From a practical standpoint, you don’t have 24 selling hours in a day. You don’t even have eight. I estimate that most salespeople can count on no more than five hours and 30 minutes daily when they can expect to make face-to-face presentations. This is due mainly to the availability of your prospects and customers. Even if you work an 8 AM to 6 PM ten-hour day, you’ll probably not be able to get more than five and a half hours in front of prospects.
Occasionally, of course, you’ll have breakfast and lunch meetings with customers, squeeze in one last call at 4:45 PM, etc. But for the most part, you’ll find it difficult to consistently make appointments with anyone before 9:30 AM because your prospects are busy organizing their own day (which does not revolve around you). Much the same holds true for lunch, which seldom starts at noon or lasts exactly an hour for most decision makers and influencers.
Here’s what a typical sales day looks like:
8 – 9:30 AM Arrive at office, attend meetings, organize day, leave for first call
9:30 AM – 12 PM Prime Sales time
12 – 1:30 PM Lunch, return phone calls, paperwork, leave for calls
1:30 – 4:30 PM Prime Sales time
4:30 – 6 PM Return to office, return phone calls, attend meetings, paperwork
As you can see, you have five hours and 30 minutes of prime selling time in the day. How do you maximize it? Using the priority system you’ve set up, you have to plan your activities.
“Plan your work and work your plan” is yet another “golden oldie” sales adage. And it’s a good one because it describes the essence of sound time management. It’s not enough to lay out a plan, you have to execute it to get any benefit from it. In fact, if you don’t “work your plan,” you’ve wasted the time it took to draw it up.
You can spend a lot of time planning. You can also invest hundreds of dollars in account management software and cross-indexed leather-bound time management systems. Or you can make up a “to do” list on a napkin at the coffee shop where you start your day. These are all planning systems that can work. I suggest trying something in between.
You need both long-term and short-term plans. Or call them strategic and tactical plans, if you have a military frame of mind. Which one is more important? Neither. They serve two distinct but equally important purposes.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Why Sales?
What attracted me to sales in the first place was the freedom the job offered. I could come and go pretty much as I pleased, work on the things I wanted to work on, and even sort of set my own goals and use the methods I wanted to achieve them. Of course I had to make sure these things didn’t contradict the company’s policies and practices, but that has never been hard since every company I’ve ever sold for wanted the same things I did: more sales from more customers to produce more income. I soon found that if I produced those things, all of us would be happy.
But the personal freedom of sales turned out to be just a side benefit to the job. The real source of gratification turned out to be the senior partner of freedom, which is personal responsibility. Selling makes you free to set and pursue your own goals, but holds you responsible to yourself for doing so. When salespeople accept that responsibility, they have taken the first step on the path to satisfaction and success.
Another constant in selling is the need for salespeople to communicate with prospects on a human level. Advancing technology may make some transactional sales functions obsolete, but as long as people make the decisions about what to buy or not to buy, there will be an important place for salespeople in our economy.
And selling will always be a fun thing to do. It combines many of the positive stimulating forces in life: learning new things, facing different challenges, and meeting a wide variety of people. You get to make a pretty good (or even a very good) living and you can take most of the credit for your own success. Above all, you get to take some interesting risks, which adds plenty of spice to your life.
Creativity is a risk-taking enterprise. To endeavor to make something new is to take risks on several levels. Risk might be defined as the ability to fail. You may spend hours, days, even weeks on the project but fail to conceive an idea that’s workable. Even if you do create one, you may fail to complete it satisfactorily and have to abandon it. Even if your idea comes to fruition, you may fail to find a market for it. Even if you sell it, your idea may not produce the results your customer expected. Every one of these potential failures wounds your ego and your pocketbook. With all these ways to fail, why try?
Because not every idea fails and the ones that succeed reward you tremendously. The risk/reward ratio is actually stacked in your favor. What’s even better, you will improve the odds of success as your professional capabilities grow.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
But the personal freedom of sales turned out to be just a side benefit to the job. The real source of gratification turned out to be the senior partner of freedom, which is personal responsibility. Selling makes you free to set and pursue your own goals, but holds you responsible to yourself for doing so. When salespeople accept that responsibility, they have taken the first step on the path to satisfaction and success.
Another constant in selling is the need for salespeople to communicate with prospects on a human level. Advancing technology may make some transactional sales functions obsolete, but as long as people make the decisions about what to buy or not to buy, there will be an important place for salespeople in our economy.
And selling will always be a fun thing to do. It combines many of the positive stimulating forces in life: learning new things, facing different challenges, and meeting a wide variety of people. You get to make a pretty good (or even a very good) living and you can take most of the credit for your own success. Above all, you get to take some interesting risks, which adds plenty of spice to your life.
Creativity is a risk-taking enterprise. To endeavor to make something new is to take risks on several levels. Risk might be defined as the ability to fail. You may spend hours, days, even weeks on the project but fail to conceive an idea that’s workable. Even if you do create one, you may fail to complete it satisfactorily and have to abandon it. Even if your idea comes to fruition, you may fail to find a market for it. Even if you sell it, your idea may not produce the results your customer expected. Every one of these potential failures wounds your ego and your pocketbook. With all these ways to fail, why try?
Because not every idea fails and the ones that succeed reward you tremendously. The risk/reward ratio is actually stacked in your favor. What’s even better, you will improve the odds of success as your professional capabilities grow.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Face Calls
There’s a simple principle involved in time management for salespeople. More calls means more sales. Simple. As Woody Allen said, “80 percent of success is being there.” You’re “there” more often when you make more calls.
Let’s define a term. A “call” is a face-to-face meeting where you ask a prospect to buy something. It’s not a telephone call to get an appointment or a service call on a current customer, although those activities are certainly important. But when I talk about making more calls in the context of business-to-business sales, I’m talking about asking for orders in person more frequently.
The technological advances of our society are wonderful. You have email, smart phones, instant messaging, video conferencing, and all kinds of other ways to communicate with your prospects. These high-tech wonders can make you more efficient. But they can’t take the place of the face-to-face call. The salesperson who tries to substitute electronic “virtual selling” for personal contact is going to be about as successful as the quarterback who tries to run a play from the bench. The rest of the team may run the play, but it won’t be the same without him there to handle the ball.
There is no substitute for meeting with the client in person. When you’re there face-to-face, you build trust. It’s really hard to believe in what someone’s saying if you can’t look into their eyes while they’re saying it. If you’ve done any telephone sales, you know how hard it is to create a trusting relationship with a prospect who can’t see you.
You also demonstrate your professionalism and transmit your enthusiasm much better in person. “Seeing is believing” is more than just a truism when it’s applied to a sales call. When the prospect can see your animation, can see how prepared you are, can see the masterful way you control your presentation, you gain tremendous credibility. When you’re there face-to-face, you find yourself much more focused on the client, too, which in turn will make your presentation just that much more persuasive.
Personal calls also show the prospect you care. They say you’re so concerned about the success of his or her business that you are willing to invest some of your valuable time in working on it with them. Use all the modern technology you want, but use it to get more face time with more prospects and current customers. That’s where its real value lies.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Let’s define a term. A “call” is a face-to-face meeting where you ask a prospect to buy something. It’s not a telephone call to get an appointment or a service call on a current customer, although those activities are certainly important. But when I talk about making more calls in the context of business-to-business sales, I’m talking about asking for orders in person more frequently.
The technological advances of our society are wonderful. You have email, smart phones, instant messaging, video conferencing, and all kinds of other ways to communicate with your prospects. These high-tech wonders can make you more efficient. But they can’t take the place of the face-to-face call. The salesperson who tries to substitute electronic “virtual selling” for personal contact is going to be about as successful as the quarterback who tries to run a play from the bench. The rest of the team may run the play, but it won’t be the same without him there to handle the ball.
There is no substitute for meeting with the client in person. When you’re there face-to-face, you build trust. It’s really hard to believe in what someone’s saying if you can’t look into their eyes while they’re saying it. If you’ve done any telephone sales, you know how hard it is to create a trusting relationship with a prospect who can’t see you.
You also demonstrate your professionalism and transmit your enthusiasm much better in person. “Seeing is believing” is more than just a truism when it’s applied to a sales call. When the prospect can see your animation, can see how prepared you are, can see the masterful way you control your presentation, you gain tremendous credibility. When you’re there face-to-face, you find yourself much more focused on the client, too, which in turn will make your presentation just that much more persuasive.
Personal calls also show the prospect you care. They say you’re so concerned about the success of his or her business that you are willing to invest some of your valuable time in working on it with them. Use all the modern technology you want, but use it to get more face time with more prospects and current customers. That’s where its real value lies.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Long Term Planning
An annual plan is your long-term strategy. It generally includes activities with accounts with the greatest revenue potential because those are important enough to justify reserving repetitive blocks of time around which you schedule everything else. If you don’t set those blocks of time aside, the long-term campaign to sell the Target Account tends to get pushed aside in the daily rush to get everything else done. But the Target Accounts—and Must Have and Priority Accounts as well—are too important to be overlooked.
I like to use one of those great big wall calendars that I can write on with a dry-erase marker and where I can see all 365 days at once. You may prefer a computerized system or a day-timer. At the beginning of each year, I note the times I expect to make presentations to my Must Have, Priority, and Target Accounts. There may be one such presentation each month for each account. If so, I’m going to mark that twelve times for each one on the calendar.
I then note the predictable sales events and sales support activities that I know will happen during the year. These include trade shows and conventions, promotion campaigns, special seasonal offers, sales meetings, report due dates, and anything else of that nature that I have even approximate dates for.
After that, I plug in my vacation (yes—it’s important, too) and important personal dates like the kids’ school programs, wedding anniversaries, and others that I don’t want to forget in the rush of business. These may be non-sales activities, but they’re valuable, too, so they deserve a place in the plan. If you have laid out the first two categories of activities ahead of these, you won’t have to worry about accidentally being on a fishing trip in Manitoba when your top account’s contract comes up for renewal.
Here’s what goes on your annual plan:
1. Must Have Account Presentations
2. Target Account Presentations
3. Priority Account Presentations
4. Predictable Sales Events
5. Trade Shows
6. Seasonal Offers and Promotions
7. Report Due Dates
8.Vacation
9. Personal Dates
Having a long-term plan like this allows me to further schedule the time to prepare for each event. If I’m planning on making a presentation to a Target Account during the first week of May, I know I need to do the research the first week of April, write the proposal the second week, call the prospect for an appointment the third week, and rehearse the presentation the fourth week of April. And if there are other people in the company who will play a part in this pitch, they have a timetable to refer to as well.
Long-term plans get changed. That’s to be expected. In fact, I suggest that you informally review your annual plan every month to see just what adjustments need to be made. A year is a long time and lots of things can happen which may change some of your priorities. So change the plan to reflect those changes.
One of the often overlooked advantages of long-term planning (and even short-term) is that planning reduces stress. Few things cause your blood pressure to shoot up worse than “discovering” that a report is due tomorrow—and you need some information from a co-worker who left on vacation yesterday. I don’t know about you, but my life is full of surprises. Some of them are pleasant, but many of them aren’t. The bad thing about all of them, though, is that every surprise reminds me that I’m not in full control of my life—a major cause of stress. Planning at least gives me the illusion that I am somewhat the captain of my own ship. This lowers my general stress level and enables me to more calmly cope with the surprises of each day.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
I like to use one of those great big wall calendars that I can write on with a dry-erase marker and where I can see all 365 days at once. You may prefer a computerized system or a day-timer. At the beginning of each year, I note the times I expect to make presentations to my Must Have, Priority, and Target Accounts. There may be one such presentation each month for each account. If so, I’m going to mark that twelve times for each one on the calendar.
I then note the predictable sales events and sales support activities that I know will happen during the year. These include trade shows and conventions, promotion campaigns, special seasonal offers, sales meetings, report due dates, and anything else of that nature that I have even approximate dates for.
After that, I plug in my vacation (yes—it’s important, too) and important personal dates like the kids’ school programs, wedding anniversaries, and others that I don’t want to forget in the rush of business. These may be non-sales activities, but they’re valuable, too, so they deserve a place in the plan. If you have laid out the first two categories of activities ahead of these, you won’t have to worry about accidentally being on a fishing trip in Manitoba when your top account’s contract comes up for renewal.
Here’s what goes on your annual plan:
1. Must Have Account Presentations
2. Target Account Presentations
3. Priority Account Presentations
4. Predictable Sales Events
5. Trade Shows
6. Seasonal Offers and Promotions
7. Report Due Dates
8.Vacation
9. Personal Dates
Having a long-term plan like this allows me to further schedule the time to prepare for each event. If I’m planning on making a presentation to a Target Account during the first week of May, I know I need to do the research the first week of April, write the proposal the second week, call the prospect for an appointment the third week, and rehearse the presentation the fourth week of April. And if there are other people in the company who will play a part in this pitch, they have a timetable to refer to as well.
Long-term plans get changed. That’s to be expected. In fact, I suggest that you informally review your annual plan every month to see just what adjustments need to be made. A year is a long time and lots of things can happen which may change some of your priorities. So change the plan to reflect those changes.
One of the often overlooked advantages of long-term planning (and even short-term) is that planning reduces stress. Few things cause your blood pressure to shoot up worse than “discovering” that a report is due tomorrow—and you need some information from a co-worker who left on vacation yesterday. I don’t know about you, but my life is full of surprises. Some of them are pleasant, but many of them aren’t. The bad thing about all of them, though, is that every surprise reminds me that I’m not in full control of my life—a major cause of stress. Planning at least gives me the illusion that I am somewhat the captain of my own ship. This lowers my general stress level and enables me to more calmly cope with the surprises of each day.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Information Is Power
In all types of negotiation, information is power. Win/win negotiation is no exception. In fact, the more information both parties have, the smoother and more productive the negotiation can be. The things you want to know are much the same as those you want to know about your prospect when you develop your proposed idea for them.
Remember that they will want to know the same kinds of things about you and your position, so be prepared to offer some of that information under the right circumstances. Conventional wisdom says that you should play your cards close to the vest but conventional wisdom is often wrong. Sometimes the exchange of information can be a transaction within a transaction that takes the edge off the larger negotiation.
Here’s a partial list of common types of information you should have before you enter your negotiations:
-What are the prospect’s apparent needs?
-Do any underlying needs exist?
-What are the alternatives to your proposal?
-What are the advantages/disadvantages of the alternatives?
-How do your competitors fit into the alternatives?
-What is the prospect’s financial position?
-How big a factor is the price?
-How strongly are they committed to the proposed idea?
-Are there other decision-influencers?
-What deadlines are they facing?
-Are they negotiating to win/win or win/lose?
You have many sources of information at your disposal. The prospect himself is the best one, of course, and if you’ve been listening to him as well as talking to him, you’ll have picked up the answers to many of these questions already. Don’t overlook your company’s files, either. A given prospect may be new to you but not to your company, since the salesperson who preceded you in the territory may well have had some contact with the prospect.
I’ve also always found it useful to get to know as many of my customers’ employees as I could. You certainly want to know Mr. Big’s secretary or assistant as well as the receptionist and telephone operator (if there is one). But don’t overlook his salespeople, clerks, shipping manager, buyers, purchasing manager, bookkeeper, etc. You never know when they’re going to reveal an interesting tidbit of information that you’ll find useful during negotiation.
Mr. Big’s competitors and other vendors are also important sources of information. A caution in this area, though: Always consider the source when judging the truthfulness of any bit of information. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, especially when it’s exaggerated by a partially-informed employee or a competitor with their own agenda. Just as information can be helpful in negotiation, disinformation can be disastrous. Anyone who has tried to make money in the stock market by trading based on “tips” can attest to that danger. Another word of caution: You don’t want to become known as a carrier of tales or rumors. Such a reputation can have very unpleasant far-reaching consequences. Your strict policy should be to have open ears and a closed mouth at all times.
Honesty in negotiation is important in another sense. Be honest with yourself about your own position. You tend to underestimate your own strengths and weaknesses because you are more aware of them than you are of the buyer’s. Remember, the buyer probably doesn’t know that you’re just one sale away from winning that trip to the Bahamas. If you reveal that little fact, you’ll probably pay for it by suffering through a more demanding negotiation.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Remember that they will want to know the same kinds of things about you and your position, so be prepared to offer some of that information under the right circumstances. Conventional wisdom says that you should play your cards close to the vest but conventional wisdom is often wrong. Sometimes the exchange of information can be a transaction within a transaction that takes the edge off the larger negotiation.
Here’s a partial list of common types of information you should have before you enter your negotiations:
-What are the prospect’s apparent needs?
-Do any underlying needs exist?
-What are the alternatives to your proposal?
-What are the advantages/disadvantages of the alternatives?
-How do your competitors fit into the alternatives?
-What is the prospect’s financial position?
-How big a factor is the price?
-How strongly are they committed to the proposed idea?
-Are there other decision-influencers?
-What deadlines are they facing?
-Are they negotiating to win/win or win/lose?
You have many sources of information at your disposal. The prospect himself is the best one, of course, and if you’ve been listening to him as well as talking to him, you’ll have picked up the answers to many of these questions already. Don’t overlook your company’s files, either. A given prospect may be new to you but not to your company, since the salesperson who preceded you in the territory may well have had some contact with the prospect.
I’ve also always found it useful to get to know as many of my customers’ employees as I could. You certainly want to know Mr. Big’s secretary or assistant as well as the receptionist and telephone operator (if there is one). But don’t overlook his salespeople, clerks, shipping manager, buyers, purchasing manager, bookkeeper, etc. You never know when they’re going to reveal an interesting tidbit of information that you’ll find useful during negotiation.
Mr. Big’s competitors and other vendors are also important sources of information. A caution in this area, though: Always consider the source when judging the truthfulness of any bit of information. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, especially when it’s exaggerated by a partially-informed employee or a competitor with their own agenda. Just as information can be helpful in negotiation, disinformation can be disastrous. Anyone who has tried to make money in the stock market by trading based on “tips” can attest to that danger. Another word of caution: You don’t want to become known as a carrier of tales or rumors. Such a reputation can have very unpleasant far-reaching consequences. Your strict policy should be to have open ears and a closed mouth at all times.
Honesty in negotiation is important in another sense. Be honest with yourself about your own position. You tend to underestimate your own strengths and weaknesses because you are more aware of them than you are of the buyer’s. Remember, the buyer probably doesn’t know that you’re just one sale away from winning that trip to the Bahamas. If you reveal that little fact, you’ll probably pay for it by suffering through a more demanding negotiation.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Avoid Assumptions
Many times you disqualify a prospect based on assumptions you make about them. You jump to a conclusion based on your suppositions and don’t do any research on the prospect. As a consequence, you don’t have enough hard data to make a decision. Additionally, if a prospect doesn’t use a product like that sold by you or your competitors, you assume there must be a reason and you don’t pursue them. Sometimes there might be a reason they don’t buy, but often the situation becomes a classic self-fulfilling prophecy. Since no one is trying to sell them, they don’t buy. Since they don’t buy, you don’t try to sell them. Or you make assumptions based on incorrect information. You look at the building or the neighborhood the prospect is in, for example, and assume they can’t have much potential, so you don’t call on them. But you never know until you find out for sure.
I used to travel a two-lane highway every Tuesday, driving between two good customers of mine who were located in towns about thirty miles apart. I sold television advertising at the time. Located about midway between my two customers on the side of that highway was a small farm house with a good-sized metal machine shed behind it. It looked like a dozen other farm houses with sheds just like it on that highway except that this house had a little sign out front that said “Energy Savers” on it. I probably drove by that house and its sign for six months.
Finally, my curiosity got the best of me and I was ahead of schedule, so I stopped to see just what “Energy Savers” was all about. I knocked on the front door of the house and got no answer. I walked around to the back and heard somebody whistling in the machine shed. When I went inside, I found a big beefy guy in overalls laying under a trailer working to get a piece of baling wire unwound from one of the axles. He didn’t look much like the “normal” television advertiser.
But it turned out he not only became a television advertiser, he became one of my largest accounts! Like many farmers, he had another business on the side. “Energy Savers” turned out to be an early provider of blown insulation, which offered an inexpensive, non-intrusive way to insulate the side walls and ceilings of existing homes. It was a perfect product to advertise on television and, because it carried such a high profit margin, this guy in the overalls and seed corn cap could afford to buy a lot of TV advertising from me.
If I had continued to judge the potential by the appearance of the prospect, I never would have made that first call on him. Remember, you can’t deposit assumptions in your bank account—only commissions.
Prospecting and qualifying shouldn’t be a chore to be avoided. It should be the beginning of the creative selling process where you open your mind to the possibilities and then try to make them happen. It’s one more adventure in selling.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
I used to travel a two-lane highway every Tuesday, driving between two good customers of mine who were located in towns about thirty miles apart. I sold television advertising at the time. Located about midway between my two customers on the side of that highway was a small farm house with a good-sized metal machine shed behind it. It looked like a dozen other farm houses with sheds just like it on that highway except that this house had a little sign out front that said “Energy Savers” on it. I probably drove by that house and its sign for six months.
Finally, my curiosity got the best of me and I was ahead of schedule, so I stopped to see just what “Energy Savers” was all about. I knocked on the front door of the house and got no answer. I walked around to the back and heard somebody whistling in the machine shed. When I went inside, I found a big beefy guy in overalls laying under a trailer working to get a piece of baling wire unwound from one of the axles. He didn’t look much like the “normal” television advertiser.
But it turned out he not only became a television advertiser, he became one of my largest accounts! Like many farmers, he had another business on the side. “Energy Savers” turned out to be an early provider of blown insulation, which offered an inexpensive, non-intrusive way to insulate the side walls and ceilings of existing homes. It was a perfect product to advertise on television and, because it carried such a high profit margin, this guy in the overalls and seed corn cap could afford to buy a lot of TV advertising from me.
If I had continued to judge the potential by the appearance of the prospect, I never would have made that first call on him. Remember, you can’t deposit assumptions in your bank account—only commissions.
Prospecting and qualifying shouldn’t be a chore to be avoided. It should be the beginning of the creative selling process where you open your mind to the possibilities and then try to make them happen. It’s one more adventure in selling.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Good Storytellers Create Good Business
As a writer and speaker, I love stories. I love to tell them, to write them, and I love to read them. I also like to read about stories, what makes them work, how they excite our imagination, how we use them to enrich our communications. Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die is about all that and more.
Good salespeople, advertisers, marketers, PR professionals, even managers wanting to motivate their employees and entrepreneurs needing to excite their investors can make good use of the techniques described in this book. The authors achieved their goal, "...to help you make your ideas...understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact...." In other words, they help you make your ideas "stick."
As the author of several books about persuasion in business, I took away several great points:
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Good salespeople, advertisers, marketers, PR professionals, even managers wanting to motivate their employees and entrepreneurs needing to excite their investors can make good use of the techniques described in this book. The authors achieved their goal, "...to help you make your ideas...understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact...." In other words, they help you make your ideas "stick."
As the author of several books about persuasion in business, I took away several great points:
"Belief counts for a lot, but belief isn't enough. For people to take action, they have to care."Chip and Dan Heath dissect everything from urban legends to ad campaigns to explain what makes a message resonate in the audience's mind. In the process, they not only show the reader how to use successful strategies, they do it in an entertaining fashion that makes the book a pleasure to read.
"We appeal to their self-interest, but we also appeal to their identities--not only to the people they are right now but also to the people they would like to be."
"One of the worst things about knowing a lot, or having access to a lot of information, is that we're tempted to share it all."
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Dynamic Manager Handbooks - Priceless Advice For A Dollar
Sometimes you need to brush up on a single issue you're facing in your business. For just ninety-nine cents, you can turn to the Dynamic Manager's Handbooks for a quick refresher on sales, marketing, advertising, or several other disciplines that affect your company's bottom line.
I'm planning an even dozen for release this year. Here are the first seven:
Best of all, they're only ninety-nine cents!
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
I'm planning an even dozen for release this year. Here are the first seven:
Customer Relations: The Dynamic Manager's Handbook of Customer SatisfactionYou can find the Dynamic Manager Handbooks for Kindle at Amazon.com or your Nook at BN.com.
Five Rules Of Advertising: The Dynamic Manager’s Handbook Of Small Business Advertising
Marketing In Cyberspace: The Dynamic Manager’s Handbook Of Social Media Marketing
Beat The Big Box: The Dynamic Manager’s Handbook Of Winning The Retail Battle
Promotion and Public Relations: The Dynamic Manager’s Handbook Of Alternative Ways To Build Your Business
First Call Selling: The Dynamic Manager’s Handbook On How To Make Sales On The First Call
Sales Promotions: The Dynamic Manager's Handbook Of 23 Ad Campaigns and Sales Promotions You Can Use
Best of all, they're only ninety-nine cents!
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Excluding The Public In Public Relations
Putting The Public Back In Public Relations
There is a lot of "why" but very little "how" in this book that bills itself as being about the transformation of the public relations industry brought about by Web 2.0. Page after page describes how social media are supposedly dictating new priorities and practices for PR professionals and their clients. While there is certainly much validity to the author's claims for the growing influence of social media, there is a distinct shortage of practical advice on how the reader is supposed to use it.
Unfortunately, the few recommendations the authors do make sound like they were written by PR practitioners (which, of course, they were). "Engage the bloggers" and "have conversations" are about as specific as the advice gets, with few examples of exactly what those bromides mean. Much is made of the need for one-on-one communication rather than scatter-shot distribution of press releases, but there is absolutely no explanation of how this is supposed to be done in a time-efficient manner.
What's really missing is a hint of how PR campaigns built on social media platforms are supposed to reach the great unwashed--the non-techie consumer (millions and millions of them) who never blog, tweet, or even look at the Facebook page their kids set up for them. Publicizing the latest chipset for tablets via Gizmodo may well be the way to go, but how do you sell Buicks online?
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
There is a lot of "why" but very little "how" in this book that bills itself as being about the transformation of the public relations industry brought about by Web 2.0. Page after page describes how social media are supposedly dictating new priorities and practices for PR professionals and their clients. While there is certainly much validity to the author's claims for the growing influence of social media, there is a distinct shortage of practical advice on how the reader is supposed to use it.
Unfortunately, the few recommendations the authors do make sound like they were written by PR practitioners (which, of course, they were). "Engage the bloggers" and "have conversations" are about as specific as the advice gets, with few examples of exactly what those bromides mean. Much is made of the need for one-on-one communication rather than scatter-shot distribution of press releases, but there is absolutely no explanation of how this is supposed to be done in a time-efficient manner.
What's really missing is a hint of how PR campaigns built on social media platforms are supposed to reach the great unwashed--the non-techie consumer (millions and millions of them) who never blog, tweet, or even look at the Facebook page their kids set up for them. Publicizing the latest chipset for tablets via Gizmodo may well be the way to go, but how do you sell Buicks online?
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Attention And Interest
One factor essential to the completion of sales communication is holding the prospect’s attention throughout the pitch. That’s harder than it sounds, as anyone who has done any public speaking can attest. Holding the listener’s attention is one of the hardest tasks a communicator faces for several reasons.
For one thing, the human brain is programmed to check for distractions—to actually seek them out—while it’s listening to you. This involuntary reflex probably dates back to the early days of prehistory when our ancestral prospect’s knuckles dragged the ground. As our proto-prospect walked across the savanna he was in constant danger from predators. He had to check out every sound, movement, or scent that came along, just like the deer that raises its head between every bite of grass.
When you’re making your pitch, your prospects are constantly tuning in and out of your sales presentation to check for other “dangers” lurking about the room. Unlike the deer, though, your prospects have a lot of other things on their minds. These subjects pop into their consciousness every time they momentarily stop listening to you. They may be staring right at your face, apparently hanging on your every word. In their heads though, there’s a monologue going on about what their spouse said last night at the dinner table, what they’re going to have for dinner tonight, how much traffic they can expect to encounter on the commute home, whether their car needs a tune-up, how large the balance on their credit card has become, and on and on. They tune in and out of your presentation while they’re also tuning in and out of that monologue in their head.
Your task is to constantly bring their attention back to your pitch. You have to continually recapture and hold their interest. Your presentation skills can help you do that.
Change is the key to holding interest. The mind attends to stimuli that change. The deer perks its ears up when a twig snaps in the background or the wind sweeps from another direction. Your prospect will tune back into your presentation when something—anything—in your delivery changes.
Work on varying the volume, pitch, and tone of your voice. We’ve all sat through presentations delivered in a monotone and know how deadly boring even the most interesting subject can be if it’s delivered in a consistent, constant drone. To avoid a monotone delivery, vary your volume, pitch, and tone.
Speak louder and softer, emphasizing different points in your presentation with different vocal volumes.
Practice speaking in higher and lower pitches—which convey excitement and intimacy among other emotions.
Work on different tones for different places in your presentation—authoritative, humorous, decisive, inquisitive.
Every time you change one of these factors, you get the prospect’s attention back on your pitch.
You can also vary the rate, intensity, and spacing of your speech. Some people seem to speak at machine-gun rate all the time. They wear their listeners out from trying to keep up. Believe it or not, it’s almost impossible to speak too slowly. The sentence that sounds to you like it’s never going to end will probably sound just fine to the listener.
Remember that the adrenaline pumping through your veins while you’re making a pitch will speed you up unless you make a strong conscious effort to control it. The intensity of your presentation can range from conversational to table-pounding, as long as it’s appropriate to the points you’re trying to emphasize.
And don’t forget to pause. An intentional silence will bring a listener back to you every time. It will also heavily underscore the point that precedes it.
Use your body appropriately. It’s almost impossible to stay enthusiastic and keep a high energy level while you’re slouched in a chair. If you can, stand for some or all of your presentation. Moving about the room, even if it’s just a few feet, will help keep the prospect focused on you and what you’re saying. If you have to sit down while you’re making your pitch (and you do, most of the time), sit on the middle of the seat and don’t let your body touch the back of the chair. Keep your arms away from the armrests so you don’t slouch to one side. The very act of sitting erect will make you more energetic and interesting.
Good posture, whether sitting or standing, gives you better breath control, too. This puts more energy into your voice and helps you speak more clearly.
You should make lots of gestures whether you’re sitting, pacing, or standing still. Gestures re-capture interest and provide strong non-verbal emphasis to important points. To help free your hands for use during the pitch, don’t fold them in your lap or on the desk. And don’t put a pen or other object in your fingers automatically. You’ll have a tendency to “fidget” with it if you’re not using it, so put it back in your pocket when you’re done with it.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
For one thing, the human brain is programmed to check for distractions—to actually seek them out—while it’s listening to you. This involuntary reflex probably dates back to the early days of prehistory when our ancestral prospect’s knuckles dragged the ground. As our proto-prospect walked across the savanna he was in constant danger from predators. He had to check out every sound, movement, or scent that came along, just like the deer that raises its head between every bite of grass.
When you’re making your pitch, your prospects are constantly tuning in and out of your sales presentation to check for other “dangers” lurking about the room. Unlike the deer, though, your prospects have a lot of other things on their minds. These subjects pop into their consciousness every time they momentarily stop listening to you. They may be staring right at your face, apparently hanging on your every word. In their heads though, there’s a monologue going on about what their spouse said last night at the dinner table, what they’re going to have for dinner tonight, how much traffic they can expect to encounter on the commute home, whether their car needs a tune-up, how large the balance on their credit card has become, and on and on. They tune in and out of your presentation while they’re also tuning in and out of that monologue in their head.
Your task is to constantly bring their attention back to your pitch. You have to continually recapture and hold their interest. Your presentation skills can help you do that.
Change is the key to holding interest. The mind attends to stimuli that change. The deer perks its ears up when a twig snaps in the background or the wind sweeps from another direction. Your prospect will tune back into your presentation when something—anything—in your delivery changes.
Work on varying the volume, pitch, and tone of your voice. We’ve all sat through presentations delivered in a monotone and know how deadly boring even the most interesting subject can be if it’s delivered in a consistent, constant drone. To avoid a monotone delivery, vary your volume, pitch, and tone.
Speak louder and softer, emphasizing different points in your presentation with different vocal volumes.
Practice speaking in higher and lower pitches—which convey excitement and intimacy among other emotions.
Work on different tones for different places in your presentation—authoritative, humorous, decisive, inquisitive.
Every time you change one of these factors, you get the prospect’s attention back on your pitch.
You can also vary the rate, intensity, and spacing of your speech. Some people seem to speak at machine-gun rate all the time. They wear their listeners out from trying to keep up. Believe it or not, it’s almost impossible to speak too slowly. The sentence that sounds to you like it’s never going to end will probably sound just fine to the listener.
Remember that the adrenaline pumping through your veins while you’re making a pitch will speed you up unless you make a strong conscious effort to control it. The intensity of your presentation can range from conversational to table-pounding, as long as it’s appropriate to the points you’re trying to emphasize.
And don’t forget to pause. An intentional silence will bring a listener back to you every time. It will also heavily underscore the point that precedes it.
Use your body appropriately. It’s almost impossible to stay enthusiastic and keep a high energy level while you’re slouched in a chair. If you can, stand for some or all of your presentation. Moving about the room, even if it’s just a few feet, will help keep the prospect focused on you and what you’re saying. If you have to sit down while you’re making your pitch (and you do, most of the time), sit on the middle of the seat and don’t let your body touch the back of the chair. Keep your arms away from the armrests so you don’t slouch to one side. The very act of sitting erect will make you more energetic and interesting.
Good posture, whether sitting or standing, gives you better breath control, too. This puts more energy into your voice and helps you speak more clearly.
You should make lots of gestures whether you’re sitting, pacing, or standing still. Gestures re-capture interest and provide strong non-verbal emphasis to important points. To help free your hands for use during the pitch, don’t fold them in your lap or on the desk. And don’t put a pen or other object in your fingers automatically. You’ll have a tendency to “fidget” with it if you’re not using it, so put it back in your pocket when you’re done with it.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
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