SnogFrog Blog

You Don't Have to Sell, But Someone Has To!

I was talking to a colleague yesterday who runs a business. He's very well qualified to sell, and he's been doing it most of his working life. He's taken a decision to use a telemarketing company to call his clients to get him the meetings. Very Interesting. Even though he's well capable of doing them himself. If you're not going to make the volume of calls needed, then get someone else to do them! I'm doing calls every day but not enough of them to generate the meetings required, I'm caught in between. Either I have to do more calls or get someone else to do them. This is a big part of Mike Southon's book, The Beermat Entrepreneur, which suggests that the Entrepreneur should focus on being the entrepreneur, and leave Sales, Finance, Technology, Delivery, to the other 4 "Cornerstones" in the company. How many calls do you have to make to generate the business you need? Are you going to do them? Either do them, or get someone else to do them! I have a friend who has moved into this very area, working for a telemarketing company making calls on behalf of other companies to generate leads. She's only recently moved into this type of roll over the last 18 months, and she's very good at it. Better on volume than most of the salespeople and salestrainers I've known over the years. Let the people who are good at doing the volume, do the volume, and you can get on with having the meetings and letting your silky selling skills do the rest!

2 Cold Calls per Day

I received some brilliant advice today.  So obvious.

Do 2 Cold Calls per Day.  1 in the morning and 1 in the afternoon.  If you stick to that, it's 40 cold calls per month!!  If you miss a day, forgive yourself, and stick to 2 cold calls per day, don't recover to 4 calls.

If you're busy for several days or away on holiday, come back to 2 Cold Calls per Day.

The Future of Selling

Someone in a workshop last week asked me what the future of selling is.  What are the new and future ideas and theories on selling.  Dunno!

Actually, I've thought a lot about it over the last few years.  I think in most cases selling will always be selling, from the classic First Impressions, Opening, Questioning, Selling, Objection Handling, Closing, Repeat!  And on to the softer stuff like Solution Selling, Consultative Selling, SPIN Selling, Win-Win Selling, Relationship Selling.

The thing that bothers me the most, is the language that describes selling.  We don't use that language in everyday conversation.  "Finding a Need" "Questioning" "Closing".  It's as though once we try to define what's going on with language, something of the spirit is lost.

So the answer I gave last week, is sure I can tell where I think selling should go, but I don't know that most "Clients/Customer" and "Sellers" are ready for it.

Firstly, when you look at SPIN Selling, a newer book Selling is Dead has added "Objective" questioning whereby you're not just looking for the problem/pain in SPIN but the aspirations as well.

Secondly, I still think that a dose of Cluetrain is the pointer to where it's all going, be it more slowly than some of us want;

1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

And near the end of the book......

Have a sense of humour.
Find your voice and use it.
Tell the truth.
Don’t panic.
Enjoy yourself.
Be brave.
Be curious.
Play More.
Dream Always.
Listen Up.
Rap On.

Thirdly, I've believed for a while (and I have a model for it) that Buyers and Sellers will start to match values, not just in traditional values and business values, but in Spirituality and Lifestyle type values.  This is still some way away and it's a bit touchy feely, but it goes further than "Developing Rapport" with a customer because you learnt it on a course, to having a genuine connection with people.

Fourthly, I think the big money is in the Ranking and Rating of products and services a la Amazon, Google, eBay, whereby it's the consumer that starts to drive the information and knowledge, and more Social Networks, but not quite as we know it today.

So all in all, we're fairly traditional in how we sell and are sold to, and that's ok for the majority of situations, but things are changing, very slowly!!

What Do You Like about your product/service

Hey I learnt something new the other day.  Something really obvious.  I've spent so long looking at SPIN, and seeing problems, that it was refreshing for someone to give me a new sales acronym. CLING

Current

Likes

Improvement

Need

Go Ahead

"What do you like about your current mobile phone, and what improvements would you like in a new mobile phone?"

I like this idea of asking about what you like in your current product, and then asking for what improvements they'd like to see.  It's a real key to looking at why someone wants something new, and what would drive them to buy it.

"What do you like about your current supplier, and what improvements would you like to see in them, or from us!!"

What Makes a Good SalesManager?

I've been thinking over the last few days about what makes a good SalesManager.  One way to work this out is to think about all the good and bad SalesManagers I've had over the years.  What the good ones have in common and what the bad ones have in common, and to compare and contrast a few with each other.  I'm looking to have a few categories that I can put SalesManagers in to cover all their styles.  What I have so far in terms of what's good and bad is;

Good Sales Manager

• Creative
• Fun
• Covers for their salespeople with senior management
• Weekly one to one reviews
• Good team manager
• Charisma
• Confidence
• Uses efforts of team
• Good coach
• Leverages resources within and outside the team
• Qualifies deals and which ones they're going to help with
• Helps the low performers
• New Business ideas
• Recruits well

Bad Sales Manager

• Bullies
• Obsessed with process
• Distant
• Big Ego
• Sucks up to senior management for their own gain
• Good at selling but poor at managing a team
• Dishonest and exaggerates situations

Have I missed anything?

Niche Markets Salesperson (Types of Salespeople)

From my own selling experience, working with sales people, and training hundreds and thousands of salespeople, I thought about what makes a good salesperson and came up with 8 types;

1. Lovable Rogue
2. Nice Guy
3. Talker
4. Dirty Rotten Scoundrel
5. High Activity Rate
6. Repeatable Process
7. Proposal Writer
8. Deal Maker

You can be a very good salesperson just by focusing on one of these areas and being good at it.
I’m not going to go into detail and describe each one here.  You’ll have to keep returning or subscribe to this weblog!!
But what reminded me of these 8 Types is having a Repeatable Process – Finding a niche market, supplying to that niche market something it wants, and then just keep doing it. You don’t have to even be good at what you do, you just keep doing it because you’ve found what the market wants.

I was thinking about this today, at a café here in Melbourne, that has free WiFi.  It’s attracting Geeks.  Lots of them. The word is out, and the café was packed today.  More so than any other café on Acland St in St Kilda.  And I spent more today, yet again, on coffees and breakfast, than I would if I signed up for hourly access!!

I’m just at another café and I asked out of courtesy, if I could plug the power in.  The guy had to phone up to the boss, and word came down, that I could if I ordered another drink.  Now I’ve already met a friend here and had 3 coffees.  Not exactly friendly, and it was like an alien question to them.  I’ve not been made to feel welcome, but actually, the place is so empty, it’s the best working space I’ve found so far in Melbourne!

The other niche market, that I keep scratching my head over, is my daughter’s new school.  For some obscure reason, they decided to be “The” French school in Melbourne.  In other words, they want to attract all French speaking people to the school.  In some cases the parents can’t speak English, but they want the kids schooled in English and French.  What a great niche.  If you are a French family working in Melbourne, and you’re looking for a school for your young kids, then this is the place.  If you want your kids to learn French, then this is the place.  A very tightly defined niche.

Find your niche.  Find what the markets wants that you offer.  And you won’t have to be good at selling.  The product or service sells itself, because the niche is so well defined, and there’s strong demand.

I identified this type of salesperson by realising that there are many very successful salespeople out there, who aren’t particularly good, but they’ve found their niche market, and they just focus on that, sometimes for years, having huge success. Think about the people you know who seem to sell well in spite of their talent!  It could be that they have a Repeatable Process selling in a Niche Market.

Hello and welcome to SnogFrog

Hello.  New Year's Resolutions and all that, so it's time to start an idea I've had for a while.
SnogFrog Blog!
What is SnogFrog?  Snog is an English word, to kiss, to pash.  It's a bit more than kissing. 
It's kissing with passion.
So SnogFrog means kissing frogs.
We don't kiss enough frogs in life.  Be it selling, dating, networking with people.
We fear rejection and failure, so we settle for kissing few frogs if any, and hoping, settling for second best, dealing with second rate customers, when in fact we should be kissing lots of frogs to give us the "Luxury of Choice" to choose the right one.
Sure you can teach Selling Skills, but no-one has the time anymore to practise them.
I'm coming to the conclusion that activity and how we organise ourselves are much easier to change than how we talk to people.

So I'm starting this blog to focus on how we organise ourselves and how we can Kiss more Frogs.  SnogFrog!!  This also includes Selling Skills, Dating, yes boy meets girl (or any other combination), and Networking, as well as a few other skills.
It also means I can keep this weblog reasonably businesslike and rant on my personal blog about football, politics, and the ills of the world!

I'm planning to also have SnogFrog Pods - Podcasts on Selling, interviewing guests, and let's see where the format goes.

Enjoy!