News flash. Salespeople are in it for the money. According to “What Really Turns Top Salespeople On?” by Bill Brooks 78% of top performers have the same motivating force behind them – money.

Merit-Based Sales Leads

Salespeople think about - and harshly judge - the quality of the leads being given to them. Every salesperson wants the qualified “hot” leads will produce the fastest and biggest sales. The best salespeople know that a great lead is worth 50 cold calls. Whether gathered online, offline, as referrals, or from out of thin air, qualified sales leads can be expensive to capture and are as close to being worth the same value as a closed sale as you can get so you need to make sure you are using them as wisely as possible. Giving them to the best salespeople makes sure you are doing this.

How do you keep dangling the proverbial carrot in front of your salespeople, while still making smart decisions for your business? Try doling out marketing-captured sales leads using a merit-based system that gives your best, hottest leads to your top performers. A lead distribution system that rewards with the most qualified leads will motivate a salesperson because those leads are most likely to end in a sale, thus contributing to the salesperson’s earnings. Classify leads by the likelihood that they will buy and reserve the hottest for your top performers.

Why it Motivates

Highly qualified sales leads allow the salespeople to:

• Focus on their area(s) of expertise
• Enjoy the process of meeting the customers’ needs, providing superior customer service and exceeding their expectations
• Expend less effort on a sale
• Make more money

Mutually Beneficial Lead Distribution

Obviously, it’s not just about the salespeople. First, there is the lure of a focused, motivated sales team. Secondly, your top salespeople are typically your best salespeople so by giving them the hottest and most profitable leads, you are putting your customers in the hands of your best people. Third, there’s the money.

Avoid The Pitfalls

Any merit-based system can cause more problems than benefits if it is not fairly managed. Follow these guidelines to keep the program effective:

1. Be objective and fair. This is a sensitive issue and your sales team will be watching carefully to see how leads are distributed.
2. Keep plenty of good sales leads for the other salespeople. This will give them the opportunity to compete for the lead rewards.
3. Offer continuous developmental sales training. Constantly improving sales skills will keep the entire group competitive by offering salespeople new tools and techniques.
4. Set goals for sales staff that are achievable, yet high enough to be a challenge. Once a goal is reached, and the incentive earned, people tend to relax and the effort – and results- decline.

For more information about how to properly implement a performance-based incentive system, check out “Motivate Your Salesforce To Achieve Selling Success” on www.allbusiness.com

Criticism of Merit-Based Sales Lead Distribution

Of course, this out-of-the-box approach to the distribution of sales leads has its critics. And there are benefits to having all sales people have access to sales leads, providing the chance for whoever is motivated to get leads. Check out #5 of BlueRoads’ “Lead Management Success Tips: The first 6 of 12”, where they discuss the impact on the leads that are not rated as “hot”. A merit-based system is also not effective in regionally organized companies with one-salesperson-per-region designs.

Conclusion

Sales leads are full of value - even beyond the face value of the potential sales they represent. Using your great leads as motivation for met sales goals, and see how hard they compete to achieve the qualified leads. It’s a win-win-win situation. Your salespeople are happy because they have a meaningful lead, you are happy because your customers are being well cared for, and your customer is satisfied because they are being treated to superior service from your finest, most qualified sales people.

RSS won’t kill the online newsletter. It is simply a different way to get information. Yeah, the headline is a little dramatic.

Think about the many ways people like to retrieve the news. Some people want news events emailed to them as they happen, others like to pick up the paper off the stoop and fold it, touch it, and drink coffee with it. Still, others like to access the newspaper’s website online. It is a matter of personal preference. I personally do look at RSS feeds often, although I am subscribed to hundreds. I use them as a reminder of a site I liked - like bookmarks I actually sift through.

What is RSS? It is a format used to syndicate web content like blogs, news alerts, product updates, and press releases – automatic syndication of content. RSS stands for Rich Site Summary/Really Simple Syndication. I think sometimes it is so popular because it makes distribution easier for publishers as opposed to making life easier for readers. It has become popular through a “push” strategy instead of a “pull” strategy.

In this day and age of information overload there are hundreds of ways to receive information. While RSS and newsletters may in some ways be conflicting, there is enough room for them to coexist peacefully - at least for now - and to even work together for the optimal benefit of your company.

From a quick survey, here are some reasons why newsletters might be preferred to RSS:

1. You have to be proactive to get the information in a RSS feed, it doesn’t just sit in your inbox like an email does. In a world of burnt-out multi-taskers, asking them to proactively read your articles is probably asking too much.
2. RSS feeds require that software be installed. Because a software installation is required (however simple), a large chunk of users that don’t know how to do it are wiped out.
3. Information overload. A newsletter is a snapshot of information that a quick synopsis of all the news that “fit to report”. RSS, on the other hand, includes everything and it is too easy to let it get out of control.
4. People tend to do what they have always done. Newsletters have a loyalty factor – nearly 82% of business professionals prefer to get their information via newsletter, according to E-Marketing.
5. People have short attention spans. Emailed newsletters are the easiest to get to, with the least barriers in getting the information. That is, they arrive anyway.
6. Checking email is part of people’s everyday routine so receiving an emailed newsletter is just like receiving any other emailed message, and is more likely to be read.

There are, however, many advantages to using RSS feeds instead of newsletters:

• Most attractive to your reader is that they will avoid the spam that is so annoying, and cumbersome, in email inboxes.
• RSS provides in-the-moment breaking news updates to people that have expressed an interest in your business.
• E-newsletter authors love RSS feeds because their newsletters go directly to an interested group that has subscribed to their newsletter because they WANT TO READ IT.
• Using RSS to distribute a newsletter is cheaper, too. You won’t need to pay for emailing lists because subscribers come to you.

Of course, there is also the case that newsletters will be used less frequently as readers’ preferences change. If the tendency is for readers to have information sent to them in-the-moment, then that quality in RSS will make newsletters less popular – and thus a less effective method of communication for the masses – in the future. For more about if RSS will replace email content distribution, check out Kent Thompson’s thought provoking article. An in-depth look at the pros and cons of RSS vs. email information distribution can be found in this provocative article by Robin Good. Lastly, this interview with Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome on the topic is interesting.

For now, Newsletters and RSS feeds are both great ways to keep your customers, employees, and vendors abreast of the latest news in your company. Utilizing a smart combination of both methods of delivery – emailing and RSS feeds – will take advantage of technology and use it as a tool to help you communicate better. From the publisher’s (yours) standpoint, it is easy enough to use both. So, use both. 

RSS KILLS NEWSLETTERS!

nah, too dramatic for my tastes.

So your organization doesn’t have a full-time training department or perhaps you are just looking at supplementing your existing sales training with online sales training options? There are many reasons to consider online sales training in your new salesperson curriculum.

1. It’s cheaper. With no out-of-office time or travel expenses, e-learning is much less expensive than instructor-led on-site training.
2. It’s convenient. Salespeople and reps can do it during downtime.
3. It’s consistent. The training experience of your employees will be the same because they are all using the same program.
4. You can measure ROI. Many e-learning companies provide assessments and other tools to help track your training’s ROI.
5. Someone tracks your training. The e-learning training company will keep a record of the progress throughout the training for each employee.
6. There are learning assessments. Your employees will know where they stand throughout the training, and so will you.

Now that you have seen some solid reasons why you should consider online sales training as a part of your training package, here are seven online sales training tools that encompass a mix of free and fee-based online sales training, and include varying training formats such as seminars, self-directed training, video training, and more.

1. American Management Association’s Blended Learning Solution

The American Management Association (AMA) offers both online and on-site training. Their blended training combines both formats for a comprehensive approach. This method has been repeatedly proven to be highly effective in making the training “stick”. After the training sessions are over, employees have access to related resources and information that can be used to reinforce their learning. http://www.amanet.org/elearn/

2. Richardson QuickSkills™

Their QuickSkills™ program has over 70 integrated course titles that run the gamut of sales training; covering topics such as Consultative Negotiations, Sales Presentations, and Telephone Selling. The sessions are 20 minutes long and are very interactive. They include assessments, role playing, and sales manager guides for reinforcing the learning in team meetings. http://www.richardson.com/How-We-Do-It/Training-Delivery/eLearning/

3. DigitalThink Simulation-Centered^TM Online Sales Training

This company offers packaged online sales training. They have a “learn-by-doing” philosophy for their training, and they use challenging sales simulations to teach their lessons. This allows your employees to practice in a safe environment instead of on real customers. You can watch a short overview on their website to see if this type of training is right for your needs. http://c-beta.digitalthink.com/dtfs/e-learning/sales.html

4. The Resource Connection Online Sales Training Subscription

When you subscribe to this sales training and development site, you’ll receive one year access to 9 online courses, with titles that include “Territory and Account Management”, “Win-Win Negotiations”, and “Prospecting to Create Interest”. View course demos, complete course descriptions and more on their website. http://www.resourceconnection.com/elearning-stp.html

5. LearnSellingOnline.com (LSO)

LSO’s vision is to be the #1 web delivered training provider for sales, customer service and sales management training. They offer free comprehensive diagnostic tools which are competency-based and focus on observable behaviors. Use there tools to help you assess your team’s training needs, and find out how LSO can help you. They customize their training packages to meet your individual needs. Available 24/7/365, when you purchase their individual annual membership plan. http://www.learnsellingonline.com/

6. iMarket® Free Training Modules

iMarket®, in collaboration with expert sales trainer John Peaker, has created a free online resource of modular-style online sales training materials. There are over 150 pages of content, broken down into 12 modules that cover tactical sales issues such as: what to say and how to say it when opening and closing a sale, both on the phone and in person. There are also sections on fact finding, secondary markets, sales scripts, and more. http://www.imarket.ca/files/sales-training-free.htm

7. SalesPro Online

This company offers online sales training seminars. They have a workshop component to the seminar where employees participate in creating a sales strategy based on what was learned in the session. There is also a section for managers to view each employee’s results. http://www.4moresales.com

Online sales training is making sales training more convenient, cost-effective and accessible for sales professionals everywhere. To decide if it’s right for you, consider reading this article by Josh Bersin regarding measuring the success of your online training.

Study hard, work hard, sell effectively. Sell smart.

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Tips for Increasing Telephone Sales

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Almost all salespeople use the telephone extensively to attract and close sales. From getting sales appointments on the telephone to closing those sales, the telephone is one of a salesperson’s most valuable tools and still many salespeople go about their phone sales without any training and only a few informal tips for increasing telephone sales. Even non-sales employees use the telephone extensively and receive little or no training about using the telephone effectively.

I am not suggesting that owners or managers should sign up for the next thousand dollar telephone sales training course that gets blast-faxed to them but some simple training, instruction, and how-to guides can help employees be more effective and sell more on the phone. I have compiled for you some helpful and effective resources and tips for increasing telephone sales for yourself and/or your business.

Listen carefully to your salespeople, yourself, and the next person who calls you on the phone and you will recognize that there are almost always rough spots that can be trained out. From the personality a person projects on the phone to his voice and professional appeal, there are usually free (and definitely paid) tips and lessons out there to help increase telephone sales.

Tips for Increasing Telephone Sales

While speaking on the telephone:

• Smile when you answer the phone and while speaking as this can be heard through the phone.
• Speak confidently.
• Speak clearly.
• Sit up straight (maintain good posture).
• Keep your head up while speaking to maintain attentiveness.
• Use gestures to make yourself more interesting and lively.
• Share your personality (balance with being professional).
• Don’t be “all business” (see “Share your personality”).
• Stand up while you speak to be more active, alert, and relaxed.

Online Videos, Articles, and Tips for Increasing Telephone Sales

• Podcast from ICS about telephone voice improvement.
• Freelance Writing Success on phone sales - pay special attention to numbers 1, 5, and 6. Seven is EXCELLENT also but slightly off-topic from this discussion.
• Video on listening from Shane Gibson. There are many excellent videos throughout this blog.
• Telesales Products offers an excellent ebook about increasing telephone sales.
• Evan Carmichael’s tips to increase your professional presence on the phone

From Innovative Communication Solutions

Most business people, including customer service and sales representatives, never receive voice training and wonder how they sound on the phone to prospects, customers, business associates and others. Since employees spend 30-50% of their time on the phone each day, it’s critical that telephone users improve how they sound.

Use Your Phone Effectively

You’ve generated sales leads, done your prospecting, checked out the potential client, and know everything there is to know about your products (right?) and now you need only engage your customers and close your sales - by phone. Use the resources here to improve your telephone sales skills to make more money and grow your business. Let me know if I can help you generate more leads online.
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Train Salespeople to use Your Website

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Telesales Training for $37

What are the main objectives of your website? You might have many but the top two are most likely something like:

1. Sell more products (whether by online sales or by generating leads)

2. Inform and up-date customers, employees, and vendors on products and services.

If you are not regularly refreshing your existing current content and writing new website content, you are missing the opportunity to develop a site will become a valuable tool supporting business activities from sales to employee training to customer and vendor service as the business grows.

Writing Website Content without Becoming a Writer

Don’t worry. No one is suggesting that you write all of the new website content yourself. Writing for a website can be a full-time job and you surely don’t have time to add it to your crowded to-do list. However, through outsourcing, making the most of existing relationships, and a few other methods you can create a content generating machine with only a small initial effort on your part. This will give you the constant flow of new, targeted content your website visitors crave. So, how do you get other people to write website content for you?

Add a business blog to your site. Blogs are important to your company’s site because it gives your business a personality – a friendly sense of who you are as a company – in the otherwise faceless world of the Internet. A business blog can also help build your credibility and establish your company as an industry leader.

Speaking of industry leader, Dave Taylor shares great first-hand experience about the benefits of a business blog in “Can Blogs Really Help Businesses?”.

A business blog is a great place for people to contribute articles. You can pay a blogger to write for your site through elance or payperpost, or if your budget is tight you can recruit volunteer guest bloggers. People rarely write for free, so offer them the notoriety of full credit for their posts and valuable links back to their site. You might also be able to trade services or products for posts.

Create a forum. A forum is like a message board, and is a great opportunity for visitors to ask questions and get answers from each other. People enjoy seeing commonly asked questions, and ideally, it draws in readers to participate in conversation about your business or industry. You’ll get repeat traffic to your site. Start your forum with just a few categories, and then get the conversations rolling by asking a few provocative questions in each category.

There are a couple of downfalls to forums. First you need to be sure you have enough traffic to your site because if you don’t have people to talk in your forum, it will look like no one cares. Another issue is that you cannot sensor what is written. Depending on your business, you might not feel comfortable giving up your editing power.

Still, a forum is probably the best way to build a community amongst your readers and there are plenty of professional forums out there that do a great job of pulling people into websites and creating content.

Invite vendors to create content. Vendors are always looking for ways to get the word out about their products. Offer each of your vendors the opportunity to add content to your site. Make it fair and routine by creating a contribution schedule.Set the rules clearly regarding how many links they allowed to their own site (if any), article length, tone, and make it clear that you will be editing.

Accept and display product or service reviews. Set up the functionality on your site to support product reviews from your customers. Amazon.com’s model of this functionality puts the customer feedback directly on the bottom of the product description page. Even negative reviews can increase sales by telling potential customers about the worst aspects of a product allowing them to decide if they can live with that or not.

Invite employees to write. Make it a development opportunity for a staff member. Most employees will welcome the time away from their regular duties which brings up the point that you should be careful not to make writing website content a chore based on deadlines and deliverables. If you are not paying extra for it, let it be a reward.

Use pre-written content. Use online aids to make the work less time consuming. You can either purchase pre-written rough drafts online, or use free public domain content.

Private label content is readily available and affordable and should be considered a rough draft of material that will be rewritten. You can buy the rights to packages of articles that you can use on your site. Rewrite the articles so that they are specific to your business and different than the original – the rights to these articles are sold many times over and you want your material to be unique and unlike that on other sites in your industry.

Public domain articles are copyright-free, which means you can use it on your site without needing to get permission. Subscribe to free article distribution websites to get this material emailed to you. Watch for stipulations though; many times you will be required to keep the article intact and include the required author’s name and bio. Often you can’t change the article in any way.

Outsource writing by hiring a content writer. There are several job boards online where you can post a project for free. Make any budgetary constraints known and you may find someone who will fit the bill. You can also hire a company offering professional copy writing services such as Lead Optimize or Invesp who will search engine optimize each of your pages for particular keywords while writing website content. The greatest thing about professional copy writers (and often the biggest sticking point for their clients) is that they are experienced with translating what you tell them about your company and services into truly effective content that will generate sales leads and sales.

Conclusion - Too Easy

There are many options available that allow you to practically automate writing website content. Use the stakeholders in your business to give your site varying viewpoints and styles, and to make your website dynamic and interesting. New informative and interesting website content will keep your readers coming back for more, and eventually help turn them into qualified leads and customers, too. Adding new website content on a regular basis will pay you back many times over in repeat and new traffic.

Cross Selling: The Art of the Up-Sell

Cross selling is offering items to your customers that complement or enhance their originally intended purchases. Some people call it up-selling. “Oyster” “Erster,” whichever you call it cross selling adds both volume and margin to your sales.

We experience cross selling every day online and off. Remember the last time you went out to dinner and the waiter let you know about a new Cabernet that would go wonderfully with your meal? Perhaps you ordered the wine, even though you were originally planning to just have water. Or, what about the damage waiver on your rental car that covered absolutely everything, protecting your own insurance deductible and rates? Maybe you didn’t know they offered this protection until the sales rep told you about it, and you were happy to have it. These are just two examples of cross selling in action.

There is an art behind effective cross selling, and it’s important to strategically plan your cross selling efforts to avoid counterproductive results.

Cross Selling Tips to Increase Sales

Here are a six cross selling tips to optimize your website for cross selling.

1. Know your customers and why they are coming to you and what their needs are, then match your products or services to their needs. Cross sell to create solutions.
2. Create linkages between your products in your copy and images so there is a logical and consistent relationship between all that your company offers online.
3. Start your cross sell ideas with one or two relevant items to avoid overdoing it and causing confusion.
4. Plan your cross sell copy and placements carefully. Carefully placed embedded links can be very effective but do not draw attention away from your main products. You want to compliment, not compete.
5. Bundle and package logical items or services together and consider offering a discount to make it appealing to the customer.
6. Use web content that will help you cross sell. Strategically selected customer reviews and professional referrals will entice the reader to make additional purchases.

Take a gander at Jack Aaronson’s article on “Effective Cross Selling Online.”

Traditional (non-Internet) Cross Selling Ideas and Techniques

Keep in mind that even if your business is predominantly online, there are many customer interactions that come out of web-based inquiries…

It doesn’t matter if your business is conducted online or offline, you’ll need to provide training to your representatives to ensure consistency and effectiveness, and to guide them into becoming ideal cross selling employees. It is important to have your staff cross sell tactfully, at every logical opportunity, and in a way that is not offensive to the customer. Cross selling should be viewed as a customer service interaction. It should add value.

When training your staff on effective cross promotional methods, focus on these important behaviors:

• Identifying and answering the customer’s need before any cross promotion is attempted.
• Focusing on matching customers needs to products and services that can help them, versus a forced sales pitch.
• Picking the right time. When the customer is trying out a product, and has finished asking questions, it is a good time to introduce other, more premium products or services. For example, if they are looking at the bottom-of-the-line auto insurance policy, once they understand what the policy includes you can point out that a more premium policy will cover more, and give a few specifics. This is called “up selling.” Another tactic would be to offer a bundled discount for adding their homeowner’s policy. If you are in a business that sells warranties, wait until after the purchasing decision has been made by the customer.
• Promoting only relevant products and services.

Avoid the Pitfalls of Cross Selling

You run the risk of losing your customers in the sales process if you don’t implement cross selling techniques properly. Online customers are easily distracted, and they will quickly get frustrated and lose patience with a cumbersome check-out process. If people get confused online - or get sidetracked - they might not close the sale and may abandon their order altogether. Obviously not the result you want.

Follow these tips to avoid the common pitfalls of cross selling:

• Don’t promote irrelevant products and services. Doing this shows your customer that you don’t understand their problem or need, and creates a less personal relationship.
• Avoid using scripted dialogue. People turn off instantly when they realize someone is reading what they are saying or it is contrived. Build trust and relationships by keeping it real.
• Stop when they say “no”. Don’t keep pushing. Annoyed customers are not satisfied customers.

Excellent article on this topic by Jamie Roche: “Cross Selling Hazards”

There’s Always a Way To Cross Sell

Take advantage of cross selling opportunities because it’s a powerful, effective, and inexpensive tool you can use to improve your bottom line. No matter what your business, there are always creative ways to cross sell products in which you can create a win-win situation for your customers and your business. Customers will be pleased with your service and attention, and you will reap the rewards of a fully optimized (and profitable) promotional strategy.

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