The JF Guest Author Spot

Kendra Lee

Social media is all the buzz in prospecting lately. You hear about it everywhere with Facebook Fan pages, tweeting, and LinkedIn profiles. You may even have an account on several different social networks. But have you given thought to how to use it to increase your prospecting results, or do you just see it as something fun to do when you have time?

Or, is it possible that you’re one of the skeptics who don’t believe social media can really bring you new prospects?

Let’s ponder that for a moment.

The two primary questions in prospecting are always:
1. How can you reach a broader audience?
2. How can you reach your audience more effectively?

Once you’ve defined your target market and your ideal prospect within it, you identify the key business needs they have and craft your value proposition. You’re ready to prospect.

But who do you approach? And, how do you approach them?

Referrals and networking are always the desired approach because the personal relationship increases your chance of gaining access. But that isn’t always possible, especially if you want a broader reach than that. So, you supplement them with the tried and true prospecting methods of cold calling and sending emails.

The challenge with cold calling and email prospecting is that your results are only as effective as the list you’re operating from and the probability that your contacts got your message.

To address the challenge that your target prospects may not have noticed your message, you call and send emails repeatedly over a period of weeks, maybe even months. These repeated touches will definitely increase your response rate, but there will always be a percentage of those stubborn few prospects who never respond. What that percentage is depends on how good your message is.

In the end, your prospecting success is bound by the size of your list and the percentage of contacts you can entice to respond so you can start a conversation and ultimately draw new opportunities into your pipeline.

What you need is another prospecting strategy to supplement the cold calling and email and give it legs to reach a broader audience.

Here’s where social media comes into play.

By expanding your reach beyond your list, your great message will draw in prospects you haven’t even heard of and wouldn’t have met through referrals and networking. What I’ve discovered over several years of tweeting and commenting is that the people who watch social networks often are not the same people who respond to emails and calls.

Don’t get me wrong. They may respond if you use the hounding strategy I’ve taught you, but what they probably do instead is watch you. Your emails and calls with the great message caught their attention. They saw your Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook link in your signature and started following you so they could listen to what else you have to say.

They aren’t ready to engage in a full conversation just yet. They want to get to know you through your comments. Over time they begin to respond to your comments. They may even email or call you directly!

Even better is that new people begin to watch you. Because you’re tweeting about the issues and triggering events your micro-segment is interested in, those are the people who perk up and pay attention.

Suddenly you’ve moved beyond your list. Your message has legs, expanding out to others in your target market that your list builder and personal network didn’t know about. Not only have you increased your reach to a new group of people, but you’ve increased the percentage of responses and filled your pipeline with a fresh set of opportunities in a manner you could never have found before.

People are watching social networks. I can’t tell you how they find the time to do it. I can only tell you that they are doing it, and you want to be out there to meet them.

If you aren’t sure what you should be commenting about to attract prospects, follow me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Kendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert, author of the award winning book “Selling Against the Goal” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.741.6636.

Source: Jonathan Farrington’s Blog

The JF Guest Author Post

Lori Richardson

Small business owners, entrepreneurs and those who “sell” for a living typically lead busy lives. We are often overworked, somewhat isolated, and often multi-tasking on dozens of projects at one time.  Sometimes we feel exceptionally organized and other times at the opposite extreme: buried. Most often we are somewhere in-between.

Regardless of how busy one can be as a seller, a common characteristic of everyone is in leaving money on the table in one form or another. It stems from poor or disorganized follow up and follow-through.

Example: A strategic partner who can send you multiple “more qualified” prospects your way indicates to you that you two should get together. You mean well, but you do not set a next action on the calendar nor do you immediately write this person to ensure that some follow up will take place. Ultimately you’ll do nothing – and no telling what could have been (that will not materialize).

I have a theory that it is (nearly) NEVER too late to turn the following four situations around, and have seen many business relationships blossom because of them. Notice that I am focusing on people, not on a business in general, because businesses are made up of people.

Thank someone:

It IS never too late to thank someone. The first instinct often when someone in business does something generous or helpful is to thank them. If for whatever reason you don’t do it right away, do not think that you are too late to do it. It does not have to be awkward – rather it is all in the delivery.

Example: A cookie bouquet-type of company in a particular city found out more than a year later that I was the one who had referred then a corporate customer who purchased thousands of dollars worth of their products. Upon learning about me, the referrer, they proceeded to send me a free bouquet and asked to participate in an upcoming event I am doing in their town.
Tip: Do set yourself up to be able to jot a handwritten note and drop in the mail the same day after you meet someone or have a particularly helpful or important conversation. Most people won’t do this, so you will set yourself ahead of the pack.

Refer someone:

You know of a person who heads a company or is a seller for an organization and you never have referred them to your customers or to those who you think really could use their services. It is not too late- get organized and make a list of who you could refer to whom. Then execute. You have no idea how grateful and helpful others may become in exchange for your help and support. The world opens up to you when you generously endorse those you know and trust. Instead of deciding it is too late, instead make the referral and you can joke about how long it took you to actually make it happen if you’d like – or just do it and don’t think twice about it.

Endorse someone:

It takes minutes to create great endorsements for others with today’s technology. If your contact is on LinkedIn, create an endorsement for them – and make it a good one. Do not use fluff terminology (example, “Oh, his company is so fantastic……”) but instead create a constructive endorsement stating what specifically about the company or service that was particularly helpful for your business.

If you have not talked to this person for some time, it can be a very pleasant surprise to receive a note in your Inbox that you have received an endorsement through LinkedIn. There are also ways to endorse right on someone’s website. Do this generously, every week.

Reconnect with someone:

For some reason, people often feel uncomfortable calling or e-mailing someone in business they have not talked with in a while. So, what do they do? Nothing. Missed opportunity.
Do not hesitate to pick up the telephone and call someone you have not spoken with for months or years. Make a list of those strategic partners and former customers or near customers whom you hit it off with, but for some reason, the opportunity got derailed. It is not too late to reconnect.

Example: I had a client that I did some work with a couple years prior, and didn’t feel that I had done my best work with them. For an upcoming event, I invited the CEO and he did attend. After the event was over, I mentioned to the CEO how I felt about the work that we did, and he assured me I had offered them great value, and urged me to call him the next week. I did, and we continued to do more projects for another 18 months.

To summarize, are you leaving money and opportunities on the table simply because you think you missed your turn to contact someone? Know that it s (nearly) never too late – yes, once or twice it can be – but most often the person on the other end of the phone or the computer will smile and thank you for thinking of them – and the trust you have previously built will help take your offer to the next level.  If nothing else, do a good deed with an online endorsement – and see where that takes you.

Lori Richardson is a Seattle-based sales strategist who is on the Fabulous 50 Tour this year talking to entrepreneurs about innovation and collaboration. Follow the tour at http://www.smallbizinnovators.com or reach her @scoremoresales on Twitter.

Source: Jonathan Farrington’s Blog

“The less I see of what’s his name? The more I forget him.”  Anon

Failing to focus salespeople’s activity reduces efficiency and consequently reduces results, because there isn’t a salesperson alive that believes they have enough time in their working week to complete all the activities they want to achieve!

Time is a huge constraint on salespeople’s activities so that when their manager asks them for more, it’s no wonder that they are overwhelmed.

Poor Quality Activity

Secondly, but equally important, salespeople often aren’t clear about how to identify the prospects most likely to have a genuine need for their product or service. Without an objective way to prioritize which prospects to contact first and/or an efficient strategy for contacting them, salespeople are doomed to waste a large percentage of their time.

Another huge dilemma for many salespeople is how to divide their time between servicing existing clients and generating new business from new prospects. Existing clients frequently make requests for service that could be dealt with by support staff. But salespeople who lack a disciplined, future-orientated plan for generating new contacts and sales, often find themselves spending more time attending to “urgent” tasks for existing accounts instead.

A common approach among salespeople can be summarized in the saying “If you throw enough mud against the wall, some of it is bound to stick.” This approach is exhausting, demoralizing, extremely unproductive, and very expensive in the long term.

Far too frequently, competent salespeople are expected to channel their own activities into the areas that will produce the quickest wins.

Unfortunately, left to their own devices, they don’t develop and pursue a formal strategy for moving a sale tangibly forward during each prospect interaction, neither do they have a clearly defined set of goals against which to measure the progress they are making. Typically, their judgment is based on gut reaction and is purely subjective – i.e. “Oh yes, I’ll get that order, he likes me.” – because salespeople have to be optimistic by nature. They end up “dancing around” with prospects, in the hope that eventually they will get to their chosen point on the dance-floor – i.e. the sale.

In this scenario, the customer has complete control.

Therefore, we can confidently conclude that: Quality Activity  =  Quality Results

Source: Jonathan Farrington’s Blog