Darrell Amy's Blog, page 4

Nigel Green: A Smart Alternative To Geographic Sales Territories

Want to accelerate your revenue growth? Try focusing your sales team on ideal clients—the type of clients that can really move the needle. Our guest today, Nigel Green, has a lot to say on this topic. He’s the author of Revenue Harvest, A Sales Leader’s Almanac for Planning the Perfect Year. This has become one of my favorite sales management books.

Nigel has over 15 years of experience leading sales and marketing for Fortune 500 companies, mid-market companies, and startup. With this diverse experience, whether you are in sales, marketing, or own a company, you are going to benefit from the insights Nigel shares. 

In the Revenue Growth Engine book, I talk about accelerating growth by attracting Ideal Clients. These are the types of clients that can move the needle for you because they can buy everything you sell.

How do you set up your sales team to land more ideal clients and expand your business inside these clients? In this conversation, Nigel Green shares his recommendations on how companies can move from geographic territories to account-based territories. This conversation is packed with great ideas. Grab a pen and notepad and let’s learn from Nigel Green, author of Revenue Harvest. 

 

Jim Benton-Real-Time Data On the State Of Sales

Have you been wondering how salespeople are REALLY doing during the past few months of the COVID Crisis? Today, we have some very encouraging data from Jim Benton. He’s the new CEO of Chorus.ai, a sales enablement company that helps sales teams capture and share their best talk tracks to create quote crushing A players. He has real-time data about sales activity, sales effectiveness, and c-suite involvement in sales conversations. And, spoiler alert, the data from the last 60 days is surprisingly good.

Andrea Waltz-Why You Should Go For No

This week we’re going to get super-practical. If you’re in sales, you’ve always dealt with challenges and objections. This is certainly true now that we are in the middle of an economic crisis. How do you sell in this environment? To give some clarity, we’re joined by my friend, Andrea Waltz. She is the author of the best-selling book, Go For No, Yes Is the Destination and How To Get There! You’re going to get a lot from this episode so grab a pen and notepad and let’s join this conversation with Andrea. 

How To Cross-Sell More To Your Current Clients

Cross-selling to current clients to additional products and services may be the fastest way great companies can grow. According to Amy Gallo, a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to twenty-five times more expensive than retaining an existing one![1]

The old saying is true: it takes more effort to get a new client than it takes to cross-sell a current client. Even better, happy clients create a basis for referrals, helping feed the net-new side of your growth engine. If you are providing great products with a responsive service delivered by caring people, why wouldn’t your clients want to buy more from your organization?

Unfortunately, most companies do not fully optimize their cross-selling opportunities and only drive net-new business. They don’t see that cross-selling to current clients creates low-hanging fruit. As I consult with companies, many begin to realize that if they simply focused on this half of their Revenue Growth Engine, they could double their revenue without adding a single additional client.

This centers on creating a memorable client experience. In their book, The Power of Moments[2], Chip Heath and Dan Heath explain the importance of critical moments in a business relationship. The moment your product or service is delivered creates a powerful opportunity to make a positive impression. Similar moments exist during a customer service call or when it is time for renewal. These moments can build customer loyalty, or they can reinforce the buyer’s remorse.

When you deliver an amazing client experience, you create an environment where the customer thinks: “I really like this company. I wonder what else we could buy from them?”

Do you have additional products and services from which your clients could benefit? For most businesses, the answer is “Yes!” (If you do not have additional offerings you could sell to your clients, by the time you finish reading this section, I bet you will be looking for some new products or services to add to your portfolio!)

Whether it is consuming more of your core product or buying related products and services that you offer, the operating question you should ask yourself is, “Would my clients benefit from buying more from my company?” Marketing guru, Jay Abraham, strongly believes that companies have a moral obligation to deliver the highest possible value to their clients.[3]

You should feel compelled to tell your clients about how they could benefit from everything your company offers. Unfortunately, most companies do not have consistent strategies and processes in place to make sure this happens. As a result, not only do they miss out on huge chunks of revenue potential, they also miss massive opportunities to generate client loyalty and referrals. 

Client Experience

Crafting a memorable client experience helps fuel cross-selling. 

Your client experience should create a raving fan club in your client base that leads to long-term relationships with happy clients. You will know that you have achieved this goal when they are happy to give you referrals for net-new business.

There are three stages to your client experience: onboarding, management, and expansion. Let’s explore each of these.

1. Onboarding

Your prospect has said “Yes!” to your proposal. Now they are a client! During the onboarding phase, it is critical that the relationship gets off to a good start. As you begin to deliver your product or service, consider how it will impact all the users. What can you do to make this process smooth and even exciting?

During this stage, you face two challenges. The first one is buyer’s remorse. Every buyer questions their decision, especially in high-value transactions that require change. Second, in many cases, the end-users may not have been involved in the decision-making process. They are being forced into change they may not want. 

A great buyer experience alleviates buyer’s remorse and helps end-users feel comfortable. This ensures that the relationship gets off to a great start, setting the stage for future purchases.

2. Management

After the onboarding phase, how are you managing the relationship? Many companies simply drop the ball here, leaving customers alone to fend for themselves. A great client experience requires that you put the right amount of effort into staying in touch and ensuring their satisfaction. The good news is that when you manage the account, you not only build goodwill, you also create touchpoints to share ideas. This combination of goodwill and sharing ideas sets the stage for cross-selling additional services.

3. Expansion

If you have created a good onboarding and client management experience, you will get the opportunity to expand the relationship. The goal is to make it as easy as possible to acquire additional products, services, and solutions. Rather than inviting competition into a new sales cycle, a good expansion experience simply invites clients to receive additional benefits from a partner they already trust.

Your Cross-Sell Strategy

The result of a cross-selling strategy can be powerful. Fortunately, most of this work involves creating processes that leverage the work you have already done in creating a focused message and driving net-new business. Not only can these systems become drivers for sustainable revenue growth, but they also help build client satisfaction, improving the overall health of your business.

[1] Amy Gallo. “The Value of Keeping the Right Customers.” Harvard Business Review, October 2014.

[2] Chip Heath and Dan Heath, The Power of Moments (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).

[3] Jay Abraham, Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2001).

Rene Zamora-Five Elements of Effective Sales Management

In today’s conversation, we are going to explore the critical role of sales management. Rene Zamora is the author of Part-Time Sales Management. He helps companies solve the sales management dilemma faced by small companies where the owner needs to play the role of a sales manager.

Rene identifies five core elements of sales management and builds them into a practical system. These ideas are great for small businesses and are also very applicable to anyone in a full-time sales management position.

Jim Karrh-How To Manage Your Message

This week we’re joined by Jim Kahrr, author of The Science of Customer Connections. He is passionate about helping businesses manage their message so they can grow. In the Revenue Growth Engine book, I talk about how the fuel for your growth engine is a message that is focused on your ideal clients and the business outcomes they want to achieve.

Jim’s ideas will help you reshape your message and ensure that everyone in your organization is saying the same thing.

Amy Franko-Escaping the Commodity Trap

At some point, every salesperson and marketer feels like they are being pulled into the commodity trap with increasing pressure on margins. Amy Franko, author of The Modern Seller: Sell More And Increase Your Impact In The New Sales Economy, shares relevant lessons she learned from her experience in the computer industry. You'll discover new ideas to help you succeed as we explore the five attributes of successful modern sellers.

Mark Boundy-Radical Value

In today’s economic uncertainty right now it’s more important than ever to be able to clearly articulate value. Today’s we’re going to take a deep dive into how to create and communicate value. 

Today, we are going to talk about value with my new friend, Mark Boundy. Mark is the author of Radical Value. He’s a fellow member of the C-Suite Advisors. Most of all, he’s passionate about helping companies understand and articulate their value proposition. 

Carson Heady-Team Selling Strategies

Last week Matt Dixon, co-author of The Challenger Customer, presented data that showed there is an average of 6.8 decision-makers and influencers in a B2B buying team.

This week, Carson Heady, Senior Enterprise Account Representative for Microsoft, takes it a step further. He works in sales environments where not only are there teams on the buyer side, there are also teams on the seller side. He shares field-level strategies to maximize team selling effectiveness.

Carson is the best-selling author of The Birth of a Salesman Series and widely regarded as a top sales influencer.

Matt Dixon-How To Find Challengers and Mobilizers

How do we sell in an economic downturn? The closest example in recent history is the 2008/2009 crisis. During that time, Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson wanted to find out why some reps were succeeding while many failed. This research led to The Challenger Sale and then, The Challenger Customer.

These books are packed with insights on the type of sales reps (challengers) and the corresponding type of buyer (mobilizers) that will drive the most results. In this episode, you'll hear Matt's perspective on what salespeople and marketers should be considering as we work to recover and grow revenue.

After you listen to this conversation, you will enjoy my recent review of The Challenger Sale.