Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 186

Sales Management 101

Being a sales manager is a demanding and complex job where your duties are constantly shifting.  You need to oversee and maintain a team and you’re responsible for a variety of make-it-or-break-it decisions. 

Weekly Recap, March 10, 2019

Here are our favorite sales-enhancing tips from this week's Selling Energy Blogs...

8 Best Practices that Will Improve Customer Satisfaction

 
Throughout my career, I’ve discovered firsthand how valuable it is to provide top-notch customer service. Like anything else, quality customer service is an investment – it takes resources, time, and money; however, the result is a happy customer (and as we all know, “happy customer = repeat business + referrals”). Additionally, your customers are less likely to seek out one of your competitors for their next project.

So how do you develop a customer service plan that will result in a high level of customer satisfaction? An article on AllBusiness.com provides eight science-backed tips for building a customer service-focused business. If you’re interested in learning more about how to provide stellar customer service, I highly recommend reading this article.

Assemble an Objections Archive

Keeping an Objections Archive™ is just as important as keeping a Story Archive™.  These are indispensable items to have at your disposal when you’re discussing solutions with a prospect.  Every sales manager should encourage their respective sales forces to generate both. 

Assemble a Story Archive

It is my studied observation, having been in the business for over 25 years, that the most effective sales professionals in the industry are the ones who can tell their prospects stories about helping people in similar circumstances. 

10 Elevator Pitch Tips

An elevator pitch is how will you capture someone's attention in 15 seconds or less.  It needs to be sensitive to what that person's segment is, what their organizational orientation is, and their role within that system.  This also applies to where they are in their career.  Ask yourself: are they a young buck trying to gain access to the boardroom?  Are they nearing retirement?  Are they comfortable where they are?  Are they seeking a promotion or a raise?

Getting Past the Gatekeeper

A lot of people misunderstand the role of the gatekeeper, in most cases an assistant or receptionist.  They assume that the receptionist’s sole purpose is to prevent you from sending your kids to good schools or paying your mortgage! The truth is quite different.  If you’re dealing with a gatekeeper who is good at their job, they’re making sure their boss’s time is well spent.  If someone is calling to sell timeshares in Florida, they’re not going to get through.  If the call is about creating genuine value for their boss or their company, or at least making the company easier to manage, then the chances of being put through are higher.

Make Yourself TED-Worthy

When it comes to designing presentations, my go-to books are Nancy Duarte’s Resonate and Slide:Ology.  However, if you’re looking for supplemental material on how to master the art of storytelling and persuasion, then look no further than Akash Karia’s writings on TED Talks.  He has written four books on how to incorporate the best of those award-winning speeches into your own.

Weekly Recap, March 3, 2019

Here are our favorite sales-enhancing tips from this week's Selling Energy Blogs...

Rethinking Education

Education is a large part of our work at Selling Energy, so I found this blog by Seth Godin especially interesting.  In terms of what we call “education,” how effective has it been?  Was it ever about us truly learning how to live and grow, or is it simply about maintaining obedience?  Should education be about keeping score, fitting a mold or connecting the dots?