible but CRM can help you think better!

1. What type of capital investment is required?
Client: Our new budgets have stopped everything. Who is going to cut what to do this project?

2. What’s the ROI on the world’s greatest doodad?
Client: The ROI has to pencil out to ‘immediate’ if we are to do anything new or even think to replace anything we already have.

3. How is your doodad going to improve on my current way of doing things?
Client: We need to be assured that it works, everything we do goes under a microscope.

4. How can your new doodad not add to my costs?
Client: Somehow these wonder cures always end up costing more. We really can’t add anything to the budget.

5. How can you and your doodad help in an immediate way?
Client: Time is money and that means I need tangible results today.

6. Is your doodad going to take more time and distract my staff?
Client: Training, implementation, added costs and changing the status quo are big distractions we don’t need.

7. How much money is it going to save me?
Client: What specific examples can you show? Fluff isn’t going to cut it this year.

8. What happens when we have problems?
Client: We cut support personnel to the bone. When we have a problem is it going to take us weeks to hunt you guys down?

9. What will happen if we don’t do anything?
Client: We’ve been doing this way for years so why all the urgency now? Heck, our level of performance is understandable in this economy.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner

• Add topical fields to your CRM program that include the top buying issues facing your clients.  For example, Opportunity/Drawbacks/Challenges can be simple fields with drop down menus to aid in speedily adding the info and tracking changes throughout the sales cycle
• Add a new technique ‘Opportunity Rating’ unlike Probability weight the importance of each issue to Rate the Opportunity against a specific Pass-Fail number
  
• Decision delays? MosaicCRM offers a ‘Deal Nurturing Strategy’ to your Opportunity mix: use a prescribed contact schedule and script to keep value and timely contact with decision makers

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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The numbers game is dead. Long live strategic ratios.

The business climate in 2011 is projected to be brutal with less money, tighter budgets, fewer sales people and scarcer customers. In spite of this many companies will thrive. How? By changing the way they view prospects and the selling process.

Method 1: High Volume Low Results

The traditional approach to sales activity has been volume gets results. In other words, given enough volume, anyone can reach the desired results. The approach to the high volume is often too costly or too many factors skew the results. Take for example, simply adding more telemarketers to make more calls. If they are poor quality personnel with low skill levels, two things occur: The number of calls goes way, way up. The quality of the prospect goes way, way down.

A point of diminishing return becomes apparent.  Processing tons of prospects doesn’t guarantee more sales. Worse, numbers game activities can eat up valuable runway space and results in closed opportunities that carry a terrible, even unaffordable, price. It’s no longer sufficient to say any organization can sell (or manage) to the tune of just numbers.

Method 2: Regulated Volume – Strategic Results

The key management factor here is to regulate the volume to better qualify the prospects before engaging the costly sales process. With fewer resources or even with the same resources but higher quotas, defining the prospect, managing the prospecting process and inspecting what you expect are time- tested actions.

+ Don’t allow prospects into the pipeline (or prospecting channel) that don’t fit simple yet concrete parameters.

+ Deal with the ripe bananas, only the ones that can take advantage of a limited window of opportunity.

+ Deals won will increase because you have much fewer distractions and more on top of your game.

MosaicCRM Experts Tips – Looking at an improved management role for CRM

Allocating resources is critical, so is monitoring results to optimize these resources. Our CRM platforms provide a number of methods that go beyond traditional ‘activity measurement’ reports.

• Manage Call Ratios & Results: The key analytics determine how good the prospect demographics are.
• Monitor promotions with ‘Opportunity Source’ analytics: From Prospect to Customer can be a tricky course. Analyzing what prospects become customers  reinforces the call ratio and delivers a ‘success’ criteria blueprint to copy

• Aging Analysis: Tracking the time periods through the sales stages provides data to modify promotions/sales processes to shorten the sales cycle.
• Measure Deals Lost Analytics: Lost Deals tell a lot about customers, competitors, pricing, timing and more that will enable you to fine tune the next offering.

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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It just doesn’t look right.

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink argues that it takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions and explains this as thin slicing. Referred to as the ‘adaptive unconscious’, these mental and physical ‘touch points’ take mere nanoseconds to associate the impression of you in the minds of the receiver.

Clients have the same reaction.

What you should know is that whether or not it ‘looks right’ is subconsciously regulated to the viewers higher thinking zones, almost instantly, and this impression can last a long time. This is a good thing or bad thing, depending on how you measured up.

A good example of just how fast an impression is activated is to think about the last time you bought a book: you quickly scan the shelf of the New York Times Best Sellers and unconsciously make a mental decision on the book cover, title or bi-line, even picking it up as if trying to evoke an impression from it… because we all react the same way.

Clients sense a physical presence to digital communications.

It’s no different when your client makes the same unconscious and rapid impression of your email, even imagining and sensing a physical presence to it. There’s nothing to touch or feel yet impressions are won or lost in seconds.

It’s not just the look but the content and layout that drive the impression centers. Like the statue that was faked with incredible detail and fooled all the experts, it’s the whole package that counted.  Ask a recruiter what their impression is of a hot shot’s resume with a typo: it’s exiled to the junk basket. Unfortunately clients won’t be so communicative when it comes to expressing their impressions to you.  These are all impressions that were sensed long before your final proposal and will either bless or haunt you.

Learn from the Automotive Marketers.

These boys know how to play upon the value of the ‘right look’.  The color, look, smell and feel are huge touch points and formed the buyer’s ‘impression’ long before you wander into the showroom.  In a recent visit to a car dealership I found out that new sales recruits don’t get business cards until they last at least 3 weeks. So the dealer won’t make an investment in a cheap card (even less investment in sales people apparently) yet they presume the buyer will make a huge investment with that same person. No matter how good the marketing was to get me to that dealer, my ‘unconscious’ brain went into hyper drive. It started with a ‘weird feeling’ and then ‘no card’ (or brochure for that matter) was a great excuse to get out of there.

It’s all about the impression.

DeBeers is simply the best at creating an impression. Even in the face of indistinguishable replica diamonds at a fraction of the price, their ‘impression’ is undeniable. They’ve also crafted our impression on the fakes… interesting how they did that.

Creating a good, lasting impression is priceless.

My first business venture was a high line shoe store. A small but very cool item was a business card of genuine leather. It was costly but so was getting a customer in the door. Without fail, the response was ‘wow, what a great card’.  It always left a good impression. For that, the cost of the card was minimal.

The lesson I learned (and often forgot) was creating a good, lasting impression is priceless. I recently ordered up some business cards online. The quality was ok but they just didn’t look right. I kept them thinking it didn’t matter, right until I handed it to the CEO of a prospective client. His impression was definitely not a wow one. I would have paid anything to change his impression at that moment.

MosaicCRM Expert Tips

It is practically impossible to get a second chance at making and keeping a good impression with customers. So we have guided a number of clients to view their CRM program as a tool that works absolute wonders with customer loyalty ‘impressions’:

• Focus reams of client data: Customers habits change and so keep your CRM geared to refining their profile to their specific likes/needs. MosaicCRM offers custom fields on account, contact, sales and activity components making it easy to define and refine your data.
• Apply ‘Buying Cycle’ information: Mosaic CRM sales and activity monitors improves how you manage customer purchasing behavior. Nobody wants to be pestered with uncoordinated calls, email and marketing pieces.
• Analyze your audience: sort through the data to determine the best customer experiences, and then copy them.
• Build confidence and excellent brand experience: get everyone who touches the client involved in CRM with one enterprise-wide single picture of the customer.
• Build in sales processes and work flows: keep personnel on track with what the customer needs, how they like to be contacted then follow that script with built in tools like Mosaic’s Marvel that schedules the precise types and content of customer touch points.

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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There is a flurry of Top Selling – Best Selling  ads coming your way.

Stop by a book stand or music retailer and notice how we are all drawn to the Top Ten Best sellers. So when it comes to top seller, have you ever stopped to ponder what this really means to your sales and marketing efforts?

Well it means instant sales qualification if we are to believe the admen. Our psyche seems glued to associating top selling with either the best buy, or seemingly the least risky purchase option. So next to the word ‘free” I believe ‘best seller’ or ‘top seller’ or even ‘hottest selling’ nomenclatures grabs our customers attention more effectively than anything else we can do. The power doesn’t stop there. What could be more exciting than that? Next we will see the inevitable sale prices on our ‘top sellers’ come January.

Here are a few ‘Top Selling’ sales accelerator factors to consider:

1. It removes the clutter of verbal nonsense so often made between the buyer and seller.

2. These claims focus the buyer (and often the sales person) on what’s important by reducing the time necessary for confidence building.

3. It shortens the ‘thinking about it’ phase.

Unfortunately sales personnel don’t reiterate often enough, or powerfully enough, the words ‘our best seller!

You know it, your boss does, and maybe the customer vaguely remembers it. Therefore, your task is to remember to use it in every presentation. Ford won’t let you forget its F Series has been the number one seller for decades. Yet I can’t remember the Ford salesperson mentioning that to me. Or the Lexus is the top selling luxury car in America and I can assure you the salesperson didn’t mention that either. I have no doubt these salespeople knew the gas mileage, tire size and minute details but they completely missed out on the one item that would make me believe all their other statements: “This is the best selling truck (car) in America.”

Best makes for a fantastic fallback when the customer says they want to think about it.

“Almost one million people thought about it and bought it making it the all time…..” The point here is that information of this caliber is the first thing that should come out of our spiel and not be something that is forgotten or muddled through.

‘Best’ power is almost hypnotic when it comes to the buyer’s insatiable need for zero risk.

After all, the psychology behind buying is essentially mapping your product or service against the buyer’s equation of least risk. When you find that magic XY line you have a sale. The nub is simply that if your customers perceive there is a minimal risk in doing business with you then you will likely get the sale.

An effective method for rubbing the risk genie bottle is associating your product with the herd mentality of the buyer. Hey, if everyone else is buying it why shouldn’t I? Best, Hottest, Most, and Number 1 adjectives are just a few of the statements that are excellent for this purpose. I also think these serve to fend off the fuzzy objections and put more focus to what’s important to the customer.

What do you think of when you hear your product associated with ‘Consumer Reports’ or J.D Powers Top Ten Report? The ‘best’, ‘highest rating’ or similar accolade will guarantee more sales. However, remember to tell the customer just in case they have forgotten, or are confusing you with your competitor or any other myriad of things that put our brains into deep freeze.

If not the best seller, perhaps you can claim top quality.

Naturally not everyone can lay claim to top seller. Even though these categories are broken down into minute details e.g. ‘top selling blue van with power steering made on a Friday’ there is an end to what’s believable or what has any value. The demonstrative word here is ‘value’. If appropriate, you could claim the prestigious mention as ‘top quality’ or ‘best value’ both of which have similar impact on buyers.

MosaicCRM Experts Tips

• Orient your CRM program to maximize its marketing potential: Create and track a ‘Best’ Sales Plan
• Utilize a closed loop reporting process to measure what’s working
• Nurture your leads with a prescribed process until they are in a sales ready state
• Add ‘Best ‘components to your marketing templates, even in your email signatures
• Tell it to the media! Add media contacts and promotion venues to your database and track where your organization is being seen.

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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Writers are experts at crafting ‘The Button’.

It’s the last scene in a TV show designed to hold the viewer’s through a commercial interruption (or is it a message?). Well, they’ve already pushed by button by their frivolous cover up of their intent but they invariably keep my attention. The ad is entirely about interrupting my train of thought and in no way is a message and is very similar to a cold call without any preparation or value on behalf of the caller.

A message is some useful information I need. An ad is just an interruption. Never mind the definition at this stage. It’s vital you do things that keep you customer’s attention. Anything!

Keep your customers attention with a strategic system.

First you need a system. It can’t be done by chance alone. Just like the TV writers, you need a gripping story line and a strategy to make it happen. And just like the advertisers, you need to constantly and repeatedly interrupt whatever your customer is doing and gain their attention. Remember it’s not too likely that the law of averages is on your side. If you get a lot of ‘cant’s, won’t, and might’s’ … without a definitive attention keeping plan, you’re pretty much cooked.

Let’s see if we can’t improve your odds with these simple steps:

1: Leave your customers with them ‘wanting more’.

Often we are just too eager to fill in every conceivable blank in a misaligned effort to satisfy our customers every whim. The lesson here is not to divulge everything. The reason is simple: when the customer has all the information they need, you are technically and fundamentally useless. It stands to reason that they can now make a decision because they have all the information at hand so why on earth would they be interested in your interruption at this stage?

Customers think they have all the information and merrily go off making crazed buying decisions (mind now that they’re only crazed if they didn’t buy from you). Just as often they make the wrong decision. That’s why you have to keep their attention on you and stay in the game until the very, very, very end.

2: Never underestimate the power of FREE.

Somewhere your strategy has got to include something with ‘Free’ in it. That’s because it’s irresistible. And if you get to keep their attention with this offer, make it worth their while because you can use it over and over again. Get your marketing folks on this now!

3: Keep changing what you’re doing.

Just like every advertisement you every see, it keeps changing, some seemingly every nanosecond. It’s impossible to keep your customers attention with a monologue. Change your voice and inflection frequently, move around or at least make important gestures to important features, get involved and become important enough that they will pay attention to what you have to say.

4: Take a pause.

For heaven’s sake, take a pause. That’s right, a mini-break, a pause, snap out of it, plan a stop and this gets the attention of the customer to come up for air so they can think or do something.

5: Ask for input.

If you want to involve your customer, just ask for his input or ideas. Think of how well this technique works when a speaker asks for a show of hands or comments. It’s works the same way for you.

6: Keep it fresh.

This is probably one of the hardest things to do, from both sides of the fence. From your customer’s prospective, they may have seen and heard someone like you or your product dozens of times. Conversely, you may have this rather unfortunate sense of déjà vu with just too many of your customers. Make it a part of your strategy to insert another person, item or issue that gets both you and your customer sitting up and taking notice.

FREE MosaicCRM Expert Tips

Here are a few FREE techniques on using your CRM tools to get attention:

• Profile Accounts: In the B2B world generalist, mass marketing is dead. Clients today only read messages that are specific to their current needs. Adding a Rating, Type, Industry and Status profiles add significant ‘readability’ advantages when added to the usual geographic and product denominators.
• Automated and Personalized Contact: Templates work especially well. Design Sell Sheets that are personalized to each Contact on a regularly scheduled email/mailer.
• Mass Email/Mail: use your Advanced Search tools to create specialized Account/Contact lists for News Items, Free Something or other topics that will get their interest.
• Track Birthday/Customer Anniversary Dates: automatically schedule calls, emails, cards and letters
• Track Biz Networks: Track Contact’s business network updates
• Insert Objectives: Use Call/Meeting Objective and Topic inserts for important Calls or Appointments as a reminder to help keep on track.

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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The best way to be lucky is to be smart. To this point, let’s expand upon the concept of doing the right things, versus doing everything right, as selling smart. Time and again I have seen the salesperson doing everything right, but for some reason they just weren’t successful. The subtle, yet big difference was they were not doing the ‘right things’.

I was reminded of doing the ‘right things’ during a sales process meeting with a label printing company. The owner of the company remarked that sometimes his sales staff skipped doing one ‘right thing’ or another.

For the most part, his people were doing everything right: good prospecting, follow up and eventually they got around to bidding. However, in their haste, the sales staff often ignored most important ‘right thing’: preparing a sample for their customers to see and hold.

“But you don’t understand” they pleaded, “The customer is all ready to go… all they need is a price.” Then POOF! Things went decidedly unlucky and obviously more than a price was needed to close the deal.

Dumb luck works too.

Unquestionably there’s always ample pressure on sales people to produce. It’s at these times we have to step back and give luck it due chance. Sometimes it’s just a matter of dumb luck. You know, when out of the blue you pursue that opportunity, you did the right things because the customer is allowing you to, and presto, the deal’s done.

Often it’s not as simple or as dumb as it appears. Likely you did all the right things. Be very alert to Customers that try to short change you doing the right things.

Hard luck stories.

There’s no shortage of hard luck stories. Everyone’s had a fair share of them. But when it comes to hard luck, maybe a bit of good luck can change your predicament. To get out of a hard luck spot, stop selling: Stop selling what isn’t selling that is.

Too often we get all hung up on a product or program and ignore what will sell, even if it is less glamorous or less profitable. The point here is if you’re on a lengthy dry streak, it’s unlikely your cadre of fine prospects can change your predicament unless you change. So the good luck part is when you finally give up on chasing rainbows and move on to what will sell.

Worst Luck Yet: You’ve got a lottery sales style.

The worst luck yet is when you blindly believe selling is a numbers game. In this case you will probably do everything right. You’ll make the calls, follow ups etc. Unfortunately, you won’t be doing the right things. It’s very much like a lottery: you throw your numbers in and hope you win. Improving you luck here is to think smarter. Besides, if you’re smart you won’t buy lottery tickets, but that’s a whole other matter.

Define what your very best customer looks like and stick to those. It’s usually an easily managed and finite number. Now that’s selling smart. Makes you lucky too!

MosaicCRM Experts Corner

Some simple process techniques to your CRM program can improve your luck many times over:

• Define: At every stage of the sales process, define what has to occur e.g. Sample Sent
• Set Activities: Include specific activity types that include the ‘must do’ right things
• Profile: Scrub lists that match your ideal customer, competitive advantage and sales ability then ignore the rest
• Track: Look at Closed Deal Analysis, Aging, Customer Retention and other parameters to tell you what is and is not selling

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Big $$$ in Unlucky Things.
Even though we seek luck, we are also reminded to avoid unlucky things. The whole Feng Shui craze is based on the unlucky ways we organize our lives. The list goes on: the number 13, broken mirrors, black cats, even being born under an unlucky star.

But alas, there’s no end to helping you find luck, for a price. There is a web site that promotes, for a fee, how to command more luck. I’m not making this up. They come complete with savvy lines like “Are you suffering from the illusion of lousy luck?” not to be outdone by “Exciting breakthrough for the terminally unlucky”. Maybe I should try my luck out selling this crap. They even promise a 55% commission. How lucky is that?

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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There was no race without practice and everybody understood that.

There was no bitching about ‘practicing’ or ‘I already know that’ or ‘I don’t have time’ responses that are all too common from sales organizations. The other interesting point I observed about myself that even though I thought I knew it all, I learned tons from each practice: about my skills, specific crew members and our overall capability. What looked easy wasn’t so. All valuable stuff you would want to know heading into a exhausting 25 hour race.

Too many organizations don’t ‘practice’ selling and ignore their crews.

I’ve often been frustrated with the lack of results with sales training.  When I think back on it, what I was really missing was sales practice. Sales practice has to be a defacto element of the sales routine: you have got to keep it continually replenished with streams of new learning, strategies and ideas.

The better you are, the more you practice.

Practice is a continual process that builds one technique at a time.  The complicated notes and nuances of human relationship skills, product intelligence, negotiation tactics and persistence take practice. This couldn’t be more accurate for anything that takes a certain level of skill to master and sales is no exception. The interesting thing about professional racers is that the better they are the more they must practice.

It seems to be a prevalent attitude of sales pros that the better they are, the less practice because they already know it. This syndrome might be the single biggest mistake in your selling or management career. Because what really happens is that these salespeople, like racers, progress only to the level of their natural talent, then level out and begin to drop.

Like racing instructors, they will all tell you their ‘practice’ of the basics when training students has always come back to help them in difficult situations. Like pit crews, support crews are no longer this behind-the-scenes personnel who no one sees, recognizes or knows. Now they are in many cases integral to the overall sale.

Better means more.

If you don’t quite buy this theory, then you only have to look at any pro. You don’t really buy the idea that points leader Jimmie Johnson, of NASCAR fame, to maintain his superior game skills, could do this despite practicing less and less? No, it’s not even reasonable. The better a sales person or manager you are, the more practice time you need.

I know some people will wince here but my experience is sales and at the track rubs against popular human relations theory: keep management and resources for the failing sales staff to a bare minimum. Conversely, the majority of their time and money must be spent with the A players. It’s hard to beat this logic. The pity is that a lot of really good talent is ignored while a mountain of effort and attention is spent on people who simply do not have the talent to become even adequate salespeople or racers.

Selling practice builds self-confidence.

You would race on a track without practicing the difficult turns. Ditto sales: practice builds self-confidence in handling difficult situations. Too many reps, even the experienced ones, avoid or fudge difficult situations through a lack of confidence. Most salespeople ignore some prospects because of a lack of simpatico, lack of knowledge or familiarity of particular circumstances, or just a plain and simple lack of interest.

Psychological ‘reality’ shock.

It’s simply not reasonable to assume that any available sales person, or manager for that matter, can play to a client… maybe it is because they don’t have, pardon the pun, the right pitch. Look at any Formula 1 racing team that sets the ‘practice’ bar that any sales organization would be wise to adopt:

• ‘A’ level sales personnel, like the very best drivers, must come prepared and dialed into practice. This means only outstanding sales and support personnel are included and are not distracted by day to day crap that is seemingly more important.
• Drivers and crews are expected to generate better times. What a concept: practice and we expect you to generate better sales volume!
• Practice conditions must prepare the drivers and team for the psychological reality of live races. In sales, the practice routines must match the real world circumstances.

CRM Experts Tips

• Add Practice and/or Team Selling meetings to your standard activity menu for every pipeline account.
• Many CRM’s provide for document storage/sharing: Upload practice topics, agendas and guides.
• Share the wealth of business intelligence: Search the database for sales and proposals made to the same or similar companies in your organization.
• Include support personnel in the account access rights where appropriate: get them dialed into the issues and solutions.

The legendary Wyatt Earp coined the phrase ‘Learn to take your time in a hurry’ and for a gunslinger, that is darn good advice. There are more than a few comparisons to sales that a gunslinger can teach us. So before we go out and shoot the whole CRM database up and then wonder what to do with it, let’s see how these techniques can help us:

1. Timing has to be on your side

It’s amazing how every gun fight seemed to be at a specific time on a specific day, usually high noon if are to believe Hollywood. But it makes sense that we establish a firm time for action and not just a soft appointment time.

Depending on your task and what you have to do, make sure you and your client know what time is needed. Nobody’s got any time, so plan it right, and lay out exactly what you have to get done, where and when.

2. Pick your target carefully

If you’re carrying a big shotgun then you might have a little more leeway. I agree that the shotgun is seductive, mostly to sales managers, but rarely is it beneficial. The reality is that most of us are selling to a specific audience and with limited projectiles like budget and time.

3. Superlative sense of timing

There’s more than a little déjà vu here: being at the right place at the right time is always an advantage and an absolute necessity if you are going to thrive every month.

When it comes to pulling the ‘closing’ trigger on your customer, too early and you might miss, too late and someone else has taken you out of the picture. Pay attention to timing. Don’t let your manager or outside pressures unduly influence what you know to be good timing.There’s nothing much sadder than sales personnel who are forced to pull the closing shot way too early i.e. even before the customer has been adequately targeted. You see this a lot when quotas aren’t realized or anxious managers take the shot gun approach. Be wary of this.

4. Don’t hesitate

When the stars and the moon all line up, don’t frig around. If you’ve called the showdown or your customer called it, go for it. If you don’t, well then don’t be surprised if you’re asked to hang up your guns and move on down the road.

5. Be prepared for anything, including the posse

What if you miss or everything backfires on you? Are you prepared for these events? You should be because the first couple of shots, like rapid fire proposals, can often go astray and things can backfire on you.

The point here is you should be at the showdown with more than one bullet in your gun. Heck, go with more than one gun! Often the extra gun e.g. your VP or other significant player can have a really intimidating and beneficial effect. Just when you thought you had it all worked out with a single target, along comes the customer’s posse. Make sure you have your own posse on call. Sometimes it’s better to show up with a group of supporters rather than being the lone gunslinger.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner

Timing is the single biggest issue and it affects everything you and your client do next. With this extreme level of importance, start by adding definitive ‘timing’ periods and qualifications to your sales process.

• From Qualification to Close, each step of the process deserves careful timing scrutiny. Power through the client qualification stage and you miss real opportunities.  Hang on for dear life to a feeble ‘call me’ response and you never progress.
• The Sales Stage is a good place to start. Each stage or gate in the pipeline should have a definitive time that is pre-agreed with your customer e.g. a suitable time that is relative to your specific situation e.g. 5 days. This technique focuses you and your client mainly because no real pipeline opportunity or client will hang forever and ever.

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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The tightening of business expenses often leads to squeezing every drop out of each and every sales activity. Surprisingly, many organizations cannot pinpoint the priority, type, and volume of sales activities they are conducting, even less so on which ones are producing the best results.

I have come across a number of sales and management styles which, in one form or another, fit into a prescribed activity type. Generally described as activity focused, close focused or buying-cycle focused, the question now is: Do you know what sales activity profile will gain the highest return?

For most organizations the answer is painfully obvious: today’s priority selling activities are buying-cycle focused. Unfortunately for some, nobody told marketing, sales support and a host of other departments that touch the customer. Are they confused? You bet and it is wasting a lot of time and money.

CRM’s highest and best use is the leading role in managing buying cycles.

The buying-cycle is comprised of those steps that the customer must go through to purchase and to become a continuing customer, as opposed to those activities that the company’s sales and marketing force must perform in order to achieve the same result (the selling-cycle).

In the past, sales activities have been selling-cycle oriented. These days the common wisdom is to focus on the buying-cycle. It is not a trivial distinction. The old selling-cycle approach is “me” oriented …products and features driven 1950’s salesmanship. Buying-cycle selling concerns the customer’s needs wants and timing.

It is essential that all selling and marketing activities be buying-cycle focused to gain the highest ROI on sales activities. Imagine the return if every call your sales team made was to a prospect closing in the next 90 days. That’s what we mean by buying cycle management.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner: Manage buying cycles over generalized activity management.

The emphasis in sales and marketing for the past thirty years or so has been ‘solution selling’, at least in the progressive corporations. The buying-cycle approach is a relatively new development and extension of the solution selling approach. The influence of customers buying habits and the influence of Internet reinforce the need for your CRM program to manage buying cycles over generalized activity management.

Many SMB’s fall victim to CRM systems that are too often designed around 1950’s selling styles e.g. designs that measure activity and not sales processes that manage buying cycles. I see it all the time where practically every field is ‘me’ oriented and very little is designed specifically around the ‘client needs, wants and directions. Beyond solution sales processes, a properly designed CRM plays a vital role in defining the buying cycle and it stands that its highest and best use is as a leading role in managing buying cycles.

Prioritize Buying Cycle Habits  in CRM.

The customer is of paramount importance to your business. Get into the habit of clearly defining the buying-cycle of your customers, individually, by type or even by whole. Even short buying cycles e.g. a simple online purchase includes at least a few of the following basics that should be a part of your CRM:

• Defined ‘steps’ in the buying cycle; paired with optimized activities for each step
• Contract Start and End dates paired with internal and external notices
  
• Budget Dates: When do your customers finalize annual budgets?
  
• Manage Product Life cycles adds value to specific customers
  
• Sales Stages paired to Buying Cycle Stages
• Activities tied to Buying Cycle priorities
• Identify Win Back Programs/Retention Programs focused on buying cycle
• Eliminate data fields, historical reports and activities that do not meet “buying-cycle” processes

Some day we can reflect back on the enormous volume (and cost) of non-buying cycle focused selling. I remember the ‘positioning’ ads; feel good brochures and reams of useless trinkets and brochures. What I wouldn’t give to have that money today and get it buying cycle focused!

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Written by Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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