Greg Giersch, on December 2, 2014
If you’re a sales manager, you need to know where your salespeople are with their accounts. If you’re a salesperson, you need to know even more. Taking a critical look at where you really are in the sales funnel process with your accounts is time well spent.
Greg Giersch, on November 26, 2014
Everyone is telling salespeople to start doing things on LinkedIn, and they’re right. But first you need to stop doing a few things. Here are three things you should stop doing on LinkedIn:
Greg Giersch, on November 17, 2014
It seems the push for individuals to have a personal brand is becoming the new black. It’s the cool thing to do. The message is that everyone, including salespeople, need a brand just like a big company or a pop star. Who’s got time for that? Sure, becoming the expert, the blogger, the “thought leader” in your industry sounds like a great idea. But it also sounds like an insurmountable goal. So why bother?
First, don’t let me discourage you. Many of you, let’s say 2 in 10, are already running down the Personal Brand path, and it won’t be long before you are a thought leader in your field. If you are not one of those swimming in social media enthusiasm, what can you do to compete?
Greg Giersch, on November 12, 2014
That simple question is at the crux of the challenge salespeople face when prospecting. The advice used to be to perfect your elevator pitch. Today we don’t meet prospects on elevators; we meet them online. And specifically, the great business-oriented platform for meeting people is LinkedIn. So what you need to perfect now is your online personal branding. That's your LinkedIn presence.
Greg Giersch, on November 4, 2014
Good salespeople are asking questions all day long. They ask clients Will you meet with me? What are your challenges? and Will you invest in this solution? They ask their managers and coworkers Can we deliver this solution?
The question salespeople are not asking enough is How am I trusted and valued by my clients?
Your best clients have shown they trust and value you when they reorder. Prospects have found some reason to trust and value what you might have to offer when they give you that first appointment.
Knowing how you are trusted and valued by your clients is the essential element, or sin qua non, of your personal brand. The struggle to write your LinkedIn profile becomes easier when you’ve asked others to help describe you, to identify what makes you you.
Here are questions you can ask of your manager, your coworkers, and your clients about your personal brand:
Greg Giersch, on October 28, 2014
Have you ever started the day feeling that there was so much to do that you didn’t know where to start? If you’re in sales, it’s not uncommon to feel you have too much to sell, too many follow-up tasks, and too many deals that haven’t closed. Which activities will allow you to hit your goals?
Focusing on just the next step is the permission you need to focus on reaching an achievable goal. And an achievable goal is motivating. We use a 7-step process in How Selling that makes it easier to decide the next step in the sales process.
Greg Giersch, on January 20, 2014
Good salespeople ask a lot of questions, but the most effective salespeople ask their questions and get out of the way. I was reminded of this in a recent post shared on LinkedIn Pulse. The article was comparing two interviews with the same newsmaker (billionaire Elon Musk championing the colonization of Mars) and demonstrated how one interview was clearly more insightful than the other. The key difference was how they asked the questions.
Greg Giersch, on November 8, 2013
Research has shown that 70-80% of online shoppers are abandoning their purchases in their shopping cart. This started me thinking about how many salespeople are also being left in the shopping cart as their prospects decide to “think it over” and ultimately never buy.
The Marketing Mind Blog did an excellent job of covering the retail marketing implications of this trend. The research cited that a consumer can have many reasons to wait to complete an order including shopping anxiety, comparison shopping, and wanting to read reviews. Looking at some of the reasons consumers are hesitating can help you understand why your prospects may not be completing the sale.
Here are a few lessons that can be applied to B2B salespeople in closing the sale:
Greg Giersch, on October 1, 2013
Most people go through their day telling people what they want to hear. They don’t consider it lying, just coloring the truth to make it more pleasing. As salespeople, you might color the truth about why you want an appointment. What if today, you told the client the real reason you want to meet with them? What if for one day, like the character played by Jim Carrey in Liar, Liar, you had to tell the truth? Would they be more, or less likely to want to meet with you?
Greg Giersch, on September 12, 2013
In the sixth century B.C. there was a king going out on what might be similar to the needs analysis a salesperson goes out on today. King Croesus was seeking advice from the oracle, asking what the outcome might be if he invaded Persia. The answer was that if he did, a great empire would fall.
