No matter what side of the deal you are on, whether you are prospecting for new business or delivering on an account that you’ve already secured, the most destructive thing you can do as a salesperson is to be presumptuous with your customer. Many potentially great business relationships crumble merely from poor communication that leads to unmet expectations. That is why there is so much talk today in the world of professional sales about the importance of asking questions. Great sales people err on the side of nagging, relentlessly following up with the customer to make sure that everything is clear. When we as salespeople are unsure about what a customer wants or expects and, instead of asking, simply give our best guess, we send one of three negative signals.

Read more at http://www.soldlab.com/content/readMore1/infobox/featured_news/template/default/active_id/5

  Recently, I’ve received a flood of cold calls from salespeople asking to “network” with me. The unanswered questions in my mind when I’m approached with a request like that are. . . Why? To what end? Why should I meet with you?

In order to ensure relevancy with your networking efforts, it’s important to have a purpose for any meeting.

One of the most common mistakes salespeople make is to think that all meetings are good meetings.

That’s just not the case.

“Good” meetings are the ones with defined purposes and definitive next steps that move you and a prospect closer to a decision (even a “no” is good because it frees up your time to move on).

Ask yourself questions like, “Why is this person willing to meet with me?” “What is the purpose of this meeting?” “What do I expect to get out of this meeting?” “What does my prospect hope to achieve?”

Once you’ve clearly defined the purpose in your mind, share it with your prospect, but leave opportunity for them to add to it. Do this when you set the appointment, when you confirm the appointment, and when you begin the meeting.

Here’s what I mean: read further at http://www.soldlab.com/news/2012/02/07/Networking-With-Relevance/

  I remember the first time I ran a half marathon, I took off from the start line and ran, no pre-run strategy, no game plan, I just took off, and at about the 16 KM mark, I ran out gas and dragged myself to the finish line.  While I still had a respectable finish for a 50 year old former smoker, I also knew there had to be a better way.

After a bit of reading, I discovered a process described as 10 – 1, the idea being you run at race pace for ten minutes, then ease off for one minute, allowing you to recover mentally and physically, and ready yourself for the next 10 minutes.

Read more at http://www.soldlab.com/content/readMore1/infobox/featured_news/template/default/active_id/5

Our friends at Totango,  a leading provider of an online customer engagement platform for cloud businesses, announced today the availability of its paid service and shared statistics from the beta period, which concluded this month. To date, Totango has analyzed and optimized the customer engagement with more than 1 million prospects and customers leading to increases in sales performance and higher rates of customer success for its SaaS (software-as-a-service) customers.

  Many salespeople make the assumption that activity leads to results. “As long as I’m doing something,” they argue, “results will come.”

This is a mistake. It’s the best way to get stuck in the activity trap. The activity trap occurs when you begin working too hard to make the sale. Sales is much more simple than a lot of salespeople make it out to be.

Above all, your interactions must be meaningful. If all you’re doing on a call with a prospect is saying ‘hello,’ all you’ll hear is ‘hell no.’ Instead, your activities need to fall into one of these four productive buckets:

    They educate your prospects.
    They uncover essential information about your prospect.
    They reveal pivotal information about your solution to your prospect.
    They close opportunities (for the good or bad).

Read further at http://www.soldlab.com/content/readMore1/infobox/featured_news/template/default/active_id/5

  Like many salespeople and small business owners, I find staying focused during prime selling hours to be difficult. As a sales trainer, coach, and consultant, my days are filled with activities that try to pull me away from selling. Yet, like every other company, selling is the life blood of my business—its what keeps the doors open and the company healthy and growing.

Interruptions, minor emergencies, emails, phone calls, and a myriad of other issues and concerns are constantly trying to draw my attention away from my primary business activity—selling.

Read more http://www.soldlab.com/content/readMore1/infobox/featured_news/template/default/active_id/5

  It’s that time of the year when people set New Year’s resolutions and goals.  Setting goals really boils down to making new and better choices.  It’s as much about what you are going to start doing as it is about what you are going to stop doing. 
This tradition has been going on for years and most of the time it is just rhetoric and hope which eventually leads back to old comfortable behaviors and attitudes.  Here’s three things to consider choosing if you are serious about making 2012 your best year in sales.

Read more at http://www.soldlab.com/content/readMore1/infobox/featured_news/template/default/active_id/5

Some of the takeaways of this powerful webinar:
  1. Are you qualifying your customer at EVERY stage of the sales process, we’ll show you how.  
 
2. What are the key decision indicators (KDI) that exist in every selling situation and how do you spot them?

3. Learn how to leverage your value position with the customer helping them move forward at each crucial juncture.
 
4. Continued success depends on a customer who is not simply satisfied (that is a gross minimum standard) but a customer who will be a walking, talking evangel for you and your product/service. We will show you how to make this happen with the toughest of customers.   
 
This is the fourth and FINAL in a series of webinars tackling the 3 critical issues of Communication, Commoditization and Conversion in the sales process. And we have a special guest, John Von Achen of SOLDLAB. He will be sharing his valuable knowledge on the subject as well! 

REGISTER FOR FREE HERE http://www.soldlab.com/content/disconnectedhowconversionisderailingyoursales/

BigMachines, Inc., the leader in product configuration, pricing and quoting, proposal generation and B2B ecommerce, has announced the release of BigMachines 12, the latest version of the company's award-winning SaaS selling solution. BigMachines 12 enables sales teams, channel partners and resellers to easily configure products, generate quotes, proposals and contracts, manage complex pricing, route approvals, and manage orders more efficiently and securely.

The new features delivered in BigMachines 12 are driven by customer input combined with extensive industry research. BigMachines gathers product feedback by collaborating with customers on the My BigIdea innovation portal, regional Customer Success Forums and Cloud conferences in the United States and Europe.

BigMachines customers will benefit from enhancements and new features in BigMachines 12, including the following:

• The improved Migration Management Center allows customers to easily transfer changes between their BigMachines test and production sites. Customers can easily compare changes between two BigMachines instances, filter results, and select specific components to update. The new migration management center allows for greater visibility of changes and speeds up the migration process. 
• BigMachines' new Configuration Layout Editor allows customers to create complex configuration and search layouts with an easy to use drag-and-drop editor for pixel perfect control of the page layout. The results are web pages are easier to design, faster to load, and allow for richer functionality. 
• BigMachines updated Commerce Rules Wizard now provides customers with a centralized location to create and edit all commerce rules. The new functionality adds more flexibility in the BigMachines commerce process and improves the user experience by providing a more scalable, standardized way to create hiding attributes, constraints and validations within BigMachines. 

I know it is very tempting to close early this coming Friday, but I encourage you to resist. It can be the perfect day to steal customers from your competitors — ethically, of course!

This Friday is what I refer to as a “customer service, help me out” day.   Many companies and, in particular, salespeople are going to be knocking off early this week and working anything but full-time next week.

If you’re in an industry where there are numerous suppliers with similar offerings, then this is your time to grab customers from your competitors.

Read more at http://www.soldlab.com/content/readMore1/infobox/featured_news/template/default/active_id/5