The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

This week, it occurs to me that I’ve become the kind of person many of our clients find most challenging. You see, there’s this guy—I’ll call him Doug—who’s been reaching out to me by email, asking me to tell him who’s in charge of printed materials at The Center for Sales Strategy.

Over the past few of weeks, he’s sent me several notes, each one demonstrating another degree of persistence. Most recently, he came out very directly and said, “I going to be even more persistent than you are busy,” as if this was a war of attrition that he would eventually win. So I sent him a response, but not the one that he wanted.

I sent him a note explaining that my lack of response had less to do with how busy I am than the fact that his email did not earn a response. He found my name, and somehow, my email address. Other than that, his notes demonstrated little knowledge of my company and zero knowledge of my role in it. I wrote to him that he was asking for a referral, in a way, that he had not earned… asking me to identify the person in charge of buying printed materials for my company. (We don’t really have anyone in charge of that. We print our own.)

In his emails, he claimed that he could help, but offered little understanding of how he could help. I couldn’t tell if he was selling printers, printer ink, or printing services. So I responded to his email, but not in the way he was hoping. Instead, I explained why I wasn’t getting back to him and what he’d have to do to change that outcome. (I gave him a free coaching session on VBRs, I suppose.)

Before you click “Send” on your next introductory message, please scrutinize it with these kinds of questions:

In case you haven’t noticed, things are changing in media sales. Almost faster than we can keep up with. More and more local accounts are now being handled by the national rep. Technical dollars, those that we have little control over and are basically bought just on your ratings, are declining. There is little a local staff can do with strictly technical dollars when the salesperson doesn’t even know what the out-of-town buyer looks like, much less have a relationship with him or her.

We've come to the end of the week, and now we're sharing our favorite articles and resources from the last few days. Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. 5 Reasons Your Social Media Campaign Won’t Bear Fruit — Social Media Today

With over two billion people worldwide having an active presence on some social network or other, businesses now understand the importance of being on social media. But many companies are disappointed with the results they're seeing from their efforts. This post details a few reasons why companies aren’t seeing the results they’d like.

It turns out there’s something much more important.

Let’s start by acknowledging the essential nature of strategy to the success of any venture, old or new, commercial or non-profit. Strategy is the grand plan, how your solutions fit with the problems they’re intended to solve, your path to market, your role in the competitive landscape, and the relationship you seek with customers. Important? Heck, yes. We built the name of our company around that word. 

Too many sales organizations don’t have a strategy, don’t believe their strategy, don’t understand their strategy, and/or don’t follow their strategy. Their daily activities are a mish-mash of ill-fitting, often contradictory, tactics, programs, projects, and promotions—Band-Aids to cover the gaping hole where strategy is supposed to be. They create a “the hurrier I go, the behinder I get” environment that wears everyone out and leaves the organization well short of its dream, its potential, even its short-term goals, quotas, and budgets. No wonder Sun-Tzu, writing 3,000 years ago in The Art of War, called tactics without strategy “the noise before defeat.”

It's Friday, and time to share the Top 5 blog posts, articles, and resources we've found online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. How to Get Better at Giving and Receiving Feedback — Inc.

It's not easy to give feedback. Will the person take what you say the right way? How can you communicate your message so that the person will understand? And receiving feedback often isn't much easier. This Inc. post explains how effective feedback strengthens relationships and improves performance, and it offers practical ways to both give and receive constructive feedback. 

We'd add to this list that when managers give feedback to their team members, it's best to do it in light of their individual talents. For example, if a salesperson struggles to use mini closes while making an in-person presentation because he or she has softer Command and Persuasion talents, your feedback to the salesperson will be more successful if you suggest building mini close statements into written proposals. This person is much more likely to use a mini close if it’s in writing than if he or she has to do it in person.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, I discussed some of the reasons why the sales cycle is getting longer for many deals (sales cycle is the term that describes the time that elapses from the first contact between salesperson and prospect to a done deal). These longer cycle times are gumming up the sales pipeline for many companies, postponing revenue, adding expense, increasing uncertainty, and making life miserable for a lot of sales executives.

Some of this slowdown in the sales cycle is unpreventable. But that’s no reason to overlook the many things salespeople can do to counter the trend and speed things up. Here are some ways that smart salespeople keep opportunities moving:

Most people define sales cycle as the time that elapses from the first contact between salesperson and prospect to a done deal. The sales cycle varies radically for different types of products and services, for different prospects, for deals of different size and scope, and for quite a few other variables.

We've found several excellent thoughts and ideas online this week, and now it's time to share them with you! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. How Marketing Can Increase Customer Lifetime Value — SBI

It's much easier to sell to a client than to sell to a prospect. Customer loyalty makes marketing and sales easier, lowers costs, and increases customer lifetime value (CLV). So how can you make it happen? This post from Sales Benchmark Index digs into how to create loyal customers who continue to buy from you again and again. 

Salespeople too often rush to deliver their proposal to the prospect, often believing that the sooner they deliver it the sooner they’ll get the order. Maybe—but only if it’s the right proposal, fully vetted.

Instead of being in a hurry to hand off the proposal, be in a hurry to uncover all the possible objections. Ensure that the vetting process happens by finding all the decision-influencers, running the plan past them, and looking for problems. When you’re present for that vetting, you can fix the problems and switch thumbs-down opposition to thumbs-up support. If you’re not there, you won’t know the issues and you won’t be able to do anything about them.