A prospect recently called into one of my client’s 1-800 number. The inside sales person answering the phone asked the proverbial, “How did you find us?” Which answer would you prefer?
1. I was returning your call
2. I found you on the internet or
3. I’ve been following you for some time, and I think I need your help.
I believe that a good portion of your networking and connections can be from people you don’t expect to get anything from, or who may need something you. There’s an old expression that says you can’t tell what direction a gift will come from. The number of times I’ve received something back when I didn’t expect always surprises me. So whom have you mentored lately?
Read MoreThe reason that the VP of Sales is the most fired position in corporate America is not because, as you might think, the sales forecast is the single most visible number. It’s because too many organizations and too many VPs succumb to the temptation of having multiple forecasts. The challenging one they think you can make, and the inflated one that no one believes you can make but the one they tell you because they don’t trust you to make the one that is challenging. When forecasting is a negotiation game, everyone loses.
Read MoreI once had a boss that sent me an email asking me to set up a meeting with him. His office was twenty feet away. Lots of passive aggressive thoughts went through my brain before I realized that in a single stroke, he had embodied the two biggest black holes of personal productivity in contemporary business; emails and meetings.
Read MoreIn my previous post, I wrote about the value of empathy in business. To be clear, empathy is not agreement. It is an understanding of another’s position. It is also a form of caring which carries with it a responsibility to be strong about your own position. Sometimes this requires courage. The combination of empathy, caring and courage is a form of respect.
Read MoreEmpathy is the identification and the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person’s feelings, thoughts or experience. It seems to me that one of the things we are lacking in our society, as well as in business today, especially in the relationship between sales and marketing, is empathy. What if we remembered the other person is thinking, “Do you understand me, can you help me, and do I trust you?” Maybe we wouldn’t get lost on our sales and marketing journey.
Read MoreTargeting the right prospects is Sales and Marketing 101. In my experience it’s done poorly by both marketing and sales more than 75% of the time. There are two reasons for this.
How can you make sure you don’t fall into the trap of selling to the wrong segment? Read more.
Read MoreOn the eve of the mid-term elections, I am struck by the tactics for messaging used by the major parties and the parallels for Sales and Marketing. The first is that those that keep their message simple and consistent are much more likely to get their point of view accepted. The second thing is that we are all risk averse. Our little medulla oblongata (lizard brains) in the back of our skulls that generate our flight or fight response take precedence over our frontal lobes where reason happens. So messages based on loss or fear tend to trump those based on reason.
Read MoreThere is a law of project management and business development that states that there will be four crises during the course of any project. This extends to most endeavors whether they are marketing projects, sales cycles with prospects, the relationship between sales and marketing, building a business, or even a marriage. Stocking’s corollary to this law is that you will be responsible for at least one of those crises. Why? It doesn’t matter. The real question is what are you going to do about it?
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