Sales

Is Email or Voicemail Better for Follow-Up?

I’m often asked if email or voicemail is a better tool for following up with a prospect. My answer is: BOTH. But I really believe that there is actually more going on behind this question. And that is, there is often a fear in “messing up” or “making a mistake” on the “how” to do the follow-up. Often people feel they only have one chance to follow-up with a hot prospect and they better get it right!

I don’t believe that at all. In fact, what I see more often than not is people only following up once (either through voice mail or email) and when they don’t get a response, they figure the prospect is no longer interested, or doesn’t like them, or changed their mind. More likely what happens is, a prospect is very busy and your email or voicemail get lost in their day to day activities-not from a lack of interest, but from a lack of busyness!

I have a fairly high success rate in getting people to return my follow up emails or voicemails. Not always on the first try, but eventually we make contact again to continue our conversation.

And the key is this:

Appropriately (keyword is appropriately) continue following up through both emails and voicemails until you make contact again. Now, you may ask, what’s appropriately?

Start with either voicemail or email. Wait three or four days, then you might want to alternate and use the other medium. Wait about a week or so, and then send another email.

Remember, keep your emails short-all you are looking for is a date for a follow-up meeting or phone call. Do not sell in your follow-up emails or voicemails. Repeat: DO NOT SELL ON YOUR FOLLOW UP!

Being appropriately persistent has served me well. Many, many times I hear from a prospect, “I love that you were so tenacious in connecting with me” or “I love your persistence, I’m so sorry it took us so long to connect-I’ve been swamped”.

So I urge you to pull out your current prospect list and continue to appropriately and systematically follow up with prospects until you reach them.

If you are interested in learning more about how to systematically follow up with prospects and turn them into sales, or how to get more referrals from friends and family, or you would just like to change the way you look at the “dreaded sales call”, then I hope you’ll consider joining me for my ever-popular, 4 week teleclass, “How to Overcome Your Fear of Sales and Get More Clients-NOW!” which begins on July 10th! Click here for all the information.

Mandy works with talented, high energy self employed professionals and very small businesses who struggle to market their business effectively, stretch their capacity and play a bigger game. Mandy’s client’s receive proven, specific information on what they need to do to get more clients and grow their business. As a result, those who coach with Mandy increase their business, get more clients and make more money, faster and easier than they ever would have on their own. Sign up for her free Cd “7 Productivity Secrets of Successful Entrepreneurs” right down below.

How Are Those Networking Events Working For Ya?

by Mandy Schumaker Leave a Comment

In order to grow your business, you must network, and you must network often. But for many entrepreneurs, the thought of doing a lot of networking can be daunting. Many times I hear from clients, “I network all the time, but I really don’t get much business from it”. Or I hear, “I went to three events last week, but they weren’t very good”.

So, here are a couple of questions for you. Do you have a networking strategy? Are you attending the right networking events-the ones that will help you build relationships and grow your business?

Here are some things you might want to consider to get more out of your networking efforts:

Are you attending the right networking events for your business? Many times we attend a networking event because our friends are going to be there, or because someone told us about it at the last minute and we thought we should attend, or maybe it’s a Chamber event and there’s supposed to be a good turnout.

These may well be good reasons to attend an event, but they may not be the best networking events for your business. The best criteria to use when picking which networking events to spend your precious time on, is figuring out where your ideal clients hang out. Which events do they attend? You don’t want to just randomly attend an event (well, not very often, anyway), and you don’t want to just go where your friends hang out.

You want to ask your ideal clients, the ones you LOVE working with, where they go to network, what groups they belong to and what events do they like to attend. Because “birds of a feather flock together” and by hanging out where your ideal clients network, you are more likely to find other potential ideal clients in the crowd. Those that need your services!

Do you have a networking strategy?

This can mean a couple of things. First, once you’ve found the networking group or groups where your ideal clients hang out, it’s a good idea to get the meetings on your calendar. And make arrangements if you need to, for kid coverage, or work coverage etc. Really plan for the event, because so often I hear people say, “Oh, I really wanted to attend that last night, but I didn’t have a babysitter”. Or, “I had a big work project that got in the way”. I hear this a lot, and not that there aren’t last minute things that come up, they would happen less and less frequently if you had really planned out your strategy.

Another strategy might be connecting with people you want to meet, before the event. Reaching out to them through social media or email to let them know you are attending as well and hope to have the opportunity to meet them. Then when you see them at the event, you can go right up and introduce yourself. This strategy works particularly well at bigger networking events or conferences.

If you are an introvert, think about setting a goal for yourself for each event. Maybe a good strategy is to try and connect with five people and walk away with their business cards. Or another strategy might be, you will find someone to meet and connect with in each of the four corners of the room. Challenge yourself to move around and connect.

Are you connecting with new people or just hanging with your friends? Many years ago, I worked at a large Connecticut newspaper where we were expected to attend a lot of networking events. At each event there were usually at least five or six of us from the newspaper who attended. Our boss would absolutely not allow us to sit, stand or even be near each other in the same room. We were expected to network with people we didn’t know, and forge new relationships and connections. To this day, I still remember his advice and I work hard to briefly say hi to people I already know and try to spend the bulk of my time meeting people I don’t.

If you are interested in learning more about how to create a networking strategy or what to specifically say at networking events to get clients to sign up with you on the spot, or how to get more referrals from friends and family, or you just like to change the way you look at the “dreaded sales call”, then I hope you’ll consider joining me for my ever-popular, 4 week teleclass, “How to Overcome Your Fear of Sales and Get More Clients-NOW!” Click here for all the information.

Are You Making The Time To Sell

by Mandy Schumaker Leave a Comment

Do you have enough business? Are you making the money you want to be making? Is your business growing? If you answered “no” to any of those questions, the issue may be, you’re not making enough sales calls.

And what I hear from lots of entrepreneurs is, “I don’t have time to sell”. If you’re not making the time to sell, and everything else is coming before getting in front of prospects, you are going to have a very difficult time growing your business, or in some cases, making enough to stay in business.

One of the challenges that entrepreneurs have, is not making the time in their schedule for selling. Have you ever had the best of intentions of making sales calls, but get to the end of the week and realize everything else took precedence, and you made very few or even none?

Here are some tips that might help:

1-You must make sales a priority

For most of us, sales is probably not our favorite activity so it ultimately takes a lower priority on our “to do” lists. But in reality, it needs to be your number one priority, and it must be done every week to have the success you want in your business. This is a mindset issue. If sales isn’t the number one priority for you in your business, you need to look at why that might be and work on changing that mindset.

2-You must schedule selling time into your weekly planner

This means writing down specific days or chunks of time that you will devote to making sales-and you must honor the time. You cannot let other things get in the way. I had a client this week who said, “I have the very best intentions of making sales calls, but everything else seems to get in the way”. You have to be extremely disciplined about creating the time on your calendar and keeping it sacred as selling time only.

3-What are the things you can either stop doing, or delegate to someone else to do?

Pick up your calendar or daily planner and take a look at a couple weeks worth. How did you spend your time and more importantly, what did you spend your time on? Are there things you can stop doing, even if it’s temporarily? Is your time spent on things you can hire others to do for you like social media, doing your invoicing or bookkeeping, running errands, etc? Take a hard look at your schedule and figure out at least three things you don’t need to be doing to free up some time for you to focus on the most important thing for your business.

The most successful entrepreneurs are those that schedule time to make sales calls and talk to prospects. If you are unhappy with the results in your business, I strongly urge you to implement the three strategies above and see what happens! I know you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

5 “Must’s” for Hiring the Right Salespeople

by Mandy Schumaker Leave a Comment

For most people, “sales” is a dirty word. And I’ve found in my experience, most small business owners and entrepreneurs don’t like to sell. They view it as doing something “to someone” rather than “for someone”.

So, they often go out and hire someone to do the dirty work for them…in other words, sell for them. However, often times things end up in a bigger mess than ever before.

Why is this?

To be honest, business owners don’t put the time into developing a job description or at least a one-sheet on expectations of the job. So no one is really clear on the expectations-the business owner knows what they expect-in their head, and the salesperson doesn’t have clue what’s expected. What’s their goal? Who should they be calling on? Who’s an ideal prospect for the business? How many calls should they make in a day? Can they work from home? What are the hours? Do they turn in call sheets? All of these questions (plus many more) need to be spelled out for salespeople to be successful.

Secondly, after the salesperson is hired, the business owner is SO grateful to have someone else doing the dirty work of sales, they just kind of let them go, giving their new salesperson lots of rope to do their job…and usually just enough to hang themselves!

And third, the business owner does very little training with the new salesperson. Usually because they are so anxious for the salesperson to start making sales, and they believe that since they weren’t successful at the sales role, the salesperson must know more than they do.

Add all these up and voila-you end up with a big mess!

Here are the 5 Must’s for Hiring the Right Salespeople:

1-Job Description Develop a solid job description for the position-before you even advertise for the job. This doesn’t have to be complicated. Think of it as creating an ideal salesperson profile for your company. What characteristics do they have? What’s their experience? What’s their weekly goal, monthly goal, yearly goal? How will you measure their performance? Can they work from home? Will they turn in call sheets? You must be very clear with YOURSELF on what you are looking for before you even start interviewing for the position.

2-Don’t hire the first person Too often, business owners are so ready to get someone in the position selling, they tend to hire the first or second person that comes along. That’s okay, if you’re sure the first or second person who applies is the best candidate, but I would bet rarely does that happen. Try and get a good selection of resumes for the position. Share your ideal salesperson profile (see #1 above) with friends, family, neighbors, associates to see who they might know or recommend. Have a first interview with at least (I said at least) four or five candidates. Then have the top two or three back again. Have them speak to others in your organization (if you have other team members or employees), or maybe you have a colleague in another business who’s opinion you respect who would be willing to interview the top two candidates. Get as much different perspectives on the candidates as you can.

3-Yes, call references I am always amazed at how many clients I speak with, who are unhappy with their sales hires, who never called a single reference. Not only should you call the references your candidates give you, but also call those that they DON’T give you. For example, if you notice on their resume, they worked at a particular organization that they didn’t give a reference from, try and find someone you may know, or that your colleagues may know who can connect you with someone from that particular company. LinkedIn is a great source for this kind of thing.

4-Train, train, train Make sure you have some kind of plan in place to train your new salesperson. Remember, nobody can sell your product or service like you can. It’s your baby, you created it and really, trust me, even though you think you can’t sell, no one else will be able to talk about it with the passion you can. So even if you think you can’t sell, you must instill all the product knowledge and passion into your new hire. Don’t just turn them loose on the road. And training by the way, means sharing the ideal salesperson profile with your new employee, because they must know what you expect of them! Including giving them some kind of goal(s)!

5-Follow up, offer support and manage them Notice I didn’t say “micro-manage” them. Most good salespeople do not like to be micro-managed, but they do want support, follow up and frequent feedback (both good and constructive) on how they are doing. Don’t just let them go without daily or twice a day check-ins. Communication is crucial in building a successful relationship with your new hire.

Yes, this all takes time, but the pay-off can be tremendous. You don’t want to have a lot of turnover with your salespeople-it’s not good for customer service, relationships or perceptions. Having the right person in your sales position can make a huge boost to your bottom line-if you put in the time and do it right!

3 Tips to Easily Close the Sale

by Administrator Leave a Comment

“Sales is something you do for someone, not to someone”

Bob Proctor

Trying to close a sale can often times feel inauthentic, stressful and forced. And when that happens, you can guarantee that more than likely, you will not be signing on a new client. Because a forced closing of the sale is a surefire way to turn off the client and lose the sale.

And because many of us feel awkward in a closing of the sale process, we often try too hard, which can be a turn off to the client. It can make our client feel like we are “pushing” them to buy something they aren’t interested in buying. Remember, people like to buy, but they don’t like to be sold to.

Here are three tips to incorporate into your closing the sales process that will help make it more of a soft close, rather than a hard close:

1-Connect with your prospect. When I think about the times I’ve felt uncomfortable when someone tried to sell me something, it was always when they had no idea what I was looking for or what I needed. They never asked me any questions, but instead just launched into the features of a particular product or service. You must connect with your prospect, asking them what they are looking for, how you might help them, and what they might have in mind. Taking the time (and the opportunity) to really get to know your prospect, find out what makes them tick, what they might be struggling with and what might solve their problem, is the first key to a successful closing of the sale.

2-It’s all about them not you. Too often, salespeople tend to focus on themselves. Again, some of the more unsuccessful, uncomfortable sales experiences I’ve had have occurred when the salesperson did all the talking…about themselves. A more successful approach is to set up the sales process, so the customer has the opportunity to know as much about you and your services as possible, prior to the closing of the sale process. That way, during the closing of the sale call, you can focus strictly on them. This might be pointing your potential customer to a place on your website that has frequently asked questions, or to point them to the testimonial section of your site. That way, they have the opportunity to have at least 98% of their questions answered before they even meet with you. Then you can solely focus on their needs.

3-Celebrate. People who buy always like to be reassured they’ve done the right thing. So be sure to celebrate your client’s decision. Let them know they’ve made a great decision and be sure to offer your congratulations. Making them feel great about their decision is the last important step of the closing the sale process.

Using these three tips will make your closing of the sales process feel more natural and authentic and help you confidently increase your close ratio with lots of happy clients.

5 Best Cold Calling Tips EVER!

by Administrator Leave a Comment

I once asked a training class to describe how they felt when I said the words, “cold calling.” I got the typical answers, “scary,” “hate it,” “don’t do it,” “necessary evil.” But interesting enough there were a couple of entrepreneurs in the room who had a different take on cold calling. Their answers were, “possibilities,” “helping others,” “opportunity to make things happen.”

Cold calling, just like selling, is how you see it and 90% of your success at it is in your mindset. If you believe it’s hard, scary, difficult, no fun, and challenging – that’s what it’s going to be for you. But if you can shift your mindset to see how it can be full of possibilities, reaching out to help others and an opportunity to grow, then that’s what it’s going to be for you and you will have a lot more success at it.

Cold calling is necessary to grow your business, particularly in the first few years of starting your business. But it certainly doesn’t have to be seen as a pressure-ridden nuisance by your you or your prospective clients.

Here are five great tips that can help you become more effective around cold calling:

1. Shift your mindset away from “making the sale” towards whether there is a “fit” or not.

Too often when we call prospective clients, even on the first call, we are trying to sell them, even before we’ve determined whether or not they are an ideal client. If your intention on the call is to get to know the person better and to determine whether or not you can help them, or even want to work with them, you will be far more likely to be successful. You’ll know if you want to begin to enter into a deeper relationship with the prospect, or you’ll figure out quickly that they are not the client for you.

2. Be a helper, not a pitcher

Understand where your prospective client is struggling, what is keeping them up at night, and how can you help solve their problems. Too often, I see people begin the calls talking about all the features their product or service offers, well before they have a good understanding of the potential client’s problem!

3. Focus on the beginning, not the end

You are probably not going to close the sale on a cold call. It’s not totally impossible, but it’s not likely. That’s okay, so get that out of your mind and stop trying so hard. Be real. Be authentic, and think about slowly building a relationship with the client that could last a lifetime. Creating trust with your prospect should be your initial goal, not making the sale.

4. Stop chasing prospects, start solving problems

This is a mindset. You are not chasing people; you are reaching out to people who may have a problem that you can solve. It’s like that quote from motivational speaker Bob Proctor, “Sales is not something you do TO someone, it’s something you do FOR someone.” Don’t think of it as “chasing” a prospect. You have a product or service that could change someone’s life, end a struggle, help them make more money, save money, or save time. If you aren’t reaching out to people and letting them know what you have to offer, they may continue to go without solutions to their problems. You don’t want to be responsible for that, do you??

5. Connect with your prospects

Make sure you fully understand your prospects problems, so that they feel you get what they need. Think about beginning a long-term relationship with them. Drop the “sales speak” and relate to them in a natural, authentic way that makes a genuine connection. Cold calling is the only way to increase your business. You must let people know about you and your products or services. You have to get them to trust you to help them solve their problems.

If you can learn to incorporate these five strategies into your mindset about cold calling, you will quickly increase your number of solid prospects and start to build the long-term client relationships that will fuel the growth of your business.

Mandy works with talented, bright, high energy self employed professionals and very small businesses who struggle to market their business effectively, stretch their capacity and play a bigger game. And who would like to overcome their fear of sales, change their mindset, increase their self-confidence, and create a step-by-step strategy for taking their business to the next level. Mandy’s client’s receive proven, specific information on what they need to do to get more clients and grow their business. As a result, those who coach with Mandy increase their business, get more clients and make more money, faster and easier than they ever would have on their own. Mandy offers one-on-one coaching and consulting, as well as facilitates workshops and teleclasses and speaks on a variety of topics.

Get a copy of her free Cd “7 Productivity Secrets of Successful Entrepreneurs” at www.mandyschumaker.com. Or contact her at 207-653-6977

Sales

Footer

Sign up for updates