I have helped companies "clone" their top sales performers.

Here's a step-by-step formula:

1. Recruit young, aggressive yet coachable salespeople who have good personal skills.
See Chet Holmes' material about a pragmatic, hard-nosed recruiting and interview process.

2. Screen them using an assessment instrument that measures:
Behavior, Attitude and Values (Target Training International is one of the leading suppliers of assessment tools - they have thousands of distributors throughout the world) The Brooks Group is one of the top firms focusing on sales assessment)  Also, use a little tool called SPQ Gold, which measures sales call reluctance; it's the only tool I've found that measures call reluctance specifically.

3. Train and orient them using inbound and outbound call measurement. Have them track and record their prospecting and sales calls using our web-based tracking tool.  With this you'll be able to see how many calls they're making, how many calls they're getting back and how effective they are while on the phone.

4. Let them listen to themselves on the phone.  Take 10 minutes and select key calls, both good and bad and review them with them. This is the ultimate truth mechanism.

5. Use call measurement with your top sales person and share their good calls with new recruits. Also, you need to personally make some calls and be an example for your reps.

6. Map successful sales calls.  Take the recording of successful calls and have them transcribed.  You can easily do this using our system because the calls are in wav. format and can easily be downloaded or emailed to a transcription company.  You should be able create "the ultimate sales scripts" for less than $50 bucks.

7. Remove all the extraneous verbiage from your transcription and break it into "bit sized" peices, literally creating a Sales Map.  Make sure all of your reps have the Sales Map in front of thier desk.

8. Continue to use call measurement to ensure they're replicating the sales process and following the Sales Map.  This is a feedback loop process...continue to hold them accountable and course correct when necessary.

9. Finally, feed more recruits into the system and repeat the process until you've reached your ideal size.

Presto chango - easy peezy!

For example:

In 1996 if it cost you $300/week to run an ad and it produced 2 leads per week - today in almost 2008 it will cost you $900/week for the same ad and the bad news is you'll only get 1 lead per week. 

So you're spending more and getting less!

Why is that?

Your cost of advertising has gone up and your results are going down because of 3 key factors:

1. The Clutter Factor - everybody's advertising everywhere, which drives the cost up and makes it more difficult to get people's attention.  The average American consumer is exposed to 30,000 commercial message per day.  People feel bombarded by marketing and filter it out.

(Of course ad agencies and publishers would have you believe that if you put your message out enough some how you're going to have an impact on people's sub-conscious and they'll think of you when they want what you offer.  That takes deeeeeep pockets and is extremely difficult to measure.)

2. Ad Options are Expanding - you have more options and mediums available, which makes it increasingly more difficult to know where to spend resources.  Confusion and uncertainty lead to inactivity or paralysis and many business end up spending more to have a third party manage this all their marketing for them.

3. Prospects Have Control - I want what I want, when I want it and I can find it on my own terms.  Now you have to retool your marketing to create pull versus more traditional methods based on push advertising.  Opt-in lead generation has grown tremendously over the last 5 years and you need systems and processes in place to capture and retain interested prospects to funnel them to your business.

Now more than ever it is critical to measure everything!

You can't manage what you can't measure and your customer acquisition process is no different.

We offer unique systems to measure and increase your customer acquisition with a web-based tracking system.  If you'd like to see a demo please give us a call or send me an email.

Best,

Ryan Pitz
(336) 790-5726
info@newcallsolutions.com

Unique visitors, click throughs, bounce rates, entry pages, exit pages, keywords and on and on...

But one of the most important metrics you're probably not monitoring are the number phone calls you get from your online advertising.

A phone lead is far more valuable than a click through and 9 times out of 10 a call is more valuable than a lead that comes through a request form.

So how do you track the number of phone calls and associate those leads with various keywords and online campaign?

Now, with our unique system you can dynamically change the contact phone numbers (call measurement numbers) on your website based on the source that delivered the visitor to your site.

No special landing pages are required and you can see precisely how many phone calls you get from your website and which keywords led to the call.

To learn more about tracking the phone calls that come from your online advertising send us an email or give us a call:

info@newcallsolutions.com

Phone: 866-231-2055

Best,

Ryan

Sooner or later, we all backslide into old ways of thinking about selling that lead us down the wrong path with potential clients.

A few weeks ago, I had a phone conversation with Julie, who has been struggling with the
old-style selling methods that her manager insists are the only way to sell their company’s technology solution.

Regardless of what product or service you’re selling, you should be able to relate to her dilemma.
Outdated sales skills fail to address the core issue of how we think about selling and unless we get to that core and change it once and for all, we’ll go on struggling with the same counterproductive sales behaviors.

And we’ll continue believing that we’re always just one new sales technique away from the breakthrough we’re looking for.

New Thinking = New Results

Maybe it’s time to take a different approach. Maybe we need to analyze our thinking and identify why we’re not making more sales.
Take a look at the table below and think about your current selling mindset.
How would your selling behaviors change if you changed your sales thinking?

The sooner you can let go of the traditional sales beliefs that we’ve all been exposed to, the more quickly you’ll feel good about selling again, and start seeing better results.

Entry by: Ari Galper

If you have a specific challenge that I haven't listed here let us know...

The solution for these problems is to track phone calls.  Tracking your phone calls is an essential part of any smart marketing and customer acquisition process.  For those businesses spending money on marketing and advertising to make their phones ring, this solution should take priority over web analytics.

Best,

Ryan Pitz 

Phenomenal event.  We were an exhibitor there, you may remember coming by our booth:

We offer a unique call tracking program that allows you to track the number of inbound phone calls generated by your marketing and advertising. 

Using tracking numbers you'll automatically capture the name, mailing address and phone number, including cell phone of every person who calls.  Plus you can record the phone conversation for training and quality assurance purposes.

One of the reason I think we had a great time at the SuperConference is because of the session Dan Kennedy did on Saturday April 21 at 8:00 am to 9:30 am.

I was sitting there listening to Dan speak and it was like he was inadvertantly doing a FREE plug for our entire tracking program.  If you were there he talked about three critical concepts:

1. The wrong attitude that most businesses have about selling

2. The right way to think about selling

3. Linking the marketing and sales process

Now I'm not going to get into all of the details about Dan's insight, but basically what I think he was saying is that a lot of businesses spend tons of money to market, but the key to turning good marketing into money is selling. And if there's a breakdown between the marketing process and the sales process you don't get any money, period.

So even if you've developed a great lead generation system or you can get people interested, it doesn't matter unless you convert their warm interest to a boiling commitment.

And no matter how much you want to automate the sales process you still have to insist that everyone in your organization is in sales. Because at some point a person is going to have to persuade a prospect. The human element and person-to-person selling will never fully go away.

But getting people to effectively convert intersted prospects to commited customers is extremely difficult, unless you hold people accountable and control the marketing and sales process. Or to say it Dan's way, " You control the results by controlling everything."

All the principles and strategies Dan talked about that morning all point to the importance of tracking your ENTIRE customer acquisition process from start to finish.  And that's what we help our customers do with our call tracking program.

I literally went directly to Bill Glazer after hearing Dan speak and asked how we can get on stage to show people what our tracking system does because it addresses everything Dan talked about.

Of course at the end of Dan's talk he pitched his sales kit, which I eagerly bought.

I think those who heard Dan speak and had an opportunity to come by our booth could clearly see how our system could help them.  Here are just a few:

There I am with Ari Galper. Ari is excited about trying our tracking system because he really understands the importance of monitoring and controlling the entire customer aquisition process from start to finish.

We're really excited to have Ari give us a shot because he has one of the most effective training programs and coaching clubs on sales persuasion that I've come across in a long time.  He also has a unique sales mastery program called Unlock The Game - I just got that system along with Dan's and I'm pumped to dive into them.

Matthew Lee came by our booth because he wants to optimize how all of his calls are handled:

Matthew offers a unique program that helps people rebuild their credit and gets them out of the nightmare of credit card debt.  I was really intrigued by how many people his program helps and we're excited to be a part of it.

If you weren't able to come by our booth at the event drop me a line and I'll do my best to get back to you as I recover from the SuperConference aftermath.

Tell us about your biggest "take away" or "golden nugget" from the SuperConference I'm sure our readers would like to read about your ideas and what you're going to go back and implement.

All the best,

Ryan

I didn't realize it when I first started going there, but UPS does printing.  This particular store does color copying and they offer a variety of different options in terms of paper, printing styles, etc. 

They're a little more expensive than a traditional printer, but if you're in a rush and want a reliable one stop shop for printing, packaging and shipping the branch I worked with on: (2618-A Battleground Ave. Greensboro, NC) did a great job.

Another thing I didn't realize about UPS Stores is that they're franchises.  For some reason I assumed the stores operated under a large corporate network.  I think, because they operate in a franchise model the people working there tend to react more quickly and effectively to customer's needs.

Not that large corporate network models don't work, but when you've got the owner of the business in there slingin boxes with the rest of the staff I would imagine things get done right.

I had a chance to talk to the owner of this particular branch - he actually handled my entire order, I spent more than a $1000 there just on this occasion.

Because he handled my stuff he was curious about our business at New Call Solutions.

So I told him that we help small and mid-sized businesses improve their prospecting and marketing with practical web-based tracking tools.  And that we help businesses improve customer acquisition and determine their advertising ROI by tracking their phone calls.

His ears perked up...

I think he was curious about our service because he wasn't familiar with it and wanted to know more.

So I explained how we helped businesses avoid wasting money advertising that didn't generate results.  I said, "a lot of businesses are spending big bucks($500-$10,000/month) on advertising and they have nothing to show for it."

I then asked him how much he spent on marketing and advertising to generate new business?

He kinda squwinted and said, "oh, we only spend, maybe, $200/month."  "We don't do a lot of marketing, we can't justify it because our average transaction size is only $25."

OK, so here's lesson # 1 from my trip to the UPS Store...

What this owner fails to think about is the life time value of a customer or even the average recurring revenue opportunity that each customer represents.

Logically, he didn't want to spend money on advertising and marketing because he couldn't justify the ROI. Hey, how much can you afford to spend if the net value of your average customer is $25?

$24.99???

That's a hard way to make a living, but I'd venture to guess this guy can make a heck of a lot more off of each customer and he can afford to spend more on marketing.  So his challenge isn't the net value of each customer it's his marketing.

But there's more...

As he continues to open up and talk about his business he explains that he and one of his associates actually go door-to-door to local businesses to drop off literature to create awareness of their store.

I stopped him right there!

"How much is that costing you to go door-to-door?" 

"You say you're only spending $200/month on marketing, but the truth is you're spending a hell of a lot more."

The door-to-door strategy might pay off some of the time, but it's fair to say it's not the most effective strategy.

Why do business owners do stuff like this? 

Because it's what they know.  They don't know what else to do.  They suffer from a "marketing inferiority complex."

Many business owners aren't confident about their marketing so they avoid it all together - to their own detriment. And the reason they're not confident is because they've made feeble, disjointed attempts at "marketing" in the past - their strategy never paid off and they've thrown the whole mess out the window.

I've talked about this in a previous rant, developing a well aligned marketing strategy that takes into account - Market -Message - Medium  will set this store owner free from ever having to pound the pavement again.

And then tracking and measuring your marketing is the key to eliminating a "marketing inferiority complex."

If you think you're working too hard prospecting for business we'd like to hear about it. Drop me a line or give me a call and I'll be happy to provide you with free resources that can help.

Cheers to marketing that works,

Ryan

Think about this...

A sharp focused point of attack at a well defined group will require less effort and resources (people, ammunition, supplies) and allow a greater chance of success than a broad frontal assault. Broad frontal assaults drain battalion resources and reduce the chance of an army’s victory.

So how is this relevant to marketing?

A focused marketing campaign, targeting a well defined group of prospects will require less effort and resources (dollars, time, media) and allow a greater chance of success than an undefined marketing campaign, spread thin, hitting targets who won't respond.

Of course the ideal marketing approach is to align your target group of prospects, the medium or method of communication and your message.

So there are actually more than two variables to consider when planning your "attack", but if you're able to align Market and Message you'll see great results.

Use this focus diagram when planning your marketing "attack":

(adapted from Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation , Stokes 1997)

Yes= clear, well defined    No= unclear, undefined

Let’s look at each scenario…

Quadrant I. Waste:

If your marketing strategy has an unclear target and an undefined or weak message you’ll waste precious time and resources with little or no return. This is total flop unless you somehow get lucky.

Quadrant II. Confusion:

If your marketing strategy has a undefined target and a well defined message you’ll get misunderstanding and indifference from the audience you put the message in front of.
You’ll also get confusion and frustration internally because the “marketing people” don’t understand why the newsletter, brochure, letter or advertisement they spent so much time and creative energy making didn’t work. Ultimately this results in confusion on behalf of both the audience and marketing. And it generates minimal to mediocre return at best.

Quadrant III. Mediocre Results:

If your marketing strategy has a well defined target and a weak message you’ll get mediocre results because you don’t have to be creative with your message if you’re putting it in front of people who are predisposed to your offer and have a need or want for your service.

Quadrant IV. Great Results:

If your marketing strategy has a focused target and a focused message you’ll get great results because you’re actively aligning your compelling offer with an audience that has a demand for your product or service.

Two years ago I was selling sales training. 

So I was working my way to get in front of  VP's, Director's or in some cases a President's of a sales organization.  I then had to persuade the decision maker(s) that their sales team needed the training program we offered and get them to buy the program that best suited their circumstance. 

The training program was designed to improve their sales team's performance and overall sales effectiveness.  There were various levels of training a company could buy.  We always used the analogy with our prospects, " you can go from tee-ball to major league baseball, depending on how in-depth/advanced you wanna go."

Frankly, no matter what level they wanted to go we always had a program that "fit" their circumstance.

I genuinely believed in the program we were selling, but it's a tough sell, especially if you're cold calling or pushing your offer. 

 Cold calling in the sales training business is like a bum holding a sign on the corner that says, "Motivational Speaker. Will work for food."

You're totally mispositioned from the outset of the sale.  In that kind of sale, or in any sale, pushing an uninterested suspect to buy isn't the most effective way to get biz.

We need to revisit an old principle in light of what's taking place with buyers of today (both b-to-b and b-to-c) to build a less painful and more productive customer acquisition process for the present and future. 

This concept isn't new...

For anyone to buy anything there has to be an awareness of a need, want or desire for the product or service that you offer, or at least the benefits that it provides. 

Here's a simple example from a classic late 80's infomercial...

Before there was a such a thing as the Thigh Master, did you want one? 

Most likely, you didn't want a Thigh Master (the patented device - brilliantly demonstrated by Suzanne Somers), but maybe you wanted to easily melt away unwanted fat, strengthen your thighs and tone your butt with minimal effort and time devoted to exercise.

The marketers of Thigh Master started their entire sales campaign on that desire. And they created public awareness for the product with their classic infomercial, which played on people's basic need to shape up and their desire to do as little exercise as possible but still get great results.

• Once buyers recognize their need and desire they go in search of the "thing" that fulfills their need.
• And then they go in search of the source for the "thing."

In Thigh Master's case their infomercial addressed these two steps in the buying process immediately - they were the only game in town. They positioned Thigh Master as a unique product from anything else on the market. The source for getting it was right then and there - "Call 1-800-XXX-ZZZZ now and we'll also include the FREE whatever."

These two steps in the buying process (identifying the thing and identifying the source), and the way buyers do their investigation, is changing the way businesses go to market.

There will always be a place for outside sales and traditional "prospect" in business, but direct marketing organizations with inbound phone sales is the way of the future!

Think about this...

B-to-B buyers and consumers do 98% of their research online before making a decision about a purchase.

Would you agree the new buying process goes something like this?

Smart companies are prompting prospect awareness and putting their message in front of targeted prospects through direct marketing and various media.

They're positioning themselves as theee source for their product or service category.

Prospects have an awareness of a need/desire/want that your product/service fulfills.

The prospect researches online to find what will fulfill this need and they investigate several sources. In most cases they'll passively fill out several fields on a web form and "request more info."

Some will anticipate a phone call from a salesperson, while others will simply move on and forget they ever filled out the form to begin with.

If they're really motivated they'll pick up the phone and call various sources to choose their favorite.

At this point in the buying process your inside sales team, the people taking those phone calls, play a key role in determining if the prospect converts to a customer, goes else where or goes dormant.

If the prospect doesn't convert to a customer, you're lucky if they go dormant because you may have another shot at em.  Otherwise you're marketing just put money in your competitors pocket.

The big picture here is we're moving to a virtual and remote sales landscape. 

One where companies become niche marketing organizations and build loyal customers by creating an efficient inbound customer acquisition process that allows the prospect to easily buy on their terms.

Buyers educate themselves early in the buying process and decide when and how they'll buy, while the company has complete control over the sales process. 

Every step of the customer acquisition process is designed to empower the prospect and make it convenient for them to buy.

The seller never loses control as prospective costumers move through the buying funnel the company has created.

Companies should limit their outside sales activity for premier accounts or highly qualified, big-op prospects.

Travel these days is brutal, gas is expensive, what used to require a face-to-face can now be done via phone and web, and traditional "outside" sales organizations are expensive to manage.

Marketing is the engine that will drive business in the future. 

Generating "opt-in" leads is the new challenge of business today.

It's all about:

• Opt-in lead generation
• Automation
• Inbound phone sales
• Building a scalable customer acquisition system
• Leveraging technology
• Minimizing dependence on "outside sales"  

Inbound phone salespeople will replace the million sky miler, hotel stayin, laptop slingin', fast food eatin road warrior of yesteryear.

I challenge you to think about your business in a new way and consider how you could improve your inbound customer acquisition system.

There's a lot more to be said about this, but not now.

Until next time.

All the best.