Today is an important day.  A really important day.  Do you know what today is?

Today is the last day of the third quarter.  Today is the last day you have to plan what will happen in your business in the fourth and final quarter of the year.  Today is your last chance to make or break this year for your business.

Today is a Big Hairy Important Day

Right now you have 3 choices before you:

1. You can choose to keep doing what you are doing now and HOPE for the best.
2. You can choose do more of what you are doing now counting on better results because of your increased activity.
3. You can choose to stop doing the things that aren’t working for you and focus on the things that are working for you.

This is what sets you apart from the people who pick up a paycheck from their J-O-B.  You take responsibility.  You hold yourself accountable.  You understand you choose the results you get like them or not.

So… if you want to end this year with a big sales bang YOU have to choose how YOU will make that happen for you and your business.  Here are the steps to making that happen for you:

1. Evaluate your current situation by gathering all your sales data and scrutinizing it for patterns and opportunities.
2. Identify your high payoff activities.
3. Identify and eliminate your low payoff activities.
4. Narrow and focus your message to hit dead center with your best potential buyers.
5. Increase your response rate with each point of connection by improving both your message and your offer.
6. Increase your engagement with all your potential buyers by increasing their opportunities to experience you in a no pressure environment.  I don’t mean a cocktail party here.  I mean something like a learning experience where you help them solve a problem.
7. Clarify your sales funnel so you have clearly defined next steps and the means to make those next steps happen.

Which steps could you improve?  Which steps do you feel like you have down?  What do you need to adapt to end with a strong 4th quarter?

Recently I made a video so I could talk to you about what people just starting out, those with an established business, and those with declining revenues need and have in common.  You can listen in here.  Sales Marketing Video

Don’t allow excuses to keep you from selling more.

Coach Cheryl

Do it Yourself

Do it with a Little Help

Do it with Guidance

photo credit: adria.richards

So you’ve got this service business where you provide services just like hundreds of other service businesses in your industry.  What makes someone who needs your services choose you over any other service provider?

Probably nothing.  It really doesn’t matter what business you’re in the challenge is the same.  In fact, Jonathan Morrow recently addressed this same issue among blogs.

Do you just accept this as the way things are, or do you take steps to make your business the business of choice?

If you want a successful business you take steps to make your business the business of choice.  There is always a way to do it.  It just takes some creative thinking and listening.

Let’s see how this worked for a product you’re probably familiar with.  What would you do if you made tomato juice to get people to buy your juice?  How would you get people to buy your juice to the point that your juice is the juice of choice among tomato juice drinkers?

photo credit: strangelv

There’s a lot of competition among tomato juice.  You have the big names in canned vegetables along with the low cost house brands.  Plus it’s not exactly an exciting product.  I mean how many times have you woke up in a sweat in the middle of the night thinking, “The first thing I have to do in the morning is get some tomato juice”?  Can’t say I have ever had that experience.

Earlier I mentioned anyone can do this it just takes some creative “listening”.  Did you catch that?  Here’s why I say listening.

You are too close to your business and what you sell to know how the people most likely to buy your stuff actually talk about it.  So you have to interact with, engage, and seek out resources where you can capture your ideal prospects engaged in real conversation about what you sell.  The internet has made this eazy-peazy.

Back to our tomato juice company.  Well, they did there homework and here’s what they found:

• credible sources proclaimed people do not eat enough vegetables to maintain a healthy diet
• many people don’t like vegetables and don’t buy them
• a good number of people are already looking for ways to get more vegetables in their diet without eating bowls full of vegetables

Because there is a market of people who already believe they don’t eat enough vegetables there is a market for a vegetable juice.  Tomato juice is a vegetable juice but there are already lots of competitors in the tomato juice market.

So, why not re-position tomato juice as “vegetable” juice?  Why not add other vegetables to your tomato juice so it’s not just tomato juice?  Why not create a new category for tomato juice and call it vegetable juice (V8)?

And that, of course, is exactly how V8 boosted their sales and set themselves apart as the vegetable juice of choice.  Okay, go ahead… slap the heel of your hand against your forehead and say, “I could have had a V8″.

Obviously the creative thinking was used to develop a position for their product that set it apart as it’s own category.

So how do you use this concept in your business?

• Start listening to discover the exact language your potential buyers use
• Start listening for what your best potential buyers are already looking for
• Start listening for what they already believe
• Tie that belief to your service
• Position your service in it’s own category

Now get to work your V8 moment is waiting…

Do it Yourself

Do it with a Little Help

Do it with Guidance

photo credit: austinevan

Are you afraid to ask for the sale?  Have you ever had a sales trainer suggest that you don’t ask for the sale because you don’t want to.  Insinuating you’re afraid to do something perfectly logical?

You don’t ask for the sales because you don’t want to ask for the sale BECAUSE you know there’s no logical reason to do so.  Your internal warning signals are shouting to you, “don’t make a complete fool of yourself asking for a sale you can’t make.”  Your natural fear instincts exist for a very good reason.

Those fear signals not only warn you of real physical danger they also warn you when you are about to cause emotional danger to yourself.  Don’t force yourself down a path leading to your own humiliation.  Rather change your approach and change your outcomes.

You don’t want to ask for the sale BECAUSE…

1. What you have to offer isn’t a match for what the prospect needs.  When this is the case, make and friend and walk away.  Never try to desperately force a sale that shouldn’t happen to begin with.  You will live to regret it.
2. You didn’t set yourself up right before the actual sales appointment.  Because you didn’t take the time and make the effort to set yourself up as a trusted adviser you now have to deal with the adversarial relationship most people have with salespeople.  Why dig yourself out of a whole you shouldn’t be in in the first place?
3. Even you recognize you haven’t helped the prospect uncover their “reason why” they should buy.  People aren’t going to buy to be nice and help you out.  They need real reasons to make a “yes” buying decision.  They need to believe your offer is the right offer for them.
4. You don’t like it when someone tries to pressure you into buying and you don’t want to do that to someone else.  Good for you.  Never use pressure tactics.  Those tactics might work for a one-time transaction but they back-fire when you want life-time relationships.
5. You helped them uncover a reason why they should buy, but you didn’t help them uncover the motivation to act.  You can tell because the prospect is completely logical about the offer and stays focused on data and facts.  You help them gain the motivation they need to act and act now when you help them envision the future they want in every detail.

You don’t want to ask for the sale because you know the prospect isn’t ready.  All too often you and the sales trainers you work only focus on closing statements.  As long as you place all your attention on the closing you’ll never correct the problems that make closing so difficult.

You’ll want to ask for the sale when you adjust your marketing and sales conversations to make closing a natural conclusion to a great conversation.  You won’t be afraid to close because you’ll know its right.  In fact, in most cases you won’t have to “close” because the prospect will do it for you.

photo credit: jseattle

I was reading Patsi Krakoff’s blog and her post reminded me of a free tool that can save you a lot of money. The free tool is a survey tool.   You may be wondering how or why this free tool can save you a lot of money.

Do you know why many businesses fail?  This underlying problem causes cash flow shortages, undue stress and frustration, and it isn’t curable.  Many businesses fail because they try to sell the wrong thing to the wrong people.

Of course, no rational business owner would ever do this intentionally.  It happens because the owner fails to take the necessary steps required to know you’re on the right track before jumping in hook line and sinker, and sinking to the bottom of the abyss.  You think your service and products are exciting and that everyone would want them.

However, what you think isn’t important.  It’s what the people who will buy your product think that’s important.  But how do you find out?

That’s where this free tool comes in to play.  I’ve just created one myself.  Not only is the tool free, but it was easy to use and I think it will be fun for you to give it a try.

Follow this link and take the survey yourself.  Then you can decide if you might benefit from using it in your business.  Take the survey now

photo credit: Adam Tinworth

Are you like many small business owners who are frustrated because your sales people just aren’t increasing sales like you think they should be?  Before you jump to any conclusions perhaps there would be value in exploring what might be causing the poor results you’re getting.

Statistically 20% of your sales people will be your top producers.  20% of your sales people will essentially be non-producers.  Leaving 80% of your sales force in what I call the squishy middle.  These statistics hold true even when you only have a few sales people.  Where do you think you should make your greatest investment to produce greater results?

The top 20%, of course.  You’ll get a far greater return from your efforts when you focus on investing in the top 20%.  Beyond that there are some basic reasons that even your top producers could be increasing your sales more than they are now.  There is potential to increase sales by:

• improving attitudes and behaviors
• increasing their understanding of the problems or challenges their best prospects will have, and how your service produces the outcomes those prospects want
• establishing mutually agreed upon performance standards and the measurements that indicate performance
• refinement of the sales process
• increasing the number of highly qualified prospects they have an opportunity to hold appointments with

If you want to get what you want you have to work with them helping them get what they want.  They want to sell more too because more sales mean more commissions.  I’ve found many small business owners who were sorely disappointed in sales performance and placed blame on the sales force when the real issue was no one in the company knew how to effectively market your business.

It’s pretty easy to see if your sales people can’t secure appointments they can’t sell.  So if that’s the biggest challenge, you don’t have a sales issue you have a marketing issue.  You may have sales issues too, but until you have people to sell to marketing should be your highest priority.

Attitudes and behaviors are important.  The quickest way to develop negative attitudes and poor behaviors is to dictate performance standards and measures.  You talk in terms of accountability.

While I fully agree every has to be fully accountable for their actions and their results the way you word things makes a big difference in the results you see.  When you communicate to your sales force that they need to be accountable you’ve just created a “we” (the sales people) against “them” (you) attitude.  That doesn’t help anyone.

You can get the desired outcome more effectively if you speak in terms of support and partnership.  When you want to partner with them and support them in a way that makes it easier for them to sell they’re all ears.  In contrast, when you tell them these are your targets hit them or hit the road you may as well fire them on the spot because you’ve just created a non-selling sales person.

Bottom line you just need to be clear where the real problem is.  Is it ineffective marketing?  Is it the way you manage the sales people?  Is it a poor sales process?  Is it poor attitudes and behaviors?  Is is a lack of understanding of your service and what it can do for your clients?

If you suspect it’s the way you manage those sales people view this little video TopGrading for Sales  It’s cute and you may find some information there you can use.

If you suspect the problem is marketing related or sales process related I recommend the “7 Secrets Top Producers Know” report and e-course.

There’s no reason to continue either your frustration or the frustration your sale people are experiencing.  Identify the cause(s) identify the solution(s) and take action to overcome your challenges.