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Sales Survival Tips for Today’s

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4 Diamond Must system!

Expand your relationships

If you've got a great relationship with one key person but don't

really know anyone else at the organization, fix it now

Create urgency

Build referral sources

Better Add Strategic Value to ROI

These days, you need to link that ROI to a compelling value. In other words,

it's not enough that your prospect will save $5 million a year. What can he do

with that $5 million that’s going to sway him emotionally to buy your

product?

Link that ROI to an emotional, business, or personal benefit, however, and

your chances of swaying a decision maker rise dramatically

Seven Tips for Improving

Cold Calling for Lead Generation

Studies by leading marketing research firms like MarketingSherpa

show that 92 percent of B2B buyers are open to cold calls if the sales person

is relevant.

The phone is the human touch of your lead nurturing program and thus every

opportunity including cold calling to a potential customer should be treated

with great respect. Each time you pick up the phone, whether it be the first

call or subsequent calls, it's important to create value by giving your

prospects useful information in digestible, bite-size chunks.

Step 1: Sustain the calling

Step 2: Make every call count

Step 3: Throw away the scripts: Telemarketers use scripts.

Teleprospectors use call guides. Scripts leave little room for conversation.

Call guides are strong outlines to perpetuate conversation with areas to be

discussed and questions to be asked. They must be built with flexibility and

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assume variable outcomes while still staying on message and promoting key

relevancies to the customer.

Step 4: Respect the Executive Assistants

Step 5: Always be relevant and informed

Step 6: Gain opt-in

Step 7: Always follow up –

Four Levels of Customer Satisfaction

⇒ Meet Customer Expectation

⇒ Exceed Customers Expectation

⇒ Delight Your Customers

⇒ Amaze Your Customers

Four Strategies for

Cracking Into Corporate Accounts

Before you pick up the phone to call that big prospect, close your eyes

and picture him at his desk. He's busy; his firm has downsized and he's now

doing the work of two people. He's got three unfinished reports in front of

him, a meeting with a very important – and very angry – customer in half an

hour, 78 unread emails in his in-box and a worrisome conference with his

son's teacher this afternoon It's no wonder he's about to tell you he's not

interested in your company's great product!

Sales professionals today are "dealing with people who have a lot to do

and who are under duress," warns Jill Konrath, founder and chief sales

officer of Selling to Big Companies. That's why the polite, gracious phone

messages of the past won't cut it today. They won't get you a call back and

they won't keep a busy decision maker on the phone for more than a few

seconds.

Scratch your old game plan for getting into corporate accounts and

instead try these four strategies, which Konrath discussed during a recent

Webinar, "Cracking Into Corporate Accounts."

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Objection Elimination Strategy.

Most sellers create their own obstacles by what they say on the phone

or in an email, says Konrath. They leave nice messages about how they'd

love to meet with a prospect, but the response is always, "We're not

interested" or, "There's no money in the budget" or, "We're happy with our

current provider." Those words are indicators that your message isn't

working and that you sound like another vendor calling in from the cold,

says Konrath. Remember that what you're selling is just a tool. Your

prospect isn't going to be interested in your software but he is going to be

interested in streamlining his supply chain or reducing his sales reps'

Administrative burden or reducing his transportation costs. So stop

talking about your products and services and what your company does

and focus on the prospect's business objectives and what they're trying to

achieve this year.

"Shout It Out!" Strategy.

People have very short attention spans and are overloaded with

information so you can't be subtle about what your product will do for a

prospect. You need to shout out your value proposition clearly, definitively,

and in multiple ways. What's a value proposition? It's the foundation of all

your work to get into big companies, says Konrath. It's about the business

results a prospect will get using your product or service.

For instance, one Web marketing firm says they "help clients improve their

online user's Web experience, which typically results in a 40 to 150 percent

improvement in key operating metrics. In just the first three months of

working with us, a recent client increased sales conversion by 57 percent and

increased average order size by 25 percent." This is a great value proposition,

says Konrath. It tells what they do and ties it specifically to how they help

their clients. Before your next sales call, create your own value proposition,

summarizing how you'll improve the prospect's business, tying your product

to the critical business issues and using exact numbers, if you can. Value

propositions will be individual and company specific so you should always be

fine-tuning them.

Triggering Events Strategy.

Triggering events are those occurrences that create opportunities for

your product or service. For instance, you might read in the news that a

company's sales are down – that's a triggering event for an organization

that helps clients boost sales. Other triggering events include new

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strategic initiatives, government legislation, and management

changes. "If you can align your value proposition to a triggering event,

now you're talking about something relevant and something urgent," says

Konrath. Scour the news, the Internet, press releases, and other sources

to find the events that should cue you to pick up the phone.

Campaign Strategy.

Once you've got a triggering event, you're going to start calling a

prospect and 95 percent of the time you'll get voice mail. Don't give up

after you've left three to five messages, as most people do, says Konrath.

In today's market, it can easily take eight to 12 attempts to reach out to

someone before you connect with them. Plan to touch the person you're

targeting in multiple ways, with new information each time. Use the

phone, email, white papers, articles, case studies, and more to

demonstrate your expertise and credibility. Don't rely solely on voice mail.

"Dialing for dollars is dead," concludes Konrath. If you're calling and

leaving "that nice voice mail message," your chances of connecting with

the decision maker are nil.

Social Media & Marketing, Social Selling!

Facts and stats you should know!

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Forrester Research; 2.2 billion today on line users……

2013 – 3.2 billion

Face book 350 million

Between 2006 and 2007, online donations grew by 26% but between 2007

and 2008 online donations only grew by 14%.

As showcased in the diagram, the four steps are:

1] Listen

2] Interact: Join the conversation

3] React: Adjust your product or service based on [2]

4] Sell

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The key word here is stronger. Social media tools, like LinkedIn, can

only strengthen these relationships and complement — not replace — the

necessary face-to-face, interpersonal communication.

B2C companies can have purely digital relationships with their customers

and often have to as a result of the pure volume of customers. However, what

social media has allowed for B2C companies (closer engagements and real-

time digital conversations with customers) can also be leveraged in the B2B

world. While B2C companies can, and for practical purposes often must, have

purely digital interaction with customers, it’s still important for B2B

companies to use social media tools as a complement and not a replacement

for face-to-face interactions.

After studying over 50 international nonprofit organization's email

lists and response rates, the 2009 eCampaigning Review

Study revealed that 60% of nonprofits present a compelling argument

for supporters to take action, yet close to 70% of the organizations did

not send a follow up email within one month. 37% of nonprofits did not

even bother to send a thank you email.

Other interesting findings include:

• Email lists are continuing to grow, though the rate of growth was 17%

in 2008. This is down from 19% in 2007 and 21% in 2006.

• The average subscriber on each email list received about 3.5 messages

per month. However, since many organizations are segmenting their

• lists and targeting messages, some people may be receiving 10 emails

monthly from an organization while others may only receive two or

three.

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• Emails sent to activists who had recently taken action on a given issue

received 3x the response rate of regular full-list actions.

• The annual churn rate, or the rate at which an email list “goes bad” in

a year, held steady at 19% between 2007 and 2008.

Social Media and Diminishing returns?Social Media and Diminishing returns?Social Media and Diminishing returns?Social Media and Diminishing returns?

As the money moves up, who is viewing the social message? Does the

decider follow the content at all levels of the social engagement? At

what point does disengagement take place?

Money

Decision Maker

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25-34 has grown by 60% from 11.2 million users to 18.1 million users

35-54 has grown by 190.2% from 6.9 million to 20.2 million users

55+ has grown over 500% from 954,000 to 5.8 million users

While the 18-24 year-olds still have a solid presence on Facebook at 18

million users, they have only grown by 4.8%, which indicates a much slower

growth rate as compared to older demographics.

In addition, the number of people who identify themselves as high school and

college students has declined by -16.5% and -21.7%.

According to a recent social media study conducted by NTEN, Common

Knowledge and ThePort, nearly three-quarters of 980 nonprofit professionals

surveyed are finally integrating some social networking into their online

marketing and communications.

74% have a presence on Facebook with an average community size of 5391

members. Four-fifths of survey respondents said that their nonprofit has at

least one-quarter of a full-time staff person spearheading their online social

networking. Over 50% say that they intend to increase social network

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staffing over the next 12 months. Social networking is generating very little

revenue. On Facebook, almost 40% of respondents raised money via

fundraising, but 29% have raised $500 or less over the past 12 months.

Another 2008 market research study conducted by NPD Group showed

that 61 percent of Boomer Internet users had visited sites that offer

streaming or downloadable video (e.g., YouTube and TV networks), while 41

percent had visited social networks (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace The

study conducted by Advocacy Online, Duane Raymond of Fairsay and

consultant Jess Day also noted that 50% of organizations' online lists had

40% or more inactive supporters. Only 9% had a strategy for reactivating

dormant supporters. Yikes. What can we glean from this study? Nonprofits

need to:

1. Segment their lists more and write separate emails that resonate

with different levels and types of supporters.

In July, Frogloop posted an article on Five Symptoms that May Indicate that

your Nonprofit Is Suffering from List Decay and suggested nonprofit’s

consider asking themselves the following: How can members help the

nonprofit and advance the mission besides signing petitions or donating

money? Are their offline events they can sign up to attend? Can they

volunteer? Write a letter to the editor?

2. Survey their list at least once a year and ask supporters what

issues do they think the organization should take on?

The key is to make online members feel like their opinions count and that

your organization cares. Also ask members what motivates them to take

action and donate money.

3. Determine if these inactive members are bad email addresses.

Remove them from your list. Only 33% of organizations surveyed cleaned up

their lists.

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4. After a few attempts of trying to re-engage inactive supporters,

consider removing them from your nonprofits list.

I know that this can be controversial for organizations that pride themselves

on list size, but there is no reason to keep people on your list who aren’t at

the very least opening up your email communications.

5. Grow Your Online Lists to Account for Churn Rates

Conduct paid recruitment campaigns -- including search engine keyword

advertising and online lead acquisition campaigns – such as Care2 offers -- to

build your lists quickly around newsworthy issues or microsite campaigns.

Other noteworthy stats from the

2009 eCampaigning Review Study are:

• 93% have a presence on a social network.

• 76% of the organizations surveyed ask their donors to take action

online.

• 69% ask their online members to make a donation.

• 92% collect email addresses from at least two sources, including:

events, website, and offline mailings.

• 51% of organizations have 10,000 members or less.

• 5% of supporters are active members (meaning they took one or more

actions in the period of the study between June and August 2009).

• 7% of respondents conduct split tests of email alerts.

• 4% of campaigners are supporters of more than one organization.

Nonprofits are making progress with their online communications, but need

to adapt some very basic best practices to move their members up the ladder

of activism.

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David Armano spoke at the Conversational Marketing Summit in NYC

This underscores a fundamental truth to social media that many

organizations underestimate--being social means having real live people

who actively participate in your initiatives. It's difficult to automate

and a challenge to scale, but it can also help move your business forward in

ways that produce leveraged outcomes such as new/better products or

services.

The economics of using social media in business require the participation of

people to fuel it. It is not simply enabled by technology that maintains itself.

One of the biggest lessons to be taken away from a social platform such as

Twitter is that the ecosystem it's a part of if, is itself built on people who keep

it humming along with not only content, but a seemingly endless stream of

third party applications. This phenomenon is not entirely new--it's been

referred to as end-user innovation (innovation by consumers and end users,

rather than suppliers).

There are a few considerations every organization needs to consider when

developing their blueprints for their own unique social media design. While

there is no one-size-fits-all solution, there are few things you can plan for as

you review the many options before you.

Here are three to consider:

Seeding. As you plan your approach for designing your social system, take

into account that you'll have to invest to grow your effort into a

healthy ecosystem that can produce data, insights or even new ideas. People

will be required in order to do this.

Feeding. Whether it's a community, Wiki or internal collaboration solution

you've put in place, it will have to be fed with a steady stream of content.

Some of this can be automated and some of it can come from your

participants--but there has to be some editorial judgment made for every

piece of content and functionality. People are required for that.

Weeding. A productive social business design will require efforts to prune

and weed out material that can inhibit its growth (just like a

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garden). In some cases, automated moderation services can do this--but in

others people will be required to ensure that interactions are productive.

Weeding can also include creating a separate environment--for example,

Nokia's "blog hub" encourages employees to vent freely internally (using

anonymous aliases).You can bet that someone is looking at the data and

analyzing it. If not, they should be.

It's worth noting that seeding, feeding, and weeding all take place after any

social initiative has been launched. But not taking into account the

manpower that's involved in these as you develop your social business design

strategy can lead to a lack of adoption or participation--essential elements to

any social initiative. Ignoring these realities will continue to propagate the

myth that social media is fast, cheap and easy. As organizations look to grow

or scale their current initiatives, it's proving to be anything but.

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