Are You The Reason Why You Can’t Hire Top Sales People?

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What it takes to get the best talent to work for you, now.

Once someone realizes that today’s B2B buying teams buy differently than the way they continue to sell, it usually creates an “Oh, crap!” moment. The 3 Deadly Cs of Sales – Commoditization, Consensus Decision-Making, and Compressed Selling Time – have completely changed B2B sales, driving a race to the bottom. A race that won’t stop on its own and a race you don’t want to win!

How do we know this is happening?

  • Reps keep saying they can’t get the right people in the room
  • Reps keep saying pricing needs to be lower (which destroys your margins)
  • Reps can’t get in early and are ignored until the prospect is “ready to talk”

If your selling model is rooted in the past, not only will it be harder to win quality deals, it will also be harder to attract the right sales and marketing team members you need to succeed.

Good news… you have three options. Bad news… two of them aren’t very attractive!

  1. Don’t do anything at all. Fall prey to 3 Deadly C’s and the race to the bottom.
  2. Completely overhaul the entire sales team. Get rid of everyone and start over.
  3. Improve your current sales team and migrate in new talent that can execute to how sales are being won today.

The most important consideration… this is not the time to freeze up and do nothing!

The least disruptive option is #3. Your team is capable of improvement, and there are steps you can take to attract more of the right sales candidates that will plug-in and win right away.

Knowing the best salespeople can work anywhere; the question is can you attract them today? With your current messaging, playbook, tools and coaching program can you attract the best sales talent?

What are you demonstrating that proves you’re doing everything possible to counter today’s 3 Deadly Cs? Can you show them how working for you will shorten their sales cycles, protect margins and win more opportunities, faster? That is what it will take to get the best talent who wants to know why they should work for you.

  • Don’t tell them you have long sales cycles to give them space. What are you doing to shorten sales cycles and help them become successful, faster?
  • Don’t tell them your business is about “relationships”. The best know that success is about building fast trust. What are you doing to get them in the right situations, faster?
  • What is your sales and marketing playbook? How does that ramp them up, faster?
  • What reinforcement and coaching are you providing? Is it 45-year-old training programs created for rotary phones and martinis at lunch salesmen or is it based-on aligning and leading buying teams to faster decisions?

Show them that you are the next step to advancing their career. You’re the choice to help them better compete and win more in this age of accelerations. It’s really no different than closing a prospect… Why should they choose you? Why should they choose you now?


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Source: https://blog.revenuepathgroup.com/blog/cant-hire-top-salespeople

Sales Dont’s…

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Basically, if you’re working for a company that sells anything – services, products, ideas, etc. – then the sales team is a very critical component of the team.  They are your front-facing department that can quickly alter the impression of those who know and don’t know your company. If they’re aggressive, it’s a turn-off, if they’re passive, they can make your company look lazy.

DON’T BE A QUITTER

A winner never quits and a quitter never wins! It can take between 5-10 different follow-up attempts before closing a deal.  Yet when asked, most sales representatives will label a lead dead after just 1-3 tries.  Think of that lost revenue!

WRITE IT DOWN

Although no two people or businesses are the same, a flexible sales script can be a real asset when working a qualified lead. Be prepared to branch out from your pitch if your lead is taking you in a different direction, but remember that this is your product and you should be the expert on it.

PICK UP THE PHONE

Although most would say that cold calling is dead, it’s NOT! Example, if your company is making use of a lead generation software like BBC Consulting, you already know that this company is interested in your business. You are just taking the first step, reaching out to them, showing that your business is cutting edge.

ITS ALL ABOUT PAIN POINTS

Don’t start your call with an all about me situation, be all about them. You have to surface the pains of the customer and learn what keeps them up at night, then help them understand how your solution helps resolve those pains.

BE THERE

After the sale and before the sale. You can’t close the deal and then pass off the customer to another department thinking that your job is done.  A good, no a great sales person stays in touch, even when they don’t have to. That kind of customer interaction will set your sales style apart from the guy in the next office and really pay off.

Tackling these common sales no-nos within your own sales style can not only set you apart, but it can set your company apart from the rest.  There is no quick way to cure being known as the company that has pushy sales people who commonly disappear after the deal is done – so outlining these no-nos in advance can save you lost of time and money in the future.

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Website Caller ID – How To Uncover “Hidden Leads”

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We all love caller ID right?

To me, it is physically hard to actually push the green button when I don’t get to know who is calling first.  Imagine what the power of website caller id can do for your business.  The ability to know who is “calling” could be the difference between making the sale and missing out.  So what is website caller id from BBC Consulting?

WHAT IS IT?

Website Caller ID from BBC Consulting is an anonymous visitor identification and website visitor tracking software that tells you who is visiting your website, what pages they are viewing, and where they came from!  I guess you could say it’s Website Caller ID but super-sized.

WHAT DO WE DO?

With our code on your website, when a potential lead comes to your site, we are able to tell you and you don’t have to do anything.  We track the visitor, tell you who they are, what pages they visit, how much time they have spent on each page, where they came from, and how often they return.  Simple.  This data is included in your BBC Consulting Instant Email Alert.

GET READY… ENGAGE

Now that you know who was visiting and what pages they went to, it’s time to prepare for the call/email/smoke signal or push that green button. We include prepopulated links for further company research in every Instant Alert Email and also in every company information page from the dashboard.  All you have to do is click on them.  They are locked and loaded with the search terms needed to get the most information available about your prospect.

CONCLUSION

So, in conclusion, BBC Consulting’s website caller id does so much more than just id your website visitors: we will track your visitors, then identify those visitors, and finally prepare you to engage with those visitors with actionable data collected from not only their visit but also from the research links provided.

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Gerard’s Sales Tip -Winning more RFP’s

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Have you ever wondered why it’s so difficult to win RFP’s?

frustrated-with-sales

All the time, resources and energy that go in to RFP’s is incredible, and for what? a potential 1-3 shot of winning?

 

Let’s be honest, when buyers read the RFP response they will turn right to the page “Cost” or “Investment”. Most of us do it, lets just cut to the chase and steer it in your direction!

What if you could win more RFP’s?

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Here is a little trick….

When you fill in the cost of investment or pricing, add your testimonials immediately before the pricing. You create a neurological reaction that helps the prospect better understand how you have proven to help others resolve their business challenge,  provide a deeper connection to the prospects challenge and how you will help them fix their pain, threat or fear and more than anything else, you will stand out, you will be different from everyone else responding to the RFP.

It really works, the more you can surface the deep rooted business challenge and how you resolve you have a significant advantage over your competition.

 

Stay tuned for next months sales growth tips and be sure to visit us for more Real Insights, Real Impact and Real Results

bbcconsulting.com 

 

If you cant wait for more, just give Gerard a call 541-731-2973

We are growing!

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BBC – Bottomley Business Consulting is honored to welcome Bill Kurtenbach to our team.

Bill is a highly seasoned executive with over 45 years of success as CEO, COO  and owner in small to mid sized firms. Bill is a principle of BBC with the primary focus on strategic business development. We are excited to see Bill in action and can’t wait to share our business solutions with you.

To learn more about BBC visit www.bbc.consulting

 

 

 

 

 

 

Outside/In – The Real Way to Grow Revenue for Your Business

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“In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives.”   Mark Zuckerberg

Most leaders are born with an innate ability to see both sides of a conflict, view alternative methods to solve a problem, and maintain an attitude that allows you to make business decisions without emotion or turmoil.   This is all because of your ability to have perspective, and having the right perspective in business is critical to your success or failure.

However, even the best of leaders in high performance organizations can benefit from an outside perspective to help realize areas of improvements and gaps that could be the difference between marginal and exponential growth. Most business consultants or coaches base their approach on asking you what your problems areas are and then proceed to put their focus on that microcosm of your overall business.   This may provide short term success, but for long range revenue growth you need to gain a neutral and innovative perspective on your entire operation.

We’ve developed a unique method, called the LIDI System, to help organizations gain the perspective they need about every facet of their business to make vast improvements for increased profitability.

Step 1 – Learn The Organization – We begin by understanding your organization from the inside out, including the culture, processes, and people that make your organization tick. The chain of activity from sales, to production, to customer care can be very telling in identifying areas of organizational improvement. We also meet with key leaders, managers, and employees to gain a full understanding of their roles, challenges, procedures, and how each department works (or doesn’t work) together.

Step 2 – Identify the Gaps –  It takes more than simply understanding challenges and applying a quick fix. To truly make an impact we seek to understand why gaps exist in the first, then look at the larger impact they make on the overall organization.

Step 3 – Develop a Plan – Like the stars in the sky, even the smallest gaps that may not seem to be an issue can be part of a greater constellation of complications that could be holding your organization back. We find those connections and prioritize their importance to formulate a game plan. We work with you to answer the tough questions – How do we get better? In what order do we tackle this? What do we need to do?

Step 4 – Implement the Plan –  We create an attainable plan that is measurable and specific to your organization. We spend quality time with key personnel to create alignment between your teams and processes. From training at all levels of your organization to developing or implementing the right systems and processes to ensure more efficiency, we are there every step of the way to ensure success.

Real impact and results comes from gaining a different perspective, but it has to be an informed perspective. Quick fixes and short term solutions will not give your organization long term revenue growth. Even extremely successful organizations can find ways to improve by through a deeper understanding and an outside to inside look at the details of the day to day operations. The LIDI System is a proven way to help organizations of any size and in any industry develop a sustainable, achievable and long term plan to achieve real insights, real results, and real impact.

Interested in how the LIDI System can make a difference for you? Let’s have a 15 minute chat to talk about your particular organization and how we can work together to grow your revenue. Give us a call at 541-731-2973 or contact us via message.

 

 



Neuroselling Part 3 – Making It Work For You

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In our first neuroselling post The Better Way To Win Business (Part 1) we gave a high level overview of neuroselling, in our second post Neuroselling – Getting to the why (Part 2) we discussed developing your “why” or convincing advantages. Now you have enough information to be dangerous when it comes to neuroselling. You may be asking yourself, “I have a lot of great data and information that I’ve been using in my sales presentations, where does that fit in?” Read on my friends, today we’ll cover how you tie your logic and reason together into an awesome business winning, whole brain convincing sales strategy.

brain from blogNeuroselling is based on targeting the lizard brain, or old brain. The old brain is fast, always on point, runs on autopilot and is uncontrollable. The new brain is younger, by about 445 million years if you’re counting. The new brain is smart, it thinks though things, and it is conscious and somewhat controllable. The old brain is our gut, our survival instincts of fight or flight, our initial, uncontrollable reaction to a situation. The new brain is our logic and reason, our rationale, the brain that makes a good decision about bringing an umbrella when it’s raining or stopping to put on shoes before leaving the house.

We react first and decide second. This is the critical component to neuroselling, targeting the reactionary instinct in the old brain and then backing it up with unique and proven data to make the new brain’s logic and reasoning feel all warm and fuzzy. To review, let’s roll through the main components of the neuroselling approach: the trigger, your “why’s”, and finally, logic and reason.

We are often tempted to jump right into those wonderful features and benefits, but in neuroselling we begin with a trigger. Something that gets the old brain to go “Oh! I’m paying attention now”. Let’s go back to our headlight manufacturer in the first blog The Better Way To Win Business (Part 1). In the final example, we used a visual and emotion trigger to capture the prospects attention.

deerThe image of the deer in headlights speaks to the lizard brain – the pain of an accident, damaging your vehicle, having to deal with insurance, unexpected costs, an injury to you or a loved one… Congrats, you’ve elicited both a feeling and a pain for your customer without them having to think about it.

 

 

 

 

advantage listNext you present your “why’s”, or your convincing advantages.   Your convincing advantages are how you solve the customer’s pains. They should be unique to you and something that you can easily prove. As we covered in Neuroselling –  Getting to the why blog post, you know what you do, but understanding why you do it helps to show your customers why they need your particular products and services.

 

At this point, you’ve grabbed your prospects attention and you’ve presented the unique advantages that a customer gains by working with your organization. Now it’s time to grab that list of statistics and information. I told you they would come in handy at some point. So far we’ve focused on targeting the old brain, but you still need to sell to the new brain – as the new brain is the part of the brain and uses logic and reason to validate decisions. Your data points, benefit statements, statistics and testimonials are the most effective way to back up your “why’s”.

harder_better_faster_stronger_by_abhijitdaraIn order to best capitalize on neuroselling you need to think about the process from a customer standpoint and make sure you are using triggers, advantages, and proof points that speak to your specific customer markets. In some cases, you may have different proof points or message statements for each of your buyer personas.

 

 

 

By following the neurosales model you’ll master selling to all parts of your prospects brain, and appealing favorably to all parts of the prospects decision making process. This is what makes neuroselling so effective. When you combine a trigger that targets customer pains, distinct advantages that solve a customer’s pain, and data or other message points to back up your distinct advantages you have created a sales or marketing message that should help to drive more engagement with prospects, close more sales, and create more revenue for your organization.

Ready to get into the brain game and fire-up your sales engine? Let’s have a 15 minute chat about how we can work together to create a winning neurosales model specific to your organization. Call us at 541-731-2973 or message here

 



Neuroselling Part 2– Getting to the Why

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In our first neuroselling blog post we gave a high level overview of what neuroselling is and how it works. If you missed it, check it out here The Better Way To Win Business (Part 1) for helpful background information on neuroselling. Now that you have the basics, let’s dig into the nitty gritty…getting to the “why”.

why trust you

 

The “why” is the backbone of neuroselling. Why? (pun intended) Because you already know what you do, but do you know why you do it? When you’ve figured out the why it makes it much easier to develop your convincing advantages and show your customers precisely why they need your product or service.

 

 

 

Let’s use our example from the first neuroselling blog of a vehicle headlight manufacturer. We know what we do:

  • We make quality headlights for cars and trucks
  • Our headlights are the safest in the industry
  • We have patented key features that you cannot find on other headlights
  • We sell to auto-manufacturers as well as direct to customers who want a higher quality, safer headlight on their vehicle

Great, we’ve got that covered. Often times, this is exactly what a salesperson uses as their pitch or elevator speech. Can’t you just hear your top sales rep spieling these exact words to a prospect? It’s not bad, but it doesn’t truly differentiate you.

The “why” of what you do targets a customer’s pains. I’m the prospect and I’m either not satisfied with my current headlights or I’m looking for something better. Perhaps I live on a dark road and can’t see the deer running in front of me at night and I don’t want to get into an accident with my infant in the backseat. Using that pain point of our customer, when developing the “why’s” for our headlight manufacturer, we may start with something like this:

  • Your family is more safe on the road from accidents when using our headlights
  • Our headlights are 75% more effective in rain, snow and other adverse conditions
  • Drivers can see 5x further ahead when using our headlights, keeping them more safe on the road

Right off the bat these sound pretty good, but keep digging to really get to the root of the pain. Using our example above, those why’s live at the surface of the pain. There is nothing wrong with them, and you may find them very useful later in your marketing or sales pitch.

 

deerThe real pains a customer may experience are the cost of repairing their vehicle, a rise in insurance, and most of all the fear of one of their loved ones being hurt or worse in an accident. We are emotional creatures, and react much stronger to the pains you solve than a list of features and benefits.

 

 

 

 

advantage listIt’s important to note that your “why’s” should be provable and unique to your product or service. The why is the positive that your customers experience from what you do. Although both are important, understanding how your product or service solves pains for your customers creates a more impactful sales pitch.

 

 

Don’t be discouraged if you find it difficult to develop meaningful “why’s”. It’s easier said than done. You should talk to your customers about their why’s for using your product, and you may benefit from developing different distinct advantages for your various customer segments or buyer personas. Once you have your convincing advantages defined your sales team moves from using a standard elevator
pitch to using a compelling justification for choosing your product or service over the competition.

There is an easy way to get you to your “why” and starting engage your prospects faster, and we can help! Let’s talk about developing your convincing advantages. Call us at 541-731-2973 or message here.



Salespeople are getting in the way of revenue!

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I am sure some salespeople took note of the title of this post (Or at least I would hope so). How are salespeople getting in the way of revenue you might ask?

 

12% of sales calls add value (What?)

Here are three common reasons why…

 

1

Salespeople can’t identify the pain

 

2 Salespeople don’t have a solution to the pain

 

 

3

Salespeople don’t have clear messaging

                                    

 

 

 

 

  58% of sales opportunities are lost to “No decision”

 

 

 

 

Here are four common reasons why..

 

1

Salespeople are not adding value, can’t articulate why they are different from their competition

 

 

  2

 Salespeople are not able to identify or get to the decision maker

 

 

Salespeople make the solution to complex Who wants to deal with complicated stuff

 

 

 

Salespeople don’t have a winning/persuasive presentation

 

These are all very common, but easy to fix challenges, you may yourself run into them or wonder why revenue isn’t where it needs to be. Gives us a call and we will share how we help companies like yours resolve these issues.

 

Neuroselling Part 1- The Better Way to Win Business

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Based on neuroscience, neuroselling uses tactics and strategies that trigger the buyer’s primitive, or lizard, brain to give your products and services a positive edge in the decision making process. We’d like to think that we are smarter than iguanas; that the human mental capacity has surpassed that of our reptilian friends, but the truth is that before logic and reason set in, our lizard brain processes certain thoughts before we even realize they are happening.

You aren’t using your lizard brain to contemplate the meaning of the universe – maybe we’ll cover that in another blog – but you do use your lizard brain when you initially respond to fear and pain.

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It’s the reason you startle when you see a spider. It’s the gut feeling you get when things seem off. It is the oldest and most powerful of our coping mechanisms, and without it we probably wouldn’t be alive.

 

 

So, how does this relate to selling? Bottom line, neuroselling teaches you that to be better at sales and marketing, you need to initially target your prospects lizard brains and quit messing around with all that logic and data. Huh?

Neuroselling makes a big impact in two important ways.

 

One’s past experiences with a product or service can impact a future reaction to that product or service. Does Hallmark make you feel warm and fuzzy? Does seeing the Nike swoosh make you want to get fit? These reactions happen in your lizard brain and help brands illicit extremely powerful responses from their prospects. Most of us don’t have the marketing power of Nike or Hallmark, but we can still get the same reaction from prospects in our sales process.

 

2

 

The way the lizard brain is affected during the sales process is through the connection that is made between the pain that you solve for your prospects and the gain they feel from using your product or service.

 

You may say, “Hold on, I’m already doing this. I have a wonderful PowerPoint presentation I use that is full of features of my product and what it does for the customer.” Say you sell vehicle headlights, your presentation may look something like:

  • Dynamic headlights
  • Leading main beam to see danger ahead
  • Static cornering lights guide you around dark corners
  • Fog lights add extra visibility

Great, but what does that really do for the customer? A neuroselling approach may instead start with this

  It only take a second for your headlights to come between this deer and a call to your insurance carrier. What brand of headlights are you using?

Get the picture? Now you have the prospects attention. You’ve not only made me get that terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach thinking about rising insurance costs, but you’ve made me question my headlights and want to learn more about yours. This is the first part of neuroselling, and what we call a trigger.

Your trigger is probably not enough to get your prospect to sign on the dotted line; it’s only one component of an affective neuroselling strategy. Once you have the prospects attention you need to show your convincing advantages and then prove the benefits the customer receives.

 

Neuroselling gives you the power to target your prospects entire decision making process, or both the old and new brains, for extremely effective sales results.

 

 

Stay tuned, our next two blog posts will dive into the other main components of neuroselling.

Ready to apply neuroselling to your sales approach and win more business? Let’s talk about working together to make your sales team a high-powered, neuroselling machine 541-731-2973 or message us.