Selling to Zebras. How to close 90% of the business you pursue faster, more easily and more profitably.  Jeff Koser & Chad Koser. 2009. ISBN 9781929774579.  This is a terrific book that David Feldhaus lent me.  The Zebra website , http://www.sellingtozebras.com/ , is a treasure trove of information once you register with Zebra U.  My readers remember that we talk about the buyers journey and talking about things the buyer finds important.  This book really helps sales people zero into the top level concerns of your buyers as well as you to find and show them the metrics of value you bring.  Its a short, easy to read book, but unless you are committed to being a top performer, this takes a commitment of energy and time to get it right.  Great book  and one that top guns will need to read, review and keep close at hand.

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Take the Cold out of Cold Calling. Web Search Secrets. Sam Richter. 2010 ISBN 9781592982097.  This is a got-to-buy book. Readers of my reviews may have realized that I am not a fan of  ”Cold Calling ” as practiced by too many companies. In order to call effectively I encourage and show my clients how to find information about their markets and prospects/ businesses before calling/contacting.  Well Sam Richter puts   everything I have ever taught and on steroids.  Harvey Mackay says, ”  A must -have resource for anyone involved in sales and business development,” and I agree.  Every marketer and sales person needs this book on their desk  and the copy will soon be well thumbed and well used.  There is no book out there like this one for immediate and direct utility for more effective sales.  As marketing realizes that their job is to drive sales,  buyer information becomes key – and this book provides the tools, lessons and examples of how to do that research job.  What a find!  Check out www.warmcallcenter.com !

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eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale. Ardath Albee, 2010. ISBN 9780071628648.  At last, a thoughtful effective marketing book written on how to accelerate sales!  I have waited so many years for a book such as this. ( Recently I was getting resigned to having to write it myself!)   I am adding this book to the must read list for sales people new and old.  She thinks, talks and  writes about things from the buyers perspective. I took forever to read this book, each section was chock full of terrific content and strategies causing me to take copious notes. It just makes so much sense to what we see every day in our practise.   So it you take this book , with Jill  Konrath‘s new one and Sharon Drew Morgen’s work you will have the trifecta of today’s real world sales approaches.  Albee also references Brian Carroll’s great work on lead generation (and you see his sales ready leads comments come through) . Albee’s blogs and sites (more than one) are highly referenced in marketing today.  Anyone who has to sell products and services today must buy this book.

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I am reading a very good book on learning about your customer before you ever talk to them (Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling) . This is in part based on what is also in People Buy You. Customers buy a solution to a problem they have. Your job as a sales person is to learn beforehand what problems appear to be occurring, so you can speak about their company and not yours.  Doing anything less, means you are doomed to the losing sales numbers game.

The sales numbers game, if you do not know.(Where trickle down is not pretty).

• Corporate sets a target of 10% more sales this quarter ( We never know where this comes from)
• Each sales guy realizes with  his  10% closing rate, that a 10% increase is multiplied by ten. thus he needs 10 times f2f presentations.
• Inside sales realizes that with a 5 % response rate to prospecting, their outbound calls have to increase by twenty times – and there is no more staff.
• The entire department is already busy – they are not sitting around

This is a losing game, because it does not address the huge losses embedded into most sales systems.  Sharon Drew Morgen, Mitch Gooze and Michael Webb all are up in arms about the tremendous wastage in sales, where such low rates are common.  A few process trainers have ideas about bumping up the percentages a bit with different behaviours.  But that is just icing a flawed cake

No one in senior management recognizes that this is a much bigger issue (yet fairly logical to address).  If you present a solution that solves a real customer problem, that he can recognize easily,  your sales cycle shortens.  You need to start to remove the obstacles to selling that you have created yourself.

In using our sales and marketing framework Rocket Builders find big self made linked obstacles/inefficiencies  in many places in companies, such as:

• product management
• marketing management
• channel management
• executive management but
• rarely in sales management

The blind spot is that if an executive does not know what they do not know, where would they find out? In your company, do not be content with accepting long sales cycles and a decreasing return based on using the numbers game.  You have created these yourself and you must find the root causes (Its your job as CEO) . If you are on a Board of Directors, you should be asking lots of tough questions. Do not know the questions to ask? Give me a call!

• Knowing What to Do vs. Doing It: Successful Selling Requires Knowledge AND Action (thecustomercollective.com)
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• People Buy You. The real secret to what matters most in business. Jeb Blount (regnordman.com)
• Video: Why Sales Fail (customerthink.com)

People Buy You. The real secret to what matters most in business. Jeb Blount. 2010. ISBN 9780470599112. The person behind SalesGravy.com and Sales Guy audio and video on selling, Blount knows what he is talking about. As he was looking at current thinking on sales he realized that many long held sales beliefs were myths that needed  debunking. Myths such as :

1. Friends buy from friends
2. People but from people they like (But they don’t buy from people they dislike)
3. You have to sell yourself

Rather you need to:

1. Be likable
2. Connect
3. Solve problems
4. Build trust
5. Create positive emotional experiences

His solving problems chapter is one of the better ones I have read lately.  This is a short , concise and clearly written book.  And it is true, people do buy you.  Younger folks would do well to read his section on Brand You.

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Snap Selling. Speed up sales and win new business with today’s frazzled customers. Jill Konrath. 2010 ISBN 978159184330.  Okay, along with Sales Dirty Secret, this new book by Jill Konrath (Selling to Big Companies) is my top sales book for 2010.  Jill has assimilated the best practices of current practitioner including Sharon Drew Morgen‘s ground breaking insights into what happens when interested and “hot”  clients “disappear” for long periods of time.  Jill’s book has been flagged by more postit notes  more than any book I read this year.  Immediately useful to any working sales person, it is a book that gives you, the sales pro,  a lifetime of application advice. Her discussions as to how frazzled customers are today is bang on.  Lesson learned she advocates that you will need at least 10 contact attempts over six to eight weeks to be noticed. No worry about being a pest since the targets are so busy, they will not notice the frequency of your attempts amongst the fire hose of incoming requests.  Early on she states,  ”if you are not helping a customer with a high priority item, nothing is going to happen. How does your offering add value to their business? “.   |Also she states that consultative/solution selling, which I consider to be level four (90s style), is well past its time. You will not have the time in front of clients early on the be “consultative” . Jill is the first current writer to begin to address what I consider level five (Gen five) selling , where the seller needs an integrated sales and marketing effort in order to get noticed, because today’s sales cycle involves so many more skills.  If you think that your sales team needs to “get back to basics” , in order to increase sales, that indicates faulty reasoning on your parts. In our engagements, marketing is takes over  ”the basics” freeing the sales team to address today’s harder issues.  Well written, well organized, concise with great examples and suggestion sI recommend every sales person and sales manager read this book this year, well before they miss their quotas.

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A list for someone very new to sales

Reg Nordman

Last week I had two requests (Thank you David and Michael), for very different reasons, asking me what books would I recommend for someone new to sales to help get them quickly up to speed. I get this question often and never felt I had my “best’ answer. So I finally:

• laid out a selection process,
• set out the requirements (Easy to read and digest , did I mention real short,  proven in the trenches, only a few, and seriously effective),
• then looked at my 800 plus  reviews

So,  in May 2010 I have made the inaugural , just add water and stir,  list of Getting Started in Sales books. I make no guarantee that I have not missed your gems, hurt many writers feelings (but being sales people they have tough skins) and I could change my mind tomorrow if a new book comes across my desk. So drum roll please:

2010 Getting Started in Sales book list:
1. Art Sobczak has been at this the longest – he calls it Smart
Calling- but if you read very carefully it is much much more- sales efficiency tag
http://www.regnordman.com/2010/05/10/smart-calling-eliminate-the-fear-failure-and-rejection-from-cold-calling-art-sobczak/

2 The Leaky Funnel – Hugh Macfarlane – sales effectiveness tag
http://www.regnordman.com/?s=Leaky+Funnel

3. It’s Not Rocket Science – Mitch Gooze  - sales effectiveness tag
http://www.regnordman.com/2007/07/31/its-not-rocket-science-mitchell-gooze/

A serious student of sales success (desire to be a top 5%er? ) understands that this is a continuous journey of learning. These books just get you started.

Comments?

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Thoughts on hiring a sales person, what companies forget about.

Reg Nordman

We have had numerous discussions about how companies seem to hire the wrong sales people.  This comes up so often that I feel the need to comment, since it is done so regularly.

Usually the situation comes up because a company exec believes they need to add new sales DNA into their company. They may have been doing all or most of the selling up to now, and feel that they need to go onto other things. These are all good things. But the symptom that it is about to go wrong is the implied or expressed belief that once they add a sales person, the problem is resolved. In our experience the problem is about to be exacerbated.

Rocket Builder has heard many common myths about sales people, here are just five

1. All salespeople are the same.
2. All selling is the same.
3. Any salesperson can fit in any company.
4. Being sales driven means I can do things the same as always.
5. Getting out there and selling is the only sales training needed.

Beliefs like this usually lead to this profit killing sequence:

1. Placing a general ad for sales people – “lets just put it out there”
2. Changing the candidate requirements mid stream – “no one met what I wanted”
3. Accepting candidates at random – “they worked for a really big company and did well”
4. Making the wrong hire – “Seems the best of those I talked to, I have a feeling about…”
5. Wasting six months of effort, wages and profits before firing the new hire – $$$$
6. Return to step one.

To help you make your “better” choice for adding sales people to your mix you need a process.  You certainly have a product development and bug fixing process.  Why not a sales hiring process for something this key?A  logical process like the one Geoffrey Hansen, Rocket Builder has. He says:

1. Select your market
2. Select your requirements for that market
3. Deliberately target candidates who meet the requirements.

Sounds like it would be a good coding practise. Of course,  in using this process effectively there is much well thought out detail involved, which is where Rocket Builders helps companies. It is in the execution and details that you find the secret sauce.  If you do this right, then you, Mr/Ms. C- Level,  can:

• add new sales DNA to your company,
• go on to doing those 101 other things you want to do, and
• know that your money machine is working away.

In this business,  prevention is so much cheaper than rework. It just might save your company.  Comments?

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The Zero Turnover Sales Force. How to maximize revenue by keeping your sales team intact . Doug McLeod. 2010 ISBN 9780814415603. This is the best sales management book ever. It is also a tremendous guide for anyone on the sales field, old dogs through to the bright newbies.  In one well written, easily read volume reside the truths about high revenue sales management and what to do, step by step.  This book reflects generation five of selling.  Such things as :

• No more cold calling ever since cold calling immediately puts the sale person at a disadvantage and loses the firm big money
• Dump the 100 % commission selling and never try it again, unless you love to lose money
• Its all about the customer now – never about you and your company
• Be honest and forthright – like the best sales people have always been
• Create your numbers in the real world – not wishful thinking
• Do not waste anyones time – especially your sales forces
• Zero turnover in salespeople makes you  huge big bucks
• The right training matters

Do not wait, buy this book right now – it is a key weapon in your sales arsenal. A bonus is the list at the end of important other books to read.

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Flip The Funnel. How to use existing customers to gain new ones. Joseph Jaffe.2010 ISBN 9780470487853. This is a game changing book for marketing. Jaffe is a prolific writer, blogger and customer care advocate. This thoroughly researched book illustrates the winning metrics that tell us we spend way too much on customer acquisition and way too little on customer retention. Since the social media wave dramatically affects the impact of WOM marketing, he speaks about some very serious stuff. In our efforts to drive new sales, and close new clients, we can lose sight of the tremendous value in getting more work from present clients. Jaffe delves into using social media to help your present customer base become enthusiasts who drive more business through referrals than you ever get through your acquisition campaigns. See lots at www.jaffejuice.com. www.youtube.com/jaffejuicetv , www.facebook.com/jaffejuice, @jaffejuice and www.flipthefunnel.com

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