Mike Schultz's Blog, page 17

How to Break Through the Noise and Create New Conversations with Prospects

As a seller, you’re trying to build relationships with potential buyers. People buy from people they know, like, and trust. The more you get to know your buyers, and let them get to know you, the easier it is to sell to them.

But first, you have to break through the noise, capture their attention, and create conversations with them. This is easier said than done.

To do this, you need to engage in what we call an Attraction Campaign. An Attraction Campaign is a coordinated series of messages with strong value-based offers deployed across multiple channels that'll get you on your buyer’s radar and make that buyer more likely to want to start a conversation.

Supercharge Your Prospecting with Smarter Execution

A lot goes into successful prospecting: targeting, offers, outreach, personalization, research, follow up, and more.

At the RAIN Group, we’ve found the most effective way to prospect is using the WAVE method:

Having a Winner’s mindset
Deploying a strong Attraction Campaign
Offering great Value
Execution

Best of 2020: Our Top 10 Virtual Selling Resources

2020 has been marked by a lot of changes, distractions, and new challenges. If it were up to us, we’d title it, “The Year Sellers Plugged In.” Not only literally, with the wholesale shift from live to virtual selling, but also figuratively in the sense sellers had to become even more keenly aware of buyer wants and needs to be successful in a virtual environment.

Each year, we release a “best of” collection of content that has resonated deeply with sellers over the previous 12 months.

2020’s list reflects sellers’ hunger for knowledge and skill development in all areas of virtual selling, from leading effective virtual meetings and asking strong questions to tackling challenges and developing strong virtual relationships.

We hope you'll find this list to be a valuable resource as you prepare for 2021.

Join Us in the Gift of Giving this Holiday Season

3 Ways to Enable Collaboration—Even in a Virtual Meeting

Stop. Collaborate. Listen.

Sellers of a certain age know that rapper Vanilla Ice was actually onto something when he uttered those words at the start of his song, "Ice Ice Baby." Years later, the concept of collaboration and a seller's ability to work with buyers, instead of speaking at or simply selling to them, to close a deal has become more important than ever.

New Infographic: 4 Ways to Take the Lead in Virtual Selling

As we near the end of the year, we’re left wondering what the world will look like in the next stages of pandemic recovery.

One thing that’s for certain? Virtual selling is here to stay.

In fact, 89% of B2B decision makers say they’re likely to sustain the new sales model beyond the next year, according to McKinsey & Company.

If you want to succeed in 2021, you must master this new medium of sales.

But virtual selling isn't just selling via phone. Seventy-seven percent of decision makers prefer to use video over phone when meeting with sellers.

In this infographic, we share the 4 Virtual Selling ImperativesSM—the critical areas where sellers must Take the Lead if they want to develop stronger relationships, create comprehensive solutions, increase buyer satisfaction, and secure more business virtually.

5 Ways to Influence Virtual Relationships with Buyers

The in-person buying and selling experience usually goes something like this:

You show up to your buyer's office, where they greet you and offer you coffee. You accept, and walk together to the kitchen, discussing your trip in and how the day's going. You chat around the coffee pot for a few minutes about the local restaurant you visited last night. You walk to the conference room together, chatting about the scores from the big game last week.

During your meeting, you're able to gauge the buyer's interest and match their energy and intent. After your meeting, you head to lunch, where you chat about your plans for the upcoming weekend. By the time you're on your way home, you know your prospect's favorite sports teams, number of kids, food preferences, and you've built a solid foundation for your relationship and future conversations.

Unlocking Sales Training: Four Keys to Driving Behavioral Change

Most people who enter the discipline of sales training and enablement have an intrinsic motivator to help people. They are teachers, inspirers, coaches, and cheerleaders. But sometimes, even the most skilled trainers are faced with obstacles that are difficult to overcome.

Training is inherently challenging. Research on The Forgetting Curve shows that within one week, people will have forgotten an average of 90% of the information presented. What's more, training is difficult to facilitate, reinforce, and measure. This reality contributes to more than 25% of salespeople reporting that their training has little or no effect.

[Free Download] The Ultimate Virtual Selling Toolkit

Experts—including us!—keep touting the need to transition to virtual selling.

But virtual selling isn’t a switch you flip on and off, nor is it your in-person sales process delivered via Zoom. It’s an integrated approach to meeting buyers where they are and when they are in world that looks vastly different than it did just a year ago.

4 Misconceptions of Making a Strong ROI Case

Emotions are powerful motivators of buying.

Consider that, in 2019, total U.S. spending in the weight loss category was $72.7 billion according to marketresearch.com. That's a lot of money spent on products and services that help people eat well and exercise more.