Comment on Proposed Changes to the Do Not Call Register for Business-to-Business dialling

Senator Conroy has announced a plan to allow businesses to add their name to the do not call register.

 It is a plan that amounts to the regulation of business-to-business communication.

 Let’s run the logic.

 You are an Australian software developer who has spent five years developing a product that is useful to banks. Life is a struggle. Finally you are ready to pitch your product to the Commonwealth Bank.

 But, the Commonwealth Bank has added its phone number to the do not call register. This is because a bean counter has figured out that they can cut general switch board calls by 35% and save three head count by registering – an action that is free of charge.

 Result is you can’t ring them to pitch your software product.

 Obviously this is nonsense; surely the rule would apply only to contact centres.

 The logic here is that you can call the Commonwealth Bank yourself – but you can’t hire the services of a specialist tele-sales organisation that knows exactly how to navigate through a large and complex company and get the correct decision maker on the phone.

 If the outsourced service provider rang the Commonwealth Bank that would be a breach of the law.

 This must also be nonsense, as it limits the access that Australian businesses have to highly specialised service providers. It puts our small Australian software company at a disadvantage versus a top shelf US software company who exclusively reaches out to the market via the agency of highly specialised telephone prospectors.

It also puts at serious risk an entire industry that employs and trains thousands of Gen Ys and gives them their start in life, teaching them basic skills such as how to sell. Let’s not forget that tomorrow’s highly paid software sales people are today’s tele-prospectors.

But surely the scenario is nonsense. A big company like the Commonwealth Bank can’t be allowed to put its name on a list preventing other businesses from making speculative calls into its switchboard. That would not be fair.

So, let’s apply the rule to companies of only a certain size.

 Let’s say that small businesses with less than 5 employees are the only ones allowed to put their name on the register.

 Setting aside the enforcement nightmare for a moment, let’s run a scenario.

Tony, an out-of-work financial guru from a large company wants to get some consulting work. Having recently been made redundant his confidence is low. His sales skills are almost non-existent. He has to pick up the phone and make a cold call.

Why can’t he outsource it? Perhaps he can find a small tele-prospecting firm that will get on the phone and set some appointments for him. They might charge him $500 per appointment.

But Tony only wants to work with small businesses – lacking in confidence and chutzpa, he just wants to focus on picking up bookwork helping local retailers and other micro businesses.

But, when it comes to business X or business Y, he can’t get someone else to ring for him because they are on the register.

In this way, allowing smaller businesses to register is a direct penalty against other small businesses (both Tony and the micro-contact centre who potentially could do the work) because it is mainly small businesses that ring other small businesses. After all, PWC is unlikely to want to ring Bob’s Fish Shop for some work.

But also Bob’s Fish Shop is unreasonably penalised. A small, fiercely independent business man, Bob is a reactionary. He registered on the Do Not Call Register to stop those pests from the The Police Gazette from calling him. But now there is no way for Tony the bookkeeper to contact him other than junk mail or local media (which Bob uses to wrap his fish and chips in) or walking into the shop himself.

The penalty to Bob is about the unforeseen consequences of his actions. He has limited himself to the selection of service providers exclusively from companies big enough to run large scale marketing programs. By putting himself on the Do Not Call Register, he has actually harmed his business by limiting his access to business conversations.

So, both Tony and Bob are losers, not to mention the tiny service provider who could have mad the calls on Tony’s behalf. It seems there is no reasonable way of allowing the Do Not Call Register listing to be governed by the size of the listed company.

Well, why not build the rule around the size of the contact centre? Contact centres with more than 5 seats can’t ring businesses listed on the Do Not Call Register.

For a start, this sounds like a medieval guild provision. It would result in either a very large number of tiny businesses with poor levels of process design and technology investment – or it would lead to larger organizations who use structural flexibility to side-step the regulations thereby making the regulations redundant and possibly opening a few tax loopholes at the same time. It would cost the government a fortune in enforcement costs while producing a poor outcome for the national economy by limiting productivity in a key sector.

Why not build the rule around technology? Only contact centres that use manual dialers can call businesses listed on the register. Well, where do you draw the line? What about dialers that flash coloured LEDs on the key pad so the operator doesn’t even have to think about the number? Or can you just press the same button eight times with the computer automatically feeding the value so as to mimic the manual dialing process? What about soft phones?

And putting all this to one side, what about the most basic question of all – why consider this in the first place.

Business is all about the marketplace, it is all about the hustle and bustle, people interacting, communicating, trying to push a sale. Do you really want to regulate the use of just one medium – the phone?

What about convergence? If I use my computer as my phone, are web advertisers suddenly subject to the same rule? Only if they use sound / voice in their messaging? What about video? Can they mime?

And are you going to attempt to regulate offshore providers ringing into Australia? Are you going to penalize Australian companies that use the Philippines to dial into Australia but let foreign firms off Scot-free?

Or are you going to monitor all incoming voice traffic over the Internet and filter out sales calls?

Or is a Federal Police Officer going to knock on the door of some foreign firm in Kuala Lumpar and issue some sort of summons for illegally trying to contact Australian businesses to sell them stuff?

Or, is it the Government’s intention to just issue some sort of Government statement on their intention to introduce this new regulation.

Why not make this announcement at the same time business investment is collapsing (which includes business spending on services such as B2B contact centres). Throw into the mix a global financial crisis and let’s hope that in the middle of it all the largest single company in the business-to-business space goes broke and throws 500 people out of work (CustomCall).

Let’s create the maximum amount of uncertainty possible inside a key industry that employs thousands of young Australians and gives them their start in life.

And at the same time, let’s put some roadblocks in the path of normal business-to-business communication – because, hey, businesses don’t need to talk to each other.

Bottom line, the idea that the government needs to step in and regulate business-to-business communication is breathtaking.

The big impact is not on larger businesses who can afford the budget to run large marketing campaigns or employ huge numbers of door knockers to get their inbound phone lines ringing.

Instead, it is going to place a massive dead hand on smaller businesses who rely on small professional sales prospecting centres to open doors on their behalf. And as for Tony the out-of-work business consultant, it could be the end of the road. Much as he is a great finance guy, he will never muster the courage to make the 10 cold calls a day he needs to make in order to keep his wife in shoes.

Chris Moriarty is the Joint Managing Director of Strike Force Sales Pty Ltd, one of the dozens of small contact centres that dig out and deliver countless sales opportunities each day to hundreds of small Australian businesses who are looking for clients and an excuse to invest more time and energy in the development of the Australian economy.

The Front Foot

By Rachel Poon

Client Services

 

Recent news headlines have been full of woe in regards to unemployment, recessionary fears and basic global financial doom. This has meant most senior management focus has been on cost cutting rather than investment in future business. This is especially so for companies with long sales’ cycles, new business is starting to be seen as a cost that a company can no longer bear as freely. This attitude is reactionary, tactical and may not be beneficial in the long term.

 

Many say now is the time you should be selling to your existing customers and not new prospects – as it is easier, quicker and more productive than new business acquisition.

 

However, now is also the perfect time to build relationships with new prospects. At a time where everyone is reducing costs, if you are speaking to them, you will stand out in the crowd. As your competitors fall away, you are able to pick up where they left off.

 

In this climate, the ability to be seen swimming when everyone around merely treading water, provides prospects with a sense of confidence and stability. And when the doom is over, you will be the one on the front foot while your competitors are scrambling to get their teams back together and back in working shape.

 

Understanding that costs are still an issue, mass marketing is not the solution. Instead, personalised, localised and strategic targeting of key prospects and verticals is the way. Who do you want to be working with, and how do you want to be positioned post-recession are just some of the questions to think about.

 

Remember, the recession will end. Business will pick up.

Engineering Sales Effectiveness

By Darren Cox

Sales Manager

 

The Sales Guy (Three years ago):

 

Targets hit (just!); Head held high; claimed back the “business lunch” at  the Park Hyatt (Woo Hoo!); Sitting behind the desk; feet up; breathe a sigh of relief; wait for the phone to ring.

 

The Sales Guy (Now):

 

Target’s missed (by a mile); lost three clients to competitors who dropped their pants for the business; sitting behind the desk – at home; Seek and MyCareer open on laptop; breathe a sigh of hope; wait for the phone to ring.

 

* * *

 

It’s remarkable to note that in Australia, many companies, before the economic crisis, rested on their laurels; the sales people sat in their leather chairs, tilted back, feet on their desks, awaiting the phone to ring,

 

And ring it did! Existing customers called to request a paid upgrade, a newer version, an alternative product, a professional service or two, and sales guys didn’t feel they needed to prospect for new business. Life was easy!

 

And then, BAM! The Credit Crunch. And, over the weeks and months we have witnessed mass job cuts, in order that businesses can reduce costs.

 

And who is cut? The sales people waiting for the phone to ring!

 

Now, times have changed. We’re in a different world – A world where businesses, to remain competitive, have to be on the lookout for new business – proactively. They have to create an effective sales strategy dedicated to new business generation and telephone prospecting.

 

Unfortunately, business owners, being less inclined to make cold calls, are equally less inclined to force their sales people to do the same thing. Furthermore, they look among their sales team, finding the familiar faces of veteran sales guys – the ones who made the cut – who outright refuse to get on the phone to generate new opportunities, or have no idea how to do it!

 

And so, their competitive edge becomes blunt, and the sharpened saw snaps.

 

So, what is the solution to the economic woes we now face? How can business owners and sales people overcome their blunted sales strategy and replace it with a new enthusiasm and purpose?

 

First and foremost, your sales people must be targeted not only on business retained – existing business – but new business generation.

 

Existing business should not be your only protection from keeping your business out of the red. Organisations must be looking at finding new opportunities, and forging new relationships.

 

Please don’t misunderstand, existing business is an important part of your sales pipeline and continued growth, but please consider, your existing business is your competitor’s new business and when the going gets tough the tough get going.

 

Your competitors are hungry. And so must you be.

 

Is it your intention to just make it through this crisis; to keep your head above water as you frantically swim to the edge?

 

Or is your strategy to grow and continue to expand?

 

Now is the best time to refine, or redefine, your sales strategy, to be proactive in your approach to new business generation, to get tough, but also disciplined in your approach to making outbound cold calls.

 

Our Joint MD, Ciaran McGuigan, drives a car with a number plate highlighting one of his own key strategies – 10B410. That’s ten outbound new business calls every days before 10am.

 

This methodology, though sounding simplistic, could be the difference between growth and stagnation.

 

So be tough. And get going!

St Patrick was in Sales

By Ciaran Mcguigan

Joint Managing Director

 

March 17 is Saint Patrick’s Day. The traditional patron saint of Ireland’s day is usually celebrated around the world with green beer, fried food and bad Irish accents. I thought this year as we are in the season we could all benefit from a little more background on why he was so successful when so many had failed before hand.

 

Before St Patrick went to Ireland there had been many unsuccessful missions [read sales trips] attempting to bring Christianity to pagan Ireland. Ireland, like many other parts of pagan Europe, consistently resisted attempts to convert the population. Now back then as a missionary if you were unsuccessful it generally meant that you were dead; so we can assume that every missionary prepared thoroughly and was personally committed to the outcome. So what did Patrick do which was different?

 

There are three lessons for us all.

 

Lesson One: He spoke their language

 

All previous missionaries arrived speaking classical Latin which naturally no one in Ireland understood. Because of Patrick’s years in slavery he could speak in the local tongue and he understood local customs and behaviour. At a fundamental level he could engage with his prospect base. Ask yourself how many of your sales team can speak CEO or Marketing, Finance or Distribution. Learn how to speak your customer’s language and you will write more business.

 

Lesson Two: He worked for the long term solution

 

Patrick was after long-term fundamental change – he wanted to convert core beliefs and systems which had been established for millennium. He knew that simply to arrive, build a church and start converting would not work over the long term. His predecessors had arrived with this strategy and had approached local chiefs and tribal elders with the goal that if they converted the chief then everyone in the tribe would follow. That’s fine – the only problem is if the chief then changes his mind – so does everyone else. No one was ever really converted. Rather than follow this, Patrick looked for the people who looked after the future of the village or tribe; the children. Patrick specifically targeted and spoke to the women in each community knowing that if he can influence them then they in turn will bring up their children, male and female, with their beliefs; beliefs which will stand the test of time.

 

Lesson Three: He leveraged existing symbols

 

In Ireland, as in many parts of the ancient world, the Sun was worshipped as the main diet. It made sense, after all the sun brought life everyday. It was one of the few constants in a dangerous world. Patrick knew that he could not replace the sun symbol which was worshiped and symbolised in art, jewellery and custom. He had one symbol; the crucifix and what he did next was one of the smartest marketing strategies I have ever come across. He combined them. What we now know as a ‘Celtic’ cross is in fact the pagan symbol for the sun in combination with a cross. Here is our lesson; We should all ask ourselves – How does our product or service compliment our competitors. If we can change our pitch from either / or, to ALSO then we can win more business and grow accounts.

The Marketplace: Our View

By Chris Moriarty

Joint Managing Director

 

Certainly these are interesting times. No doubt the first quarter of 2009 has felt like a down quarter. But it has not necessarily been one.

 

Strike Force Sales itself is up just over 20% on last year. The issue for our sales team has been that interest and enquiries have more than doubled, so there is a huge pipeline of interest.

 

I spoke to a colleague, a partner specialising in liquidations at one of the big accounting firms. He has experienced something similar. Lots of companies are talking about entering administration, but few companies are actually doing it.

 

Accounting firms are instead busy restructuring businesses to shield stakeholders from any future issues – there is a strong sense of future potential risk, but little immediate crisis.

 

I spoke with a senior executive at one of our big global clients and he noted an interesting trend… just about all of the job losses being announced in Australia appear well planned. People are being retrenched on the back of carefully thought out and well-executed planning, not on the back of emergency situations.

 

The point here is that if companies were in genuine trouble, they would lay off staff in a more haphazard fashion. What is really happening is businesses are using the downturn as an opportunity to re-size – actions are deliberate and planned.

 

So let’s thread all this together.

 

There is a strong sense that the future is uncertain and risks loom.

 

There is no real sense of panic.

 

Businesses of all sizes have used the first quarter of this year to sit down and carefully take stock of the current situation while putting in place plans to survive any sudden downturn.

 

Lots of businesses are re-sizing not because of immediate critical need, but rather because it seems prudent to do so.

 

A return to business fundamentals is taking place.

 

The most basic business fundamental is that all power comes from the barrel of revenue. So, while businesses are focussed now on their re-sizing programs, ultimately that can’t survive at all if they don’t keep on winning new business.

 

This means that over the next few months the whole economy is going to see a surge in sales activity. It will not necessarily result in a surge in buying activity – so we will see a hyper-competitive environment emerge, with fierce hand-to-hand combat being fought over every dollar.

 

Nothing is going to matter more than winning ‘that’ sale.

 

This is probably going to become the defining feature of the new economy that will emerge off the back of this global crisis. We will see a new hyper-competitive global economy against a background where risk is properly considered meaning heightened demand (and inherent competitive advantage) for accountability and transparency (the natural enemies of uncertainty).

 

It will be very exciting – in fact, it already is.

 

 

Ground Zero: Leveraging the GFC for Advantage

By Daiju

Operations Manager

 

 

As Operations Manager for Strike Force Sales I have the opportunity to not only make calls on each and every campaign we run but I also see the spread of data we receive from our many campaigns. One thing my operators and I are consistently hearing from all sectors of the economy is uncertainty, and uncertainty equals risk in business.

 

Risk can be dealt with in various ways depending on the business model and the management style of a company. Currently most Decision Makers are responding with a single-minded focus on “cutting costs” to protect the bottom line. However, paring back a business can also mean surrendering market share, it might mean your business falls father than your competitors. Thus, the second concern I hear expressed is “How do we take advantage of the current economic climate?”

 

These two concerns appear polar opposites, but they need not be. Cutting staff can lead to lower total ouput, but not if balanced with increased technology and/or training. Cutting costs while focussing on the future can lead to a leaner more productive and competitive machine which will be more able to capitalise on the inability of competitors to stay afloat in a hostile environment. Decision Makers know that this negative market will end in the not-too-distant future and the more savvy DMs are already preparing to be leading the forward as the conditions begin to change.

 

When I talk with my operators the first thing we do is examine the negative aspects of your product or service based on the bearish economy. Then we look at the way that our prospects can gain from the products offered by our clients in terms of future positioning. This is a process that continues all the way through each our campaigns so that common objections can be overcome.

 

We often point out to prospects that we understand their Pain in terms of the need to cut costs (be that staff, general expenditure or capital investment) while also reminding them that this is the perfect time to Gain from the relatively greater fall of competitors. We then insist this is in fact the reason why we have taken the time to contact them. Never directly pushing a product onto a wary market we instead aim to remind them of the fundamentals of business; adapt to and take advantage of the current economic climate.

How Do Marketers Screw-Up Outsourced Telemarketing? Let Me Count the Ways …

By Michael A.Brown

© 2008, Michael A. Brown
www.michaelabrown.net

A while back, DMNews International carried this extraordinary quote: “Where you may want to use a service bureau is in the making of programs. They already have a pool of talent and are a way you can get good results. And you don’t have to pollute (italics added) your offices with a telemarketing department.” Pollute! I can’t recall a stronger verb applied to a legitimate business practice. 

The person quoted, a European publisher, has it all wrong of course. The “making of programs” is up to the marketer, not the service bureau. And the “pool of talent” too often isn’t.

 Nevertheless, the misguided publisher does provoke an interesting question: what other mistakes do marketers make when outsourcing telemarketing? In my work with many companies that outsource telemarketing, and several outsourcers themselves, I have identified six “killers” … three each strategic and tactical.

Strategic

1.       Inherent business mismatch: they don’t really do what you really need done. Examples:

• Your marketing strategy calls for sustained opportunity development and lead nurturing but the outsource provider is better at stand-alone campaigns.

• Their history and their hearts are in b-to-c, but because of National Do Not Call Lists in the USA and elsewhere, they pretend to be knowledgeable and experienced in b-to-b.

• Inappropriate technologies such as predictive dialers, and rude behaviors such as pitching during the call opening and failing to ask, “Is this a suitable \ good \ OK time for a conversation?”

• Wrong metrics such as dials-per-day and talk-time rather than ratios of results v. efforts and generating enough viable opportunities.                                                      

• Their labor market, education base, and turnover rates will not support the right types and levels of calls to the kind of people you need to reach. For instance, they hire high school grads to contact C-level prospects.

• They are offshore, and their reps cannot understand what your prospects and customer are saying and vice versa.

2.       Undisciplined outsourcer selection and default of oversight. Examples:

• Some marketers fail to screen the outsource provider themselves, much less conduct due-diligence in selection. Rather, they have purchasing put out an RFI or RFP. To me, that’s a firing offense. (Are you reading this, really large technology companies?)

• Ignoring or not even acknowledging an absolutely crucial outsource selection criterion … the outsourcer MUST forecast to staff, NOT staff to forecast. If the latter, their “stable” of callers and the callers’ quality will fluctuate widely. Also, their management will spend more time recruiting and interviewing than attending to your projects. Conversely, forecast-to-staff generally yields a more dependable group of permanent callers, meaning a greater likelihood of continuity and success for your marketing campaigns and projects.

• Allowing more than 30% of the callers to be temporaries. You need to know who is calling on your behalf at all times and that they are trained and competent to do so. That cannot happen with a room full of temps.

• Not conducting constant high-level management of the business relationship and the conduct of the calls, and then expressing surprise when callers say odd, ineffective stuff and results fall short..

3.       Not recognizing that besides catering to your marketing requirements, the outsource call service bureau also has their own business to run, and it’s not yours. They have to turn a decent profit, exactly as you do. Beat ‘em up over price and you will pay the price.

Tactical

1.       Failure to integrate telemarketing with other marketing and sales media and\or to tell the outsourcer about the others. Here are the penalties:

• The outsource callers do not know about, nor have they seen, the webinar content, mailing, or offer that their call is based on or supports.

• The outsource callers are supposed to read from marketing “scripts” that were originally written for visual media such as web sites or print, not the ear … and they sound awful!

• Out-of-context campaigns and offers that under-perform. Customers and prospects want whatever we present to them to make sense in their business life and timetable, not ours. The “call from out of the blue” confuses and annoys and does not sell. What callers speak about must be relevant and timely to the prospect, not the marketer.

2.       Allowing the outsource provider to conduct undifferentiated calling. Examples:

• The “one call fits all” approach, without prospect research or call preparation.

• Generic, undifferentiated calls to high-level contacts fail, unfailingly.

• Asking outbound reps to make 100 dials a day. Dials without resulting conversations mean nothing. Talk-time without qualified leads, positive next steps, and orders causes poverty.

• Over-automation. In their attempts to reduce costs, some marketers want to replace live callers with automated messaging systems. And don’t we all love automated messaging systems.

• Narrative phone mail “ads” (some over 2 minutes long!) left overnight for prospects to listen in the morning. After clearing 83 spams from their e-mail and hearing “you have 24 new messages” on their phone mail, the last thing prospects want is an infomercial.

• Disguising sales calls as surveys. Deception eventually destroys the deceiver regardless of the economy.

3.       Not listening to what is being said and done by the outsourcer on the marketer’s behalf. Examples:

• Inability to monitor calls from anywhere on the planet. If you cannot hear them, you cannot assess them. And marketers never should leave monitoring solely up to the outsourcer. Hey, it’s your stuff!

• Their technology is incompatible with yours. Their data input, throughput, and output is on a different platform and\or in a different format. While it is not necessary to replicate every technology aspect, you do need consistency and continuity so everyone in marketing and sales and the outsource company “reads from the same page.”

The good news is that every one of these mistakes is entirely avoidable! If you avoid them, you’ll do much better despite our economic woes. May you prosper!

The Dollar Value – Increasing the value of your marketing dollar

By Sali Lu

So, we have the inevitable headlines… as jobs are being axed in the tens of thousands at a time. And, of course, enterprise spend is under increasing scrutiny (if not completely frozen). This is equally true for marketing budgets, as cost cutting seems to take resounding priority over growth. In fact, (ideally) cost cutting will need to happen despite growth.

 

Quite simply, every single dollar, from an outcome point of view, needs to be leaner and meaner. The main advantage of outsourcing lead generation is to help both your Management and Sales Teams achieve greater cost savings by reducing the overhead costs associated with hiring and managing your own internal teleprospectors.

 

There are a number of variables that you are able to control when delivering any type of marketing campaign:

1)      The market

2)      Branding (how will your brand hold up as competitors become more fierce?)

3)      Positioning (is your brand positioned to be attractive during a recessionary period?)

 

More specifically in outsourcing teleprospecting campaigns, the elements that we can take control include:

1)      Good Data

2)      An attractive offer

3)      The right pitch

 

The one thing that we can’t control is Macro-economic factors (legislation, inflation, interest rates…)

 

We are in a time when the variables we cannot control are proving to be a challenge. Thus, the elements we can control (like the operator and the pitch) become increasingly important.

 

How will the operator respond to all of the above factors, intuitively, and articulate value professionally and convincingly?

 

1. Unscripted pitch means that operators are trained to engage naturally with each prospect. Prospects especially decision makers are highly resistant to scripted calls, simply because they sound artificial and insulting. A well executed, unscripted campaign can ensure that calls to prospects which don’t yield an immediate result will present your company’s brand in a positive light, building long term value.

 

2. Market intelligence includes immediate and actionable feedback, as well as the ability to incorporate market research into sales mix. Anecdotal feedback and building strong qualifying questions is the key in achieving better results and value in lead generation.

 

3. Visibility occurs when there is interaction and participation between the client and our operations team at SFS. Clear visibility helps us to better understand the needs of our client.

 

A tighter marketing budget may not necessarily mean shrinkage in the outcome of your next campaign. However, this is only possible when all the controllable factors are taken into good care.

The $28,000 sandwich

By Ciaran McGuigan

 

Free for lunch? You may not have given today’s lunch much thought – after all it’s pretty routine. Pop into the sandwich bar and five or six dollars later lunch is taken care off. I also usually grab a bottle of cold water from the fridge. My perception of lunch changed recently when I was powerfully reminded, by two different news reports, of just how much more important Value is rather than Price when it comes to selling.

 

Let me illustrate: How about paying US$455. for just a few teaspoons of twenty seven year old water. Or, if your budget will stretch to it, how about US$28,000 for a ten year old grilled cheese sandwich? – With a large bite taken out. In 1977 Wade Jones kept a plastic cup which Elvis had been drinking out of and froze the remaining contents. This was six months before Elvis died. In the autumn of 1994 Diane Duyser, from Florida, made a toasted cheese sandwich and was surprised to see an image of the Virgin Mary looking back at her.

 

Both of these items were auctioned on ebay recently and their former owners were delighted to find that there were hundreds of people from all over the world happy to bid what may seem at first ridiculous amounts of money. Let’s take a look at these in more detail:

 

Value and price are NOT the same

Our customers act on what they perceive as value. We don’t know what that is until we start to engage them in conversation and listen to their responses and the meanings behind them. Sometimes our greatest challenge is setting aside our own perceptions of their needs. The reality is that customers have demonstrated time and again that they will buy what they want before what they need. Find out what those unique wants are and relate your product to move them towards their outcomes.

 

Technology can create new markets

One of the major reasons why these sales were possible and profitable is the internet. ebay have combined a global reach and a niche focus to empower people from all over the world who can  now buy and sell products and services which would be impossible on a local and regional level. A major feature in the sale of these items was their ‘newsworthiness’. The ‘sandwich’ customer, Richard Rowe, CEO of The Golden Palace casino, is already using it to market his establishment.

 

This is a perfect example of supply and demand. If there are a group of interested and keen people bidding for a unique item and there is a deadline (like an auction) then prices are going to go up – irrespective of how ridiculous it may seem to those who have no interest in the product.

 

So what can we learn as sales people?

1.      Don’t use your own value systems to qualify clients

Start you client interviews with a blank slate. Ask plenty of quality questions and listen to the answers. Take lots of notes and try not to jump to conclusions. I like to almost act as if I were a family Doctor and ask what may seem obvious. But more often than not yields important information.

What we think of as expensive / cheap is just that; what WE think. It is not uncommon for sales people to believe that their product would sell more if it cost less. If you focus on the VALUE your product could have for your customer, then price will not be an issue.

 

2.      Find out what is truly unique about your product

Do you know what is truly unique about your product? It is not what you think, it is what your prospect thinks is unique about your product that matters. Once you understand their perspective you are in a powerful sales position. The way to do this is by constantly asking them for their opinions on features and characteristics of your product class. Something else that you may not have considered; YOU make your product unique.

 

3.      Make it easy for them to Buy

Finally make it easy for your customers to make buying decisions and to actually buy from you. Can you offer proof, guarantees, easy payments etc? Can they purchase online, over the phone, by mail order or any other way they chose. One of the factors of an auction like ebay is that each prospect can see in real time just how easy it is for their competition to buy. This helps ‘fuel’ the competitive atmosphere and drive the price higher. Although I still think that US$28,000 is a bit over the top. Now if there had been ham in it, well that’s another story!

 

Revenue, Revenue, Revenue!

By Chris Moriarty

 

Revenue is everything in business. Nothing else matters. It is the life blood of any organisation – even if you are not profitable.

 

As long as you have revenue circulating through your business you are a chance of staying alive.  Unless you have revenue pumping through your veins you can never prosper.

 

Sales generates around 100% of all revenue for just about every business.

 

Therefore, whoever has the best sales teams and the best sales process is in the best position to prosper through the current economic climate.

 

Think about athletics.

 

It is hot, humid and oxygen is thin. You have to run a marathon. Who is going to survive – the elite athletes or the slobs?

 

This is a great time to be in sales. Great sales people should be celebrating their good fortune at being in the market at this time.

 

First, all the lazy and weak order-takers will be the first to fall. This will open up the field.

 

Second, your prospects are all in pain. Everyone is in pain, the whole economy is feeling pain. This is great. It means there is an abundance of pain points. Pain points are great because they give you something to sell against.

 

An amazing thing is happening. At Strike Force Sales our hit rates are going up. I would like to think it is 100% due to our skill and application. But another factor is at play. There is less noise in the market. People are giving up.

 

When the going gets tough the tough get going. It is true. The soft are giving up. There are less people out there spruiking for business. Instead they are sitting at their desk in sackcloth and ashes moaning about how bad business is. Meanwhile their absence from the market is leaving it wide open for the tough and the fit.

 

Right now is a fantastic time to be on the phone, drumming up leads and developing a battle hardened sales team and sales process.