Want to increase your company's equipment and service sales through marketing and promotional programs but don't have the big ticket budget for advertising or promotion?

Try using an inexpensive but effective Newsletter E-mail Marketing program.

What is Newsletter E-Mail Marketing?

The purpose behind newsletter marketing would be to promote your company's products and services, and to enhance its image and reputation as a professional, dependable, and knowledgeable entity.

Newsletter marketing offers some of the benefits typically gained from On-Hold Promotions, in that it informs the customer about promotional specials or new items and services offered by your company. But an added advantage to you is that your promotional message is delivered to your customers or prospects on a regular basis, rather than your waiting for your customers to hear your promo message only when they call your company and are put on hold. In addition, your newsletter's content gives your prospect motivation to open your newsletter and read it when he receives it.

How is all this accomplished?

A weekly--or monthly--newsletter with your company name, logo, and promotional information is created, along with news, tips, articles, advice, and information which are all selected on the basis of their potential interest to your customers. After your newsletter is approved by you, it is then E-mailed to a list of customers or prospects of your choosing.

Newsletter Format and Content

Your newsletter format is designed with these factors in mind.

• Contents of each issue includes current and of particular interest to business people
• New information, tips, news, advice, include articles and announcements about services, products, and new technology (excluding items which might promote your competitors, their services, or products), is chosen from professional articles and news releases, and replaces old copy from previous newsletter issues.
• Your company name and logo are displayed in a prominent location on each newsletter intended to project the impression that the newsletter is created and published by your company, or at least that your company is an expert in this field.
• Advertisements (except for your company promotions) from other vendors are not published in the newsletter.
• Your Company Promotions

Each newsletter will feature a special column or space designed to promote your company, its products, and its services, such as:

• Monthly equipment or services pricing discounts
• Promotional information about your company, such as new equipment and services you are adding to your line
• Special recognition, awards, or achievements of your company's executives or employees
• Personnel or management changes at your company
• Changes in company policies and services

Newsletter Service

A Newsletter service is one that is in business to help create and mail newsletters. In addition to mailing your newsletter, these services typically include reports that tell you which recipients actually open E-mails containing your newsletter.

How does this newsletter process work?

A simple four-step procedure allows you to choose your newsletter content and send it to selected prospects or customers, without printing costs or postage. All you pay for is a small fee for using the newsletter service (usually $.01 to $.02 per E-mail recipient). Or, if you work with a service that designs your newsletter and writes copy for you, there will typically be a small fee for that.

Step 1: You choose the template and format which you think will be of greatest interest to your prospects who receive your newsletter, along with a format which best represents your company, its services, products, and its policies.

Step 2: You create (and submit to your newsletter design service, if you have one) monthly specials, promotions, or news about your company (such as new products and service, upgrades, monthly pricing specials, etc.) which you'll want inserted into your newsletter template.

Step 3: Your template (if you use a design service) with your inserted company information is submitted to you for your approval.

Step 4: You E-mail your final template to a list of customers and/or prospects you have added to your E-mail list. (You can also print the one-page template to be used as a stuffer, hand out, or prospecting piece)

Using your newsletter for promotion in prospecting or in presentations to prospective customers

By including prospective customers in your Newsletter E-mail list, you keep your company name information in front of prospective customers, so that when they decide to purchase systems or service you can provide, your company will be one which the prospect contacts for quotes or information.

In following these simple steps, even a manager with little or no experience in newsletter marketing will be able to easily create an effective tool in marketing his products and services.

Garry Steck is publisher of Telcom Today, a newsletter for managers of telephone sales and service companies across the U.S., in addition to his 30 years as an independent telecom consultant. Among his most successful marketing programs, he lists newsletters as being near the top. He says a large portion of his new clients came to him as a result of his company's newsletters.

I know you've heard someone say, "We have a high performance culture here at Amalgamated. We have high expectations of all our people!" So, if you've been a member of a larger national sales organization how often did the term "high performance culture" turn out to have any benefit for you as the person in the trenches? Did the leadership team have high expectations of themselves on creating a sales culture that was not only good for shareholders, but also good for clients and employees?

Sorry for a little culture slamming, and I won't mention any companies, but here's the facts m'am.

"We have a high performance culture" usually means we are going to expect a lot from you. Okay, fine. But what can I expect from you in return? Can I expect a vibrant lead generation program? Can I expect to have a manager in my corner who will routinely carve time out of their schedule to help me succeed? Instead of telling me that I'm not doing enough can you tell me how to do more? Can I expect to have up-to-date sales collateral so my presentations help prospects visualize the benefits of our programs? When I bust my hump to over deliver can I enjoy even better rewards next year or will I bask in the sunlight with dramatically increased goals coupled with dramatically lower commissions? In other words, will you invest as much in me as I am being asked to invest in you?

First I would like to propose a definition of what an organizational culture is; The quality that arises in a person by virtue of belonging to a group. That person's behavior begins to reflect what they have learned through training and observing others in that group. With time, the members form agreement with what the group prizes as excellence. So with my definition of culture let me disclose something else. I am a huge believer in building a culture that benefits clients, stakeholders and employees equally. I believe strongly that satisfied employees will deliver a superior service, which customers will be willing to pay for...and stakeholders like that outcome.

So where do you begin to build a sales culture that will help develop a sustainable world class sales organization? Essentially there are four drivers;

Sales Effectiveness - A bundle of skills that arm each sales person & account manager with the tools they need to effectively help prospects navigate through a buying process and end up with needs that are satisfied. This isn't just about holding people accountable to having & using these skills. It's really about hiring people with high potential and then provided them with the training they need. This is much more than simply enrolling people in training. This is field managers who are experts in all the skill areas, and providing them the training they need to be excellent coaches in the field.

Reward & Recognition - There is a lot more to reward & recognition than a compensation plan & an annual outing. The compensation plan should produce a target income at sales goal attainment. Your peak performers should earn two or three times what your average performers earn. Why? Because sales people are great understudies and peak performers are the people you want them to imitate. Management reports should be shared throughout the organization and include not just the top performers but also the strugglers. The only people that should not make the standing report should be untenured sales people. Additionally there are all kinds of recognition vehicles formed around peer recognition, Sr. Management recognition and yes, family and friend recognition. For those recognized this affirms their contributions. For those that did not make the grade it affirms what the organization values.

Execution - Do all members of the team understand the sales strategy? Good communication is the key and good communication is not solely reliant upon the message...good communication is driven by understanding. Can people recite a summary of what the strategy is? Do they understand the role they play in the execution of that strategy? Has there been a set of metrics devised that will benchmark how well the organization is performing and how well each team member is doing?

Field Leadership - The Rosetta Stone of the quality of your sales culture is the company's investment in first level field sales managers. If you're expecting for your army of revenue generators to win battles you're going to have to invest in field support. Do your field generals understand their priorities? How should they be investing their time & energy? Is it 50% making sales calls, 30% admin., 15% forecasting and 15% coaching & developing people? If this is the reality of how people are spending their time your organization may never get any better than it is today. I have one question for CEOs and top Sales Officers. How many leadership training courses have you delivered to your field generals in the last 5 years? Don't hold them accountable for moving from a peak performing sales person to an excellent management leader. That's your job.

Is a heart healthy culture worth the investment? Only if you want the best sales people in your industry to aspire to work for your company.

The sales culture that develops in your organization cannot be controlled, but you can influence it dramatically. Your culture will be known for a theme, for it's character, for it's composure, for it's courage and yes...for it's care for people. You must deliver results, but how you go about delivering those results will define your culture.

Sales Performance Advisors delivers field ready tools to help sales people, sales managers, directors and executive management optimize their sales results.

Sales managers spend a lot of time in meetings and attempting to motivate their sales teams. Much of this time is truly wasted and not invested because the focus is on existing problems such as failure to increase sales, declining customer loyalty, etc instead of focusing on solutions.

Problems in any organization are far easier to identify and in many cases re-identify. However, determining solutions and then executing those solutions is far more difficult. Possibly that is why there are endless meetings and far fewer results happening in many businesses. Sales Coaching Tip: Problem re-identification is another word for insanity - doing the same thing over and over again hoping for different results.

If you are facing the endless meeting behaviors as a sales manager, have you considered this one simple strategy to reverse those non-productive problem identification meetings - a proven goal achievement process reinforced with a proven goal setting tool.

For example, the weekly sales meeting discusses the ongoing problem of inability to increase revenue. Instead of beating this dead horse, write a goal statement that the sales team will increase sales by 2% during the next week. Sales Coaching Tip: Break large goals into smaller ones. Remember to eat the elephant one bite at a time instead of attempting to eat the entire elephant at one setting.

Before you jump into the action steps, invest the time to build the emotional buy in from each team member. List all the gains for achieving this objective as well as all the pains associated with failure.

Next work through all the known and unknown (potential) obstacles preventing that goal from being achieved. This is the time for active brainstorming. If your selling team is large, break them up into smaller groups.

Now bring the sales team back together and list all the possible obstacles on a white board or flip chart. Either collectively or again in teams start thinking about possible solutions for each obstacle. Then as a group determine the best solution for each obstacle.

Finally, identify time frames (dates) and delegation if necessary. At your next meeting, track your progress and make any course corrections. If the sales goal is achieved, set another. Use this goal achievement process to provide solutions and make those sales meetings truly valuable to everyone.

Chicago Sales Coach Leanne Hoagland Smith helps with sales skills to management development.

Read about Leanne's new book on sales coaching book. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, the Keys to Unlocking Sales Success.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leanne_Hoagland-Smith

If you are about to start a dollar store one of the challenges you will face is determining exactly what dollar store merchandise to initially order for your store. Then there will be the challenges of decided which items to always carry, and which can be allowed to run very low if required by your ordering process or cash flow. To make this management task a little easier to handle, consider developing a set of rules for the ordering in your store. In fact consider incorporating the 3 tips that follow to make it even easier.

Tip #1) If you start a dollar store be sure to make consumables a top priority. In fact, always without exception make consumables a top ordering priority for your store. Items in this dollar store merchandise category include dish soap, auto dishwasher soap and other household cleaners, paper products including paper towels, bathroom tissue, and facial tissue, and health & beauty items such as toothpaste, hand soap, deodorant, and shampoo. These are the products shoppers need and will come back time and again to buy. However these items must be in-stock at all times to retain your shoppers and to keep them coming back.

Tip #2) Consider developing a plan to purchase replenishment merchandise for departments based on their sales. For example toys are always a big seller so don't ever allow them to run low. Make sure seasonal toys are in-stock as the season approaches. Party & gift is another department that always ends up as one of the top producing departments. This area generates a lot of store traffic, and the overall profit margins will often be among the highest in your store. Never allow core items to run low in these departments.

Tip #3) A valuable tool to use in the buying process is open to buy. That means you have an overall store budget that is based on a percentage of sales. Next track by-department sales and allocate money back to purchase replenishment merchandise based on the sales-by-department results. If one department ever needs extra money, reduce allocated spending for another department to cover. That way replenishment was always managed to your sales level.

If you start a dollar store be sure to incorporate these tips into your initial and follow-up ordering processes. They will make the challenges of carrying the right dollar store merchandise much less challenging for you to handle.

To your success when you start a dollar store!

Learn how you can Start your own Dollar Store Business.

Bob Hamilton is an entrepreneur, author, writer, business consultant and trainer.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_Hamilton

Sales lead management is a business activity that tends to be cast aside when the going gets good. When the current revenue stream is flowing great, sales lead management is the farthest thing from people's mind. Unfortunately, when marketing activities are put on hold the likelihood that they need to be used increases.

One of the most dangerous things that happens to professional service businesses when they start generating lots of revenue, is that sales lead management suffers. Typically what happens is the owner starts to work more and more hours. This results in lots of billable hours. But, an increase in billable hours often comes with a decrease in marketing hours.

Poor Sales Lead Management Is Poor Business Practice

Sales lead management is neglected when there is less time available. Attending networking events and doing follow-ups and sales calls almost disappear. Phone calls from leads remain unreturned for days, even weeks at a time. Slowly, concern for the business diminishes and is replaced with concern about writing invoices.

This lack of sales lead management is a sure sign of future death. You need to be constantly adding new opportunities to your funnel. Going to more networking events, getting new people in your database, and getting more proposals out there.

Not all sales lead management activities, though, need to be this time intensive. Direct mail is an excellent sales lead management technique that can run on autopilot. It is also financially affordable.

Regardless of what type of sales lead management you use, you need to be spending much of your time on getting people into your funnel. Qualifying leads as prospects. Getting the prospects and getting them signed up for work. You never know when you will need to turn those leads into paying customers. It is much easier to do so when they are already part of your marketing efforts.

The Bottom Line on Sales Lead Management

The type of sales lead management technique you use is not the most important issue. The important factor is that you use sales lead management consistently, regardless of where your business is at in terms of sales and revenue volume. When you have hardly any customers, to when you have more customers than you think you can handle, your sales lead management will make a difference in your long term success.

Copyright MMI-MMVI, Computer Consulting 101. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance}

Joshua Feinberg, co-founder of Computer Consulting 101, helps computer consulting business owners get more steady, high-paying clients. Learn how you can too. Sign-up now for your free access to field-tested, proven computer consulting secrets at Computer Consulting 101.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joshua_Feinberg

Looking into buying a dialer and finding a vendor can be challenging, not to mention finding the right one for you. You want everything to be perfect. You should have everything that your company needs in that dialer system and vendor. But how do you do such a thing? You need to research and research well. Even the best of vendors and dialers can't make up for a lack of preparation on your side of the deal. You need to be well prepared for whatever is coming. The researching is your key to success.

Some of my other articles have gone over several of these areas, but I want to stress the point again and again: Research. Its like judging a book by its cover. A vendor might look fancy up front, but within the system, there could be quite a few loop holes and such, and you wouldn't want that running your dialing system. Know what the departments in your company need, and know what you need. Right it down on paper. Don't pay for what you will never use. Keep several vendors in sight throughout the entire process. If you only have one that you are eying and its not what it seemed to be at first, you are out of a dialer and provider.

When investigating, find out everything that you can about the provider. If they are the one that you will use, you will want to know how well they will run your software. Search on line, ask around your company, call the actual provider, question them. Everything wi

It is often said that customers buy from people they like. While we don't usually buy from people we dislike, there is one more dimension to this old saying.

Customers buy from people they trust

To illustrate this point further, let's look at how typical prospective customers react to new sales people making the first contact with them (otherwise known as cold-calling):

1. They find an excuse to hang up the phone as soon as possible
2. They make themselves very busy during appointments with sales people
3. They keep their mouths shut as much as possible when sales people ask questions
4. They will not refer the sales people to a higher authority even when such a need is clear
5. They often use delay tactics such as "If there is a need, we will call you" to appease sales people, etc.

These are, just a few examples, of customer's behaviours when they distrust the sales person. As such, to get customers interested and excited about what you have to offer, you first have to win their trust.

A Question of Lust

The reasons that customers don't trust sales people is very simple: they feel that the only thing that sales people care about is getting their money. Sadly, this "lust for the customers' money" is quite true with many sales people out there, AND customers can smell them from miles away.

When customers make purchases, what they really want in exchange for the money they spend, is substantiated value. That is, can the products or services they buy bring better productivity, reduce wastages or simply improve their quality of life.

Hence, the first step to build trust is this: you have to be perceived as being on the customers' side and pro-actively help solve customers' problems.

Here's a simple example. When most sales approach their prospective customers, they will say something like, "Hello, my name is xyz, and I'm from abc company. How are you today? I would like to show you a demo of our latest productivity-enhancing gadget. As I will be around your vicinity on Tuesday afternoon, can I come and see you around 2 p.m. or 4 p.m.?"

The problem with this way of approach lie in how these intended customers respond. They will either just say "not interested", or say yes and then get their secretaries to tell you "the boss has an urgent meeting, please leave your materials on the front desk, and we will call you when we have a need".

The reason for such responses from customers is that they don't trust what you said. They probably have seen just too many "productivity-enhancing gadgets", and hear too many "I happen to be just in your neighbourhood" stories and certainly will be too busy to meet just another peddler of gadgets. Furthermore, they don't trust you enough to tell you their "productivity" challenges, if that is what your product will solve.

To overcome such trust issues at initial contact, both sales people and their managers will have to work together to build trust and allay customers' fears that they will be rip off, or that they will be wasting their time.

From the sales person perspective, she will have to provide the customer what Miller Heiman calls a Valid Business Reason into her opening call, e.g. "Hi, my name is xyz. I understand that many companies in your industry are facing serious challenges due to the sharp increases in raw material costs. I'd like to explore with you if we can help improve your productivity, and thereby reducing your costs."

From the sales managers' perspectives, trust will have to be built beyond the initial cold-call. Customers are likely to increase their trust if they had seen testimonies and case studies of past successes, PRIOR to the initial phone calls from sales people.

Build Credibility, NOT Benefits

Traditionally, many companies focus merely on the "Features, Advantages and Benefits", none of which will work IF the customer does not trust you enough. Hence, sales people would have to build credibility during the course of the sales process, namely:

* Listen
* Do your homework and ask intelligent questions
* Provide Assurance to your customers

Many sales people tend to put too much emphasis on their company, and the products they offer, that they forgot to listen to their customers needs, wants and concerns.

To ensure that customers spend more time talking, sales people would have to ask intelligent questions. Typically, customers expect sales people to have done some basic research on the customers' web sites. Sales people can improve on this by going through customers annual reports (if they are listed companies) or source for news reports about these customers. If a prospective customer is a competitor of a current customer, you can find out more information from the latter. Web 2.0 social networking sites are also a great source of information.

While some sales managers may argue that spending too much time on the Internet will eat into selling time and hence, is detrimental to sales. However, going to a customer and not knowing what are the right questions to ask will make the customer feel you are unprofessional and incompetent, which is worse. Sales managers will have to get the balance right by allocating sufficient time for research as well as for selling.

Ultimately, customers will often have niggling concerns about buying from you. Rather than avoiding those concerns for the fear that addressing them will hurt your sale, the opposite is likely to be true. If customers have got any unanswered questions or concerns about your products and services, they will be:

* Less likely to buy
* Buy less
* Drive a hard bargain on your price

Hence, when you are approaching the closing stages of your sale, look out for symptoms that show the customer is nervous or uneasy. Then seek to address such concerns and provide the relevant assurances.

The Policy of Truth

Perhaps the biggest destroyer of trust is to "over-promise and under-deliver". The causes of this destruction are two-fold:

* Sales people make promises to customers on things that they cannot (or unsure if they can) deliver
* Companies who deliver less-than-expected levels of product qualities to their customers

For the former, sales managers would have to ensure sales people do not over-promise their customers just to get the sale or to reach their sales target. Doing so will severely damage the trust between buyer and seller, and will make it really difficult for future sales efforts to succeed.

For the latter, nothing de-motivates sales people more than having to answer customers' questions that they don't have answers to. No amount of sales effort will succeed if the company does not invest enough in quality to make sure customers get the value they pay for. When companies deliver shoddy quality, not only will there be decreases in sales, there will also be an immediate increase in sales staff turnover. It's not a question of "if", it's just a question of time. After all, who wants to to sell for a company that they can't even trust?

by c.j. Ng

c.j. is an Affiliate with HR Chally Group in China. Founded in 1973 through a grant from the U.S. Justice Department, the HR Chally Group provides predictive and compliant assessment system for management, sales, technical, customer care, and administrative talents. Unlike other assessments that just conducts personality profiles, Chally profiles what is exactly required by specific job descriptions and responsibilities and predict if these talents can succeed in future. As such, you'll get:

* Up to 40% reduction in staff turnover

* Up to 30% increase in employee productivity

* 85%+ accuracy in identifying effective performers

Prior to this, c.j. was Asia Marketing Manager for a Fortune 500 logistics company, as well as Corporate Training Manager for Ringier AG, Switzerland's largest media group, in China, where he was responsible for sales team development, and helped increase the % of new hires to close their 1st sales within 2 months by 30%, as well as increase overall sales targets by more than 50%. Visit http://www.psycheselling.com/ for more info.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=CJ_Ng

What I am about to say can be executed by a new sales manager on their own, or via the direction of senior level sales manager.

The challenge of a new sales manager getting up to speed and succeeding would be a common problem for most companies because most have not done their homework.

Everyone would agree that in order to succeed you need a "plan." Well this is true of the position of sales manager; it too should have a plan.

If you are a sales manager, or have this position reporting to you, you should have a very complete document telling how to execute that job. Each task of the sales manager's job should be listed and described in enough detail so that anyone needing to fill in for the sales manager can run the show as it currently runs.

To make a new sales manager successful I would suggest that their first job be that documenting the tasks and execution of the position. The manager should discover the key things that need to be done, learn how to do them, and then document how and when they are to be done.

This exercise will get the new manager evaluating the duties of the position and learning how to do them at the same time. This task will also quickly reveal those things the new sales manager doesn't know how so that he can go to his manager to learn them.

As a new manager you should not worry about changing anything, unless there are major problems left by your predecessor that simply can't wait. The new manager should maintain a steady focus on doing and documenting the principle tasks of his job while developing this new relationship with the team.

The focus with team members should only be on "How can I help?" or "What can I do that will make you better?" Corrective actions should only be taken on at this point for the most serious of problems, those things that simply cannot wait. In the beginning, just helping is the best strategy.

It may take a week or two for the new manager to accomplish this task. The result will be a complete documentation of the sales manager's job and a manager who now knows all the critical things he needs to be doing and how to do them.

The "just help focus" with the team will have revealed a potential list of projects that may improve team performance. And, by focusing only on "helping" the team during early part of the relationship, there will now, hopefully, be in place a good working relationship between the new manager and the team.

The new sales manager will now be in a position to evaluate what is going on (maybe with the help of his manager) so that the critical and most important issues can begin to be solved. He will know his job and responsibilities and will have a working document that can be added to or improved as he works into the future.

The next step in the process would be to evaluate team skills and the sales process so that these areas can be optimized.

This concept is certainly not limited to sales management - companies should do this for every position (including salespeople). You will find this an invaluable exercise in creating success with any new manager (or employee). And if you are one of the few companies that has already done this, the manager now can execute this exercise with the benefit of that document achieving the same objective and possibly even enhancing what currently exists.

In a face-to-face card payment environment a well trained staff at the checkout can identify certain suspicious indications in a cardholder's behavior that can help prevent a potential fraudulent transaction from being processed. It is advisable that you do provide your personnel with proper training so that they know what signs to look for, in addition to following all other procedures for identifying fraudulent activity, such as identifying cards that have been tampered with, signatures on the sales receipts that do not much those on the back of the cards, etc. Keep in mind that identifying fraud before it actually takes place helps to avoid chargebacks against which you have no remedy. Here is a list of suspicious signs at the point of sale that you should look out for:

• Purchasing large quantities without much attention to details. If a customer is purchasing a sizable amount of merchandise, without much care for its size, color, or even price, that might be an indication for fraud.
• Ignoring free delivery. If your customer asks no questions or completely ignores a free delivery option, in favor of a quicker but paid one, this could be a warning sign.
• Attempting to rush the cashier into a quicker processing of the payment. Although your customer may really be in a hurry, such behavior can be intended to force the point-of-sale person to circumvent fraud prevention measures.
• Making multiple purchases within a short amount of time. If a customer completes a purchase, leaves the store and then comes right back in, he or she might be doing it because they believe that making multiple fraudulent transactions, each for a lesser amount, would not attract much scrutiny.
• Shopping either right after the store opens or before it closes. A fraudster might be shopping early in the morning or late in the evening, in the hope that the point-of-sale personnel will not be as attentive as during other stretches of the day.

You should keep in mind that, although suspicious, a certain behavior might be perfectly justified and explained in another, completely legitimate way. By themselves, none of the above examples constitutes a proof of a fraudulent activity. You should always use your observations of customer behavior in the context of the particular setting. Different establishments attract different types of customers and what is considered a normal customer behavior at one place might be interpreted as completely irregular at another.

Once you have accumulated enough observations to suggest that a fraudulent activity is probably taking place, you should contact your merchant bank's authorization center and make a "Code 10" request. You should keep the card in your possession, but only if it is safe to do so. If you feel threatened or uncomfortable, complete the transaction and make the call to your merchant account bank's center right after the customer leaves. Then follow the instructions your merchant bank gives you.

The marketing components that used to generate leads -- product, performance, promotion and price --are no longer effective. The tools for selling -- lots of sales calls, lunches, golf and give-always -- are expensive and inefficient. In the 21st century, selling and business development require the following:

* Prospecting Using the Internet
* Relationship Selling
* Network Selling and
* Investigative Selling.

Prospecting Using the Internet

Cold calling is dead. It's not productive. It's demoralizing. It's expensive. Prospecting in the 21st century involves setting the stage for people and companies to find you so that you can solve their problems. Flaunting advertisements and brochures is also a waste. Everyone goes to the Internet these days to find solutions to their problems. Therefore, the successful sales person will have to know how to use the Internet to generate qualified leads. Corporations should have an Internet program, but territory and product-line sales people should have their own Internet marketing program as well. And it's not about having a website, it's much more. This is the passive side of prospecting. This means that sales and business development professionals must set up an aggressive Internet Marketing process for their territory or product so that the people they want to do business with will come to them.

Relationship Selling

The other 21st Century prospecting element is the active side of prospecting. This is where you use professional relationships to find out about problems or opportunities where you can assist. There are so many opportunities for a sales person or account manager to discover within their existing and old/lost accounts. Using professional relationships make this prospecting method effective and easy.

Sales and Business Development people with professional relationships are seen as a resource to protect or enhance buyers' careers. These people will be open to give information and coach you for cross-sells into their business unit, associate divisions and/or other product lines. If you develop professional relationships, these people will give you qualified leads, buy more and more from you, and refer you to others.

Network Selling

However, one has to learn how to use these relationships to get networked to others. There are two focuses for successful selling in the 21 Century:

1. You must spread like a virus in your customers' organizations. I use the phrase - move up and out.

2. You must get to the profit-center leaders, C-level executives, and senior staff of the business units you sell into and develop professional relationships with these people to effectively close sales, cross-sell and be seen as the preferred supplier. Hanging out with the subordinates will never secure your position with your customers.

The only way you'll move up and out and connect with the leaders is by using your professional relationships to network you to others. People with whom you've developed credibility -- your Golden Network as I call it -- will help you if asked. But if they are not asked for a referral and introduction to others, they will rarely offer to connect you with the leaders and others you should be meeting. So you must ask for their help.

To make the networking process productive, what you ask for, how you ask for it, and where you look for help will make all the difference between getting to the right people and getting to useless people for your initiative. This process is Network Selling.

Investigative Selling

Once a sales or business development person connects with a person of value, using his or her network connection, the goal is to convert that individual into his or her Golden Network. In other words the sales or BD person will have to develop a professional relationship with this new contact.

People will consider another individual a professional relationship only if there is something in it for them. So a sales or BD person needs to investigate the critical drivers of their target contact in order to learn what this person values that s/he can deliver. Everyone is different and without knowing each individual's triggers, a sales person will flounder or worst yet, become annoying. But if the sales person can make the connections between the desires and the deliverables, a relationship can be established, and then this new contact will continue networking you up and out until you are connected to the leaders and their staffs.

The process for determining one's triggers is Investigative Selling. It requires knowing the questions to ask and how to ask them. Although this sounds simple, it requires finesse, skill and confidence. Investigative Selling also requires effective listening, and the ability to expose and entice. Both of these are advanced skills never taught in schools and rarely taught in product or sales training. So the successful sales or business development person will have to learn these Investigative Selling skills and be able to take them seamlessly to the street.

The sooner the sales or business development person masters these Internet Marketing, Relationships, Network and Investigative Selling Skills, the sooner sales will close and closing ratios rise.

When companies are looking to hire new sales people for their organization, most concentrate on hiring the person with the most experience or with a solid history of sales success. As a sales recruiter, our job is to find the best business development, account manager or sales rep for companies. However, many companies are not prepared to make even the best sales person successful once they begin their new sales job.

Many company specific factors go into making sales people successful. Companies who have had a hard time retaining top sales talent usually have a few things in common:

1) A well designed Sales Compensation Plan

2) Ongoing Product and Sales Training

3) Coaching, Mentoring and ongoing support from their Sales Manager

Sales Compensation Plan

From our experience, most small and medium sized businesses do not have a well designed sales compensation plan. We find the plan either too generous for the sales person or too generous for the employer. Either way, if the compensation plan is not set up properly, either your business will suffer or you will not be able to retain good sales people. As a rule of thumb, you should not pay your salespeople more than 20% of gross profit. Any more than that and your business is paying too much.

Ongoing Product & Sales Training

Having worked for and with many large companies and it never ceases to amaze me how during training 90% of the time is allocated to the product. Sales training and the process of how to sell a particular product is usually a small component in corporate training sessions. While product knowledge is important, it is irrelevant if your people do not know how to sell its features and benefits. Invest in ongoing product and sales training to ensure your sales people have up to date knowledge on new products and services and so they have the sales skills to sell it!

Coaching & Mentoring

Hiring a salesperson is a big commitment of time, energy and money. Making a hiring mistake with a sales rep can be costly on all fronts, not to mention opportunity cost, damage to key accounts and missed opportunities. We talk to dozens of sales people on a daily basis and one of the main reasons sales people leave their job is lack of support, coaching and mentoring from their sales manager.

Ensure your sales managers are equipped with the skills to effectively coach and mentor your sales people. Most sales managers are promoted because they were the top sales rep and do not necessarily possess the skills needed to be a coach and mentor. Invest in sales management training for your sales managers to ensure their skills are up to the challenge.

The important thing to remember is that finding a great sales person is only half the battle. You need to invest in their selling skills, product knowledge and their sales managers to ensure you have sales people that are successful and stay with your organization for years to come.

I spent a number of years as a consulting nuclear chemist and radiation protection specialist at commercial nuclear power plants. Which means I love physics!

I've always been baffled by the concept of managing time, because from a physics perspective time can't be managed. The proof is obvious when we consider... it's impossible to manage our time so effectively that we get 25 hours in a day, nor is it possible to manage our time so poorly that we only get 23 hours in a day.

We can't find time or make time.

The only thing we have control over is what we do in the slices of time each day.

A great deal of people manage their day by using a to-do-list. Stop and think for a moment, traditionally, how do we create a to-do-list?

The phone rings, emails arrive, clients or prospects call, boss assigns a task, a coworker needs a favor, sales calls to make, follow-ups to perform, demos to give, proposals and contracts to write, not to mention; market research to conduct and articles and white papers to read. If new tasks pop up while we are engaged in any of these activities, just add them to the list.

Yes, we can rewrite our task list. Yes, we can assign numbers or letters to denote importance, but what does that have to do with being effective?

So many people confuse their to-do-list(s) with their priorities. They run around with their hair on fire, adding tasks to and checking tasks off the to-do-list.

The gravitational attraction of the mountain of information and activities competing for our attention is like a giant black hole gobbling up space in our head and time in our day. Finally, our busy day ends without completing the key sales activities that add prospects to the funnel, move deals closer to close and increase our capabilities as sales professionals.

So what should we do?

Instead of trying to better manage our time, we should focus on managing our effectiveness. Sales effectiveness is a function of our ability to identify and prioritize high impact sales activities that are in alignment with achieving of our objectives.

Stop focusing all your efforts on planning your day and start planning your week, month and quarter.

1. Develop objectives for your territory, sales and personal development
2. Set objectives for each of the key phases of your sales process
3. Define the success metrics and targets for each objective
4. Create a rolling 90-day action plan and organize tasks by objectives
5. Create a model work week - your weekly schedule
6. Move your tasks off the action plan and onto your calendar
7. Measure progress towards achievement of the objectives weekly
8. Say no to everything else

I highly recommend Sally McGhee's book Take Back Your Life using Microsoft Outlook 2007 to Get Organized and Stay Organized (she even covers work life balance).

So how do we identify the high impact sales activities?

Start by answering three questions:

1. What does a great day of selling look like?
2. What do you have to do to prepare to have that great day of selling?
3. What do you have to do to string more great days of selling back to back to back?

I'm very interested in what you think so drop by my blog and leave a comment.

Martice E Nicks Jr

Partner - Applied Concepts Institute, LLC

Professional Speaker, Master Sales Productivity Consultant, Coach and Trainer

Martice has 27 years as a successful consultant in government and private sectors. He focuses on optimizing and integrating systems that drive revenue and facilitate organizational performance. Martice has held multiple executive and management positions in companies including founding and self-directed teams. His approach brings a sense of urgency to drive positive behavioral change and most importantly-measurable business results. Clients realize between 15-30% increase in revenue in 90 days.

If you have ever put on an event, you know that registration can be very tiring and cumbersome. If it is a large event, you will have a computer system that takes care of the registrations. The Web can also be used for registration just as it can be used to have people register for your newsletter. Event registration on the Web enables you to drive people to your site and then navigate to the registration page. This way they get a taste of who you are and what you do at the same time that they are registering. Unfortunately, not everyone will register from the Web site and you will still need to enter some names by hand. This is not a big task if your anticipated audience is fairly small, but for a larger event you will need to deal with the process differently. Services such as Aceteva.com make the process very simple.

When I was setting up the executive breakfast for my Power Marketing seminar, I had people go to the Power Marketing Web site to register. It was the only option they had. I found that a number of people wanted to register but were not computer savvy enough to navigate the process. I contacted them by e-mail and asked for their information and entered it into the registration form on their behalf. Only a handful of people did not want to do this for themselves.

In the long run, you can also have people pay for events on the Web at the same time. If you do not have the ability to take credit cards over the Web, you can use a payment service such as PayPal. It will take the orders and process the credit cards and even deposit the monies into your bank account.

Many salespeople today will waste a great deal of time calling on poor prospects – trying to turn poor prospects into customers, or trying to close prospects that do not want or need what they are selling.

One of the key characteristics in more effective territory management is doing a better job of qualifying prospects prior to giving them your time, energy or corporate resources.

Let’s look at a few ways to better manage your resource of time and territory management.

1. Ask more effective questions earlier in the sales process.
2. Pay attention to answers to determine whether this is a good time to try and sell this prospect.
3. Develop a customer profile to use as a template for your prospecting.
4. Audit your sales call activity by dividing the number of calls you make in a week by the number of miles you drive in that week. This number will give you your call route effectiveness.
5. Spend more prospecting time getting referrals.
6. Develop strategic alliances to help you improve your prospecting activity.
7. Plan your call activities early in the week, month or day.
8. Don’t give poor prospects more time than they deserve.
9. Get up earlier.
10. Go to bed later.
11. Use this extra time for planning, thinking or evaluating your routines.
12. Develop a daily checklist of what you will need to be effective.
13. Keep accurate sales records. The more information you keep, the better able you will be to spot potential trouble areas.
14. Try to get more of your prospects to visit your location, plant or office.
15. Don’t spend time giving presentations to non-decision makers.

Even if you only do half of these, you will find your time will be better spent and you will experience better overall sales results.