The Five Sentence Email

When you send email, you most definitely want it to be read! With everyone’s inboxes bulging at the seams with unwanted come-ons you face an awful lot of competition in your recipient’s inbox for their attention. Getting read is no small feat,  getting your reader to take action even a greater accomplishment. Lets face it – E-mail that takes too long to respond to results in continuous inbox overflow for those who receive a lot of it.

Good writers know that lean, vibrant language is almost always preferable to verbose, rambling writing. There is virtually no writing in the world so good that it can’t be made better by making it shorter. There are exceptions, of course – a contract needs to cover every possible potentiality, as does the text of an international treaty, but these documents are not really meant to be read, they’re meant to be enacted.  

Writing concisely offers benefits on its own – the short email, particularly the email whose contents fit into the preview pane without any scrolling, has a much higher chance of gaining a reader’s attention than one that starts off with three pages about trivia.

This is what Mike Davidson (five.sentenc.es) figured out – if his recipients were half as slammed as he was, he figured they could use some relief from long-winded emails that ramble on and on in the guise of pleasantries. Instead, he committed himself to writing emails that were five sentences or less, every single time.

That’s all well and good, of course, but how can you make sure you say what you need to say if you limit yourself to five sentences?  You don’t want to leave anything out, right? Fortunately, super-entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki offered this advice - ”whether UR young or old, the point is that the optimal length of an email message is five sentences. All you should do is explain who you are, what you want, why you should get it, and when you need it by.

A good outline for a five-sentence email might look something like this:

1. Who are you?  – This might be skipped if you already have a relationship with the recipient; otherwise, in as little space as possible, explain the relevant facts about yourself.
2. What do you want? – Explain why you’re writing the email, what you expect your recipient to do about it, and any relevant information they need to respond with the appropriate action.
3. Why should you get it? -  Why should they bother? Explain why your request is important, and if relevant, what’s in it for them.
4. When do you need them to act? Open-ended requests get responded to whenever the recipient gets around to it. Be as specific as possible, so that your recipient a) has a sense of urgency, b) feels that their response is important to you, and c) feels inspired to act.

If more information is needed, a formal report, a webpage, or some other document is probably going to be better-suited rather than presenting it than an email. Send an attachment, send a link, or schedule a face-to-face meeting if necessary; don’t blast off a giant email that takes you hours to write in the vain hope that it will be read. It probably won’t!

This material was summarized from Mastering the Short Email by Dustin Wax.

 - Steve (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

When Does a CRM Lead Become a Contact?

When implementing a CRM (customer relationship management) system, many business owners struggle to understand how standard definitions relate to their specific business processes. CRM software solutions (Salesforce.com, ACT, etc) typically use terms like lead, contact, account, opportunity, etc. which may or may not clearly apply to your business vocabulary. Usually it’s best to first understand how these terms are generally defined and then decide how (and if) to modify them to fit your specific business processes.

LEAD – anyone you think may be interested in your product or service. Leads are usually tracked by their status (e.g. open, contacted, unqualified, or qualified, etc.) and by their source (e.g.  a referral, networking event, tradeshow, purchased lead source, web enquiry, etc.). Sometimes companies keep another category they call ‘names’ to track purchased mailing lists, etc. that really aren’t leads.   

CONTACT – an individual (associated with an account) usually associated with a unique business opportunity. Contacts are usually tracked by their (duh) contact information (address, phone number, email, etc). Once leads are qualified and considered as potential prospects then are usually converted to a contact/account pair (and usually assigned to a salesperson).

ACCOUNT – generally an organization with whom you do business (could be a customer, vendor, partner, etc). Accounts are usually tracked by their industry (finance, manufacturing, etc.), their type (e.g. customer, competitor, partner, etc) and sometimes many other details like website, revenue, number of employees, etc.  Multiple contacts usually exist within a single account (i.e. for different departments, projects, etc).

OPPORTUNITY – is a specific business potential associated with an account and contact. Opportunities are the source of sales forecasting and revenue tracking. Opportunities are usually tracked by their campaign source(direct mail, internet marketing, etc.), stage (e.g. needs assessment, proposal, closed won, closed lost, etc.), estimated revenue, probability and closing date. Generally your sales team is handed opportunities (not leads).

Remember that the overall goal is usually for marketing to generate (and nurture) leads until an opportunity arises. They then they pass along these qualified leads to the sales team to close. The overall process is running smoothly when the sales funnel is filled with thousands of leads, which turn into hundreds of contacts, and finally into tens of opportunities that keep your crack sales team fully occupied!

For more background information on CRM systems and definitions visit;

CIO Magazine CRM Definitions        Salesforce.com CRM Best Practices

 

- Steve (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

New B2B Marketing/Sales Trends

To survive this difficult business environment, businesses cannot continue doing what they’ve always done in the past. Marketing and sales are now being forced to ‘do more with less’ due to reduced staffing and budget cuts. Here are some of the trends I’ve noticed in the B2B marketing and sales world …

1. There is an increased emphasis on measured results and ROI of all marketing expenditures.
2. Sales cycles are getting longer with buyers much more cost conscious about their purchases.
3. Businesses now need to generate new leads outside their normal sphere of relationships and contacts.
4. Increased use of marketing automation tools to reduce expenses – while still nurturing leads who may turn into prospects in the future.
5. More emphasis on website copy optimization that clearly portrays a company’s ‘value proposition’ and a clear ‘call to action’. No more ‘business card’ websites.
6. Growing use of internet marketing and search engine optimization so businesses can easily ‘be found’ when prospects are looking for their product/service.
7. Tracking and monitoring of website traffic including keywords used to get there, and referral sites.
8. Increased use of multi-channel marketing campaigns (print, email, internet, telesales, etc).
9. Prospects are looking for (and downloading) much more product information and collateral as they perform their due diligence before buying.
10. More effort is being spent on lead scoring so the sales team is only given qualified leads and expected to follow-up on all of them.

 In the good old days businesses may have been able to flourish with casual marketing efforts and less than 100% lead follow-up but not anymore. In this challenging economy, every qualified lead might be worth thousands of dollars to acquire making it more important than ever to (1) understand which marketing approach worked the best and (2) ensure each and every one is followed up on by the sales team.

- Steve  (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

SaaS Business Management Software from BScaler

One of the more enjoyable aspects of my job is learning about the many new and exciting tools that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) now have access to that historically were only available to larger companies. BScaler is now offering a cost-effective, business management tool targeted at SMBs who just can’t run their business anymore using independent applications software like ACT for their CRM, Excel for their Purchasing/Operations, QuickBooks for their Financial/Accounting, etc. BScaler calls their solution an Enterprise Resource Manager™ (ERM) because it integrates both front-office applications (i.e. sales, marketing, support) and back-office applications (i.e. operations scheduling, purchasing, warehousing, materials, and finance) into a single solution based on a common Oracle database.

Their targeted market certainly can’t afford the expensive solutions from SAP or Oracle and most can’t even afford the mid-level solutions from Salesforce.com or NetSuite. Their solution is also a total integrated package which means you get much more than a stand-alone application  (i.e. CRM, SFA, etc) for the same price. 

Enterprise ERP systems dramatically reduce the manual re-keying of data by users,  eliminate duplicate databases, simplify cross-departmental transactions, and enable real-time information analysis/reporting from any computer, anywhere in the world (and in multiple languages). For SMBs, these types of solutions provide the structure to grow because they require a business to understand it’s internal processes and procedures – something a lot of small businesses do poorly at.

Here are 8 reasons I like the BScaler web-based integrated ERM™ solution so much.

1.  SaaS web-based model eliminates the cost of purchasing software, maintenance packages, business-class server, or IT support.
2. Pricing is based on a per-user model (with no long-term contract) so you can start out slow and grow with your business.
3. ERM application suite shares a common database which eliminates errors and reduces duplication of effort.
4. Each user is assigned a specific role with clearly defined capabilities (i.e. booking orders, scheduling production builds, purchasing materials, etc).
5. Field personnel (i.e. sales managers, distributors, suppliers, etc) can all have visibility into the business at whatever level you would like them to have.
6. Every transaction is kept in a permanent record so you have history and tracking data for review and/or auditing.
7. Management has real-time financial data, available anywhere, on the status of the business.    
8. The BScaler ERM application is easy to use and is totally secure (same security used by on-line banking).

Click here for more information on BScaler.

Here is a good site for background info on enterprise ERP systems:    http://www.erpinsights.com/

- Steve  (SPM Business Solutions)

SANDLER: A Non-Traditional Selling System

 

 

 

While many small business owners appreciate the value of good marketing, very few know or understand how to sell effectively. It’s always quite interesting to talk to people in business about their views of marketing and sales. Some believe that if your marketing is done well enough then prospects will turn into paying customers naturally without much effort on your part. Others believe that marketing is nothing more than generating leads (or suspects) and the real work is the selling cycle where you use your selling skills to close the deal.  This ‘marketing vs sales’ view is even worse in large companies where they are actually in separate departments.

One of the things I really like about the Sandler Sales System is it’s non-traditional view of selling and salespeople. Their view is that if everyone else is doing something then you need to do something else, otherwise you (and your products) will look and feel like everyone else’s. When that happens, customers see no unique value in what you have to offer and only buy from the lowest-price vendor. Obviously, everyone loses in this situation.

Most traditional selling systems use the following steps;

1. Establish rapport with the prospect.
2. Qualify the prospects needs and interest in your product.
3. Present all your products features and benefits.
4. Deal with stalls and objections and close the sale.

The traditional selling style can be characterized as an ‘easy qualify’ and ‘hard close’ approach. We have all dealt with pushy salespeople who quickly assume we need and want their product and then aggressively try to pressure us to close the sale. This selling style is why everyone has an ‘anti-salesman’ filter which causes us to play the games we always play when dealing with salespeople.

But what if the salesperson adopted a ‘hard qualify’ style where they spent time (up-front) truly assessing if their product is right for you and if it’s not they actually are willing to accept a NO. What a relief this would be to buyers and what a great way to differentiate you (as a salesperson) versus your competitor. It would also save you a lot of time chasing people who really aren’t good prospects for your product or service. Well this is the basis of the Sandler Selling System.

The Sandler Selling System is based on the following 7 steps; 

1. Bonding and rapport with the prospect.
2. Establish an up-front contract (Yes or No but not Think-It-Over).
3. Find your prospects true PAIN points (i.e. their reason for buying your product/service).
4. Review their budget.
5. Understand their buying decision making process.
6. Present your products benefits that address their PAIN.
7. Post-sale followup.

A few of Sandler’s rules that make it so good for small business owners include;

1. No PAIN then no SALE – people buy (primarily) to reduce pain and the purpose of the sales process is to understand what they really want your product/service to do.
2. No FREE consulting – many customers take advantage of salespeople by using them to generate unnecessary quotes, do design work and educate them.
3. SELL yourself by the questions you ask - Traditional salespeople dominate the conversation by talking continuously about their product/service and why you need it. Sandler, on the other hand, is based on listening to the prospect and asking pertinent and insightful questions.    

Sandler’s selling system is ideal for small business owners – especially those uncomfortable with selling. Instead of pushy, high-pressure sales techniques they learn more interactive and conversational selling styles that are much better for businesses that are based on long-term relationships. 

David Sandler’s book is a good way to get started although the best results are obtained by taking the Sandler training.

- Steve   (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

Sales Closing Techniques – Do They Still Work?

Ask any good salesperson whether they still use traditional ‘closing techniques’ and you’ll get a wide range of answers. There certainly are a lot of sales trainers who promote learning a myriad of closing strategies but obviously just knowing closing strategies is not going to separate you from your competition. Anyway, it’s always fun to go over what’s been used over the years so just in case you might have forgotten, here are a few of the standards. 

1. Assumptive Close- still a classic because it’s easy and natural to use if everything is basically going OK during the sales process. You basically just assume the prospect is ready to buy and proceed to the next buying step (e.g. choosing a delivery date, quantity, color, etc.). The challenge here is if you mis-read the prospect, and they aren’t ready to buy, they’ll easily recognize this strategy and question you using it.
2. Alternative Choice Close – is a little less assumptive since it asks the customer to specify one of two buying options. They certainly have the option of rejecting both and saying no, but if you’ve properly read the situation and use this approach correctly, it can help push them along and commit.
3. Impending Event Close – is used if you really need a commitment now and are willing to risk it a bit. We’ve all heard this one before. This is where the salesperson offers the product with a very clear offer that is only available if ordered today because of an impending event (i.e. price increase, lack of inventory, one-time special, etc) that will happen if the order is delayed.

Do these really work? Probably not but they are still worth knowing about. If you’re really into these types of things (which is kind of fun for some people) then check out this site -  Sales Closing Techniques. 

The closing techniques that work the best for me and my style of selling are;

1. Progressive Close – works very well in consultative selling. You simply make sure to get progressive ’closes’ as you move through your sales presentation. For example, you might start out asking ‘is this something you think might be of interest to people in your industry?’ and then follow it up later with ‘Is this something that might be of interest to you?’ and if things are going really well asking ‘Do you think this is something we can move forward with?’.
2. Thermometer Close- is a favorite of Sandler Sales Training. If you sense that you’re making progress and addressing the prospect’s pain points, you stop and ask ‘On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means we shouldn’t even keep talking and 10 means you are ready to buy, where do you think we currently are?’. Regardless of what they answer you follow up by asking them ‘What would you want to see (or hear) to get us to a 10?’. This type of close works very well and actually gets the prospect to tell you what to do to close the deal!

Remember ABC (always be closing)!

- Steve  (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

Extended DISC Behavior Assessment

 

To be an effective leader and/or manager of others you need to know yourself, control yourself, know others, and meet their needs. Extended DISC is a simple online assessment which measures your natural behavior styles when interacting with others. It provides you with valuable, easy-to-use insight into how you can more effectively work with others who may or may not interact with people like you do.   

For those of you who have been around awhile you may remember the older Myers-Briggs testing or the Merrill-Reid tests (Analytical-Amiable-Driver-Expressive styles). These were all very popular in the 90’s but have now been replaced by testing that is more accurate and easier to interpret. Extended DISC is a very popular online assessment which is simple to take (only about 15 minuts online), easy to interpret, and straight forward to use in everyday business situations.

 

Extended DISC is a four-quadrant behavior model based on two items. The first is how you gather information. Some people are more intuitive while others require specific data. The second item is how you make decisions. Some people base decisions solely on what the facts tell them to do while others are more concerned with the impact on others. The combination of these traits, when put on a four-quadrant model, yields four basic behavior types.

  

   D-style people – dominant, decisive, competitive and demanding

   I-style people –  interactive, social, talkative, enthusiastic, persuasive

   S-style people – steady, calm, careful, modest

   C-style people – compliant, precise, logical, careful, disciplined

 

One of the reasons that the Extended DISC evaluations have been so popular is because they are simple to understand and also basic enough that you can quickly recognize other people’s styles. This is an invaluable tool for leaders, managers, and salespeople whose business success depends on reading other people and interacting with them appropriately. 

 

Click here for more information.             

 

- Steve  (SPM Business Solutions)

 

Outsourced Telesales

I recently attended a seminar on outsourcing telesales by Sridhar Ramanathan from the Aventi Group that I thought was very interesting. Many of us are familiar with the term ‘telemarketers’ which describes those annoying people who call trying to sell us something we don’t really need. Well B2B telesales is much more developed and seems to make sense for business owners in some situations.

Telesales is certainly something to consider to suport the ‘inside sales’ role. These are the people who work in the office and usually do all their work on the phone booking orders and/or setting up appointments for the ‘direct sales’ team. So what exactly do telesales companies do? Well they can actually do three different tasks.

1. Teleprofiling – researching prospective comapanies to find the specific individuals who may be most interested in your product or service and also identify the real decision makers.
2. Teleprospecting – calling prospective customers in your targeted market segment and attempting to qualify their needs and interests over the phone so that an appointment can be made at a later date with a direct sales representative.
3. Telesales – direct calling of prospective customers with the goal of qualifying and closing the sale over the phone.

Obviously you should consider outsourcing the whole inside sales function if you don’t have enough resources internally or your team just isn’t very good at it. It also only makes sense if your average revenue per prospect is high enough to justify it.

To see if telesales makes sense for you then do the math. If the ’appointment rate’ is about 1% then you need to make 100 calls to generate a single appointment. Assume this generates about 5 appointments per week. If your closed sales rate is 20% then you should end up with at least 1 new (paying) customer per week.  If local telesales personnel make around $25/hr (low-end) to $50/hr (high-end) then  that equates to $1,000 to $2,000 per new customer. Using off-shore telesales personnel can certainly reduce this, perhaps up to 50% less, although many companies have much less success with this approach.

Remember that I made a lot of assumptions here. You need to plug in your own numbers to see if outsourcing telesales makes sense or not for your business. Obviously if you are selling a $100 item it doesn’t make any sense at all but if your average revenue per prospect is >$10,000 it starts to look more attractive. There are many 3rd party B2B telesales companies out there who are very good at what they do. They are also experts at ‘keeping score’ of call metrics so you know what is working and what isn’t.  

Some the 3rd party telesales companies to check out include;

       InTouch Inc      Rainmaker     By Appointment Only

- Steve   (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

So You Want To Grow Your Business

Business Growth

Whether you’ve been in business a few weeks or a few years, nearly everyone wants to grow their business. Even though many business owners consider ’growth’ to mean increasing top-line revenues the first step should always be to get your gross margins and overhead costs under control. Otherwise you could end up driving more activity into a money-losing business and go bankrupt before you know it. So where do we start if we want to grow our business revenues? Well it helps to consider the fundamentals!

First we have to understand that all business revenue is achieved as a result of two things – marketing and sales. Marketing does its job by strategically promoting your product/service to generate leads (i.e. people that may be interested in your product). Leads can come from new customers (i.e. people who have never bought from you before) or they can come from past customers (people who previously bought something from you) or current customers. Your marketing strategy must address all three of these sources of new leads and not necessarily concentrate on just new customers (which are much more difficult and expensive to get). The critical marketing KPI (key performance indicator) is how many leads are generated for a specific marketing campaign and budget. The higher the better! 

Once we have a pile of leads then the sales team takes over (or at least the business owner now changes hats and starts selling). In the sales world the number one KPI is conversion rate (CR) which is the percentage of leads that are converted to actual paying customers. Obviously the higher the better. In a restaurant the CR might be 99% because once a potential customer (or lead) walks in the door they usually buy something. The opposite situation might be a telemarketer who has a pile of leads but may only convert less than 10%.

The other critical sales KPI is average selling price (ASP) which is the approximate value of an average sales transaction. Higher revenues can always be achieved by ‘up selling’ or offering customers more value as an encouragement to buy more. 

All business revenue strategies fundamentally come down to understanding this simple equation:  REVENUE = LEADS x CR x ASP

Therefore to grow your business you might decide to …

1. Improve your marketing effectiveness to get more leads from new customers.
2. Define a marketing strategy to get business back from past customers.
3. Develop promotional ideas to get current customers to buy more (or more often).
4. Improve your selling skills so you convert more leads to customers.
5. Train your staff to be better at sales and customer relationships.
6. Offer new items that add to or complement your existing products.
7. Work on bundling offers or qty discounts to get existing customers to buy more.

The bottom line is that revenue is the product of marketing and sales efforts. You can work on either one (or both) to grow revenue. If you double your LEADS then you can double revenue. If you double your CR then you double revenue.  Work on the areas you are weakest in first and you’ll immediately start to see improvements in top-line revenues!

- Steve  (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

‘Marketing’ is not ‘Sales’

So many times I hear small business owners speak of ‘marketing and sales’ as if they are the same thing. Apparently for some people anything not directly related to making the product is lumped under the category of  ’marketing and sales’. I’ve also noticed that the people who do this are generally the same ones who have an aversion to promoting their business and usually need to work on their marketing mindset if they are going to be more effective.

A simple way to differentiate marketing from sales is by the old telephone analogy. The role of marketing is to get the phone to ring while the role of sales is answer it and make something happen. Big business clearly defines the roles by having different people in charge who work in different groups (not always good). For small businesses, where the same person has to wear multiple hats, there can be a problem realizing when you are in a marketing role from when you need to start selling.

Many people say the one-and-only role of marketing is to generate leads. While this might be a little simplistic it does have some truth to it. Classic marketing (i.e. the 4 P’s) talks about product, pricing, promotional strategies, and placement/distribution. For small business owners it’s all about promotional strategies … or how do I get my message out there so people know about what I offer.

Sales (on the other hand) is measured by conversion rate. This is the percentage of leads (or prospects) that you are able to convert to paying customers. If marketing has done their job then sales has plenty of leads to work on. The sales challenge is knowing how to get customers to value your product or service so they commit to purchasing it. The goal is to get more paying customers by working on a selling system (or strategy) that is right for your specific business and your personality and comfort level.

So why keep marketing and sales separate?

1. To clearly measure how successful we are at each piece.
2. Because the strategies for success are quite different.  
3. To avoid selling to a prospect who is not ready to buy.
4. To quit marketing to someone who is now ready to buy.

Sometimes just a little change in how we view things can have great results. For more information on marketing and sales try the following site;

   http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/marketing/Marketing.htm

- Steve   (www.SPMsolutions.NET)