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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Aaron Ross
Read between
May 31 - June 12, 2022
Every month, go in and clear your pipeline clutter to create space for new, high quality opportunities!
“How have you evaluated similar products or services?” “What is the decision-making process?” “Who is involved in making the decision?” “How will the decision be made?” “What are the steps to have a check cut or funds released?” Now, when a decision-maker refers you to their “get it done” people (the influencers), it’s a perfectly good way to begin selling into an account.
Don’t be afraid to ask the client questions like, “What does success look like?
how many hours of selling time per rep does each sales cycle require?
Does your sales team give out proposals and quotes like one of those people standing on the street handing out flyers? “Here, please take one!”
Giving out proposals too easily helps no one
If you’re not winning at least 50% of the proposals you’re giving out, you’re too easy.
The most common mistake is lumping all the types of leads into one bucket and then making future projections based on past results.
Seeds take a lot of time to cultivate and to ramp up, but once they get going they are unbeatable, with the highest conversion and close rates.
Seeds are created by developing happy customers, organic internet search/SEO, public relations, local user groups, most social media, and publishing expert content.
Nets: Nets are classic marketing programs, in which you’re trying to cast a wide net and see what you get, whether through email marketing, conferences, advertisin...
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Spears involve targeted outbound efforts (such your classic “hunting”) that require some individual human
WebsiteGrader.com is a free SEO and website analysis tool that lets anyone analyze the effectiveness of their site and online marketing.
Marketo has all kinds of free training and educational resources. Landslide has a free online tool that helps organizations design a sales process.
80% of webinars are not for selling but for teaching: TEACH people something useful in the webinar. How can you help them do their jobs better?
Make webinars “bigger than you” – make them about the attendees, not your company.
Potential buyers with fewer than 65 points are called “prospects”; potential buyers with more than 65 points are called “leads”
Register for webinar: +5 Attend webinar: +5 Download thought leadership content: +5 Download Marketo reviews: +12 More than 8 pages in one visit: +7 Visit website 2x in one week: +8
If the prospect does not engage actively, they then receive “Stay In Touch Campaigns.”
With one view, the sales rep can see all the accounts in their territory
You need a process that emphasizes quality of leads over quantity of names.
How is success going to be measured? This is never about the number of names logged at an event. Is it the number of leads qualified within 2-4 weeks? Is it qualified pipeline generated after 1-3 months? Closed business over the next 2-6 months?
There is a real cost to keeping low-quality leads on sales reps call list:
I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones.
Fatal Mistake 1: Not Taking Responsibility for Understanding Sales and Lead Generation
failed to really understand the “why” when results didn’t come in as expected
Fatal Mistake 2: Thinking Account Executives Should Prospect
Account Executives should prospect for new clients less than 20% of the time and only to a Top 10 Strategic Accounts list, with partners, or to current customers.
Insufficient training: Back to training… To learn what it’s like to be in the customer’s shoes, new hires should spend time in any services area that works with live customers before starting their “real” job.
How clear is your Ideal Customer Profile? Have you identified their core challenges?
companies love to talk about what they do and what they are. “We are the leading platform in …” No one cares about what you do; they only care what you can deliver for them. You’re a “platform”? Why is that valuable to customers? What is the impact or result you can promise customers?
Executives need to spend at least 25% of their time with customers,
Fatal Mistake 6: Sloppy Tracking and Measurement
You can’t make what counts repeatable if you’re not regularly measuring what matters
How effectively are you measuring your sales and marketing activities and results?
If You Only Track Five Metrics…
New leads created per month (also, from what source).
Conversion rate of leads to opportunities.
Number of, and pipeline dollar value of, qualified opportunities created per month. This is the most importan...
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Conversion rates of opportunities to ...
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Booked revenues in three categories: New Business, Add-On Business, Renew...
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Start tracking 3-5 key activities or results now. Keep experimenting with new metrics, old ones, and how y...
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Review them weekly with a...
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Bonus Mistake: Under-investing in Customer Success
Solution: Hold the hands of your first 50 customers; give them lots of love.
There’s no process or magic to this: call them, visit them, talk to them! Ask them what they need, if they have any improvements or ideas to suggest. Ask their advice. Then do something about it.
What are you doing to make your customers satisfied, successful and happy?
Experiment. With everything. Constantly. A/B test. Try two different phone scripts or emails with 50 prospects, and measure which one works better.
salespeople should only be compensated based on the deals and data that are in your sales system.
