The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Approaching new prospects with a customer-needs focus used to be the smartest thing you could do. No longer. 

Today it’s the only thing you can do, the only way to win an appointment with a decision influencer. 

Rewind back to the 1990s. It was that recently that prospects needed to meet with a salesperson to learn about the products and services that company was offering. Yes, there were brochures, and sometimes a company would make a brochure available by mail to prospects, but to get questions answered and to learn about specific applications, buyers knew they needed salespeople.

Today, that notion is downright quaint. Product information, answers to most questions, insights into specific applications via case studies, and user reviews/raves/rants are all found online. Prospects learn almost everything they need to know faster, and with more accuracy and reliability, on the web than they do from salespeople.

They can make a buying decision quicker, easier, and with less annoyance without a salesperson than with one!

As a result, it’s pretty rare these days that a salesperson can get an audience with a buyer to talk about what he or she is selling. What used to be the path to a weak deal at a dirtball price—talking about what you’re selling—is now even worse: It just gets your email, your voicemail, and you deleted.

This week, we wrote about nonprofits, and how they're not so different from us. We focused on individual focus meetings, discussed where vs. what, and we broke inbound marketing into pieces that even a five-year-old could understand.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Monday, Jim Hopes told us that when you're looking for a nonprofit fundraiser, there are eight talents to look for, and it takes more than a good heart to succeed.

• Tuesday, Matt Sunshine gave us three things to add to our individual focus meetings to make them better.

"It takes more than a good heart."

These were words spoken to me by the Senior Pastor at my church when he was convincing me to take a major role in the upcoming capital campaign. He was right. You know yourself in today’s competitive fundraising environment that it takes more than a staff with a love for your cause to secure a major gift from an individual or a corporation. It takes talent to be a successful development officer.

Talent is different than skills. Skills can be learned. Talent is innate. So if you are facing a big increase in your fundraising budget this year or next, the most important thing you can do is employ fundraising professionals with the innate behaviors that will allow them to ask for and receive major gifts from a wide variety of donors.

But what talents, what innate behaviors, should you look for? Based on research with thousands of professionals whose role is to seek commitment, we suggest strongly that you look for these eight key talents:

1. Intensity for the work effort.

Getting in front of key donors is hard work and uncovering their underlying needs and goals for giving requires effort as does fashioning a tailored solution. The best fundraising professionals love to work and go about their work in a very focused manner. They work hard, they work smart, and they work long.

2. Discipline.

The very best have standards for excellence and produce quality work. They can manage details easily and spin multiple plates, rarely dropping a single one.

3. Successful development officers are not afraid to ask.

They have a certain command about them that allows them to persuade and convince naturally. They are very comfortable with the notion that they must bring others around to their way of thinking.

4. The very best are great problem solvers.

They gather more information, they ask better questions, and they devise more creative solutions.

5. We see that top performers have a positive outlook.

For these people, the glass is always half full, they deal with change well, and they have a wide circle of people who like them.

6. The best are also blessed with a “sixth sense” that allows them to pick up on how someone is feeling at the moment.

This genius-level empathy allows them to know how and when to proceed. Donors feel a real sense of being cared about—because they are.

7. In order to ask for big donations, you have to feel as though you deserve a big donation.

Top people see themselves as significant, worthy of sitting with high-net-worth individuals and top corporate officers. They can make a “big ask” because it lines up with their self-image.

8. If you are going to meet a goal you have to think in terms of measurement and winning.

Top performers are constantly striving to best last year’s, last month’s, and even yesterday’s performance. They think in terms of winning, and when they are winning for your cause, everyone wins.

This week, we learned about how to know when leads are ready to be contacted, got inspired by leadership quotes, brushed up on in-field coaching, and were reminded that everyone in the company is involved in sales support and customer service.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Monday, Dani Buckley told us how to figure out when it's time to call someone who filled out a form and downloaded something.

• Tuesday, Matt Sunshine recalled 12 moving leadership quotes that we heard at our company's annual meeting.

We're heading into the dog days of summer. The days are warm, but the leaves are starting to change. We wrote about all kinds of things this week: what to do after you finally get that first appointment, how to secretly find talent, ways to achieve client satisfaction, and how LinkedIn's tools can harm your efforts.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Monday, Mike Anderson told us what to do after getting the appointment.

• Tuesday, Mindy Murphy told us how to spot talent without asking questions.

Here at The Center for Sales Strategy, we strive to make our clients happy. In fact, we pride ourselves on client satisfaction and retention. Read below for four ways to achieve client satisfaction as a B2B salesperson.

Now, you know the keys to making sure your clients are happy. Are you holding up your end of the bargain when it comes to client satisfaction?

A young account manager asked my advice recently about how to handle his first meeting with a particular prospect. It was memorable because the seller who got the first appointment admitted  he was surprised this big prospect gave him an appointment at all… and now he wasn’t sure what he was going to do with it.

I started by asking what Valid Business Reason he used to gain the prospect’s interest and attention. Turns out the VBR was “okay,” but not great… focusing a little too much on the product the seller was hoping to pitch, and only slightly on a community service initiative that he thought might appeal to the prospect. But it was the latter that got the CEO’s attention and got the salesperson this appointment.

So, we went online to explore the prospect’s website and learned what we could about the organization’s community involvement. Studying their efforts led us to understand the prospect’s passions. We spent a little time browsing the site further, for other press releases and to get an idea of what the company’s priorities were (based on the way the website was designed). Then a quick stop at LinkedIn revealed some of the CEO’s additional accomplishments and a visit to his Facebook page shed light on his personal interests.

This week, we wrote about flipping generally held beliefs upside down, putting on our shoes, misconceptions about talent, and the keys to sustainable sales performance. We ran the gamut! Get a cup of coffee, and cozy up to read these, if you missed them.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Monday, Steve Marx wrote about Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, and how it fails without a key piece.

• Tuesday, John Henley asked (and answered!) what B2B selling has to do with putting on your shoes.

Most people put either their right shoe or left shoe on first. Every single time they put on shoes, they put them on in the same order. Pay attention to your habits the next time you put on your shoes! Try to put the other one on first—it will feel awkward.

But as ingrained and habitual as this is, can you tell me which shoe you put on first this morning? Probably not.

We follow patterns in other areas in our lives, too, without giving them much thought. Not all our habits are neutral, like the order of our shoes, or even good, like remembering to brush and floss our teeth everyday. In fact, in B2B selling, we can get into some pretty bad habits that can hurt our chances at closing a sale.

An Unfinished Needs Analysis

Picture this: You’re on a call with a prospect who seems interested in what you have to say. They’re actively listening, and responding like they want to buy. You’re in the needs-analysis part of the conversation, when the prospect asks about cost. 

It’s easy to jump ahead, to blaze forward. They’re talking cost! You think you can close the sale! So you bulldoze the rest of the conversation and throw a lot of facts, phrases, and terms in your prospect’s direction. You even go so far as to suggest a solution that might not be the best for your prospect. Their interest wanes, their eyes glaze over. They tell you they’ll have to think about it.

Slow Down Instead

This week, we wrote about a variety of topics, and one blog post included homework! From sinking ships to athletic coaching, from empathy and accountability to two-paragraph emails, we've covered a lot of ground, and if you've missed anything, now's your chance to play catch up.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Monday, Mike Anderson warned us of the dangers of holding onto our ideas like someone going down with a sinking ship.

• Tuesday, Jeff Roth told us that great emails get ten things done in just two paragraphs, then he gave us homework. Did you send him an email?