It is amazing what the power of social media can do.

Someone in my LinkedIn network had an update about another software platform called SocialGrow. They used a video from Xtranormal, which has pre-cut computer animated scenes. All you have to do is type in a script, place some camera angles, and… you have a movie! It is even easier than iMovie.

Here is what I cam up with.

In the right marketing hands this can be a very powerful tool!

There is a cost to publishing your video but for a small business it is very minimal i.e. under $100. The downside is that there is a limit in the expressions and you cannot upload your own music or sounds. If you keep your videos short — say under two minutes — then it should not be too much of a problem.

Be on the lookout as I have found a new tool to use!

Great sales start with even greater detailed meticulous planning.  All the homework, research, and effort you put into your pre-call sales plan will lead to great conversations and even larger sales.  The proof of this is in your own experiences and in the habits of the highly successful salespeople in your company.

Putting in the effort to plan for your sales call removes the risk of error, nasty surprises, and wasting of time.  The more you prepare, the easier the sales call is.  In fact it is so easy it is like having a great conversation!

Doctor, bare with me.  You and I are going to be looking at this presentation for the very first time. – Anonymous Salesperson

Failure To Plan Is A Plan To Failure

Yet most salespeople do not do anything in regards to pre-call sales planning.  (Looking up information in your computer before you walk in to a call does not count as pre-call sales planning.  It is more like cramming for a test.)  The excuses as to why not are as numerous as the stars in the sky.  You have:

• I know all there is to know about my customer.  I have been calling on them for years!
• I have so much to do that there is no time!  Besides, I have practiced my presentation numerous times.
• The data is old, wrong, and not applicable to my customer.
• A personal favorite… Hmmm, let me think about it and I’ll look up some information after the call.

Do any of these sounds familiar?  Have you said them yourself before?

You know when a call goes bad because you did not plan at all for it.  Questions sound awkward.  The customer is politely listening but you can see in their eyes they feel sorry for you or even begging that you end the torture.  What was once an hour appointment is done in ten minutes.  You never even get the chance to ask for the business and if you do it is completely inappropriate.

The sales call is so bad, so horrible, that you even consider becoming a hermit.  If you do not have that insight and you cannot understand why you are not making sales… well, what does your pre-call sales plan look like?

Meticulous planning will enable everything a man does to appear spontaneous. – Mark Caine.

9 Steps To Pre-Call Planning

1. Review all the sales notes, previous contracts, previous buying habits, and other information on the customer you are going to call on.
   • If it is a brand new prospect – review who their vendors are, buying habits for same priced items, and how they win business.
2. Review the image of the company you are going to visit by looking at their website, facebook, twitter, blog, and any other information you can find on the internet.
3. If the company is public review their annual report.  This will help you see how profitable they are, what their vision is for the future, and if they have announced any major plans that will effect your business.
   • If you know other vendors that work with your client/customer talk to them.  Find out about payments, length of contract negotiations, and who they turn to in times of trouble.
4. Google who you are meeting with and where.  If they are on LinkedIn, see how removed you are from them and if you can get connected.
5. Compile the information from your research and look for gaps in information.
   • You will turn these gaps into “areas of interest.”
   • Create a hypothesis as to why these gaps in information exist.
6. Write open-ended questions that will test your hypothesis and help you fill in the information gaps.
7. Visualize the sales call:
   • How do you expect it to go?
   • What will you do if you are cut short?
   • What will you do if you are given more time?
   • Where do you expect the customer give you objections?
   • When do you want to close the sale?
8. Create anticipated objections from the information you have gathered.
9. Practice your sales presentation with your questions in front of the mirror, your friends/family, and in the car.

A lot of my time was spent searching, thinking and planning my life. – Ryan White

Time Invested = Big Money

Pre-call sales planning is a time consuming process that reaps huge rewards.  You are likely to spend more time on the pre-call plan than you are on the actual sales call.  That is okay.  It means that you are digging deep to understand more about the needs of your customer.  It means that you are preparing to enter into a deep conversation that will be enlightening and have an impact.

What most salespeople do not like is the fact that proper pre-call sales planning takes time away from other things, like watching TV.  Yes, you have been called out.  The dirty little secret is that you, the salesperson, get paid the big bucks because you do not punch in/out on a set schedule.  Sales can occur at anytime.  Therefore you have to use your downtime to plan, practice, and prepare for success.

Will you use everything that you have planned for?  Most likely not, but you will be prepared.  That preparation equals confidence, which equals being ready for anything.  Having that feeling you will walk into any presentation, sales call, or meeting looking taller, stronger, and calmer than the other people in the room.  Your confidence will rub off on everyone else.   You will feel as ready as ever to take on the world.

The great conversation – the magic – that happens from investing your time into pre-call sales planning will result in larger sales.

How do you plan for sales success? What are some examples of pre-call sales planning failures?

I am guilty as the next person.  I get offended if I walk into a store and no one asks if they can help me.  Yet, if they do, I completely blow them off.  It is as if I am looking forward to telling them that I am “just looking”.  The reality is that I have been trained to respond to a specific set of “sales” behavior and when I don’t get it… well I am just offended by the poor customer service!

Yes I like bad openers.  We all do really because stores get graded poorly if the salesperson does not ask us the bare minimum, “Can I help you?”  That is right… you, me, the person on the train/plane/car lane next to you… we expect bad openers.

That has translated into most sales professionals having contrived uninteresting boorish presentation starters.  These range from the “How would you feel if I told you that you could ____________?” to “Hi, I am here to _____________ about ____________.”  (If this were a Madlibs you could have a great time filling in those blanks!)  None of them reach out and grab your attention.  I believe it comes from two things:

1.)  Fear of being told that the client is “just looking.”

2.)  Some internal desire to transfer the torture of practicing a sales pitch over and over without regards as to who will actually hear it.  (Imagine if you will a salesperson saying to himself, I don’t care how I get into the sales presentation! As long as I do, I am a success!

You do not want to be like this, you want to be different.

Somebody is boring me.  I think it is me. – Dylan Thomas

One Chance To Get It Right

Successful sales people do not just have a presentation, a canned opener, and stock questions.  No, they train themselves to have detailed intense (some could say almost intimate) conversations with their customers.  They start by having an opener that will spark that conversation, realizing that each conversation is a different event and each customer is unique.  How you get to that level is through belief and practice.

To build special insightful conversations that will make your clients want to buy from you, refer to you, and rely upon you then you must make these fundamentals core to your salesmanship:

Belief….

• You must believe that each customer is unique and different.
• You must believe that each contact with a customer can educate you and them.
• You must believe that the interaction you will have may be life altering.
• You must believe that no one can help them like you.

Practice…

• Asking open-ended questions that keep a conversation alive.
• Practice different ways to open a conversation with a complete stranger.
• Smiling.
• Listening.
• Talking professionally for measured impact.

Leave no interaction to chance.

That last part implies that you have only one chance to get it right.  Just like your first impression, not matter what you do afterwards it leaves a lasting mark.  So too should you approach each sales call as if it is the one opportunity to get it right.  When think of a sales conversation as such, you will remove as much randomness as possible.

Stellar salespeople believe in themselves and their clients.  Stellar salespeople practice earnestly with creativity so that their interspersing of product information is natural and not forced.  Stellar salespeople do all the necessary preparation to make sure that chance is removed from the equation.   All of this translates into stellar salespeople having openers that don’t sound like openers, instead they sound like the beginning of a beautiful conversation.

You can be that way too, if you desire.

Salesmanship is an art; the perfection of its technique requires study and practice. – J. C. Penney

What are some of the worst openers you have experienced?

You ever have a great conversation that changes the way you view things?  You know, the type of conversation that makes you use everything you’ve learned, makes you take a stand, and leaves you feeling refreshed.  Ever have one of those?

Did you know that you could have one of those conversations when it comes to your business?

Yes you can.

Engrossed in conversation

It begins with you believing that every sales call is an opportunity to have a conversation with your customer/client.  You must believe that this sales call will challenge they way you think and provide you with an opportunity to educate the other participant(s).   In order to have a successful conversation you have to believe in yourself, your product/services, and in the best interest of your customer.

You have to believe.

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet. – Truman Capote

Anatomy of A Great Conversation

Close your eyes.  Think back to any of the great conversations you have had in your life.   What components did they have in common?  How did you feel during them?

I bet as you look back through your conversations you will find that the common components were:

• Having time.
• Asking great challenging questions.
• Opening your personal filters to accept new opinions.
• Allowance for a natural flow – give and take.
• Listening.
• Trust.

Notice what is missing?  Intimate knowledge of the other participant who is part of the conversation.  Granted that most great conversations are with family members and/or friends, there are times when they are held with complete strangers.  When they are held with strangers the same components apply.

A conversation goes sometimes into personal things and that’s nicer. You look to each other and you have a different picture, you get into a relationship. – Maximilian Schell

Practice + Sales Call = Great Conversation

So how do you make a sales call into a great conversation?  Well you must have the same components!  To have those same components you have to practice!

You need to believe in what you are going to ask, say, and demonstrate.  They only way to get this belief is to practice.  Practice your sales call in front of a mirror, practice on your family, and practice on your friends/colleagues.  When you practice with others it should not be a “you speak, they listen” approach, instead it should be in the form of a conversation.  This will help you test your questions, respond to objections that might arise, and… practice listening.

Now, I am sure you a saying to yourself, “Hey! Aren’t conversations supposed to be natural and not staged?  What is up with all this practicing?”  The answer is yes, conversations should occur naturally.  The reason to practice is for you to know when and where you will introduce your product’s benefits for your client.  Through practice you will sound natural when you speak about your product information.

Practicing with your dog counts!

Some of the best comedians present their comedy in a conversational way instead of the old setup and punch line.  As you watch them it seems as if they are bringing up all that funny stuff from the top of their heads.  The secret as to why it comes of so natural… practice.

The same is true in discussing your products/services with your clients.  If you do not practice then you will come off as pushy.  You will not truly listen to your client; instead you will only be waiting for your turn to speak to pitch your product.  In comedy they call that crow barring in a joke.  In sales it is called being obnoxious.  The result is failure either way.

Through your practicing you will be confident in yourself, you will believe, and that will build trust, allow for a flow in the conversation, and help you deactivate your personal filters so that you are open to the needs of your customers.  When you do speak you will present your information naturally as if it is a part of your personal belief system.

A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation. – Mark Twain

Applicable To Any Sales Call

Obviously there will be times when you cannot have a conversation because the other party is just not interested in having one.  You will find that to be the exception though as you will be actively engaging with customers that truly desire to be helped and want a conversation that provides it.

Your goal should be that every sales call is a great conversation no matter if it is in social media, in person, webinar, or over the phone.  It can be done through practice.

The alluring call of the Siren has finally gotten you to succumb.  You are going to market your business into the social media realm.  Here are five guidelines you need to follow to be successful in leveraging social media for your business.

Answer A Few Questions

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong. – Bono

Before you begin blogging, posting, tweeting, and linking you need to answer a few questions first.  The answers you provide will help you establish a focused effort that will result in a better use of resources.  So take your time to really answer them before you jump feet first into social media.  Here are the questions:

• Why should/would anyone listen to you?
• What is your persona?
• What is your voice?
• Where will you engage?
• Who will you want to engage?
• Who will execute your social media plan?
• What do you want to accomplish?
• When do you want to begin?
• How will you measure success?
• How will you listen?

Ten questions that you should have strong answers to before you begin your social media campaign.  All of them are weighed equally in importance.

Is your team asking the right questions?

It is has been my experience that where companies fail is in answering the first, third, and tenth questions sufficiently.  The result has been that these businesses present an unfocused approach that repeatedly misses opportunities to build a strong brand.  So take your time in researching your answers.

Make A Plan

The path to success is to take massive, determined action. – Tony Robbins

You made a business plan for your business, you made a marketing plan to market your business, and you may even have your salespeople use sales plans to beat their quota.  You know that plans keep your company focused and on target.  So why would you not have a plan for your use of social media?

This plan should layout the overall strategy for your social media campaign.  It will be particularly strong if you have successfully answered the questions above.  Primarily knowing what you want to measure and how you define success in social media are key components to your plan.   It will keep you focused and away from wasting time.

Your social media plan should be incorporated with your marketing, sales, and customer service plans.  It should not be a stand-alone entity.  Doing this will allow you to keep a

The Secret Recipe

single voice and representation of your brand not matter where your customers may engage you.

Your social media plan – like other plans for your business – should be a living document that is updated and adjusted to take advantage of opportunities for your business.  It is best to break down your tactical components of your social media plan into 30-60-90 day increments.  It is easier to execute in more manageable bites.

Choose The Right Platform

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. – Abraham Lincoln

It is important that you research which social media platform is right for your business.  Do not get caught up in the initial hype surrounding some of the platforms out there.  Facebook may not be where your customers are if you are a manufacturing B2B that sells ball bearings.  Go where your customers and where influencers of your customers roam.  This means that you might not go on to Twitter or Facebook, but set up a blog or network intensely on LinkedIn.  Business is still location, location, and location.

Test With Patience And Adjust

Distance tests a horse’s strength. Time reveals a person’s character. – Chinese Proverb

You need to measure your actions.

If you are entering into social media for the first time or coming back to it after a failed attempt, remember that patience is a virtue.  Social media is not a quick sale or a fast customer service resolution.  Social media is about being social and building relationships.  In essence social media is about what you and I do everyday at the office, with our customers, and how we make friends.  All of the things we have learned in the real world apply in social media: it takes time to get to know someone.

The great thing about that time is it allows you to test ideas, messaging, and service models while receiving feedback (that can be brutally honest) about your products.  If you enter into this medium with honest intentions you will be rewarded with insights that you would have most likely been overlooked.

Measure Your Effort

People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results – Albert Einstein

When you have established what it is that you want to measure in your social media campaign – measure it.  It could be gaining new followers, subscribers, fans, or customers.  Whatever it may be, the measurement you have selected is the best indicator of your efforts and if they are in alignment with your plan.  This is the same as how your measure your sales versus a quota or the return on a capital investment your business has made.  Otherwise how do you know what you are doing is correct?

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.  – Ghandi

Odysseus had his crew put wax in their ears so they would not row his ship upon the deadly rocks where the Sirens lived.  Only he heard their song.  Your business needs to have the same focus.

When you decide to enter into social media as a marketing tool it can be easy for everyone to want to be involved.  That will tear you business apart and waste valuable resources.  Your effort needs to be focused.

There is no need to rush when it comes to social media.  Learn, observe, research, plan, and then execute a campaign that focuses on building strong relationships.  You will be rewarded.

How Old School for the 21st Century

Recently I was approached over the phone by a company that wanted me to purchase keyword advertisement for life.  The idea being that my company would have preferred ad placement when someone searches for specific keywords like business coaching, corporate coaching, etc.  That a few grand up front would have a longer ROI than the horror of pay-per-click when one gets the bill from Google. (I learned to quickly control the content portion of ads after my first bill.)  A pretty straightforward proposition from this company, which is using cold calling as a sales technique to get the business.  Great proposition; bad sales approach!

Being a former “sales guy” I am always eager to be sold to.

There are mountains of papers, books, pamphlets, newsletters, and blog posts about how horrible cold calling is.  It sucks.  Cold calling is not the preferred methodology when it comes to sales.  People hate it when they have to do it and when it is done to them.  Yet, at some point in every business, it happens.   So it happened to me.

“Give him money and watch it burn a hole in his pocket.”

Person To Person Sales In The Andes

Being a former “sales guy” I am always eager to be sold to.  I am looking for a reason to part with my cash.  As my father said, “Give him money and watch it burn a hole in his pocket.”  So very true at times.  The real reason I like to be sold to is that I get a chance to learn from someone else.  I get to listen to their probing techniques; I learn how they handle my objections, and how they swoop in for the close. It is a great chance to receive a sales education.

The sales person did not to build a relationship, which is hard to do over the phone, yet they did not even try.

So that is why I was heart-broken when I told this particular sales person my objection to buying their products/services that they just hung upon me.  This sales person did not try to clarify why I objected (price was the biggest issue), nor did they try to find a way to make me a better offer, and the left me felt feeling… inadequate.  That I was not worthy of being a customer, which my money is not “good enough” to be fought for.  The latter really ticks me off.

For this company I was not the ideal customer most likely, yet when they got their target list for their cold calls I fell on it somehow.  The sales person did not to build a relationship, which is hard to do over the phone, yet they did not even try.  There was no effort to understand what it is my business does and how their services could be of value to me.  All of these are fatal flaws of the cold call.

The result for this company has been to insult a person, who may not be an ideal customer, but who is now motivated to blog “negatively” about the experience.

How can your business avoid this fatal mistake?

• Train your sales team to be ready for push back. Objections are part of every sales call.  There are millions of them.  In fact if you do not get an objection it really means that your customer is not listening or you are not selling.  Why?  Objections mean the customer is engaged with what it is the salesperson is presenting.  It means that the customer is looking for a reason of value to purchase the goods and services you are offering.  It means that – shhh, don’t tell anyone the secret of sales – a conversation is taking place (perish the thought!)
• Cleanse your call file. Just because you have a territory, call list, or computer generated targets does not mean that you have the right customers to call on.  You just have the right names that met the criteria used to find these “clients”, that is all.  You have to make sure that they meet your ideal customer that your business wishes to obtain.  If they do then you pre-call plan how to engage in conversation, visualize how the call will go, and what you expect to happen.  You provide the four steps to ideal customer service during the call and afterwards.  This little bit of effort before the call will result in a tremendous amount of success and long-term sales.
• Train your sales staff to be human. Most people will say that they are “not a sales person” or cannot “be pushy” to be in sales.  That is not what sales is about.  Sales is a conversation between two or more representatives from different businesses or between a business and consumers.  That is sales.  Unless you cannot carry a conversation, most people engage in some of sales whenever they ask for something, then you can perform sales.  While much money has been spent testing scripts, phrases, charts, benefit statements, and pretty pictures by the marketing team, it is up to the salesperson to communicate that information.   Please do it as a human! I beg you! We all beg you!  Which means put the script down, be true yourself and have a conversation!
• Avoid cold calling at all costs. It is a horrible way to do business and its long-term effect is negative perception for short-term gain.  If, heaven forbid, you are forced to go this route, then train your staff to research their targets and build business rapport before even thinking about asking for the business.  Or you’ll get blogs like this.

This most likely was not the intended outcome the company that called me wanted.  Yet this is what they get in return when they do not train their sales team effectively.  You get to learn from their mistakes.

What cold calling stories do you know that have left you freezing?

About the author:

Erroin A. Martin is a Business Advocate with the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, a business coaching and consultancy provider for business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs. He has fifteen years experience working within the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, natural resources, medical devices, software, technology, business services, and agriculture industries in various levels of leadership across six continents. He has led diverse teams in sales, marketing, planning, and in the Army.  He currently coaches business leaders and physicians in the tools needed to plan for their success. Learn more about the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC at www.vongehrconsulting.com or call +1 203 433 8079.  You can follow him on Twitter at @Erroin

The Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, was founded by Erroin A. Martin to provide business coaching, business consulting, and other services to companies both large and small.  The primary goal is to have his clients be passionate about their business and reach the unachievable.

Somewhere it is written that it takes 21 days or more to change a habit or establish a new one.  (Although I am sure under the right pressures those days can be shortened.)  If it is really the case that it takes 21 days then you should use that number when establishing how many times you are going to speak with your customers/clients.

Meeting With A Client

First, you cannot bug your clients/customers for twenty-one straight days.  That is simply insane and they are in their correct judgement to bar you from the door.  If you have an established call cycle that you are working with to obtain clients then you can spread those twenty-one days over a number of weeks or months.

Now you are probably saying to yourself that spreading out twenty-one customer contacts over the calendar can really make your sales cycle longer than it should be.  Yes, that is very true, it would definitely do that.  Unless you are sitting on a huge pile of cash, that probably is not going to be a good thing for you to waste that time.  So instead divide that number by three and you will come up with seven different times you are going to contact your client/customer.

Okay, but didn’t you just say that it takes 21 days to change a habit, you ask.  I did and the number seven is the number of times you are going to contact your customer through three different means.  Those different methods are:

• Face to face meetings

• Telephone conversations

• Webinars

• YouTube Videos

• Podcasts

• Mailers

• Newsletters

• Blogs

• Tweets

• Emails

• Brochures

• And anything else that puts you in front of the customer.

The key is to keep your message consistent and with value to your client/customer.  Remember they have reached out to you and/or have done business with you in the past.  Therefore they are initially receptive to the information you have to offer.  If you have done your intelligence of the market and customer correctly then it should be easy for you to offer value.

Learn more from our podcasts.

What in the heck does that mean?

It means another skill the top 1%, possess in making the sales.  It means understanding the terrain in which the top 1% salesperson is going to making their sales call in.  It means knowing who the decision makers, influencers, environmental pressures, and who the “false buyers” are.  It means comprehending how long the sale is going to take.  It means applying the proper resources at the right time in the right place to secure sales success.

The U.S. Military has simple acronym for this called METT-T.  Which is defined as Mission Enemy Troops Terrain and Time.  While the bean counters can be your enemy, in sales everyone involved in the call is an opportunity.  Not to leave the universe lacking for another acronym, the top 1% employ what is called CALL.

Commission

• The top1% understand that each sales call will have an impact on what bonus (aka commission) they will make.  They also take their profession seriously. Like errant knights in service of their company, they are the defense against bankruptcy and they are the paladins of the company’s mission.

Alliances

• The top 1%, almost supernaturally appears, can map out all the major players in their accounts, who has influence, who is a façade of authority, and who can make the decision to purchase.  The 1% can even anticipate what corporate politics will be involved in making the decision.  They can do this because they have prepared diligently prior to the first contact with a prospect or customer.

Logistics

• The top 1% plan to have the right resources in place to put the product in the customers hands, to have third party references, and to over deliver on any promises they might have made.  The obvious example is the salesperson that always has a business card at the ready and always lends you a pen when you need one.  Like the Boy Scouts, they are always prepared.

Location

• The top 1% control the environment of the sales call.  They set the room up so that all eyes will be on them and focused.  They anticipate technical glitches that can pop up on anyone.  They test and test and test their products prior to any demonstration.  If they can help it, they always make sure the decision to purchase is made in person.

Are you prepared for the CALL?