The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

It is amazing how often I’ll hear sellers talk about those prospects (and even clients) that absolutely drive them crazy. I’m not just talking about those really demanding customers who expect the impossible or those who expect you to constantly deliver world-class champagne on a cheap-beer budget. I’m referring to those situations where there’s some kind of a personality conflict, or you’re dealing with a person who consistently makes you wonder if you still want to do this kind of work.

If it’s not really worth it, why do you continue to put yourself through it?

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the Country Radio Seminar in Nashville. My presentation covered the need for sales organizations to rethink the way they generate leads for their salespeople. The painful truth is that most B2B sales organizations rely almost entirely on their salespeople to drum up new business opportunities. As a result, salespeople are spending more and more time trying to find that rare qualified prospect and less time doing what they do best: finding needs and selling solutions.

Google me by my former last name (Kim Willoughby) or search me on YouTube and a former Olympic volleyball player arrested for assault is a top search result. There's also an attorney who seems to have a great reputation in Denver, but let's be honest, you'll remember the Olympic Bully first.

Gone are the days when the best prospects were storefront businesses lined up along Main Street. Back then, a salesperson could simply wander in, looking a little like a shopper, and have reasonable hope of engaging in a productive conversation with the proprietor. Today’s prospects look almost entirely different, ranging from less-accessible big-box and chain retailers to exclusively Web-based businesses to insurance providers, educational institutions, investment offerings, group medical practices, personal technology devices, and more—none of which can be approached casually.

And, just as you can no longer simply drop in, so too have the email and voicemail paths to the prospect become hellishly difficult to penetrate. Between the human gatekeepers and the electronic ones, today’s prospects are very well insulated. Some screen salespeople out simply because there are too darn many of them, a multitude of people selling advertising this and marketing that. But others do so because experience tells them that most of these salespeople are a colossal waste of time: Given how easily prospects can access product information online, information that’s often more accurate and useful than what they get from salespeople, why would any prospect take a meeting with a salesperson? 

For many of the clients you serve, digital media and technology tools have become an important and obvious part of the marketing equation. But just as there is a digital divide in device adoption and ownership among consumers, there can be dramatic differences in the levels of sophistication from one client to the next when it comes to technology. While some of your clients have already been using things like responsive website design and behavioral targeting for years, there are almost certainly some clients you work with who still have trouble opening an email on their cell phone. 

“Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you, I appreciate you, and I think you’re amazing in every way.  You had me at hello!”

Those are words we express–and really like to hear–from those we love each year on February 14^th. But shouldn’t we express love and appreciation to people we care about everyday? And what about our customers? Shouldn’t our customers feel important everyday… rather than just certain days of the year?

I am currently reading the New York Times bestseller called “Influencer, The New Science of Leading Change.”  This book is based on the in-field work of the team at VitalSmarts. I like books that are based on real-life observations. I generally find ways to apply the principles. Influencer is written to a broad audience, not merely those of us in sales. But there are some good lessons in the book that we can apply to sales.     

The authors point the reader to three keys to being an Influencer:

The total-revenue budget is historically a media property’s single most important measure of success. If that number is hit, the pressure to make some of the lesser targets is greatly relieved. But that pattern has been changing in recent years.  

Today, the digital-revenue budget is often the one that gets the most scrutiny—from the boardroom all the way down through the organization to the newest seller on the team. It’s not only because the total-revenue number is getting tougher and tougher to hit, but because everyone knows that revenue related to digital offerings represents the future, and most everything else is part of a past that is destined to decrease over time.

My 7-year old daughter loves frozen yogurt with toppings.  She loves going to one of those self-serve places where she can pull the lever for her yogurt and then create an artistic and culinary masterpiece from a wide variety of toppings. Typically she gets vanilla and chocolate yogurt and goes for a variety of toppings, including gummy bears, sprinkles, gummy worms, Oreos, chocolate chips, coconut, and kiwifruit. The other day I asked her which frozen yogurt she liked best and then which topping she liked best. She looked at me quizzically and said “Daddy, they only taste good together! Why would I eat a gummy bear and then some kiwifruit?!”

Our recently published report, The Biggest Challenges of Media Salespeople and Sales Managers, reveals the findings of a study we completed late in 2013.  The questionnaire offered sales managers a list of 14 current issues they may be wrestling with, and asked them to select their three biggest—the three problems that, if solved or even partially solved, would make the biggest difference in their operation. Too many products and services to sell popped up near the top of that list, as Management Challenge #3.

It might be those first few moments after you get back to your car following an important presentation. It could be while you’re riding to the airport after a critical needs analysis. Perhaps it is those minutes that immediately follow a conference call or an online meeting where a big renewal was discussed.

Yes, every client-facing meeting is critical, whether it happens online, on the phone, or face-to-face. The time you spend with any target or key account is likely to impact your top line revenue, and therefore, your income. But those minutes are mostly important to a specific sale or client relationship. Reflecting on how the meeting went—the first five minutes after you’ve met with a target or key account—are important to your career. Because you’re using this experience to get better, build on success, and note mistakes so you can avoid them in the future. Bottom line: You’re improving the very next meeting or client interaction you have. 

Recently I was having a discussion with my colleagues about how Dynamic Website Personalization (DWP) is changing inbound marketing and how it's going to change the way that websites are designed and leads are captured and nurtured.   This conversation was prompted by a great article from the folks at Entrepreneur.com
about how websites are being designed with the user experience taken into consideration to create a more personalized experience based upon customer life cycle, industry or other criteria that is deemed important.