Keeping Up With the Competition!
Creating Prospects Who Close Themselves
Listening Pays
How Do You Measure Up?
The Trick to Hiring New Salespeople
The Keys to the Kingdom
Coaching to Maximize Sales Performance
Making Voicemail Work FOR You

Keeping Up With the Competition!
Someone recently noted that most of the students who are currently attending college have never known life without CDs, answering machines, Jay Leno or red M&Ms. The pace of change is accelerating; you and your company will be left in the dust if you don't keep up!

Many leading firms have turned to benchmarking as a way to see how they compare to their industry peers. Our extensive experience with technology firms allows us to compare sales performance, processes and competencies in industry groups like:

• Systems and applications software
  
• Internet software/services
  
• Computer equipment and peripherals
  
• VARs & System Integrators
  
• Electronics equipment
  
• Networking hardware, software and services
  
• Communications and telecommunications
  
• Cable & telephone services
  
• Biotech/medical technology

Our clients have used sales benchmarking to answer questions such as:

• Are we hiring the right type of salespeople?
• How do our compensation plans compare with other firms' plans?
• Does our sales process maximize revenues and customer contact time?
• How do our sales and channel structures compare to other firms'?
• What skills and tools can help significantly improve our sales performance?
• Are we using the best-possible sales management techniques?

Successful companies have learned that "reinventing the wheel" can waste valuable time. Instead, they take the time to learn and emulate what other firms are doing to optimize their performance.
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For more information on our sales benchmarking, call us!
(619) 501-1040

Creating Prospects Who Close Themselves
Have you ever wished for a whole territory full of customers or prospects who close themselves? Sure, it's a salesperson's dream… but you can have a lot more of them if you want.

Often, prospects are slow to move to the order stage when they don't perceive adequate value for their dollars. They aren't positive that your product or service is going to provide them with the benefits that will make their outlay of funds worthwhile.

Avoiding this situation starts right up front with creative questioning skills. Find out what the customer values, why they should initiate change and how your product or service will save them money or generate revenue. A good question to ask is, "What kind of impact would my product or service have on your business?" or "How will acquiring this help your business grow and prosper?"

Know the total effect your product or service will have so you can propose your solution in terms that are most meaningful to your customer… and closing can become a foregone conclusion!
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Listening Pays
To produce exceptional sales results, salespeople must be effective communicators. However, salespeople tend to do more talking than listening. In a typical 60-minute sales call, a salesperson spends 30 minutes talking about products or services, 9 minutes asking questions ,and 12 minutes letting the customer speak. Clearly, not enough time is spent asking questions and listening to customers - the only way salespeople can learn what it will take to quickly close the sale.

So, how can you improve your sales results?

1. Listen to Understand, not Reply - Give your prospects and customers time to express their needs, priorities and desires. Avoid interrupting or suggesting solutions until you hear them out.
   
2. Make Eye Contact - If you are taking notes during the sales call, glance up at customers frequently to show them you are interested in what they have to say.
   
3. Repeat Important Points - Summarize key points to insure you have understood them correctly and to show them how well you listened.
   
4. Listen Actively - To process everything customers say, keep your brain engaged. Think about how their needs match your product.
   
5. Ask Open Questions - Open questions, which elicit more than just a "yes" or "no" answer, encourage your customers to give you more information.

Listening is the key to sales success.
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Remember, you have two ears and one mouth -
so use them in that ratio!

How Do You Measure Up?
A recent study of 540 companies showed that firms making above-average investments in workplace learning and training had 57% higher net sales per employee ($385,000 vs. $245,000), 37% higher gross profits per employee ($165,000 vs. $120,000), and a 20% higher ratio in market-to-book value.

Conducted by the American Society for Training and Development, this study found that high-performance companies:

• Invest up to 6% of their payroll in workplace learning
  
• Train 85.9% of their employees on the average
  
• Are 11-18% higher than the average in using training programs from outside training firms

A prior study showed that the return on investment for each $1 invested in sales training is $20! Given the huge body of evidence that good training programs pay handsome dividends, you may want to review your current budget to ensure you are making prudent choices in your training and development programs.
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The Trick to Hiring New Salespeople
Many of our clients have asked us how to find qualified salespeople who will hit the ground running.

Most firms try the classifieds, with varying degrees of success.   Firms routinely find that, of 100 resumes they receive, only five are really qualified for the position.  They spend hours sifting through mountains of faxed and emailed resumes, only to come up empty-handed.  Or worse, they settle for unqualified candidates, thinking that's the best they can do.

Here are some suggestions we have developed for helping our clients design and implement staff hiring programs:

1. Network at all appropriate organizations and locations.  San Diego boasts a number of professional organizations that are potential sources of new employees, including the High Tech Marketing Association, the American Electronics Association (AeA), the American Marketing Association, UCSD Connect, the MIT Enterprise Forum, and more.
   
2. Use the Internet.  Many high-tech firms have had good results by using Monster.com and other job-seeking sites.  If you have a web site, be sure to include an "Employment Opportunities" page.
   
3. Check with complementary vendors.  These non-competing vendors to the same market may have good information on potential staff that already know your products and your customers.

If you're looking for competent sales staff, the classifieds can be part of a well-thought-out, organized campaign.  But by looking in a variety of places, you stand to find many more qualified candidates.
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The Keys to the Kingdom
Many local firms expect the busiest summer in years.  In fact, they're having trouble handling all their leads.  Good news, right?

Wrong.  In the press of trying to answer all inquiries, respond to all leads and call everyone who sends back a bingo card, most companies end up brushing aside the prospects with the most promise.  This means lower revenues and lower profits.

What to do?  Look for the characteristics common to your best customers.  Are they all in the same size range, markets or growth phases?  Once you know the common factors, apply them as qualifiers to your leads so that you an determine the ones you want to spend time on first.

For these and other prospecting and qualifying skills, call us about arranging a Phone Power or Soft Sell Techniques workshop at your location.
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Coaching to Maximize Sales Performance
How do successful companies significantly boost their salespeople's' sales results?

1. They give their people sales skills and techniques that make them stand out from ordinary salespeople and avoid all the typical barrage of sales "screening" behaviors.
   
2. They provide ongoing "coaching" to ensure that those skills and techniques are reinforced and properly applied.

Increasingly, companies are finding that individualized sales coaching immediately improves revenues, reduces turnover and instills confidence.

How do you create an effective coaching/mentoring program?  How do you sell the program to management?  How do you evaluate its success?  And how do you find good coaches?

These and other topics will be addressed when the San Diego American Electronics Association (AeA) presents "Mentoring and Coaching for Sales Success."  A panel of industry executives from Exide Electronics, Solsource and Mitchell International will discuss how they've implemented successful sales coaching/mentoring programs.  The panel will be moderated by Craig Arnoff, President of The Sales Alliance Inc.
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Making Voicemail Work FOR You
"You've reached the voicemail of..." This is the fifth time you've "reached the voicemail of" a key prospect.  Your previous four messages have not yielded a return call.  What can you possibly do or say that will penetrate this electronic gatekeeper and get this person to call you back?

Most people hate voicemail.  Salespeople often spend more of their telephone time in contact with voicemail rather than customers.  However, when used properly, voicemail can be an effective part of your sales approach.

Some keys are to:  put benefits into your voicemail messages, do the proper homework, and use voicemail as a backup rather than as a primary sales strategy.   Want to learn how to make voicemail work for you?  Call us for details on programs that address this key issue.
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For additional information on The Sales Alliance Inc.'s services and to read a copy of “Sales Training: Myths and Facts”, please complete our request form.