Archive for: December 2007

Most sales reps have a good pitch, especially those who are selling themselves. How do you identify the peak performers hidden in the haystack of average performers with the gift of gab?

It’s better to err on the over-critical side during the screening process than to hire the wrong candidate. This article addresses Phase 1 of the four primary Phases of Screening for Peak Performing Sales Reps:

Preliminary Phone Screen
Telephone Interview
Personality Profiling
Face-to-Face Group Interviews with Your Peer/Superior Advisor Group

Does the candidate seek to identify areas where (s)he can add value?

Potential buyers are inundated with reps’ sales prospecting efforts. Perform thorough customer research on your prospect before initial contact to understand their specific business needs and to formulate a preliminary value proposition that will increase your chances of getting the initial meeting.

If you’ve read our article on profiling customers, then you know that understanding how your prospect compares to your ideal customer can significantly improve overall selling effectiveness. Through proper profiling, you identified key attributes of an account that determine whether they are a good target for you.
Communicate Relevant Value

Sales prospecting is certainly a numbers and timing game, but none of us has an unlimited supply of time. Use your prospecting time more effectively by prequalifying your targets based upon specific business criteria.

Understanding and pre qualifying your target customers and/or new projects based upon key characteristics common amongst your most profitable customers/projects will help you to maximize the effectiveness of your sales prospecting efforts. By systematically eliminating ‘bad’ targets, you will have fewer false starts and more time to focus on closing the attractive deals.
Targeting Lifetime Customer Value

Successful sales racehorses understand that most prospects hate to receive traditional cold calls, and their first thought when they answer the phone is typically, “Oh no. How do I get rid of this caller?” The primary reason for this is that nobody likes to be sold. As a result, sales laggards often dread-and even fear-telephone prospecting. Consequently, they fail to execute one of the most important components of their profession: Qualified Lead Generation.

The successful technique I describe below capitalizes on the fact that prospects are often willing to help the caller if it provides a means for avoiding a sales pitch! Sales racehorses actually enjoy cold calling, because their objectives and goals for the process are different. With this technique, the opportunity for cold call rejection is minimized while the opportunity to grow the sales pipeline is greatly increased.
Prevent Cold Calling Objections

Thanks to all of you who have been patiently awaiting the transfer of my blog from its original hosted location to my company website.

I am still in the process of refining the layout, and it will be another week or two before I can transfer all of the posts. In the meantime, I encourage you to continue participation in the blog at its original location.

For those of you subscribing to the RSS feed, don’t worry…the feed URL is not going to change. You can subscribe by right clicking on the chicklet  and copying the shortcut into your feed reader.

Happy Hunting!

Be Happy…Play Tennis…Love your kids…Love your dog (Oh…your Spouse, too!)

I created this blog for one very simple reason:
To bring together top performing industrial equipment Sales Reps and Sales Leaders to collaborate with and challenge each other to become more successful in their careers and their lives.

The sooner you establish trust and rapport with your prospect, the sooner (s)he will candidly answer your questions and enable you to understand the nuances of the business situation necessary to identify relevant opportunities for your business. Quickly establish trust and rapport on the telephone or in person with your prospect by following these positioning, pacing, and mirroring techniques.