The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

When you hear the word Mercedes it is likely that a visual image of a luxury German automobile pops immediately into your mind. Likewise, when people hear McDonald’s it conjures a specific image almost immediately. You might picture a restaurant with golden arches somewhere near your home or your favorite menu item. You might see a logo, hear the company’s jingle, or recall an experience you had at a McDonald’s restaurant.

Such is the power of branding. From FedEx to Kleenex, from Macy’s to Applebee’s. Having a brand means that an image pops immediately to mind when you hear or see the name.

And the same is true of you. You have a brand.

We are dealing with a broken elbow in our house. My 9 year old son had a moment of misguided confidence and felt “certain” he could slam dunk a basketball. He is a 54,” 58-lb fourth grader and learned quickly that he cannot dunk.

It is a nasty break and very close to his growth plate. So my extremely active “Let’s go 250 miles an hour all the time and never sit still except to eat when mom makes me” boy has seen his activity level come to a screeching halt. Doctor’s orders: No basketball, no soccer, no field day, no recess, no jumping, and no running… to put it in perspective the weekend before he did his first 5K in 23:15 and now his doctor is telling him he can “walk slowly.”

Unfortunately, I am no stranger to broken bones. My younger son broke his leg on a trampoline a few years ago—a very different break, and a very different child. He loved taking it easy! He watched more Scooby Doo than I should admit as a parent, he colored pictures, watched some more TV, and the healing time passed relatively quickly for him. It was more natural for him to relax. He is a more easygoing kid to begin with.

Four-day weeks always seem to fly by. We took a long weekend, then came back on Tuesday, and hit the ground running! Now that we're officially in summer mode, we're reading our books outside on the patio and generally spending more time in the sun.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Monday, many of the employees here at The Center for Sales Strategy weighed in on their favorite business books they've read in the last year. I don't know about you, but I put in my Amazon order!

• On Tuesday, Alina Diaz gave us five steps to developing a strong social media strategy. I like that she focused on individuals rather than companies -- there are great takeaways for everyone who reads that post.
  

We're regularly asked by clients to help them create compensation plans for salespeople and others in their sales operation.

They want to know how to make sales compensation effective for the salespeople and good for their bottom line.

We generally start consulting by suggesting they break the process up into the following three steps.

Does it ever seem like life is moving so fast that everything’s a blur? I can help you with that by sharing this one simple law of physics: You cannot focus on everything. So of course, when you try, everything’s going to be a blur. 

A few years ago, I took a photography course. One of the early assignments was to focus on a fast-moving object by keeping the camera trained on the subject, regardless of the background. That’s why this picture of a car moving down the highway is in focus, but the road and everything else around it is blurry.

Today is Memorial Day. A day to remember those who have given their lives for us, and a day to be with friends and family. To celebrate togetherness, and (hopefully) eat something fresh of the barbecue.

Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer. The weather is warmer, and if you're anything like us, you find yourself winding down outside instead of in front of the television.

But what should you read? I asked my colleagues about the best business book they've read in the last year. Here's what they had to say. 

Jim Hopes, Chief Executive Officer

Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story

The premise of the book is that the most successful communicators are those who are adept at telling stories.  The business environment is replete with facts and figures thrust upon us by seemingly un-ending Power Point slides and voluminous presentations.  But research indicates the most effective way to connect, persuade, and to gain genuine interest in other people is to be an effective story teller.  Don’t tell me why I should do something, rather illustrate the impact of what you have to sell has on real people in real situations.  Tell me about how you changed a life or solved a pressing problem for someone.  People want to hear your story, not your data.

Dani Buckley, Inbound Marketing Consultant

The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential...in Business and in Life

You can be much more effective professionally (and personally) when you learn how to break goals down into manageable tasks and to be more focused when you work. I’ve learned some great new ways to do this, as well as some tried and true tips on how to create and maintain new habits. It’s an easy read and very applicable!

Emily Estey, VP/Senior Consultant

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

The book is about a lot of things, but mostly about vulnerability. Vulnerability is where innovation and creation begin.

This week was busy! We launched a new self-directed online course called Brand & Connect, which is a really powerful way to learn how to establish your profile online. People are searching for you as soon as they know your name -- you can guide them on what they find.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Monday, Brittany Ransonet asked us if our personal brand was keeping us from getting that first appointment. Then she offered to help whip our brands into shape. Thank goodness for that!

• On Tuesday, Steve Marx told us about the difference between product danglers and process danglers, and made a clear distinction as to which kind of dangler we should be.

Here at The Center for Sales Strategy we work remotely, which means our professional lives are contained on the internet. I was excited to find that my colleague (and crosstown neighbor!) Greg Giersch was working on launching a new self-directed online course we’ve just published called Brand & Connect, so I asked him to meet with me.

This new course is one of Greg’s important recent projects, so I came to lunch loaded with questions about Brand & Connect.

1. What was the impetus behind Brand & Connect? Why did you start it in the first place?

The short answer is that today potential clients are researching salespeople online before they ever agree to meet with them. Salespeople are being judged and graded before they ever meet a prospect.

The longer answer is that I've been building this product for years. In 2006 when Twitter first came out, I was an early adopter. Everyone in the office thought, "what is a sales manager doing on Twitter?" They thought I was just "playing online," but I was fascinated by how much you could learn from the early thought leaders and use social media to connect with other professionals around the world.

2. What will Brand & Connect teach us?

The first half of the course is about building your personal brand—figuring out who you are and what you have to offer. What benefit do you bring to your clients? The second half teaches you how to connect with people, especially prospects. There's an old saying that a good salesperson can sell anything to anyone, but that's not really true. A good salesperson provides the right solution to the right customer.

3. Doesn’t everyone already know his or her skill set?

Surprisingly, often they don't, so we help them consider their brand from three perspectives:

1. What people who don't know them think.
2. What people who do know them think about them.
3. What they think about themselves.

Sales managers are so busy these days that it is easy to get caught in the everyday shuffle of dealing with all the tactical and urgent items on their to-do list. It makes it very easy to forget what your real job is: managing salespeople and maximizing the talents of your sales team.

Here are five strategic ways to get the most out of your salespeople:

1. Identify Their Talents

After working with your salespeople over a period of time, you probably have a pretty good idea of where they excel and where their limitations are. At The Center for Sales Strategy, we have a talent assessment that can tell you their talents without having to wait months to determine that on your own.

2. Talk to a Talent Analyst to Determine Ways to Maximize Those Talents

There are only two kinds of prospects who agree to see you: the ones with lots of extra time on their hands and the ones who are tantalized by what you have to offer. The former are tough to find these days, and when you do you often discover that they don’t have any spare cash to go with their spare time. 

And so our task as salespeople is to tantalize the prospect enough that he or she will be motivated to carve out a block of time in their busy schedule. Salespeople who ask for only a sliver of time, instead of an ample block, set themselves up for failure by positioning themselves as unimportant and inexpensive and by leaving themselves too little time to launch a successful relationship. If you need plenty of time with the prospect, figure that the prospect will need plenty of tantalizing before agreeing to invest that time.

Most salespeople attempt to tantalize their prospects by dangling their product in front of them. Fewer tantalize their prospects by dangling their process. See which one is more like the approach you use…