Tips on How To Sell in a Rough Economy

TIPS ON HOW TO SELL IN A ROUGH ECONOMY

Here is what I am seeing out in the market place and some ideas on how to deal with the current economic situation. These tips are really for Salespeople who are selling a service and /or a product in a business to business environment.


What You Are Seeing:

1. Delayed closings
2. Getting less appointments
3. Companies are spending less money
4. Clients going away


Customer Objections:

1. Spending freezes
2. Putting things on hold
3. Layoffs
4. Cutting back


The Reality-Opportunity is Still Alive and Well:

1. There are really no spending freezes
2. There is still plenty of business being conducted today
3. People are just scared
4. Some people are just taking advantage
5. People are still greedy
6. Entrepreneurs are still Risk Takers
7. People still want to believe
8. This is the 3rd recession since 1987 predicting gloom and doom
9. This could be the worst one yet
10. Some businesses boom in a recession
11. Hidden weaknesses of your selling process and salespeople gets exposed
12. People actually want the help
13. People will always complain “until you’re the guy with the solution”


The Winning Strategy:

1. You should be more focused on who you should sell to
2. Aim bigger, not smaller
3. Aim higher, not lower
4. Make fewer appointments
5. Empathize with issues – not excuses
6. Develop bigger goals
7. Smaller window-not bigger

The Strategic Tactics:

1. Nail your 30 second positioning statement that can create a need to "hear you out"
2. Give at least two examples in your positioning statement that can relate to your audience
3. Be more selective – not less in who you go after and "opportunities" you chase
4. Be more focused on your service and/or product – do not generalize
5. Sell to the right person – CEO or President
6. Book your appointment – Accept no put-off’s
7. Book only three new appointments per week
8. To get 3 appointments means 6 conversations per day/30 calls per week
9. That means 24 Dials a day
10. That equates to 78 minutes per day on the phone

Executing the Tactics:

1. Book the appointment
2. Hold your ground
3. Create urgency – can’t afford to put it off
4. Create an Economic Stimulus


Team,

This is timely and great information and I’m sure you will find it useful! A wise person once said "If it is to be its up to me". I hope this message helps everyone to get on point and do well.

Regards,
Neil Licht
answers answers@ucanpreventbadhires.com
http://www.ucanpreventbadhires.com/
508-341-9563

Making Critical Decisions: It doesn't have to be "all on YOUR shoulders"

Making Critical Decisions: It doesn't have to be "all on YOUR shoulders"

It took me a long time but I have learned how to involve others and their expertise into making decisions so that I am honestly seeing issues and problems, not subjectively seeing them. Thats important and maybe even critical in key decisionmaking. Here's a few points that this can address:

1. Ramifications of the decision
Have you thought through the impact of your decision on internal staff, the implementation issues, its value v its premiss ROI? Have you though through its effect on Partners, Channels and their ability to remain Partners and Channels.In trying to come up with A good idea, see a problem and solve it, in trying to make decisions, you must first deeply understand the departments involved or effected by your scope of problem v solution or decisiopn making.

Let key people who deal with the area your decision will effect into your thought process. Lay out the issues, problems and ask them how your thoughts would effect their ability to deliver. Let them offer their experienced based insights. Your intended decision may be more upsetting than problem solving and, in this way, you will know it before you go with it.

2. Why Bother to Involve Others:
Sounds almost rediculous to ask but its how you justify and validate the merit of your path. Again, seek out the folks in sales, marketing, support, tech and manufacturing. Let them into your thinking and let them tell you if it effects them, how and if its even worthwhile. They can quantify the impact better than you because they know their side of the equation better than you.

3. Whats the machinery needed to implement the decision?
Very important because any decision must have the mechanics in place to become a real and implemented policy. Consider if you have the machinery in place for implementation. Identify who or which groups will be effected and get them to help you define and create the machinery so it gets done and it actually works as intended.

Great decisions fail when the mechanics of implementation are not in place and managed for taking the decision and implementing it.

4. After the decision is made...making it work
You made a decision because a "step" or "change" was necessary. Now you must make sure everyone is aware of the decision and how to "go with it". That means plan its implementation and include it as part of the process. Implementation considerations are critical to its success.

Each department needs to buy in for their reasons and see the decision as great for them. That means that announcements must be framed differently and precisely by department so it shows a correlation between the decision and how it impacts them specifically.

Dept heads must be involved in this framing and delivery of the decision and having the mechanics in place for implementation ready for instant management of the implementation.

Thats my take on the decision making.

Its not making the decision, its understanding why its needed, if and who it impacts and,if you go with the decision, implemented as seamlessly as possible so the intended results actually materialize.

Neil Licht, answers@ucanpreventbadhires.com
http://www.ucanpreventbadhires.com/

When the economy drops,maximizing existing staff, not hiring is the key

How can you really know how to match your target market and customer's needs with what you offer for an astounding increase in sales and profits?





I can not reveal the company's name because they are in a very competitive industry but one large travel agency increased sales and profits by deploying a very unique assessment tool taht can achieve that result.


Thanks to the new technology, this travel agency has seen significant shifts in how they do business and who their customer is, and how to maximize the per contact hit rate and $ value of each sale.

These changes resulted from revealing, defining and understand which traits and characteristics matter most in success as a sales atravel agent.

Here's what they did:

Study 1: Performance Issues

The travel agency's first study covered a period of nine months. Its intent was to identify trends based on performance data and the relationship of the trends to the overall job match percentage as part of their program with the ProfileXT® assessment tool. The study included 153 sales agents who had finished a trial employment period.

Using a traits/behaviors job match pattern, not a personality pattern developed with the ProfileXT®, the travel agency decided that 76 percent represented a good overall job match score.


To arrive at the score, the agency chose top performers based on their weekly sales average. Ten of these top-ranked employees averaged 76 percent on overall job match, or competencies that travel agency managers wanted to see. Ten bottom performers averaged 69 percent. Sales for top performers averaged five times greater than for bottom performers.

Profit-performance- Revalations, Highlights:

• The top 10 sales agents' weekly sales average was $2,648
• The bottom 10 sales agents' weekly average was $482
• The difference between the two averages is $2,166 weekly.
• For every dollar a bottom performer earned, a top performer earned $5.50.
• Using the overall match on the assessment, replacing a poor sales performer with a top sales performer would result in a sales increase of $2,166 per week, or 349 percent.
  

Study 2: Turnover Issues

The travel agency's turnover study covered a period of 12 months and included 181 sales agents. Managers gathered turnover rates throughout the study period. Before the study began, turnover was 28 percent.

Managers developed a job match pattern using the ProfileXT® and found 60 top performers with a job match percentage of 75 or greater.

They matched the results of the entire group of 181 workers against the pattern, and then used the same pattern in the employee selection process. At the end of the study period, turnover had dropped from 28 percent to 16 percent.

Turnover Reduction Highlights:

• Reduction in turnover: 43 percent
• Average cost of hiring: $15,000
• Cost of 28 percent turnover (51 people times $15,000): $765,000
• Cost of 16 percent turnover (29 people times $15,000): $435,000
• Savings: $330,000 in reduced hiring costs.

During the study period, the agency hired 181 new employees. Twenty-nine left, reducing the turnover rate from 28 percent to 16 percent and giving the agency the $330,000 in savings.

Summary In both areas of study, the job match pattern proved to be a valid and reliable means of selection and retention


Learn More... Ask questions......
Regards, Neil Licht, 508-341-9563, answers@ucanpreventbadhires.com http://www.ucanpreventbadhires.com/

14 "power tools" for making a sale

Ever wonder how to connect with a potential buyer and assure that they will buy your systems solution?

Here are the fourteen absolutely indispensable power tools that should be in every sales rep’s bag of tricks:

• What can you tell me about your organization… and yourself?


• What do you like about what you’re currently doing?


• What don’t you like about your current situation?


• What would you like to be enhanced or improved?


• What can you tell me about your priorities?


• What prompted you to start this project now?


• What can you tell me about your decision-making process?


• How do you handle budget considerations?


• What other options are you looking at?


• What can you tell me about the people involved in the process?


• What obstacles are in the way of moving this forward?


• How will you be evaluating different options?


• How will the funding for the project be justified?


• How much support does this have at the executive level?

Get the answers to these questions, and take action based on those answers. Its a roadmap to create need, set up the eveluation criter in your favor and know how to get things funded and purchased. All of that is critical to making a sale. Follow and use thes questions, act accordingly on all of the answers and you’ll get the sale. It’s that simple.

The questions are adapted from some material provided by the sales wunderkind

Barry Rhein.

Neil Licht answers@ucanpreventbadhires.com

http://www.ucanpreventbadhires.com/

How can employers take their workforce from just punching the clock to going the extra mile?

Why do some employees give their all for their work?

Why are others merely warm seats in their organizations?


How can employers take their workforce from just punching the clock to going the extra mile?


How do you assure that your candidate and your employees will not only work with passion, but will burnish your reputation with your customers, your community and with prospective employees


What can you do to engage existing employees and get from them their highest levels of performance, commitment and passion?

• The difference between satisfaction, commitment and engagement—they are very different, and just because your employees say they are satisfied isn’t necessarily cause for celebration.

• Why employee engagement is important. Understand the business results that stem from having fully engaged employees (as opposed to merely “satisfied” ones).

• Global drivers of engagement. Some things are universal.

• How do you uncover your employees core engagement drivers, and use this understanding to engage and motivate employees?
  

The key is actually in understanding the traits and behaviors of each employee. That’s not personality. It’s the core being of what we are as a person. It is how we define our responses, our likes, dislikes, even our predisposition to human interaction styles.



You can uncover that with a unique “traits” assessment tool. Doing this will clearly reveal what makes your employee “tick”. Now you know their values and behavioral traits so you can position them into the best fit for using “who they are”.


Result: People matched to the right job who actually like what they do, participate, volunteer and have enthusiasm.


Now, about motivation…Its self motivated if you use these assessments and position your people according to their “natural selfs” re the jobs and tasks you give to them.



Neil Licht, answers@ucanpreventbadhires.com

www.ucanpreventbadhires.com

I Hired My Competor's Top Person....And They Failed Miserably---- WHY?


The well known 2004 Miller Heiman Hiring Effectiveness Study reveals two startling facts that shed light on issues about why "great candidates" fail and what is really needed to solve them.

Although your new people may have been Tigers for one company, its market and its products when you hired them away, they can’t change their stripes to fit into what’s really needed to succeed in your company with your market and your product or service
As your product and market changes, your new people may not have the right traits and skills needed to succeed in the emerging sales environment.
Unfortunately, those short comings and failures get revealed and occur on the job where a person's core traits and behaviors do not facilitate success in your unique environment.
So how do you remedy that during the hiring process? Its called job match ...Take a look

Weeding Out The Liars

Last week, I spoke about making honesty and trustworthy synonymous with employee at your company. Now I'm going to give you some ways to make that reality.

While background checks can reveal a number of discrepancies between a candidate's resume and reality, we don’t do background checks on every applicant. Also, it would be prohibitive in cost. Worse, the traits that may cause security issues or disgruntled employees are behavioral traits and are not revealed in background checks at all.

And..What about other candidate "realities" that are not apparent but will present "security or integrity risk" if hired like:

• The Great Pretender - he is not who he pretends to be
• A Low Integrity Candidate - he justifies minor theft and will do so regularly
• The Worker Who Is “Absent” - not reliable
• A Substance Abuser - and more likely to be coaxed into a "slight" breach of security
• A Slacker Who Won’t Accept Supervision - or worse, might get agitated or angry when supervised

So, what's out there for us security folks that can help us make sure our people are not " security issues"?

There is a readily available, reliable and tested tool for doing exactly this.

Called an SOSll, this online pre-hire or employee assessment tool is very unique and accurate in revealing and predicting these attributes – use it in the job-application process, way before you even decide to interview, and screen out the bad risks upfront. It's an on line assessment tool that any job applicant can take in about 20 minutes from any computer that can reveal these negative and potentially dangerous hidden traits and behaviors in an applicant.

It reveals the core traits and behaviors that make up a person and the kind of conduct you can anticipate from them. It defines them, shows the conflicting input to key questions about integrity, theft, even drug use issues, with answers coming directly from the applicant. It helps you see what's below the tip of the iceberg before you interview.

Next week, I'll give you some tips on using this hiring tool. Check it out.

Neil Licht, Managing Director
Answers- No More Bad Hires or Promotions" tools
answers@ucanpreventbadhires.com
www.ucanpreventbadhires.com
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