A new west-coast contact called using Skype. It was early morning there. Suddenly she shrieked, utterly embarrassed, realizing her laptop’s web cam was on. She was sitting in bed in her pyjamas.

A fellow speaker contacted me. Before returning his call, I Googled him and found him on two links. When I asked about these, questioning their validity to his area of expertise, he paused nervously and said “are they still there?”

I was in a meeting with a corporate executive who was key to securing a large project. Halfway through our conversation, my cell phone rang. I can still feel his cold eyes saying “how unprofessional” (I didn’t get the deal).

This week’s tip:
Technology is a requirement for success in today’s fast-paced business environment. However, when not used properly, it can be as much a liability as an asset in building trust and developing relationships.
Perform a “tech check” as part of your preparation for every meeting, event or contact. That way, you’ll be more confident, focused and be perceived as more professional.

SPECIAL NOTE: Never check your Blackberry or PDA during a meeting or event. It does not make you look important. It is rude and demonstrates a lack of respect for those around you.

Now, get out there and sell something!

Hi, I’m Howard, Howard Olsen.  The repetition of your first name twice can be very effective in helping people remember it. Have you ever been in a meeting and forgotten the name of the person you were speaking with?  What happend? You had a temporary loss of sanity and panicked to remember; for that moment you were no longer present at that meeting -that’s what happened. So, what happens when the person you’re speaking with forgets your name?  They’re no longer present in the meeting and their concentration shifts to trying to remember your name.  This subtle repetition of one key name (and it might be your last name that you want folks to remember: Olsen, Howard Olsen) plants it firmly in the mind of the person you are shaking hands with or speaking to on the phone. Now,  confident that they remember your name, they can remain present with you in the conversation.

Let me make sure I understand what you’re saying. You may find yourself in the middle of a conversation, a debate or even a disagreement.  Take time out with this great one liner. It’s very effective because everyone on the planet wants feel understood. This conversational technique conveys to the other person that you are trying to understand their perspective.  When you do that you’re able to maintain a trust filled environment.

I’ve heard some great things about you. We all like to feel significant and appreciated, even if it’s fleeting or with a small group of people. Letting someone know that they’re liked by others and by association also by you, is an important way of building trust, rapport and your own likeability.  All things being equal, people cooperate and do business with people they like and trust.  It is a choice.

These conversational techniques are not intended to manipulate, rather they’re intended to help navigate conversations that are more effective for all parties involved.  Use them well and with sincerity to go forth and prosper!

In this day and age of Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, eBay, Global trade, and the access to it through the internet, everyone is offering good quality products and services at similar price points. Often our customers know more about the products and services being sold than even the salespeople representing them which leaves price as the final frontier of selling features. This has caused virtually everything in the marketplace today to become a commodity. So what do you do about it and how do you get price off the table?

Price does not need to be your final frontier of selling features.

At High Output we know that there are 3 fundamental truths to selling anything anywhere to anyone. But first and foremost amongst those is that 75% of your success or failure comes down to the level of trust and rapport you establish with your customers in the initial stages of your presentation and in the building of your relationships with them.

I’ve just finished reading one of the most thought provoking and well researched books on the subject of sales I’ve come across. In his book “Achieve Sales Excellence – The 7 Customer Rules For Becoming The New Sales Professional” Howard Stevens CEO of the HR Chally Group shows us by tracking the spending patterns of corporate America against the attributes of the sales people doing the selling what corporate clients really want. And, if it just so happens that you’re in the retail or B2C sectors, sit up and take note, these apply to you too.

Here’s what your customers demand:

1. Advisors who truly understand their businesses or situations.
   Your customers want sales people and business partners that take the time to understand their businesses and unique situations well enough to act as trusted advisors, offer unbiased perspective and provide solutions that help them achieve their goals. They are not buying your products or services, they are buying the outcomes that those products and services produce: better ROI, better efficiency & productivity, the satisfaction of their own internal and external customers, and the confidence that they are making the best purchasing decision amongst the myriad of choices available to them.
2. Partners who understand their own companies.
   Your customers want sales professionals who they trust to understand the workings of their own companies well enough to manipulate the internal politics, policies and systems to deliver the outcomes that they promised. They need to know that you will act as their advocate within your company and sell internally just as hard as you do externally with them to achieve the results promised to them.
3. Personal accountability.
   They are looking for business partners who are personally accountable for the results delivered and are willing to step up without excuses and take responsibility to fix the problem if and when things go awry . They don’t expect you to have all the answers nor to take all the heat, but they do expect you to be easily accessible and act as the single point of contact to making it all happen.

None of these customer demands have anything to do with the traditional skills typically associated with selling such as prospecting, probing and closing the sale. Everyone of these demands has everything to do with the 75% success factor that’s directly correlated to the trust that you deliver on those 3 fronts. Sales people take note: You can’t close before you open. And opening the sale simply means establishing rapport and conveying that you’ve got a deep understanding of where your customer is coming from and what he or she really needs.

Of course it’s important to know how to prospect, how to uncover the true need and how to close. There is a process to it and at High Output we do teach our clients how to professionally perform these tasks, but more importantly we help them build true differentiation into their sales process and show them how to become those trusted professional advisors that their customers want.

If you can stay away from trying to make the perfect pitch, and get into the habit of asking intelligent questions (spending 20% of your time talking (asking) and 80% listening to the answers), and then making purchasing recommendations based on your understanding of the client’s situation, you will be well on your way to establishing true value equations in you, your company and your product or service offerings. When you do that price is off the table and your customer has gotten what they really want.

In this day and age of email, SMS, voice mail and other technologies the good old fashioned hand-written note has become so rare that when they do arrive in our mail boxes and on our desks we’re thankful to receive them and they stand out to be remebered.  The simple truth is that the vast majority of sales and business people intend to send thank you notes but never get around to actually doing it.  That creates a great opportunity for you! 

Before sending out your note there are a couple of ground rules to consider:

1. Stay away from the email shortcut.  Everyone uses email for the majority of their correspondence including you and me.  The point of the follow up letter is to stand out and show a little extra effort.  An addressed, stamped and delivered by post note does that.
2. Send your letter within a day or two.  By sending your letter promptly after your meeting (and this could include a telephone meeting), you re-establish your presence and your commitment to helping the prospect achieve their desired outcome.  You can be sure that once you left their office or hung up the receiver the prospect didn’t sit around pondering you and your compny for the next 48 hours.  Their phone rang, other meetings came up and their customers demanded their attention.  Your timely letter re-focuses them on you while they still remember the conversation!  If your letter is too late it loses its relevance.
3. Keep it brief.  The purpose of this letter is thank your prospect for the meeting and to reinforce the potential relationship with you a valuable partner. That’s it … don’t write an endless novel here.  Less is more.
4. Don’t try to close!  You may have left the meeting feeling that you are the best match with best solution for your prospect and that may infact be the case.  But I will strongly encourage you not to give into the temptation to point that out here.  You can undo a lot of your hardwork by taking an assumptive tone.  The purpose of this short and sweet note is to reinforce the relationship and the spirit of cooperation.  Speak in terms of possibilities, not absolutes.  Stick to your sales cylce and to agreed upon follow up meetings when it comes to closing.

Take a look at the following example: Your note should resemble it fairly closely.

Dear {Prospect’s Name},

I just wanted to drop you a short note to thank you for taking time out and sharing a few moments with me yesterday. 

I found the information we exchanged quite stimulating and I come away from our meeting feeling that there could be a nice fit between us.

I’m looking forward to the prospect of a mutually beneficial relationship with you and  {prospects firm}  and to opportunities the future may bring.   I hope also that you’ll feel free to call me with any questions, challenges or problems I may be able to help you or your associates work out.

Sincerely,
{your hand written signature}
Your Name

Sending a note like this on company stationary can go a long way to winning positive attention for you, your company and your offering, however, most of us just don’t do it.  Why?    Because it takes time and effort, we may not like our own handwriting, or we simply don’t have the creative energy some days to think of what to write.  All of these were my illegitimate excuses until I found the solution that that ended them all.  I created for myself a standard template on my PC using MS Publisher.  Publisher will automatically format the document with your contact details and your logos and create a simple note card using the standard paper sizes.  I selected a handwriting type font to make it personal and made the template.  Now at the conclusion of a meeting I just open the document make some slight modifications, hit print, fold it and stuff it into an envelope!  My sample letter can be found here.  It’s that simple and it’s fun.  It’s also rewarding knowing that you probably made someone else’s day with just a little effort.  The results that it brings speak for themselves.  It amazes me how many prospects go out their way to thank me for taking the time to thank them! 

It doesn’t take much to exceed the expectations of your customers and prospects.  To go just a little further than your competitors is really quite simple.  At 211 degrees water is hot, with just one degree more at 212, it’s powerful boiling  steam.  Going the extra mile doesn’t take much and there is no congestion on the last mile! 

Like it or not, your secret to success in selling begins with prospecting.  At High Output Training Systems, we can teach you the greatest sales methodology in the world (and we do) but if you  aren’t out selling,  there is absolutely nothing we can do for you – except, of course, give you some advice on prospecting.

Selling is helping people you find, but it all starts with finding people to help.   So when it comes to prospecting just how much is enough?   Rather than me looking at how many prospects I may arbitrarily believe is reasonable for you, let’s use some simple mathematical extrapolation to arrive at a reasonable number you can generate for yourself.   For this exercise we need to look at stages of development from suspect to customer. 

To begin, we need to determine some metrics.  The questions we need to ask are as follows:

1. What’s your NEW revenue target, or if working with a team what’s the target of each rep? 
2. What’s the average revenue of each existing customer? (Total revenue divided by number of customers) 
3. How many phone calls to leads (suspects) does it take to generate 1 appointment?  
4. How many appointments does it take to generate 1 qualified prospect (Has a need, has the authority to buy, and has the money) 
5. How many qualified prospects does it take generate 1 new customer?

Since I don’t know what your actual conversion ratios are, I’ll use some generic numbers to illustrate and you can plug in your own numbers later:

1. It takes 10 phone calls to get 1 new appointment. 
2. It takes 10 appointments to generate 1 new active qualified lead or prospect. 
3. It takes 10 active leads or prospects to generate 1 new client.

Using this information, it’s now a simple matter to generate real target numbers for your critical sales activities.
I don’t know what your revenue targets are, but let’s say that based on the new revenue target and the average revenue per customer we determine that you or each rep needs to produce 10 new clients this year - reasonable?  Again, plug in your own numbers, but from here we can work backwards to determine activity:

1. Since it takes 10 active leads to get one client and we want 10 clients, we need 100 active leads. 
2. Since it takes 10 appointments to get one new active lead and we want 100 active leads, we need 1000 appointments. 
3. Since it takes 10 phone calls to suspects to get one appointment and we want 1000 appointments, we need to make 10,000 phone calls.

“Whoa!  Slow down,” you say. “10,000 calls! How am I going to do that?”  Well, the simple answer is discipline, applied one day at a time.  So let’s break this down into daily activity:

• 10,000 calls divided by 260 working days per year = 38 prospecting calls per day. 
• Let’s conservatively assume 5 minutes per call.  This number is high because included in the 38 calls per day are no pickups, prospect unavailable, voicemail etc., which take only 30 seconds each. 
• So, 38 calls times 5 minutes each = 190 minutes of prospecting every day. 190 minutes divided by 60 minutes per hour = 3 hours of prospecting per rep.  In actual fact some calls will be short some will be long, so a strict discipline to a minimum 2 hours or 38 calls per day, and you should be OKAY. 
• 1000 appointments divided by 260 working days per year = 4 appointments with active leads per day.

Let’s see now:  2 hours of prospecting and 4 appointments per day, these look like pretty realistic daily numbers to me.   The question is:  Do you and / or your team have the will to do it?

Pareto’s law or the 80/20 rule applies  to just about everything and if you want to build a business, in the early stages you should probably spend 80% of your time working on generating new business and 20% of your time servicing it.  If you commit to that your portfolio will grow.  Once you’ve built your customer base, you can shift your activity to spending 80% of your time servicing and 20% prospecting.

As you and/or your team gets into the habit of achieving these targets, your proficiency will begin to increase and your conversion ratios from call to appointment will increase.  As your conversion ratio from appointment to prospect increases and your conversion ratio from Prospect to Client also increases, these numbers become less daunting and the freedom that selling can provide will materialize.

Here’s a suggestion for you:   Keep a phone log to keep track how many phone calls you make each day and how many appointments you get out of all those phone calls.  Make two columns on a sheet.  Every time you dial out just make a mark in one column.  Every time you get an appointment put a mark in the second column.  Keep track of this for a month, you will arrive at your true conversion ratios but you’ll also see your effectiveness increase.

One of the best books on the subject of prospecting that I ever read is: “Cold Calling Techniques that Really Work”, by Stephan Schiffman.  I offer it off my website  under our new section Recommended Reading feel free to check it out. 
I’ll also be running a webinar called Painlessly Profitable Prospecting which will increase your telephone penetration rate.  When you really want to get serious, enroll in our two day program The Three Truths of Selling or book us to train your team to increase your closing rate!

Those of you who have attended any of my seminars, workshops or key note addresses know that that I place heavy emphasis on practical “How To” action plans that get you results.  You also know that I preach long and hard that the stuff I teach will have no impact if your “thinkin’ is stinkin’”.

Long before Nike hit the scene with it’s now famous marketing slogan, Art Williams, a high school football coach from Monroe Georgia had an idea and a dream to create the largest insuance company in America.  When everyone told him he couldn’t,  Art rose up against the rejection and the inevitable failures along the way and built a multi billion dollar company that empowerd countless people to become millionaires along with him.  His company A.L. Williams was eventually bought by Citi Group and is today known as Primerica.

It doesn’t matter what you think of life insurance sales, or different types of business models, champions and winners from all walks of life have a couple things in common.  Find yourself 18 undisturbed minutes to listen to this piece of audio.  It will set your hair on fire!  This speech delivered by Art back in 1987 is probably more relevant today than it was then …..   

I’ve read A. L. Williams book “All You Can Do is All You Can Do, But All You Can Do Is Enough” many times and consider it one of the best self empowerment books I’ve ever read.  It’s out out of print circulation, but I found 34 used copies available on Amazon.com  Just click on the image in this post to get one of them for yourself.

  Enjoy, Get fired up, and Just Do It!

When I ask people what their greatest challenge in selling is, the most common response I receive is that they don’t know how to close.  In a way, that’s really encouraging news because one of the fundamental tenets at High Output Training is that 75% of the outcome of any selling opportunity is directly related to manner in which trust and rapport are established in the initial stages of a presentation.  In other words, what happens in the end is determined by the way you begin.  You may have a complex sale with a  long sales cycle or a simple product with a very short sales cycle but in either case you can’t close before you open.

There are three keys to making sure you get your meetings off to a good start so that you establish deep and lasting trust.  These keys will ensure you can properly close when the right time presents itself:

• Make a positve and lasting introduction to every meeting
• Ask good questions before you try to sell anything
• Confirm your understanding of the answers given by the other person

The number 1 rule in communication is that people prefer talking to listening.  That means that you prefer talking to listening and it means that your customers also prefer talking to listening.  Two people are trying to communicate and both want to do the talking; it’s a conflict.

Most salespeople go into meetings on the defensive trying to justify why they are there.  They begin the meetings talking incessantly: they’ve got the best product, or cheapest price, or the most incredible company with the most history etc., etc., etc., but none of this really means anything if you don’t know where the customer is coming from.  Customers need first and foremost to trust you and they can’t trust you if they sense that you don’t understand them.  Asking questions is the key to understanding it’s also the best way to get your prospect talking!

This past weekend I delivered a key note on the three keys to sales success in 2007.  I recorded that message and it’s available here for you.  It’s a 35 MB mp3 file that you can download to your iPod or MP3 player or you may simply visit the Podcast section of our site and play the audio from within its own player.  I hope you enjoy this presentation and find it useful.   

If you’re looking for a boost to get you going in the new year, you may also wish to check out our Full Day Workshop on January 27th titled “The Power In Selling”.  We’d love to have you there.

May God bless you abundantly and I wish you an amazing 2007 that exceeds your wildest dreams!

The only reason a professional makes a sales call or presentation is to be of genuine service to the customer or prospect. Professionals understand that customers buy for their reasons not our reasons.  This fundamental truth can give you a whole new perspective on what it means to be a professional sales person and the rights and responsibilities that go along with being a pro.

We define selling in two ways:

1. Selling is good well managed, customer focused communication. 
2. Selling is helping people make a decision that is good for them.

Professionals take the time in the early stages of a customer meeting to ask good questions and find out what the customer’s real need it.  Quite often even the customer doesn’t fully understand their own need until a professional shows up and gets them thinking through a few though provoking questions.  By our definitions, it’s clear that the only goal of a professional salesperson is to remain customer focused, to find a need and then provide true service to address it.

Occaisionally during the exploration or qualification stage of a meeting it is discovers that the customer really needs something you or your company can’t provide. Professionals understand that helping a customer make a decision that is good for them sometimes also means telling the customer that they can’t help them.  If your prospect has no need for your product or service, can’t use it, or can’t afford it you have absolutely no right to try to convince him or her to buy. 

Amateurs by contrast are extremely product focused and try to convince someone to buy in every single situation.  They don’t ask questions, they don’t understand their customers and they endlessly tell all the reasons they beleive a customer should purchase their product or service. 

As a professional you must never in clear conscience persuade your prospect to buy something they don’t want, don’t need, or can’t afford.  However, when you do find a need  that you can genuinely address, which is more often than not if you’ll just thake the time to sell and not tell, you have every right and responsibility to sell it well.

It’s OK to tell a customer that you can’t help them.  This simple code of conduct will reap huge dividends in increased sales; even from customers to whom you admitted you couldn’t help.  By being completely honest and transparent, you establish deep levels of trust;  that trust often results future business and referrals you were never expecting.

At High Output Training Systems we teach a precise step by step procedure that helps professionals through the entire sales process so that they can be of genuine service, painlessly close and sell more … more often.

What’s your reason for making a sales call?

So, what does it mean to really listen?  Real listening is an active process that has three basic steps.

1. Hearing.  Hearing just means listening enough to catch what the speaker is saying. For example, say you were listening to a report on zebras, and the speaker mentioned that no two are alike. If you can repeat the fact, then you have heard what has been said.
2. Understanding. The next part of listening happens when you take what you have heard and understand it in your own way. Using the zebra example above which claimed that no two are alike you’ll think about what that might mean. You might think, “Maybe this means that the pattern of stripes is different for each zebra.”
3. Clairifying and Confirming. After you are sure you understand what the speaker has said, simply give your level of understanding a reality check.   Just ask the speaker a simple question.  Sticking with the zebra example, you might ask: “So, if I understand you correctly, the stripes are different for every zebra?”  At the this point the speaker will either confirm that you got the correct meaning or will clairify and explain what was actually meant.  When this happens you have truly listened and you have had good communication.

Tips for being a good listener

• Give your full attention on the person who is speaking. Don’t look out the window or allow yourself to be distracted by your own thoughts or whatever else is going on in the room.  
• Keep your mind focused. It can be easy to let your mind wander if you think you know what the person is going to say next, but you might be wrong!  If you feel your mind wandering, change the position of your body and try to concentrate on the speaker’s words.
• Let the speaker finish before you begin to talk. Speakers appreciate having the chance to say everything they would like to say without being interrupted. When you interrupt, it looks like you aren’t listening, even if you really are.
• Finish listening before you speak! You can’t really listen if you are busy thinking about what you want say next.
• Listen for main ideas. The main ideas are the most important points the speaker wants to get across. They may be mentioned at the start or end of a talk, and repeated a number of times. Pay special attention to statements that begin with phrases such as “My point is…” or “The thing to remember is…”
• Ask questions. If you are not sure you understand what the speaker has said, just ask. It is a good idea to paraphrase your understanding of what the speaker said so that you can be sure your understanding is correct. For example, you might say, “When you said that no two zebras are alike, did you mean that the stripes are different on each one?”
• Give feedback. Sit up straight and look directly at the speaker. Be fully attentive. Now and then, nod to show that you understand. At appropriate points you may also smile, frown, laugh, or be silent. These are all ways to let the speaker know that you are really focused on them. Remember, you listen with your whole body; your face as well as your ears!
• Think fast.  Remember: time is on your side! Thoughts move about four times as fast as speech. With practice, while you are listening you will also be able to think about what you are hearing, really understand it, and give feedback to the speaker.

People hunger to be appreciated and to be understood.  More importantly, they need to understand that they have been understood.If you can form the habbit of really listening to understand, and then confirming that you understand, you are well on your way to creating and maintaining exceptional sales, business and life success. This is where deep levels of trust are born.  In our Three Truths of Selling Workshop, we spend a great deal of time building the reflex of effective questioning and active listening.  I invite you to join us for a transformational workshop that is guaranteed to turn your natural daily conversations into cashflow!

Sales people and advertisers have much in common; they both desire to connect with their audience to inspire a positive buying decision, and they are both in the business of proactive customer focused communication.   So just what is it that causes some communication to work towards achieving positive buying decisions while some fails dismally?  First and foremost, our communications must be customer focused, but there’s more.  Legendary advertising man, Leo Burnet, set out to define what made some ads successful and what caused others to fail.  According to Burnet “Dull and exaggerated ad copy is due to the excess use of adjectives.” To prove it, he asked his staff to compare the number of adjectives in 62 ads that failed to the number of adjectives in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and other age-old classics.

Here’s what Leo Burnet discovered:

Of the 12,758 words in the 62 failed ads, 24.1% were adjectives. By direct comparison, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address contains only 35 adjectives out of 268 immortal words – only 13.1% adjective-to-total-word ratio. Winston Churchill’s famous “Blood, Sweat and Tears” speech rates even lower and has a 12.1% adjective ratio (81 adjectives from 667 words).

Mr. Burnett found that similar ratios applied to great works such as The Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Conclusion: Use more verbs, not adjectives. Verbs increase the pulling-power and believability of ad copy, sales letters and sales conversations.

Keep this 108- POWER VERB CHEAT-SHEET close-by.

Abolish Accelerate Achieve Act Adopt Align Anticipate Apply Assess Avoid

Boost Break Bridge Build Burn

Capture Change Choose Clarify Comprehend Confront Connect Conquer Convert Create Cross

Decide Define Defuse Deliver Deploy Design Develop Diagnose Discover Drive

Eliminate Ensure Establish Evaluate Exploit Explore

Filter Finalize Find Focus Foresee

Gain Gather Generate Grasp

Identify Ignite Illuminate Implement Improve Increase Innovate Inspire Intensify

Lead Learn Leverage

Manage Master Maximize Measure Mobilize Motivate

Overcome Penetrate Persuade Plan Position Prepare Prevent Profit

Raise Realize Reconsider Reduce Refresh Replace Resist Respond Retain

Save Scan Segment Shatter Shave-off Sidestep Simplify Solve Stimulate Stop Stretch Succeed Supplement

Take Train Transfer Transform Understand Unleash Use Whittle-down Win

Sales people can learn a lot from effective advertising. Whenever you begin to draft your next ad, sales letter, website, email campaign or discuss your features and benefits, use verbs from the list above.  Remember, your customer wants to know “What Will It Do For Me” and these verbs are proven to put the pulling action into it.