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Sales Acceleration: Target Your Dream Customers to Amp Up Your Sales

What is Sales Acceleration?

Sales Acceleration is a term that virtually everyone in sales uses, from CEOs to managers to salespeople. However, when I ask these same groups of sales professionals to define sales acceleration, and what it means in terms of the steps that they should be taking to speed up their sales, I am often met with blanks stares and confused looks.

So, I’ve set out to answer that question for you. What is sales acceleration? What does it mean and how can I do it?

If you’ve read my books or my other blog articles, you have a pretty good sense of how I define Sales Acceleration. But, I thought that you would find value in hearing what other sales experts think about Sales Acceleration and hear their thoughts, tips and techniques about how to amp up and accelerate your sales.

Today I’m sharing another video from my series of Sales Acceleration Interviews. My guests are all leading sales experts and we explore what sales acceleration means and discuss steps sellers should take to make it happen. I learn something new and usable every time I talk with these experts and I’m sure you will too.

Watch this excerpt from my in-depth conversation with author and speaker, Anthony Iannarino (who writes the excellent The Sales Blog.)

In this video Anthony discusses three key steps that you need to implement at the beginning of your sales process in order to accelerate your sales.

1. Identify your ideal customer. Who are the highly targeted customers for whom you can produce outsized results for the money you will be paid?

2. Start prospecting immediately and filling your funnel. You can’t accelerate sales without prospects!

3. Define disciplined sales processes that set expectations for how you will produce the value for your prospects that enables them to compress their decision-making.

It’s all good stuff that you need to hear. Click on our smiling mugs below to watch and learn now!

To learn how to view my entire conversation with Anthony, click here.

The post Sales Acceleration: Target Your Dream Customers to Amp Up Your Sales appeared first on Andy Paul | Strategies to Power Growth.

When No Action is Better Than Random Activity

The Sales Bargain

At the heart of every sales interaction is a bargain struck between the customer and you, the seller. The customer agrees to invests some of their limited time in you. And, in return, they have the very reasonable expectation that they will receive something of value from you.

A problem arises when that bargain runs into silence. For some reason, one of your qualified prospects goes silent. You thought everything was going well and suddenly, there’s nothing. Salespeople hate emptiness. And silence. It makes them nervous. In the mind of a salesperson, only bad things can be happening if the customer isn’t communicating on your schedule.

 

Avoid Random Sales Activity

Salespeople, like nature, hate a vacuum and rush to fill it with unfortunate “check-in” calls and spurious “just touching base” emails. Like a love-struck teen-age boy endlessly texting his new girlfriend seeking reassurance that she still likes him. In this case, it’s a salesperson using random, valueless sales activity in order to demand time from from their customer in order to be reassured that they haven’t been forgotten. And this is when the bargain begins to unravel because the salesperson wants to consume some of the customer’s time without providing anything of value in return.

The fact is that your customers have a myriad of tasks that they need to accomplish within a 24 hour day. Only one of which is evaluating your product or service for purchase. It would be great if you were your customers’ highest priority at all times and that they kept to a predictable schedule in their buying process. But, life intervenes and sometimes there will be quiet periods in a customer’s buying process during which you won’t have visibility into what they are doing or thinking.

But is random sales activity the best way to get them to re-engage? Or, is it even necessary? The answer is no. In fact, sometimes no action is better than doing something.

Make Every Sales Touch Count

Always keep this top of mind: Each and every sales interaction you have must move your prospects at least one-step closer to their goal of making a smart decision. Wasting prospects’ time bombarding them with random “sales activity,” hoping something will make them give you some time, is not going to win you the business.

Don’t take this personally: but a buyer wants to spend as little time with you, or any salesperson, as possible. The objective of their buying process is to quickly gather the information they need to make an informed purchase decision with the least investment of their time possible. Breaking the bargain and wasting their time with “check-in” calls

In fact, in sales, less is often more. You will increase your chances of winning new business if you can minimize the number of sales touches that you require to deliver the information and insights that will enable your prospects to make good decisions quickly.

Your prospects give you their time. What are you giving them in return? If you don’t live up to your end of the bargain to deliver something of value each and every time you interact with your prospect, you shouldn’t expect that they will either.

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Has American Business Forgotten How To Sell?

“American business has just forgotten the importance of selling.” Barry Goldwater (1909-1998)

Barry Goldwater, a long-serving senator from Arizona and the GOP candidate for President in 1964, uttered this phrase about 50 years ago.

I am not certain whether American business had forgotten the importance of selling. But there is a danger of that happening now.

Thanks to the Internet and ongoing innovations in a variety of technologies, we are awash with brand new sales tools that promise to painlessly remedy one sales shortcoming or another. Or to provide shortcuts, or hacks, that promise an easier path to success in certain sales activities or sales processes. In other words, selling would be a lot easier if we could just automate everything and remove the people as much as possible from the equation.

Like so many things in our American lives, we are attracted to the easy fix. Sales is no different.

Why the Easy Fix Isn’t

Compare the state of selling today with the sad state of our health care system. In America we believe that technology can cure any ill and fix any problem. However, despite the $3.8 trillion that are spent year on health care in the US, a large portion of which is spent on the latest tests, medications and treatments, our measured outcomes, in terms of the improved health of the US population in return for the dollars spent, lag behind other developed nations. Yes, we may have the best doctors and best medical technologies but we trail in life expectancy and outcomes related to chronic diseases such as diabetes.

Why? In part because we are drawn to the easy fix. Do you have Type 2 diabetes? There’s a pill for that. And if I take the pill, then I don’t really have to worry so much about altering my diet and exercise regimen to lose weight. Have heart disease? Just give me my statins and I can eat that 1,200 calorie cheeseburger for lunch.

I see the same happening in sales. Don’t know how to prospect? There’s an app for that. We have social selling, sales automation, sales enablement, sales engagement and many others that promise to facilitate the entire process of selling. Which they all do to some degree. But they all have as their primary focus the salesperson. Not the customer. Hey, don’t get me wrong. I am as immersed in these technologies as anyone. But, I never forget that the object of everything I do is to help the customer make a good decision quickly.

I have listened to salespeople rave about a sales hack that they claimed got them past the gatekeepers and let them talk to the decision-maker. The problem came when they actually had to talk to the customer. They were unprepared. They didn’t fully understand their products. They lacked knowledge about the customer’s business and how they would use their product. They didn’t have insightful questions to ask. In short, they lacked the fundamentals.

Master the Basics First

Health care providers are learning that a focus on the fundamentals is the best way to treat chronic diseases such as diabetes. Pairing a patient with a home health care provider who regularly visits them in their home (or online) to make sure that they are taking their medication, getting regular exercise and following a prescribed diet has been found to be very effective in improving the health of diabetics as well as reducing the number of emergency room visits and hospitalizations associated with this chronic condition. Through this personal contact the home health provider builds a trusted relationship with the patient in which more information is revealed than might normally be disclosed to a physician during a normal 5-minute exam.

So, too, the fundamentals are indispensable in selling. While we have come to depend on technology in so many ways, sellers can’t forget that selling requires that they actually engage in a real conversation with a customer, carefully listen to what they say and learn what is important to them. Here are four sales fundamentals that are not going out of fashion, and are actually increasing in importance as busy customers wish to devote less time to their buying process.

1. Know your product, and its uses, better than your customers.

2. Have the business acumen to understand your customers’ business.

3. Be completely responsive to all customer requests and questions.

4. Maximize the value you deliver to make every sales touch count.

Go ahead. Take your medicine. But don’t forget to eat right, exercise regularly and get a good night’s sleep.

The post Has American Business Forgotten How To Sell? appeared first on Andy Paul | Strategies to Power Growth.

Are You Giving Your Prospects A Clear Choice? And, Is It You?

The old saying still rings true: if you are in a business without competitors, you’re in the wrong business. And, come to think of it, I don’t know anyone in the wrong business, for virtually every business I know of today has significant competition. From local vendors to start-ups to established companies from around the globe.

When too many vendors crowd into a market inevitably the feature differences between products narrows; as do the pricing differences. This creates real problems for sellers because, in the eyes of the customers, all these vendors competing in the same space lack differentiation and appear virtually to be the same.

Faced with choosing from a flock of similar sellers, buyers can become paralyzed. Intuitively, you might think that more choices make it easier for a customer to choose. In reality, too many choices inhibit decisions. (It’s natural. I get overwhelmed just trying to pick a cereal off the supermarket shelf – whole grain, sprouted grain, simple grain, no sugar, non-GMO, fiber, flax… You get it.) And then, once buyers make a decision, they often experience buyer’s remorse – they wonder if they had picked another option would they be better off. (Would the simple whole grain have tasted less like recycled cardboard than this sprouted stuff?)

Sell with Maximum Impact in the Least Time

Fortunately, you can help give your buyers a clear choice simply by providing a superior buying experience. What does a superior buying experience look like? What must you do to become the clear choice?

First, make sure to respond to buyers’ request for information in zero-time. By that I mean, give them the information they need to quickly and confidently take the next step in their buying process. Give them this valuable information as quickly as humanly possible. And, most certainly, before your competitor does.

Second, make sure the information (features, data, stats, stories, insights, context) you provide is easy to understand. The customer shouldn’t have to work hard to understand the value you are delivering to them. A goal for every sales touch should be to deliver your value while requiring the least amount of investment of a buyer’s time. That’s what’s called selling with Maximum Impact in the Least Time. If you sell with Maximum Impact in the Least Time, you have the opportunity to create a positive First Perception with the prospect. This gives you a significant first mover advantage in creating trust, credibility, and clear differentiation with your prospect.

Third, another reason the value you deliver must be easily understood is that you want your main advocate to be able to present it accurately to others within his or her company who are involved in the making the purchase decision. You are much more practiced than your advocates in presenting the value of your solution. Make it easy for them to sell your value internally.

Become the Easy Choice

Your prospects don’t possess an unlimited store of time in which to evaluate and purchase your product. Or, one just like it. You have to become the easy choice. Sell with Maximum Impact and then your buyers, more often than not, will come to depend on you, knowing that you’ll be the first to provide the information they need to maintain positive momentum in their buying process.

Bottom line, how you sell differentiates you and your company from the competition so buyers can confidently make a fast and favorable selection. You are the major determinant of that choice – so embrace this responsibility and make it work for you.

The post Are You Giving Your Prospects A Clear Choice? And, Is It You? appeared first on Andy Paul | Strategies to Power Growth.

Sales Productivity and Your Very Next Action

Are You Training Prospects To Expect No Value from You?

If a sales interaction with a prospect is not going to make a difference, in terms of delivering value that will help them move closer to making a decision, why would you waste their time? Empty sales touches that deliver no value to your prospects are a drain on your sales productivity. And, even worse, they are simply a way of training your prospects to not take you seriously. It will make them leery of investing more of their time in you. Which means they freeze you out and stop answering your calls and emails.

Equally as important, why would you waste your own limited selling time on sales activities that don’t move the customer at least one step forward in their buying process? How does that help you achieve your own goals with that prospect? Of course, that could be the problem. Do you have a goal other than getting the order?

The Very Next Action Required To Move Forward

Productivity guru David Allen understands how to get things done. His bestselling book, Getting Things Done, is a masterpiece about time management. And, many of the lessons he teaches in his book apply directly to sales as well. One of his most relevant lessons for salespeople involves how to breakdown a bigger task (i.e., getting an order) into the logical sequence of events required to help the customer make a purchase decision (i.e. your sales process.) Allen writes about needing to know at each step of your process the “very next physical action required to move the situation forward.”

Let’s look at that statement in the context of sales. In selling terms, this means that you have to know, at each step of your sales process, the very next action you should take to move the customer at least one step closer to making their purchase decision. Before your next sales touch with any prospect in your pipeline, you have to be able to answer this question: what information, context, wisdom or insights is the prospect expecting to receive from me during our next interaction that will move their buying process forward?

The Value Of Being Deliberate

Unfortunately, this usually is where salespeople trip up. The problem is that salespeople too often don’t know what the “very next action required to move the situation forward” is. Too many salespeople operate on auto-pilot. They just show up for work everyday and unthinkingly try to apply the same sales process to every prospect. And when that doesn’t work, they shrug their shoulders and move on to the next prospect.

Oh sure, you’ll say to yourself that you need to send a follow-up email to the customer. However, before you take that step, you have to ask yourself why are you sending that email? What information are you going to provide that will move the customer’s buying process forward? What value are you delivering in the email that will make a difference to the buyer? And, most important of all, what’s the “very next action” that you want the customer to take as a result of receiving the value that you delivered?

Being successful in sales requires that a salesperson be curious, thoughtful, mindful and deliberate. Instead of dreaming about getting that order, you should carefully set a series of short-term goals for your prospects that lay out the next actions that you need to take in order to help them take their next steps forward.

Here’s the deal: A sales touch will rarely make a difference in the trajectory of the customer’s decision making process if it isn’t intentional. Asking and answering the question I posed above will force you to become very deliberate about the sales actions you take. Don’t make a move with a customer until you do. This means that you have an action plan in place for each sales touch to deliver value that will help your prospect make a fast and favorable decision.

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Do You Hire A Sales Type? Or A Sales Stereotype?

There are obvious dangers in making generalizations about various sales personality types. But when you prepare to make your next sales hire, step back from recruiting and hiring the typical sales stereotypes. Instead, think about the experience, knowledge and expertise that your customers need from your salespeople in order to help them evaluate your product and make good purchase decisions quickly. Watch this video to learn the 4 key qualities that all of your new sales hires should have.

 

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Sales Leadership Starts With The Sales Rep

Sales leadership doesn’t originate with the C-Suite.

It begins with the salesperson.

I read an article in a recent issue of Sky, the Delta Airlines inflight magazine, in which it said that Delta’s inflight crews exhibit leadership by being able to adapt to changing circumstances. “Each of Delta’s nearly 80,000 people around the globe have the opportunity to be leaders in how we handle unpredictable situations, how we use Delta resources, how we take care of each other and how we take care of you.”

To me that is also a great definition of sales leadership. Salespeople must be able to adapt to the changing requirements of the prospect and be able to help them by leading them to make a good decision. This doesn’t mean leading buyers by the nose. I’m talking about the classic definition of leadership that revolves around the idea inspiring others to take actions based on the actions of the leader. Or, as the great American thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “What you do speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you say.”

Leadership and the Customer

Too often we conflate the idea of leadership with management. But the battle in sales doesn’t take place at that level. It occurs with the prospect; in that intimate setting of person-to-person selling. And it is the responsibility of the salesperson to inspire the prospect to follow the path to a solution that they have worked together to define.

This inspiration comes in the form of serving the customer to help them to make a good decision quickly. Sales is not something you do to a customer. It is an interactive, iterative process you undertake in collaboration with the customer. The end result is a shared goal. If you are selling to a prospect in a conventional sense, then they will be painfully aware that your goal is all about the order. In other words, your goal is all about you. Buyers don’t like the feeling of being pushed to do something.

However, when salespeople are invested in the process of helping their customer make good decisions quickly, then the customer will be fully cognizant of that and orders will be the logical and inevitable outcome.

Sales opportunities are like snow flakes. No two are alike. Certainly, you should have a well-defined sales process. But, life rarely follows the script. It is what a salesperson does when they are forced to deviate from the script that demonstrates whether they possess the qualities of a sales leader or not. How do you react when the customer’s stated requirements change? Do you despair? Or do you roll up your sleeves, start asking new questions, work with the customer to understand their modified requirements and apply your knowledge, expertise and insights to synthesize these into an even better solution for them?

Note to Sales Managers

Lastly, in a separate note to sales managers, how often do you list “sales leadership” among the qualifications you include in a job description for a salesperson? Managers often list the stereotypical “heroic” qualities in job descriptions for new salespeople: hunter, closer, extrovert. But, the fact is that not one of those qualities will help you in your search for the extraordinary salesperson that can inspire customers to make decisions. Sales is a journey. Do you have salespeople who can inspire their customers to take that journey with them?

 

 

 

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5 Steps To Becoming A More Effective Sales Coach

If You’re A Sales Manager And You’re Not Coaching; What Are You Doing?

If you’re a sales manager and your number one priority each and every day is something other than coaching the people on your sales team to become more successful, then what the heck are you doing instead? The fact is nothing is more important for sales managers to do than coach.

What does it takes for a sales manager to become an effective sales coach? Here are five key areas where you can improve.

Andy Paul is author of Amp Up Your Sales: Powerful Strategies That Move Customers To Make Fast, Favorable Decisions (AMACOM Books, 2014) and  Zero-Time Selling: 10 Essential Steps to Accelerate Every Company’s Sales. A sought-after speaker and business coach, Andy conducts workshops, coaches and consults with CEOs and sales teams to teach them how to maximize the value and power of their selling to rapidly increase their sales.

© Andy Paul 2014

The post 5 Steps To Becoming A More Effective Sales Coach appeared first on Zero-Time Selling with Andy Paul.

5 Steps To Become A More Effective Sales Coach

If You’re A Sales Manager And You’re Not Coaching; What Are You Doing?

If you’re a sales manager and your number one priority each and every day is something other than coaching the people on your sales team to become more successful, then what the heck are you doing instead? The fact is nothing is more important for sales managers to do than coach.

What does it takes for a sales manager to become an effective sales coach? Here are five key areas where you can improve.

Andy Paul is author of Amp Up Your Sales: Powerful Strategies That Move Customers To Make Fast, Favorable Decisions (AMACOM Books, 2014) and  Zero-Time Selling: 10 Essential Steps to Accelerate Every Company’s Sales. A sought-after speaker and business coach, Andy conducts workshops, coaches and consults with CEOs and sales teams to teach them how to maximize the value and power of their selling to rapidly increase their sales.

© Andy Paul 2014

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The post 5 Steps To Become A More Effective Sales Coach appeared first on Zero-Time Selling with Andy Paul.

4 Ways To Make a Good First Impression on Customers

Here’s a short video with four quick recommendations for sales actions that you can take to shape your prospects’ first impressions of you and your company. First impressions, and the important customer perceptions that flow from them, are extremely powerful and sticky. Once a customer has formed their perception of you, and your company, it is extremely difficult to change. Therefore, it is extremely important to be at the top of your game from the very first opportunity you have to interact with a prospect.

 

© Andy Paul 2014

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