FRUITS OF SUCCESS WITH HUGH blog hits 250,000 pageviews

250,000 pageviews to this site

Thank you very much to all who have visited my Blog.

*Apologies to  Rogers and Hammerstein – Sound of Music

“For here you are, at my blog, surfing me

Whether or not you should

So somewhere in my past or childhood

I must have done something good...”

Over 500  selling related posts

Some highlights :-

“On the go” info for your mobile

Tapas Bar - short sales training tips (20 posts)

 5 a day mobile selling tips(10 posts) 

Buyers' views research data (9 posts) 

Professional Selling (140 posts)  

Conference Reports (42 posts)

 Presentation Skills (14 posts)

Plus some meerkat meanderings with Aleksandr and Bogdan Orlov ! ( who say "Hi" to all in Meerkova)

Loads more posts to come in the future - so please return soon

Good Selling

*You Tube Clip of the real song from Sound of Music ( Tissues at the ready!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNdl-HIkDqQ

Buying Teams' views on Powerpoint and Conference presentations from Salespeople

Over the last 14 years that the Buyers views of salespeople study has been tracking the presentation media preferences of Buying teams , 4 out of five respondents prefer PowerPoint as presentation media.



click here for Buyers Views of Salespeople Selling in a VUCA world

The Buyers' Views Of Salespeople 2012 is in preparation and shortly to be published. Some advanced information has been released on Buying teams' preferences with reference to PowerPoint, Demonstrations and conferencing.

Much as people talk of  'death by PowerPoint' presentations, this is more to do with how the programme is used rather than a rejection of PowerPoint as a medium in itself.


79 % of Buying teams prefer to receive supplier presentations through this software.

Demonstrations still hold around the 42% preference level with flip chart slumping to  2.8% from 20% acceptance ten years ago.

One of the areas for significant growth has been video/web conferencing as a form of presentation media where 1 in 5 buyer teams accept a sales presentation via web conferencing. 

Respondents are allowed to  select one or more presentation medium options. So often PowerPoint will play a part as the visual aid for a web conference presentation.

  How  suppliers use rather than whether they use such Web conferencing technology  to present their offering is becoming a significant differentiator.

If a buying team have a poor experience with your on line presentation , they
will most likely have a negative perception of your product and solution that the organisation is presenting.



Here is a checklist adapted from the  Microsoft’s GoTo guidelines. Commonsense stuff but I find it really helpful.

Before the 'virtual' sales meeting

If you intend to share your  PC desktop with your  audience, it is a good idea to turn off any instant-messaging applications, notification software or other programs that may 'pop up' or distract your audience from your presentation. Does anyone know how to switch of those annoying Norton Intenet security messages by the way? ! Please advise in the comments box below I would appreciate your help.

• Switch off any streaming media apps that may take up bandwidth and resource-intensive applications that may be exhausting your PC’s processor ability. As I use a small netbook which has limited memory this helpful advice.

Should you wish to record your seesion

• Pre-Set your desktop display to a neutral background and adjust display settings to a mid-range resolution (e.g., 1024 x 768) to improve the display for attendees with lesser settings. This will also be the optimal setting should you wish to record the presentation apparently.

• Tidy up your pc’s desktop before a meeting. Remove wallpaper and icons that may distract your client audience.

• Pre-load any documents you wish to share ready to be accessed in just a couple of clicks. Clients dislike being held in limbo while additional documents are being uploaded.

• Hold a dry run rehearsal with a team colleague to anticipate any questions and to acquaint yourself with the set up of your online sales presentation.

Running your Presentation via conferencing - some tips

•  As the host of the meeting log on a  good 10  minutes early to greet your client attendees as they arrive and start your meeting on time. It also helps to have a welcome presentation up and running during this time. Your presence in these opening minutes can help establish the tone and direction of the meeting.

•  Create a welcome message  (in Go TO under the Meetings category of Preferences) to greet your client attendees as they click onto the meeting. It is their first impression experience of your preentation.

• Provide a Overview agenda at the start of the meeting, with estimated timing, and  keep to it.

• Verbal Agenda -Explain to your client attendees what the purpose/goal of the meeting is, what to expect and when and how they can ask questions and participate in the meeting.

• Email information on how to use  the equipment or service and how to get assistance if needed

•  To monitor and respond to the chat log when someone is presenting enrol a colleague or co-worker to do it.
.
•  You can encourage participation by using open questions such as “Who What When Where How...?"

• End your meeting clearly with a call for action if suitable. Ensure all your attendees know that the meeting is formally over and stay on the line to address any last questions.

Hold a de-brief meeting with your colleagues off-line to ensure follow up actions have been captured.


Best practise in Conference Call management

• Phone in to the meeting from a location where there is little background noise.

• Switch off system prompts and sounds for when attendees join or leave a meeting.

 It is worth reading the Voice Conferencing section of the help files to familiarise yourself with the conference call features. ( The old adage "When all else fails READ THE INSTRUCTIONS "still applies!)

• Best to avoid using mobiles and cordless phones because of static and use the phone handset or a headset instead of speakerphones because of background noise, echoing room effect and sentence chopping off.

• Switch off your call waiting . The beep of a new call on another line is broadcast to everyone in an audio conference.

• Don't put your phone on hold during an audio conference, otherwise

 Greensleeves, Fur Elise or Vivaldi Four season will play into your conference call, and make it impossible for your client attendees to continue the meeting.

• Introduce yourself when you begin speaking and ask other attendees to also identify themselves before speaking. Not everyone in the meeting may recognise everyone else’s voice

Related Links

Sales presentation on web

http://fruitsofsuccesswithhugh.blogspot.com/2011/05/sales-presentation-on-web-using-pro.html

Conferencing Systems

Intercall

http://www.intercall.com/

 

 

BT

 http://www.btconferencing.co.uk/products-and-services/web-conferencing/

 

Cisco Webex

 http://www.webex.co.uk/

 

GoTo meeting

http://www.gotomeeting.co.uk/fec/

Sales Prospecting and New Business Development in 2013

91 % of Buyers in the 2012 Buyers Views of Salepeople survey have looked  for a new supplier in the last 12 months. There are opportunities right now to prospect.

But beware not all Buyers feel like this. One commented

" I would prefer to contact a potential supplier when or if we have the need. I am REALY tired of eager salespeople calling me 5-10 times per day."

Much of  success in prospecting begins with building up more names. Populating your CRM or Customer Records systems with more contacts is important.

 The more names you have, the more contacts. The more contacts you have the more chances to do business.

Back in the day of road warrior salespeople, this referred to this as “belly buttoning”. The more bellies you bumped into the more contacts developed.

Nowadays we do 'virtual belly buttoning ' via the internet and we also “do networking” at networking events. This is wise since the 2012 survey also revealed that Buyers are proactively attending more networking events themselves. 

 Whatever the  title we give to the activity- the important thing  is to keep doing it regualrly ,actively but also poitely and professionally.

One comment from the Buyer's views of salespeople read:-

"I hate the current trend of people pretending they know me ( when they don't); claiming to have spoken to me before ( when they haven't) being all friendly and familair ( how are your today?) and talking to me as thogh I am a prat ( which i am not) "

Respondent to  to 2012 Buyers' Views of Salespeople Survey.

another read


“Appointment makers should not respond to a vague request for a call back in x months with a scheduled appointment e.g. thank you for speaking to me today Fred will see you on 11^th April at 10.a.m.”

Respondent to to 2012 Buyers' Views of Salespeople Survey

Carpe Diem - Seize the day

It should be part of one’s daily routine of tasks. Most contacts on the phone or face to face provide the opportunity to actively (if we are prepared to seize it) and ask /enquire " Who elase should i be speaking to?" 

Unfortunately many salespeople do their prospecting in either spasmodic purges or simply  follow the supplier herd when hard times are encountered.

They also prospect at exactly the same time as everybody else mid morning or mid afternoon. Yet looking at teh 2012 data . 31.8% of Buyers will take a phone call from a salesperson before 8.30 a.m. 21.2% will meet a salesperson on or before 8.30 a.m.

At the end of the day similar opportunties for the active prospector. 40.9% will  still take a phone call from a salesperson at 5.30 p.m. Indeed 24.6% will accept a face to face meeting at 5.30 p.m.

So here are some good regular routines to keep your prospecting skills bubbling away of the back burner:

1. In face to face interactions always try to give two cards over at meetings which can be passed on to either other influencers and decision makers on the current project you are working on, or to other prospects. Buyers like to show that they are aware of the market and they have  a number of contacts.
2. Find opportunities in every call to ask the question “Tell me Charlie who else should I be speaking to ? “  “ Who else would you suggest I call ?”
3. Send out a regular metered “Saw this thought of you “ messages of links, news clippings, articles of interest and relevance to  your prospect and suspects contact list.
4. Discipline yourself to record and follow up those who resist with “Not today. Give us a call in …” and make a record of this offer and follow it up.
5.   Gather material and ideas in order to write and submit copy to the editors or write/email/blog post on a business topic related letter  to the editors of the correspondence page of  trade magazines and local business papers on an area of expertise you have. You never know your luck. Often they are eager for copy.
6. Offer to speak at local business clubs and local networking groups.

The key to successful and angst free prospecting is little and often.

It is also wise to spread the various forms and combine  prospecting media.

Consider the data on prospecting from the 2012 Survey

Email , phone and letter are acceptable channels through which to communicate accoding to the Buyers who rsponded to the latest TACK International survey.

The survey also picked up an increase in propsecting aceptability in using Linked In to above 40% of the respondents.

Old skool cold calling 'face to face ' also has had a little lift to just under 20 % from negilible acceptability in between 2002 - 2007. Perhaps this indicates that when the credit crunch hit in 2008 hungry prospectors were cnsidered moe acceptable.

Texting and SMS were still considered acceptable by juts 1-2% of the respondents.

Related Links

TACK International

 

3 ways to Improve your chances of winning Sales

In the Tack Buyers views of salespeople 2012 - Selling in a VUCA world , 89% of Buyers had looked for new suppliers a 10% lift since 2010. 

 Whether prospective new suppliers are able to offer a sufficiently persuasive alternative is more debatable .

What are the chances of winning new business ?

 In a post published on the HBR blog in July 2012 by Steven W Martin , he shared some research he had undertaken on 1,000 bids to analyse at what point of time decisions were made by buyers in the bidding process.

30% had decided the winner before the selection process began

45% had made their mind up by half way through the process

Only 25% decided at the end of the process

Therefore, if you are not clearly in the lead at the half way stage of the sales process, the likelihood is that you are going to lose

In almost every case Martin observes, the decision wasn't even close between the top two choices.

Even though customers had made up their minds, they still demanded all the other salespeople to jump through a series of hoops for nothing, wasting their valuable time, resources, and mental and emotional energy.

The main point from the above  ? There is little point training your sales teams on how and why prospective customers make their buying decision if your training isn't based upon direct rsearch with decision makers about won and lost business and what they feel about salespeople. Hence why the Buyers' Views of Salespeople has been a work in progress the last fourteen years.

Three ways to improve the team to win more.

1. Sharing success stories about key wins especially when explained using examples  will help the entire sales team  understand and learn from them.

Click here for tips on elevator pitches

2. In your sales training include role play exercises on everything from your elevator pitch and cold calls to the corporate presentation and negotiation.

2. Best practise .Consider asking your top salespeople to be interviewed in a panel-type setting about their sales philosophy, client interactive categorisation strategy ( see below), and where they win and lose. This can be  followed by a robust audience question and answer session.

Client interaction Categorisation is a method of segmenting customer interactions based upon prospective customers' roles within the organization, their speciality (technical, financial or operational), their political power,  and how they process information.

Client Interacton Categorisation

The purpose of such categorsation strategy is to produce a predictive framework that helps salespeople anticipate client behaviour.

Since the salesperson has a deeper insight about customer behaviour based upon past interactions, (s)he is able to conduct more persuasive sales calls.

 This strategy also serves as a communication methodology to educate and prepare the support team members (pre-sales engineers, consultants, and sales managers) who may attend the sales call with the salesperson.

Related links:

 Click this link To forward order your copy of the Exceutive Summary of the 2012 Buyers Views of Salespeople 2012 

 Click for posts on Professional Selling

Salespeople should switch off - their mobile phones.

More and more of us have become addicted to our SMART phones in our Sales work with buyers.

As a trainer, I have long given up asking delegates to switch off their phones on courses.

( If you can't beat them - lead them)

 Delegates are asked to set their mobile phones on 'silent'.

If they need to ,they can leave the training room to deal with emails, messages and phone calls outside the room so as not to disturb the learning of fellow delegates.

I do ask them not to furtively text or read their phones under the table.

For the addicted I tweet some learning points during the session so they can pick up the learning. I also explain that I tweet so I do not need to repeat questions I put to them .

Once having explained the ground rules I notice most WANT to switch their phones off!

It is interesting to note that a third of the poll of Buyers consider that texting is acceptable.

The anecdotal data captured from the 2012 data included:

" Only when announcing a delay of the meeting"

" depends on what it is, negotiation is not OK by texting"

" e-mail of phone call"

" Yes if we already have a meeting arranged"

" Only if I text them - which i have done last 12 months"

" If I have a relationship with them"

" When I know them"



For a while now, the Buyers' Views of Salespeople survey has asked the poll of Buyers its views on how salespeople should use mobile phone when working with clients. So it is with the 2012 survey.

Delegates often remark that Buyers do not always give reciprocal courtesy and switch their phone off.

 Some salespeople  find that by switching off their mobile at the start of a meeting and telegraph the action quite often prompts Buyers to do likewise - but there is no guarantee.

Silent setting has remained acceptable at around two thirds of the poll since 2006.

So a third will still like the salesperson to switched off their phone.

So this response from Buyers shows no sign of changing on this issue for the present time.

So switch into your Buyer but switch off your mobile seems the best advice.

The Buyers' Views survey of Salespeople 2012 will be published shortly

For information please contact info@tack.co.uk

The Challenge Sell is perhaps not 'new' but is important

(If the' history stuff'  / 'back in the day' does not float your boat scroll down to the 2012 data at the bottom)

In 2005 the  Sales Engagement study stated  75% of  the poll of Buyers said they wanted a relationship or to put it another way 25% were already saying they did not!

However by 2007 the  Buyers’ views of Salespeople  poll questions began to pick up the change in the purchasing scene. We asked  questions around the most recent significant purchase both in terms of the aspects of the offering and the salesperson with whom they did the business.

The Offering ranked as follows in the 2007 poll;-

2007

The ranking regarding the salesperson involved with the Buyer’s most significant purchase was.

2007

We then asked the buyer respondents to decide which was more important

2007

2007

The answers came across in favour of the offering!.

When I used to  show this at conferences it caused quite a lot of murmuring and some grumbling from some quarters. Many salespeople believed relationship as the only key.

Again others argued animatedly that  the buyer only knows about the offering through the benefits being described  by the salesperson.

Well I was only being a provocative messenger - dare I say 'challenging' to the audiences to get them thinking.

Fairly new onto the bookshelves has come te excellent The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation (Portfolio/Penguin: 2011) by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson  

The forward highlights ‘ breakthroughs’ of selling - the  history of sales 

1.      Front line sales and support account developers e.g. Producers and collectors i.e. a defined selling role they suggest first came from Insurance Inspectors

2.      Psychology of Selling from 1925 EK Strong et al

3.      Drill down questioning models like SPIN  etc.based on research studies

4.      Purchasing advancement through supplier segmentation strategies, supplier chain management  models

5.      The Challenger sale - well it is selling the book and research so fair enough!

  According to their study of complex selling they suggest the Relationship Seller style is not the star performer. 

“ Build relationships first and the sales will follow “ concepts have long been off the selling skills fashion radar for a while now.

Most would agree with Dixon and Adamson and  will find their research both helpful and useful.

I  also enjoyed the way Adamson and  Dixon  have kicked those hackneyed sales style ‘buckets’ around –  the hard-worker, challenger, relationship builder, lone wolf and reaction problem solver.

Again nothing so very new here -in  the UK  'Old School' trainers used to categorise salespeople into styles like like the 'Aggressive', the ' Passive', the 'Schmoozer' etc.

Such descriptions have  long gone passed their usefulness.

A preview of the Buyers' views of Salespeople 2012 has picked up these 'changes' and the need for sales people to contest, challenge or even provoke as a trusted adviser.

Note how in the offering Price is very important across the the top 5 choices but only 9% put Price as their first choice. Challenges must me made around quality,  technical specification, the Product/ Service.

The way Buyers now rank the offering and the qualities of the salespeople above. Notice the importance of Listening skills , Questioning ( Challenging) Skills along with adviser skills and how in the offering Price is very key overall but not in the first choice,

So let our selling be challenging in the best sense of the word. Sales is and should be  a challenge.

Buying need to be respectedly challenged with courtesy and the good of the best deal for both parties.
( The TACK International Buyers' views of Salespeople 2012 is to be published shortly. for more information info@tack.co.uk

Sales skills beyond Price in B2B

Price is a significant factor in why a Buyer will do business with a salesperson yet it is seldom the ONLY factor.

Throughout the study of Buyers' Views of Salespeople from 1998 we have asked Buyers to consider  the last significant corporate purchase they had made and to list the top five reasons why they went with the offering.

As you can see from the table below  for 2012 by the fourth choice 80% of the poll had selected price. On a pretty much equal basis to the Product.

Examining the data a little closer what strikes one is how only 9% of the poll put PRICE as their FIRST choice. Early on in the top ranking choices Quality, Technical Specification and Brand hold stronger sway.

This is good news for the sales side if their offering if a higher priced product than the competition. What is helpful from our study is that we can perhaps suggest ideas which Salespeople can explore in order to match Buyer's needs and wants.

As can be seen when just the PRICE stats are displayed even for 13% of Buyers there will be 5 reasons ahead of PRICE which need to be elicited by the salesperson in their investigation stage of their sales process as well as price.

This shows how important questioning and listening skills are for Salespeople.

Most know the theoretical importance of questioning, they may even recognise the labels of various questioning techniques but as far as most Buyers are concerned they tell us through the research that Salespeople are generally ( the majority) only fair and poor at these  assessing skills as you can see from the pie chart below.

Of course these are only the Buyers' views but 'perception is reality'.

 As a check we also have a question in the study which asks how well buyers felt the need is matched  by sales people's offerings. You can see the  'fair'  questioning / assessing results in 'poor'  matching of needs from the buyer's viewpoint  of the salesperson's offering.

.

Q 10 and 11 from 2012 Buyers' views of Salespeople

The fundamental communication skills such as questioning and listening are still important therefore.

 Not only must salespeople do them well but they need to do them conversationally and convey to buyers that they questioning with skill and genuinely listening.

Such sales skills are 'beyond price' for the Salesperson !

The Buyers' views of Salespeople 2012 is to be published shortly

contact info@tack.co.uk

B2B Buyers do Social Preview from Buyers Views of salespeople 2012

The TACK Buyers' Views of Salespeople 2012  ( 6th edition) is soon to be published- a comment from one Buyer respondent concerning their search for suppliers which particualrly struck me was:-

“ If they have no web presence, both personally and, if relevant, corporately as part of a team/company, I’m not going to trust them, or at least would find it hard to justify putting in my time to work out if they know anything about anything”

Buyers ‘do social’ on Sales

The processes and approach to the buying role have changed markedly.

 More and more buyers ‘do social’ as part of their buying role. For example, 55.% of the respondents used LinkedIn to research potential suppliers and products in the last 12 months.

 Buyers also use other social media channels to carry out their research of potential suppliers 22% had looked at Blogs, 22% had used You tube as a search engine to investigate supplier solutions  , 20% had used Twitter to read and listen in on potential suppliers. 12% had used facebook in their research of new suppliers and products.

 Those in sales who still do not “do social” themselves in their business are increasingly putting themselves at a disadvantage to their competitors who do.

Social media is also  accepted by many Buyers as a channel to be used in prospecting activity from suppliers.

Cold calling has had a further resurgence in this 2012 poll to above 1 in 5 .

This is indicative of tough times but also challenges the view of  many that believe cold calling is entirely dead.

Linked In at 34% acceptance is also an increase in acceptance from 28% in the previous study.

The TACK International Buyers’ Views of Salespeople 2012 captures detailed information on Buyers’ Views and is a “must read” for anyone involved in sales, sales management and those interested in benchmarking their own organisation and looking for best practice in sales.

It is an invaluable resource for Sales leaders, Trainers and those in Customer facing roles in the b2b sector.

The study is an on-going project, which was started in 1998 and acts as a bellwether indicator of the state of selling from the Buyers’ viewpoint.

 In the 2012 survey, 201 buyers from SMEs to Global Corporations across Europe, Middle East and Africa, Australasia, Far East and North America shared their views with the study.

Buyers undertake the questionnaire on line. 

 Both quantitative and qualitative information is captured from a set of 39 questions.

76% of the respondents had four or more years of corporate purchasing experience

39% had ultimate buying authority setting budgets  49% had limited buying authority  ( budget holders and/or decision influencers).

The male female split was 65%:35%.

For more information contact info@tack.co.uk



Business Dress Code in UK 2012 Keep Calm and ...

A recent invitation to a breakfast business club I received read  (I have redacted the detail with                 )

Dear Hugh

Thank you for booking a place(s) to attend our XXXXXXXX  on                June 2012.  To help make the event as enjoyable as possible please read the full event details below. ( This included :)

TIME:  7.30am - 10.00am

VENUE  XXXXXX

          Suite,                                                 Street, London                     . 

DRESS CODE

Business Dress

The meeting agenda  did have 'on the bill of speakers' a Government Minister , a Chief executive of a   trade  department for the Foreign Office ( Senior Civil Servant), a case study practitioner and a leading social media provider and was taking place in the city of London - the financial district.

So I thought  Dress Code : Business means that I better keep be tie and suited. 

Well as you can see the "Business"  dress code was interpreted quite freely from the photo below.

Dress Code : BUSINESS as interpreted by the Audience at a breakfast meeting in Summer of 2012

 At front stage :
The chairman of the Business Club was in a suit but without a neck tie.

The Government Minister and and the Civil servant  were in suits and wore ties.

The Case study presenter was in smart casual with no tie and the social media team had a director in suit , shirt and no tie  the rest of the team in company logoed T shirts - which looked great - but they were young and  all had waists!!

Business Dress has changed considerably over the years in the UK.

The Buyers' views of Salespeople study which began in 1998 regularly asks two pertinent questions about dress code and selling. The first is how does the Buyer currently describe his office dress code and the second is the how should Salespeople dress when visiting the Buyer's premises on a 'dress down' day?

Of course it depends .

 

So therefore it is best if possible to ask ahead but if in doubt remain 'suited and booted.'

After all if you are overdressed you can aways take your jacket off - just like I did at the breakfast meeting.

Not sure I carry off a T shirt that well these days.

For information on the new Buyers' Views of salespeople 2012 contact info@tack.co.uk