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Two days ago, I posted the news that Sales Machine will be moving to a new site. As with any major change, the relocation is a good opportunity to rethink strategy, so in this post I'm asking Sales Machine readers (that's you guys):
- Going forward, what are the top three areas that Sales Machine should cover?
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Consultant Compensation Traps: 4 Ways to Avoid Them
Someone recently asked me about profit sharing, stock, and options as forms of compensation for consulting work. Here's how I responded:Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!" ?€?I get asked all of the time if I'll get a percentage of the profits as pay. Here is my condition that I give to companies who ask for this: ?€?"Sure, I'll be happy to. However, I will need the following authorities:So, clearly I have serious reservations about this type of pay-for-play approach to compensation. That does not mean that I am against a skin-in-the-game approach; I just want it clearly focused on the areas over which I have the necessary control to change the performance outcomes.
Without the ability to completely control every element of the business, what real impact can you make on your own compensation if it is a percentage of profits? When you agree to a share in the profits you are actually taking a position as a minority, non-voting shareholder with no power to make the necessary leadership changes, like removing the CEO. ?€?I am against profit-sharing compensation in any business in which I am a minority shareholder.
- All hire/fire/compensation authority for your people.
- All vendor selection and materials negotiation authority.
- Need to review and have executive decision discretion on your overhead, treasury function, and banking relationships.
- Final say on sales and pricing as well as go/no-go on any contracts over a certain threshold size or length.
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Top 10 Sales Books of All Time
Amazon.com currently lists 270,902 books with "Sales" in the title. That's a heck of a lot of reading, especially for somebody who has to go out and sell for a living. With that in mind, I thought I'd list out the ten books which I believe should be in every sales professional's library. Here are the sales books (and sales thinkers) that have most heavily influenced my thinking on the subject (in alphabetical order):- Better PowerPoint by Stephen M. Kosslyn (Oxford University Press, 2011). Why: Kosslyn analyzes presentations using the latest science on perception.
- Mastering the Complex Sale by Jeff Thull (Wiley, 2010). Why: Thull is a "big thinker" with a broad prespective about how complex sales go through different stages.
- No More Cold Calling by Joanne Black (Business Plus, 2006 ). Why: Joanne is THE expert on using your social and business network to build up your client base.
- Perfect Selling by Linda Richardson (McGraw-Hill, 2008). Why: Linda Richardson understands more about selling than you or I will ever know in 10 lifetimes.
- Persuasive Business Proposals by Tom Sant (3rd edition, AMACOM, 2011). Why: There's a reason this is a classic; it explains how win the HUGE contracts that build businesses.
- The Complete Idiot's Guide to Cold Calling by Keith Rosen (Alpha Books, 2004). Why: This is simply the most straightforward guide I've ever seen to this very challenging part of the sales process.
- The Funnel Principle by Mark Sellers (Self-published, 2008). Why: Mark upends your thinking about sales pipelines and how to make them work for you rather than against you.
- The New Solution Selling by Keith Eades (McGraw-Hill, 2004). Why: Keith provides a much needed update to the decades-old concept of solution selling.
- The Sales Winner's Handbook by Wendy Weiss (DFD Publications, 2010). Why: In addition to bringing a female perspective to the often macho world of selling, Wendy is all about practical techniques that work from square A.
- The Seven Keys to Effective Business-to-Business Appointment Setting by Andrea Sittig-Rolf (Thomson/Aspatore Inc., 2006). Why: Getting the first appointment is still the most difficult part of selling and this is a perfect guide for those who must run the gauntlet.
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Sales Machine's Last Week on CBS/BNET
For nearly five years, I've tried to bring Sales Machine readers the very best in sales tips, techniques and ideas from the world's top sales trainers and professionals. As a result, Sales Machine has become (by almost every measure) the most popular sales-oriented blog in the world.Continue »
Top 40 Bonehead Boss Stories
Three things are certain in life: death, taxes, and bad management. With that in mind, here is a collection of horror stories about real-life bosses in real-life situations. Like my recent post "The 32 Dumbest Things that Real-Life Bosses Said", this post is based on material that my pal Larry Jacobs and I compiled for our talk radio program, Funny Business, which used to run on WRKO, the big talk radio station in Boston.Continue »
23 Sure-Fire Ways To Improve Your Presentations
I've had repeated requests for a checklist of techniques to make presentations more effective. Here's that list, along with links to Sales Machine posts that have more detailed suggestions and a step-by-step method.Continue »
How to Get the Media to Help You Sell
If you're in Sales and have to work with a marketing or PR group, do them a favor and email the URL of this post to them. If you're in Marketing, I suggest that you bookmark this post, since it contains knowledge gleaned from reading thousands of press releases and media letters.Continue »
Top 5 Brand Winners of 2011
For reasons that will become clear later this month, I'm doing my annual "brand winners of the year" post today. As usual, I've included not just corporate brands, but political, ethnic and personal brand categories as well. Comments, of course, are more than welcome.Continue »
Six Easy Ways to Find More Customers
Having trouble finding potential customers? Here are six proven, easy ways to make your lead generation and qualification process more effective:- TWEAK #1: Obtain sales leads in order of effectiveness: 1) referrals (friends, colleagues, existing customers and business contacts), 2) networking (meeting people at industry events and other occasions), 3) sales partnerships (working with other sales professionals in other companies that sell complimentary products.) 4) web visitors (potential customers who have visited your corporate website and examined products and only then turn to 5) cold-calling (contacting potential customers based upon the information about them and their companies on the Web).
- TWEAK #2: Reframe "lead qualification" as "bad lead elimination." Almost every lead generation program operates under the assumption "the more leads, the better." Hey, want a lot of leads? Buy a booth at a trade show and run a raffle for a new iPhone. You'll have business cards coming out your ears. But your cost of sales will go through the roof because the sales reps will be chasing geese. Effective lead generation only results in as many leads as the sales team can close, and only leads that are likely to close.
- TWEAK #3: Measure conversions to customer not opportunity. A lead that gets into the pipeline but then peters out only adds to the cost of sales while not creating any revenue. Every second that a sales professional spends trying to develop a lead that doesn't convert is money down the toilet. Therefore, the important metric is whether the lead converts into a paying customer, NOT whether the lead converts into an active prospect. Build this concept into your entire program and (especially) your compensation scheme.
- TWEAK #4: Agree upon a definition of a qualified lead. Most of the fingerpointing arguments between sales and marketing are about whether a lead is qualified or not. Marketing blames sales for not being able to close; sales blames marketing for giving them lame leads. End the controversy by defining a qualified lead as one that can be closed by the current sales team, rather than some theoretical concept of what they SHOULD be able to close.
- TWEAK #5: Create a quantifiable profile of a good lead. Find out exactly what type of prospect is likely to buy by gathering accurate quantitative data. Supplement that knowledge by interviewing sales reps who've sold the product (or something similar), customers who've bought the product (or something similar) and (most importantly) customers who didn't buy. Once you've created that profile, prioritize it according to profitability. For example, leads that have a long sales cycle may be more profitable, overall, than those that close quickly.
- TWEAK #6: Measure, remeasure and adjust the profile. As the sales team continues to sell, track which leads actually closed, and continuously adjust the profile to so that it more accurately identifies those small number of profitable leads. According to scientific research from CSO Insights, only 23 percent of the leads that the typical sales groups gets from the marketing are worth following up. That's what happens when you don't measure and correct course.
: You'll find plenty of similar tips and techniques in my new book How to Say It: Business to Business Selling now available for pre-sale here:Continue »
