Sales Blog with Sales Tips

I don’t mean to ruin the fantasy world you’ve been living in. But do you honestly think your company really makes the best widget or provides the best service on the planet? They don’t.

If this is all you’ve got to offer customers, you’re running on empty.

“Oh, but my situation is different. I work for Mercedes!” Really? Have you seen the initial owner satisfaction ratings and reliability records for Mercedes lately? Even giants fall.

Everyone wants and needs to believe their company is the best. But it isn’t. Now that we’ve gotten that taken care of, let’s move on to why this isn’t a problem.

What Your Customers Really Want
There’s no doubt that customers want excellent quality and service. However, today they value something more highly that falls outside of the products and services your company sells.

Ease.

Customers want to do business with a company that is easy to do business with. They want a sales professional who is a highly communicative liaison between themselves and your company. They want you to even anticipate their needs.

This is part of your “personal value” and it outweighs anything your company can or cannot do for the customer.

Why This Is Relevant Right Now
There are two primary reasons why it’s important to make it painless for your customers to do business with your company in 2010.

The first has to do with the amount of cognitive overload your customers have to deal with today. Decision makers average a total of 200 emails and voice mails a day. Technology is a wonderful thing, but in this regard, it makes their job more difficult. Their brains are overwhelmed.

The second reason has to do with the economy. Decision makers are being asked to do more with less. It is very likely that within the last 18 months they have had their staff size reduced significantly. They have to do the same work with fewer resources.

Sales Tips Wrap Up
There is a payoff to you, as there should be, for making it easy for your customers to do business with your company.

It enables you to charge higher prices and makes your customers stickier. The time and effort you save your customers is something they are willing to pay for. And if you make it a snap to do business with your company, your customers are unlikely to look for another supplier.

You want your customers to think of doing business with you as eeeeeeeeeeeasy.

Further sales tips reading:
Four Levels of Want vs. Need in Sales
Value Propositions, Corporate and Personal

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>©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

Scott Sheaffer’s New Book, “Comatose Management”
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Six Short Stories of Destructive Management Practices, Volume I
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Available in printed and Kindle edition on amazon.com
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—

When I was just a sales pup I received one of the best sales tips I’ve ever heard. It was from my sales manager.

The advice I got was, “Keep in touch with your customers when they are laid off; they always reappear somewhere else.”

Why This Is Especially Important Right Now
We’re heading out of the recession, but the unemployment rate is a high 10%. About 4% of this 10% represents those who are not looking for work or chronically unemployed. This leaves us with a net real unemployment rate of approximately 6%.

What does this mean? One out of 17 of your customers has been laid off and is looking for work. That’s a lot. This percentage will vary according to the industries represented in your customer mix.

That 6% represents a tremendous sales – and helping – opportunity for you.

Staying In Touch
There are a number of reasons to keep in contact with your unemployed ex-customers.

• Most importantly, it’s the right thing to do. People feel abandoned and forgotten when unemployed. It doesn’t matter whether you think you’ll ever sell to them again or not. This is an issue of being human. The karma thing.

• 99% of the time, these ex-customers will end up in the same industry and same job they came from. They’ll want to do business with you because you’re a known and trusted person. Keeping in contact during stormy times keeps the bond intact.

• As ex-customers look for employment, you can help them by providing job leads. Think of the goodwill this creates. They will also be in a position to share information with you about companies they are interviewing with (i.e. sales leads).

Sales Tips For How To Keep In Touch
Here’s a short checklist on how to keep in touch with these temporarily unemployed ex-customers.

• If you’ve lost touch with them, you can search for them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Do a little research so you’ll know something about their current situation before contacting them.

• Contact them by email and/or phone at least every 2 to 3 weeks to see how they are doing. Be sure to mention any job openings that might fit what they’re looking for. They welcome the moral support provided at a time like this.

• Listen to them. What was true when they were active buying customers is true while they are unemployed. Listen to their needs; you’ll be in a better position to help them.

A Final Note
Don’t do this primarily as an exercise to get them back as a customer. Do this in order to support people who have helped you in the past (i.e. by buying from you). When they land on their feet – and they will – they’ll likely contact you and business can resume again.

If they aren’t able to, or choose not to, do business with you after finding a new job, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you helped someone. That has a way of drawing all kinds of good things your direction.

Further sales blog reading:
A Reader Asks About Sales Force Layoffs
These Two Words are Killing Your Sales
Direct Sales Tips: What the media types do to ruin your sales career.

>You can automatically receive Sales Tips Blog by Scott R. Sheaffer >by email< or >by RSS<.
>Follow >Scott R. Sheaffer< on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
>©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

Scott Sheaffer’s New Book, “Comatose Management”
—
Six Short Stories of Destructive Management Practices, Volume I
—
Available in printed and Kindle edition on amazon.com
—
—

The exact meaning of “Eyes Wide Shut” is debated. In the context of this sales blog post, I’m going to use the expression as a way of representing our perspective on counterfeit customers. Counterfeit customers are customers that really aren’t…well…customers.

The Reality
We’ve all done it. We’ve been assigned a new customer quota for the month/quarter/year. We immediately begin to think how we can manipulate the system to hit our quota. Our real goal is to silence sales management – and we know we can do this by hitting our new account “number.” Does this really help anyone? Eyes wide shut.

In many cases, sales management has lost sight of the challenges of adding new accounts. They think all we need is a phonebook and a phone. Period. Dinosaurs. Eyes wide shut.

Oh sure, the “new account” activity blossoms for a few months. But check back a year later. Everything is back where it was before the new business development machinations. Maybe even worse. Eyes wide shut.

This is a dysfunctional prospecting environment for both the sales professional and sales management. It produces smoke and mirror “customers.” It creates a lot of activity, but not any long-term gains. Eyes wide shut.

Counterfeit Customers
In our enthusiasm to hit our new account quota we kill anything that moves and call it dinner. Unfortunately, our kills don’t come close to satisfying our appetite and there are never any leftovers. Are the following really new customers we want or need?

• Cherry Pickers. “Customers” that buy from us because we’re the only company that has what they’re looking for. No cross-selling opportunities exist here and loyalty is zero.
• Convenience Buyers. These “customers” view us as nothing more than a convenience store. In their world, our prices are out of sight, but they’ll buy the minimum from us because we’re handy, for now. They’ll always be small; they’ll always complain about price.
• Give-Me-Credit Buyers. This, of course, is a big problem during a recession. We’re nothing but a bank to these “customers.” They want us to help them finance their business. Our credit department will be calling us for collection assistance.
• High Maintenance, Low Volume Buyers. These “customers” embody every aspect of Vilfredo Pareto’s 80/20 rule when it comes to investing too much time on small customers.

Accounts That Matter
We can differentiate between counterfeit customers and accounts that matter with the five-point test below. Checking all five of these boxes allows us to claim a customer as an account that matters.

1. The customer has made at least three purchases. One order does not a customer make.
2. They pay their bills according to the credit terms we’ve given them.
3. They purchase a broad spectrum of our products and services.
4. Not only does our employer make a decent ROI (i.e. net margin) on the customer’s purchases, but the commission income makes it worth the sales professional’s time.
5. We are viewed as the incumbent supplier by the customer and are connected to the right decision makers.

Sales Blog Epilogue
It’s important to evaluate our accounts. How many of them meet the five criteria above? This will give us a feel for both our number of accounts that matter and how much legitimate business development might be needed to fill the gaps.

We all sleep better – with our eyes restfully shut – when we have accounts that matter instead of counterfeit customers.

Further reading:
4 Inconvenient Truths About Prospecting In 2009
4 Sales Tips For Managing Your Pipeline
Corporate Dysfunctional Sales Behaviors In A Recession

>You can automatically receive Sales Tips Blog by Scott R. Sheaffer >by email< or >by RSS<.
>Follow >Scott R. Sheaffer< on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
>©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

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I’m sick of hearing about “added value.” So are customers. We have to start giving our customers and prospects something real instead of spouting off intangible and meaningless phrases we’ve gotten from marketing.

Believe me, much of the “added value” we spew on our customers lands on deaf ears.

Voodoo Added Value
Voodoo Added Value is my term for the embellished, intangible and baseless added value we hurl at customers. Want some examples?

“We have the best trained account managers.” Name one of your competitors that doesn’t claim the same thing.

“We can provide any product or service for you, even if it’s not in our product line.” Really? Can you? Think the customer believes that? Does your employer believe that?

“We are an honest company.” Oh please! Companies aren’t honest, people are.

“We’re the Mercedes of the business.” Again, name one of your competitors that you think might say something like, “Oh yes, we’re not that great at what we do, but we have great looking account managers.”

“We provide the fastest service/product delivery/response times/etc.” Quick, how many of your competitors say this? Answer: all of them.

The Great Contradiction
Given that your competitors are repeating these same kinds of Voodoo Added Values, actually not saying them becomes a real added value. This is counterintuitive.

Think about it.  Authenticity, credibility, factuality, legitimacy and originality are valued by customers. They respond positively to these qualities. No hollow marketing chatter required.

Sales Blog Epilogue
Rules to sell by – and to avoid the trap of Voodoo Added Value:

• Anytime you feel it necessary to start machine-gunning your customers with added value statements, ask yourself, “Is this the least bit original or has this customer heard this from all of my competitors?” If it fails this test, it’s Voodoo Added Value. Your customer isn’t listening.
• Am I making legitimate and factual claims as to the added benefits my company brings to the table? If the answer is no – Voodoo Added Value.
• If what you’re saying is not credible, or if you don’t sound credible, you guessed it, Voodoo Added Value.
• Am I being authentic or am I being a phony? Don’t forget that buying from you is not your customers’ first rodeo. They can sniff out an imposter in about three nanoseconds.

Further reading:
What Value Do We Need To Be Selling In A Recession?
Rise Above Commodity Style Selling

>You can automatically receive this sales blog >by email< or >by RSS<.
>Follow >Scott R. Sheaffer< on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
>©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

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Are you satisfied with your sales results?
Kay Ray can show you and your team how to reach
your objectives and unlock the door to success.
thekayray.com