Voicemails can either be your best friend or worst enemy (or possibly a little bit of both). It’s a common occurrence in sales and it’s a critical selling skill to possess.
My suggestion is that instead of lamenting about how frustrating it is to reach people’s voicemail, why not commit to improving your voicemail skills.
There are thousands of conferences every year, and thousands of opportunities for attendees, exhibitors, speakers, and conference planners to benefit from these events.
You don’t want to waste your time networking and not take action. Let’s talk about getting the most out of live events.
At Easy Biz Solutions we’ve always been a huge advocate for training and education – specifically, sales training. A large chunk of the entire business is anchored in the power of education.
In the last 5 years, that desire to learn and grow has been reinvigorated.
I’ll just say it: I’m sick of the whiners. I’m sick of people who hit a bump in the road and completely shut down.
I get it sometimes being in business is hard. But, as Entrepreneurs, we get paid to find and execute SOLUTIONS, not to sit in the corner and complain about how hard or unfair things are.
But this isn’t just about you this is also about the people you surround yourself with. If you surround yourself with successful people—successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, innovators, marketers, doers you’ll be more likely to be successful.
If you surround yourself with the opposite – with people who aren’t solution-oriented. That spend their days whining and complaining they’re only going to pull you down.
This is especially true when those people are your team—the employees you’ve brought on board, trained and supported.
If they aren’t strategic and solution-oriented. If they’re whiners and complainers who expect everything to be done for them then your business really can’t thrive, at least not to its fullest potential.
It’s easy to say you don’t hire couples or significant others of employees or friends and family—that’s black and white. But it’s hard to make a rule about not-so-solution-oriented people sometimes, they disguise themselves as motivated and committed workers.
Then BAM! The truth hits you and your company like a ton of bricks.
All of that said, my warnings are simple: if someone complains and whines in their interview or during any part of the hiring process, chances are that’s not going to get any better.
In fact, it’s probably going to get worse. Even if the person looks perfect on paper, don’t assume these interactions are some sort of a fluke. They probably aren’t.
The best, most experiences and most creative people can have the energy and enthusiasm beaten out of them after spending a few years in the corporate world. Maybe their intuitiveness and excitement weren’t appreciated by their previous companies.
Now, when something goes wrong, they’re comfortable just complaining instead of rolling up their sleeves and digging in. And it’s not your job to try and right that course.
It’s your job to run a successful company and that’s NOT made up of high-potential complainers.
It’s made up of people who get the job done. Period.
Ideally, during the interview process you’ll have an opportunity to give candidates a personality test or a lengthly test to see how they deal with problems. That would be ideal!
If you can’t swing it, don’t be afraid to do multiple interviews. Someone may seem great at first glance, but when they’re more comfortable may show their true colors.
Throughout every hiring exercise, remind yourself this: you want, need and DESERVE go-getters. These people stumble on problems and work to fix them immediately.
To them, every challenge is an opportunity and when they do present the next issue to you it’s always paired with a solution, a suggestion or some course of action.
Stop hiring them… Stop making excuses for them…. Stop indulging them… Just STOP!
And if and when one creeps into your organization, weed them out ASAP and don’t feel bad about it.
If they deserved the job, they didn’t and they WON’T. So, simply, move on. And never look back.
Because, let’s face it … if your hiring process isn’t as effective and efficient as possible, you’re not only missing out on the best talent, you’re also wasting time and money trying to fill needed positions … and potentially damaging your company’s reputation.
Did you know that the average cost to hire a new full time employee is more than 4,000 USD? That’s a scary thought!
It’s important to learn how to attract, identify, and select the best candidates for any job you need to fill.
By the end of this , you’ll have a great understanding of how to put yourself in the best position to attract, identify, and select the best candidates for any job you need to fill.
Let’s get to it!
We are here to help. If you want any help, just Messenger us (Private Message Us) at our Facebook Messenger link – m.me/EasyOnlineBizSolutions
Talk Soon,
Dave Cane
The one thing most new salespeople lack more than anything is the ability to sell with confidence. Being able to confidently deliver your pitch and answer the prospect’s objections is one of the most important skills to master on your way to becoming a sales pro.
To sell, you must believe in your product or service – and believe in yourself. Your selling skills depend, in large part, on your level of self-confidence.
Other people sense whether or not you believe in yourself, and by extension, whether or not you believe in what you’re doing. That belief is what persuades the customer or client to buy the product or service.
Therefore, building your self-confidence will improve your selling skills.
Confident salespeople know their strengths and they work to develop them. This comes from being self-aware, not from being arrogant.
So identify an area you or your team naturally excels at, and then get coaching to develop it even further.
This will help you or them improve in that area. But even more, it will help them build self-confidence when they’re faced with areas they find challenging (for example – delivering a sales presentation.)
One of the best ways your salespeople can build their confidence in sales is to surround themselves with successful, goal-oriented people.
The sales manager should set the example by being positive and confident themselves, and avoiding negativity when possible.
Positive, optimistic people motivate us to achieve. Try pairing up new sales reps with a mentor who can help them develop their skills and build their confidence.
A mentor is great for this. However if you are a team leader then you should work to build a culture where your members regularly share “tribal knowledge.”
When a member of your team achieves success, recognize it and ask them to present their success story at your next team meeting.
They’ll own that area of expertise and increase their own confidence level. At the same time, they’ll help their team members to achieve the same success.
We will all experience success and failure. They’re both a necessary part of life.
It’s how we react and learn from our successes and failures that makes the biggest difference.
When you or your team fail at something, be coached or coach them to use it to their advantage. They should learn from it, brush themselves off, and go back out there stronger than before.
When you experience a win, you should do the same thing. Examine what went well, and replicate it in the future.
While a win can provide a confidence level boost, you should learn to always be thinking about the next opportunity on the horizon.
See yourself as a bearer of good news, a problem solver, and a competent, knowledgeable expert. Realize that you have information and ideas that will add value for your prospect.
Many Olympic athletes use visualization techniques to become medal winners in worldwide competition. Close your eyes and imagine that you’re having a successful interaction with your prospect. Imagine feelings of positivity happening as you see yourself winning in your mind’s eye.
People are hungry for ideas, and a prospect is likely to be interested in an idea that’s going to be of benefit to him or her in some way. Instead of seeing yourself as selling a product, see yourself as giving away good ideas.
Classic motivator Zig Ziglar once said;
“…that being selective about the things that you choose to read, look at, or listen to is a key way to guard against negative thinking.”
If you change the mind’s input, you will change your emotional output.
It’s amazing how your outlook will change when you start each day thanking someone else.
We make better decisions when we have a clear mind, and the best way to clear your mind is to focus on expressing gratitude to those people around you. Along the way, we feel much better about ourselves as well.
When you take the time to notice what another person is doing and you congratulate them, you’ll suddenly find yourself being more aware of your own talents and accomplishments.
These goals should be ones you know you can achieve early in the week.
Success breeds success. Some may see this as being contrary to being successful, but I see it as a valuable tool that works. Each week, set yourself one or two goals you know you can accomplish early in the week.
When you accomplish them, congratulate yourself. You will be amazed at the impact this method will have on your level of confidence.
This does not mean you shouldn’t also have big long-term goals. What this means is the weekly goals you intend to accomplish early in the week should help move you closer to achieving your big long-term goals.
When we allow ourselves to focus our attention on short-term things, we are more likely to view things as being overwhelming. Thinking long-term allows us to put what seems like a bad situation into context.
Think back a few months or a few years and remember what it was you were worried about. Fast forward to today and most likely you’ll find yourself wondering why you would have been worried about something that small.
Time helps put everything in context, reduces pressure and allows you to be more confident.
Only you can define confidence and success. It’s a personal decision you have to make.
Negative people allow themselves to be seen as victims. Confident people do not allow the concept of being a victim to enter their thinking.
Ground yourself in your beliefs and your personal integrity. There is no way others will see you as confident unless you see yourself as confident. In the end, you’re the one who will determine your level of confidence.
Going around comparing your level of confidence to how other people see themselves will only lead to arrogance.
Arrogant people are those who view themselves as no longer needing to learn from others, and when this happens they will quickly find themselves isolated from others.
Ask yourself, “How successful will I be in sales if I’m isolated from others?”
When you look at the above 13 ways to boost your confidence, which ways really resonate with you?
Don’t delay in building confidence that will positively impact not only your sales career, but more importantly, your life overall!
Where we will first we identify your skill level, your wants and desires, by reviewing your Application.
There is No Charge to Submit an Application
at our Facebook Messenger link – http://m.me/EasyOnlineBizSolutions
Talk Soon,
Dave Cane
Despite all the advances in social media, CRM software, marketing automation and other high-tech tools designed to connect sellers with willing buyers, sales prospecting still involves a lot of old-fashioned pick-and-shovel work to separate the gold from the dirt.
But prospecting isn’t just about working hard. Some people dig for gold all day long and come up empty-handed. Others know how to work smarter and get a better return on their effort.
Are you one of those people who are timid when engaging a prospect with tough questions? Maybe you are someone that tries to gently nurture a lead or a prospect, so you don’t lose them?
Prospecting is the art of opening new relationships. The new business opportunities that later turn into sales are initially identified through prospecting, making prospecting the lifeblood of sales.
The first way to improve your prospecting results is to acknowledge its importance to your sales results and treat it accordingly.
Improving your prospecting results begins with setting aside the time and the energy to prospect each and every day. And, yes, we do mean each and every day.
Schedule to make time to prospect every day. It is best to set aside the time first thing in the morning to ensure it gets done before the world makes other demands of you.
“Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short.”
– Adam Hochschild
Turn off the Internet, email, and turn off or mute your smartphone. We have found that Social Media to be the largest source of distraction.
Focus.
Tell your family and friends that you have a new found discipline and that you need their support. Promise to catch up with them later.
Hang a sign on your door saying “Do Not Disturb! Prospecting!” If you don’t have a door, use string and hang the sign over your desk.
Prospecting is the activity of opening new relationships, but it isn’t really what we are focused on here.
To prospect well, you need to focus your time and energy on what works best for you, but not exclusively. If you are great at cold calling, you should absolutely focus on cold calling.
But that doesn’t mean that you should never use email marketing, inbound marketing, networking, trade shows and conferences, direct mail, social networking, or referrals. You should include all of these tools in your arsenal.
Make a list of all of the methods that you can and will use to prospect.
Plan the time that you will set aside for each method and how many prospects you will gain from your effort. For example, you might commit to attending one networking event per month with the result that you acquire two new prospects from each networking event.
Measure these results and focus on what generates the greatest return on your investment of time, but remember that your prospects may have their own opinion on how they best like to be approached, and you shouldn’t exclude any method.
Two things cause poor prospecting results. The first is not spending enough time prospecting. The other is ineffective prospecting. This mostly comes down to language choices. It comes down to what you are saying when you prospect.
There is no substitute for scripts.
“But wait!” you say. “I am a professional salesperson and I can’t sound like I am using a script!” We hear you loud and clear. And you can’t sound like someone that your prospect isn’t interested in meeting either.
First, you have to recognize that you are already using a script. The words that you use when prospecting and on sales calls, are choices that are comfortable to you because you have rehearsed them.
They are comfortable to you because you have them memorized, not because you are reading them. But this doesn’t necessarily mean they are the best script to use.
Your effectiveness is improved by choosing your words carefully. Making observations about what is working and what isn’t working. This takes an awareness, focus, and discipline. It also allows you to experiment with language structures to see what is most effective.
Write scripts for each of the prospecting methods you use. Write responses to the common objections you hear. Rehearse them. If you are part of a great sales team, do this together and rehearse them together.
The outcome of prospecting is to open the relationship. This almost always involves obtaining the commitment for an appointment.
Effectiveness in prospecting is improved by simply focusing on the outcome. This means that you don’t allow your prospecting to turn into a needs analysis, a presentation, or a discussion about the merits of your product or service.
It means you apply a laser-like focus on scheduling the appointment.
The reason some people struggle focusing on the outcome of an appointment and the reason often they slip into the sales mode is because they feel that they have to prove that they can create value for the prospect during their prospecting activity.
Selling, at this point, is premature.
Just know that a successful outcome here is almost always an appointment. It doesn’t matter how much you liked them or how much they liked you if you didn’t schedule an appointment.
From the start, we have to be focused on moving the lead forward, and that includes creating value as quickly as possible.
You create value by asking questions early, and we mean very early in the process.
If you fail to have a plan as to how you tie value to the outcomes the prospect desires, then you run a major risk of the prospect never going anywhere. This means you need to ask “value-focused” questions sooner than you most likely have been doing.
“Value focused” questions are ones that get the other person discussing the real issues they’re facing. They aren’t absolute questions regarding price, but rather they’re questions that help uncover the outcome the customer wants.
You can’t afford to not ask tough questions early in the process. The questions you ask will vary based on what you do and who you’re working with, but here are just a couple to get you thinking:
What is the risk if you don’t do anything?
Why has this become a problem for you?
How will this impact other parts of your business?
You see these questions are designed to engage.
Don’t think you can’t ask questions like this during the first call. If you don’t ask questions like this, you run the risk of having the other person focus the conversation on the features of what you sell and that you’re nothing more than a low-price vendor.
Today your job is to up your game with the questions you ask. Don’t hold back. The faster you know the outcome the prospect is looking for, the sooner you will be able to equate it to value. In the end, your customers will only pay for value.
There is too much to write here about how to get good at cold calling. But it is important that you have it in your repertoire, and that you build your competency picking up the phone and scheduling an appointment.
Cold calling is still one of the fastest ways to schedule appointments and to open relationships, and the very best salespeople are the very best at cold calling. They are also the very best at all other forms of prospecting, and the only people we have found that are willing to consistently ask for referrals, something else salespeople avoid.
Start cold calling.
Even when you use all of the ideas above, you are still going to hear “no.”
You are going to hear it a lot. But relationships, including business relationships, are built over time. Your consistent and unrelenting pursuit of your dream clients is part of a longer-term plan for success and not a quick fix.
Consistency here means that these prospects hear from you more than sporadically. It means they hear from you frequently and with all the predictability of the Sun rising each morning.
Some of the best relationships and the biggest deals will take the longest time to win, and your consistent nurturing of these relationships will open opportunities for you over time.
This approach proves that you are not going to disappear like so many of your peers, that you are truly interested in working with them, that you are a professional who executes well, and that you are determined.
These are some of the attributes that people look for in salespeople, partners and friends.
Write a nurturing plan.
What will you do to create value for your dream clients even before they decide to set an appointment with you? How often will you call? How often will they receive something from you? What will they receive? What will it say about you? How will it create trust?
Opening relationships is built upon the ability to prospect. Follow these steps to improve your prospecting results.
Invest in yourself by checking out our coaching program today!
Don’t forget that a coach can help improve your prospecting skills – excel in your business.
If you want or need any help – connect with us on one of our social media platforms or on our contact us form!
Talk Soon,
Nicky and Dave
Whatever the survey, public speaking is ranked among the top – often above death. If you don’t know how to speak in public, you could be hurting your professional and personal life.
There are two types of people in this world:
1. Those scared to give presentations
2. Those who love them.
Me, I fall into the first category.
Though l’ve gotten better at over coming stage fright over the years.
Imagine that you’re pitching a shiny new idea to your boss, prospect or client. You could be almost positive that they’ll like it, or maybe you know it’ll be a hard sell.
And then comes the first hint of an objection: a skeptical or dismissive remark, possibly phrased as a question. You can see the whole plan collapsing. Read more
For how much time most of us spend on the phone, it’s amazing how poor our phone skills can become if we are not improving our skills regularly. It’s especially important for those in sales where’s it’s a necessity for you be on the phone.
We all need a little inspiration and motivation sometimes to re-shape our attitudes and our actions, and keep us on the road to success. It’s time to be intentional about your phone sales.
To do that you must consider our phone sales tips when you are contacting your customers and prospects.
