by Admin | Sep 3, 2019 | Business Development, Networking, Prospecting, Referrals
This year my husband and I celebrate our 28th wedding anniversary. One key lesson I have learned in staying married to the same man for that long is that every day takes 100% investment of effort into our relationship. There is no 50/50 in a marriage, it’s all in for each partner. In the beginning it was much easier as we had a lot of hormones running amuck and were very young and immature about relationships. We didn’t realize the path to finding your happiness lay in helping someone else find their happiness. This lesson came to us after the second child and about ten years in when I realized that this man helped me be the best me I could be. And that every day he wakes up and asks me how he can make me happy today and I realize that I want the same thing for him. How does this relate to your prospecting effort? Too often we have a ‘routine’ we follow and it becomes something we ‘have to do’ instead of something we look forward to. We also fall into the routine and out of love with what connected us to our profession in the first place. Today we will take a bit of a different approach to see what has to shift to make it more enjoyable and yes, it can be the most fun part of your business! Align with your ‘why’ – Remember what an impact you actually make with your best clients. Devote a significant amount of your prospecting effort to engaging your great clients. If you have an account...
by Admin | Aug 26, 2019 | Business Development, Business Relationships, Networking, Prospecting, Referrals
Today’s buyers have so many more tools at their fingertips to find solutions for the problems they are experiencing. Thanks to social media influences, the magic of Google and remarketing, they may be aware of problems they have that before wouldn’t have even been recognized. In some cases they may have unfounded fears or skepticism that need to be addressed before they ever engage with you. Whatever the situation may look like, the buyer journey your best client has gone through with you to engage your solution, similar prospects also go through to solve their issues. Today I’d like to talk about how a few conversations with your top clients can help you design a nurturing process to help your best prospects recognize their need, create urgency to engage and build credibility in your solution. And close more business for you in the process! Let’s get to it! Start with figuring out who are your top prospects, if you struggle with how to profile your client base, here’s a short post on LinkedIn that talks about profiling your clients to recognize how you narrow your focus to serve these folks often and well. And avoid those that aren’t profitable. This will help with creating your perfect prospect profile. Once you figure out who the top clients are that you’d like to reproduce, you need to dig into what their approach was to working with you. I would like for you to interview them about their ENTIRE buyer journey. Not just once you met them. I want you to go back in time to when they realized they had something...
by Admin | Aug 19, 2019 | Business Development, Business Relationships, Influence, Networking, Prospecting
Hint – Like Most Things in life, it’s More about Listening than Talking My Grandma Mattie was a very wise woman. We lost her at the age of 97 several years back before social media had really arrived. I do remember wisdom she shared with me about life in general that I certainly think applies to best practices in social selling. She shared with me “God gave you two ears and one mouth to do more than twice as much listening as talking.” I think Grandma would have been a great sales trainer. The biggest lesson we teach is how to ask the right questions to help our prospect (and us) figure out if we have the solution to their problem. Today I will share with you 5 Do’s and a couple of Do Not’s to engage in social selling. Be clear about who you are talking to. The more crystal clear you can be with your prospect profile, the easier it is to align your messaging, create content and share insight. A big nugget here – the more narrow your prospect profile the better. Interview your clients that fit your perfect prospect profile, find out what their biggest goals are in the next 18 months and what obstacles they see in accomplishing those goals. Understand the challenges they face. This is another reason the narrower the vertical market segment, the easier it is to really engage in their world. Subscribe to their industry publications. Follow their thought leaders and truly become an ‘expert’ in their space. An easy example – I have never been in the manufacturing space...
by Admin | Dec 14, 2014 | Business Relationships, Goal Setting and Achievement, Networking
What an amazing year! And like the one before, it seems to get faster and faster as we get older. One of the greatest benefits of aging is gaining wisdom through life experiences – both your own and others. As we reflect on 2014 and look through our experiences, I encourage you to think of who enriched your life this year. If your schedule is like mine, holiday parties, family activities, gift buying, wrapping up year end, etc all seem to take every spare moment until there is not a single moment to just be. I encourage you to really take a few moments, carve them out, and look back on who really added to 2014. I was reading a great article this weekend in the Huffington Post that talked about the 5 lists to make in reviewing your year. After reviewing their list (and enjoying the post tremendously) I thought I would share with you my own top 5 lists to make. And in the spirit of our tagline – SalezWORKS where relationships meet opportunity, I will talk with you about the top 5 lists of relationships to develop, nurture and grow in 2015. 1. Let’s start with your top new relationships in 2014 – this one is a pretty obvious place to begin. Take a look back at the people who have led you to great new clients, introduced you to new productive referral partnerships, enriched your knowledge base or has just proven to be a fabulous person to know. All of these are critical components belong in your center of influence. If you wish...
by Admin | Oct 20, 2014 | Networking, Referrals
With referral partners? Made you look, didn’t I? This topic of conversation has arisen this week even more than it usually does, which inspired me to write this post. We cultivate relationships with referral partners hoping to gain those quality introductions, not be one of 3 on a list that is emailed over with no added insight from referrer. Introductions are something many struggle with to obtain from referral partners. It makes the difference between a 10% chance of getting the deal to a nearly 90% with a highly influential referrer. We often run with ‘you can use my name when you call’ permission from the referrer just because we don’t want to push our luck. What does this have to do with monogamy? The question is, should you only have one referral partner in a given profession? Is it cheating to have more than one? Let’s consider a few factors…. When an introduction is made, risk is taken by the referrer opening a door to a valuable relationship that could be lost if you screw up. I think just about anyone who has been in business for a significant time has been present and accounted for at a train wreck and I know of a few that have even caused the death of a few companies. Much is at stake. Trust is key. Which necessitates open doors of communication with referral partners about exactly who is, and who is not, a great referral. When I ask ‘who is a great client for you?’ and the response is ‘anyone who has a business, job, pulse, etc’ I am immediately...
