Question of the Month: How many times do I have to call to get an appointment?

by Shannon F. The numbers may surprise you, but they’re really true: 80% of sales are made after the 5th through 12th attempt. A common beginner mistake after receiving a leads list is to call each contact once or twice and then let it go; in fact, only 12% of salespeople persist after the third attempt. Unfortunately, one or two calls will barely register with your prospect. Think about how many times you need to be introduced to a particular brand before it immediately comes to your mind when you have a need. (According to an early advertising guide, 20 times is the magic number.) The Right Attitude Keep in mind that your prospect is, at best, distracted and, at worst, overcommitted, stressed out, and struggling with a fragmented attention span. Those are merely the realities of the workplace today. In many cases your first call won’t be lucky enough to catch the prospect on a good day. You may be sent straight to voicemail, which is not necessarily a bad thing. You may be hung up on or lied to. It is essential to believe that your prospects need your product or service and that it is your duty to help them improve the way they run their business. Without confidence in the importance of what you have to offer, it can be difficult to make the 5 to twelve – or more – prospecting calls that you need to set an appointment and close the deal. Is the […]

3 Expensive Ways (Worth Every Penny) To Help Your Sales Reps Kill Their Goals

by Shannon F. There are many reasons why sales reps won’t make their goal this year, but it often boils down to time. After all, the more selling activity salespeople can accomplish in the day, the more appointments they can set and the more deals they can close. So not having time-saving processes in place means less activity, fewer appointments…you get the idea. Here are three investments you should make to speed up your sales team and help them surpass their goals this year. 1. New, faster computer. Everyone can recall their first computer–mine was a Compaq Presario the size of a small planet. But while PCs of decades past can be remembered fondly, they have no place on a salesperson’s desk. You’d be surprised how many sales reps are working on outdated machines; it’s a big problem, because slow computers kill productivity. If it takes your sales rep 30 seconds every time they want to log into their CRM or find a prospect on Linkedin, the day will quickly be consumed by wasted minutes. Today, salespeople must work at a frenetic pace to keep up with busy, hard-to-reach prospects. In fact, many reps are so overwhelmed by keeping up with existing clients that they don’t have time to set appointments with prospects and sign new clients. An expenditure of $500-$1000 per sales rep to equip your team with new computers that allow them to work faster is a small investment with a potentially huge return over the lifetime of […]

Why do I need CRM software for sales?

by Shannon F. Many small businesses that we encounter prefer doing things the old-fashioned way—even if that means recording customer and prospect information in the margins of a mildewed ledger by the light of a dripping candle. We’ve found that making sales cold calls doesn’t actually take much time—it’s preparing for and logging those calls the old-fashioned way that can be time-consuming. Thumbing through spreadsheets to find your contact takes a couple of precious minutes, and after you’ve made the call, you’ll waste even more time scribbling notes, setting a follow-up call date in your calendar, and looking up the prospect’s email address to send a follow-up message. If you are doing everything manually, there are simply not enough hours in the day to make all the calls you need to drive revenue and achieve your sales goal this year. You better learn to like working by candlelight, because you won’t be able to afford your electric bill. The thing is, we understand why so many salespeople like doing everything on paper. It’s simple and intuitive to get your leads in a spreadsheet and work through them with nothing but a notepad and a telephone. It’s just slow. And unfortunately, today’s salespeople need to speed up productivity to reach their busy prospects. Gone are the days when you could get in touch with someone via a single easy phone call. The good news is that there are some pretty fast CRMs on the market that are simple and intuitive to […]

Can social media help you with PRM? Part 3: Linkedin as a PRM Lasso

    If you haven’t touched Linkedin since your last job search, you probably still think of this professional networking platform as little more than a way to get your resume out there. Like friends that you only call when your car breaks down, however, Linkedin won’t do you much good if you don’t pay it the occasional social call. If you nurture your Linkedin contacts through good times and bad, you’ll have a solid network when hard times hit. More than just a job-seeker’s tool, however, Linkedin can help you find and manage prospects.   How? Well, if you’re familiar with the way Linkedin works, you know that it organizes potential prospects according to your degrees of separation. Contacts that you know directly are first-degree connections, but you also have access to your connections’ connections, or your second-degree connections. That means you may be indirectly connected to a critical decision-maker within a company if your golfing buddy or accountant knows her and is willing to make the introduction via Linkedin. When you think a particular company could benefit from your product or service, see who you may have access to within that organization. If you work hard to build your network, you might be surprised at who you can easily reach. When you have a mutual friend or acquaintance, a prospect is much more likely to welcome a meeting—and your sales pitch.   LinkedIn is also a great way to get others interested in what you have to say […]

Can social media help you with PRM? Part 2: Learning to “Like” Facebook as a PRM tool

  You likely already use Facebook as a personal platform for showing off pictures of your enviable vacation or the fancily-plated dessert you had last night, but Facebook is more than just a way of sharing (or oversharing) with friends and family. A corporate Facebook page gives your company a chance to get personal with potential clients.   How? Share, Engage, and Invite.   Share   If you find useful information online, like a helpful sales video or a how-to article, you can spread the wealth of ideas and get people “liking” your company simply by sharing what you’ve discovered. Let’s take a look at a personal parallel: which Facebook friend’s regular status updates do you most look forward to reading, the friend who clues you in on interesting news and funny videos, or the friend who accosts your news feed with pictures of their lunch or worse, their most mundane thoughts and feelings?   When sharing, be highly selective. It could be something you have found online or a blog post you have written, but make sure it provides useful content for your readers. Also stay on topic; news, trends, and tips in your industry are your best bet.   Engage   Get people talking and exchanging information. When you Share, you encourage your readers to check out what you have to offer. But are they commenting on your status updates and checking out your company website? Engaging your readers can be as simple as asking a compelling question […]

Is Your CRM Stressing out Your Sales Team?

If your sales team is frustrated by their CRM, you’ll see some signs like:   Decrease in productivity Failure to meet sales goals Low morale Outright refusal to use sales software Mood swings Teeth-grinding, hair-pulling, or general listlessness   As a sales manager, you’re understandably concerned when your salespeople aren’t performing to the height of their potential. Poor performance can’t always be attributed to insufficient tools and resources, but in the case of slow sales software in today’s fast-paced marketplace, it’s easy to understand why sales reps are getting frustrated. Let’s take a look at the average sales software. It’s designed for managing existing clients, so making cold calls to new prospects and suspects using this software can be arduous. Every salesperson knows that reaching prospects on the phone (and getting them to listen to your pitch) is now harder than ever. In fact, it often takes twice as many calls to reach a prospect as it did ten years ago. But does each call have to take so long? Sales reps use as many as 300 mouse clicks per ten cold calls and take an average of six minutes to log a single call. Since it takes about 7 calls on average to make contact with a decision-maker, a sales rep could be spending upwards of 35 minutes just getting a single prospect on the phone, once. (And of course, the prospect probably won’t say yes the first time.) That’s why faster CRM is a trend we’re seeing a […]

Long, hot summer for your sales team?

Here in the Philadelphia area, temperatures have been off the charts this summer. Are your sales spiking too, or are you feeling the pinch from sales reps who are dreaming about their next beach vacation instead of logging cold calls? Summer is often a slow time for companies, but it doesn’t have to be. We have some tips for keeping your summer sales productive, at least until Labor Day. 1. Have a contest. Sure, we’d all rather be snorkeling, but it’s possible to have fun at work while increasing sales revenue. How? Try throwing in a summer-long sales contest or put a few bonuses up for grabs to keep your team focused and working towards a goal. A little healthy competition can enliven the summer months, and you’ll likely see results. Sure, it’s not a margarita at the poolside bar, but it will get your sales reps going. 2. Reward your sales team. You don’t have to stage a summer bash complete with Polynesian flame jugglers and mai tais, though you could. A dress-down day or pizza in the break room can be a much-appreciated reward for your team’s hard work. Your employees will be motivated to keep on increasing sales even when other companies are slowing down for the summer. 3. Switch up your approach. Keep in mind that many of your prospects will be vacationing over the summer, which means an email blast might not be the best way to reach potential clients. Who sifts through a week’s […]