“21 appointments next week” I proudly offered before ingesting a large amount of a very cold tap beer at our Friday afternoon happy hour to close the week.

“Incredible! You are going to have a huge week!” my friend replied.  He understood.  He also made his living making sales.

Another round.  After all it was time to celebrate.  That was a record.  A new personal best. 21 new business meetings in 5 business days.  Each one of those appointments was secured via good, old fashioned cold calling.  You smiled, dialed, pushed and pressed until a 60 minute face to face was locked or you didn’t pay the bills.  Simple.

I planned to head out that Sunday evening and make the two hour drive from Cincinnati to Indianapolis.   I covered the whole state of Indiana and my trunk would be full with the required 21 presentation kits.  Armed with a map of Indiana I was “prepared” to hustle and win.

My friend was right.  I had a huge week.  I called on and closed BMG Music.  Remember BMG Music Club?  12 CD’s for the price of one?   At the time their business was booming and they became a very big client.

That was selling then.  This is now.  Not much of what I did then would pass as sales competency now.

The world changed. BMG Music?  Out of business.  That old school approach to professional selling? Dead end.

The best sellers are making the sales shift, gaining a huge competitive advantage and exploding past plan.

Unfortunately this is the week that a lot of sales professionals part company with their organization for missing plan the previous year.  I had a CEO just say this to me directly, “show me a sales organization where a bunch of sellers who missed plan the previous year are still employed and I’ll show you an executive team that doesn’t know how to establish and adjust targets and plans.” That is tough.  That is sales.

Missing plan isn’t an option for the best sellers.

The best sellers today are experts.  They rigorously prepare for every prospective client encounter and customize solutions to fit for the specific opportunity {TIP:  You cannot do that 21 times in one week}.  The best sellers know how to deliver value first, earn a reputation and wield influence. Yes, they still hustle.  The difference?

I don’t cold call anymore.  I don’t enjoy it and more importantly the effort/outcome equation doesn’t compute.  Time is a precious commodity and there are simply more efficient/effective ways to end up with a calendar full of quality meetings with qualified decision makers eager to do business.

I prefer warm calling and social selling (click the enclosed link for my Social Selling Keynote).

More effective.  More fun.  Makes it a whole lot easier to make plan.  New techniques, tools and technology give the more progressive sales pro an abundance of opportunity and huge advantage in competitive selling situations.

Knowing that the way we connect, communicate and ultimately make decisions has changed means knowing that professional selling requires a new and improved approach.

One constant does remain.

Sales drives the business.  All of the ideas, innovation, strategy, interpersonal relationships and process initiatives don’t matter much if you don’t have the revenue to turn on the lights.

Sales success today requires a shift in approach, strategy, skill and competency.  Are you ready?

Posted in Performance, Sales, Social Media, Uncategorized

Tags: Sales, Sales 2.0, Sales Expert, Sales Training

I had my shopping list:

-A device to keep my MacBook Pro and iPhone charged during a long flight
-A presentation remote
-A hands free wireless microphone
-A new digital camera

I could have purchased all of this online.  However, I am essentially inept when it comes to electronics.  I need support, guidance and expertise.  I am willing to get into my car and drive for that expertise.  I am even willing to pay more for that expertise (and generally to avoid buyers remorse).  I am inclined to get excited about the notion that the expertise and technology could possibly be available in one place. I am excited about what this technology can do for me.  I have dreams!  I just need a little support to make them come true.

I will also embarrassingly acknowledge that my DVD player died 6 months ago.  I have no idea what model/make to replace it with.  Installation is another issue.  If there is an easy solution and support then sign me up!

Enter Best Buy.  The electronics superstore that offers customers Dream Support!

I entered.  With my shopping list.  Ready to spend.  I was a very engaged potential buyer.  They could have easily had the full inventory on my list and sold me a new DVD player with an up-sell for installation. Let’s keep going.  It has been 8 years since I purchased a television. I could also easily add a television to the home office. Why stop there?

Instead I walked out of the store with nothing.  No sale closed.  Why?

Dream Support is a tough business (a very worthy aspiration no doubt and I absolutely love the enclosed video and positioning).  To consistently execute dream support is a challenge.  In a stalled economy with new competition that takes skill.  That takes expertise.  That takes sales competency.  That takes ongoing training and development.  That mandates preparedness, competitive intelligence and all around sales excellence.

After 30 minutes and 3 mediocre conversations I walked out of the store.  I wasn’t angry.  I was perhaps a bit unsure,  a little overwhelmed and not having an in store experience consistent with my expectations.   I was never asked about my dreams.  I love to talk about dreams.  I was directed to aisle 6.

At the end of the day this has very little to do with what Best Buy does and much more with how they do it.  Dream Support requires an upgrade in the “How“.  Increasingly, so will growth in the new economy.

One stand alone sales expert could have carved out a very nice sale and likely added layers of upside to the transaction.  The difference between several thousand in revenue and the no sale that resulted was skill.  Not attitude. Not desire.  Everyone in that store was perfectly polite and I am certain they would have been more than happy to take my money.  However, in this era of increasingly elevated expectations that often isn’t enough to make the cash register ring.

Multiply this over 1,400 stores and you might have an incredible opportunity to ring the cash register a lot more often through some elevated sales skill and strategy!

When you deliver an experience that meets or exceeds expectations consistently, you can build customer loyalty.  If the experience is differentiated and compelling enough people will keep coming back, pay more and spread the good word.

Often, that comes right down to skill.

(Note:  To my friends working for Best Buy…I am rooting for you!  I am also going back to shop Saturday and you’ll have another opportunity to separate me from my $ and make my dreams come true!  Sales 2.0 TIP:  Start with an effective, open ended question that immediately connects me to my dreams…you will have me at hello!).

Posted in Sales, Social Media, Uncategorized

Tags: Best Buy, Dream Support, Sales 2.0, Sales Training

“In this new world of business, companies and leaders will have to show authenticity, fairness, transparency and good faith. If they don’t, customers and employees may come to distrust them, to potentially disastrous effect. Customers who don’t like a product can quickly broadcast their disapproval. Prospective employees don’t have to take your word for what life is like at your company—they can find out from people who already work there. And long time loyal employees now have more options to launch their own, more fleet-footed start ups, which could become your fiercest competitors in the future.” {Forbes Magazine, September, 2011}

Welcome to Social Power & The Corporate Revolution according to the recent cover story in Forbes Magazine.

The resistance is still powerful.  Legacy leaders struggle with the loss of control.  Fear a shift in the balance of power. Underestimate the impact and influence of the revolution.  Discount a new breed of competition. Resist the notion that the way we connect, communicate, collaborate and choose has changed.

Shift.

The days of command and control communication, leadership and operational strategy are over.  Welcome to an era where collaboration and connectedness flourish.  We are just getting started.

This isn’t a marketing conversation.  This is a business performance conversation where the outcome is about the impact on results.

What you do is increasingly a commodity.  What you do is easily replicated.   What you do is readily available elsewhere. What you do isn’t that special.

How you do it is the ever increasing opportunity to differentiate in the people economy.

A question worth considering:

What are you willing to do for people that the competition simply isn’t?

The onus is on companies to care more.  About customers.  About employees.

I illustrated this notion in the enclosed video excerpt during my keynote last week referencing my relationship with Delta Airlines.  This is one example of a company that embraced change, evolved communication and turned challenges into a real opportunity to care and connect customers to a better brand experience.

 

Posted in Brand, Communications, Leadership, Social Media, Uncategorized

Tags: Brand, Delta Airlines, Forbes, Revolution, Sales 2.0, Social Media

Increasingly, when a client partner has a meaningful, high impact experience they feel compelled to share.  They want the world to know. Smart sales leaders recognize this opportunity and invite their best customers to share their experience with the world. For example:

Simply stated your own customers are your best brand ambassadors.  If your customers aren’t telling your story, evangelizing the experience and sharing the outcome perhaps you need to consider:

1.  Are you delivering enough value?  Value your customers simply cannot live without?

2.  Are you developing real, meaningful relationships?

3. Are your customers invested in your success?  Are you invested in their success (or just making sales)?

4.  Are you really listening to your best customers?

5.  Are you Social Selling?  Do you have the platforms and requisite participation to create an impetus for your customers to socialize your brand experience?

Writing and sharing takes time.  It is hard work.  It is also the work that makes sales easy. It sure beats the hell out of cold calling.

For example:

As a seller your own opinion of the value, differentiation and impact of your solution is increasingly insufficient. Invite your best customers to share their experience with the world.  Make it easy for them.  Flip the sale.

You might soon find yourself spending a lot less time time doing the thing that sellers dread the most (cold calling) and more time in business development meetings that matter.

Posted in Sales, Social Media, Uncategorized

Tags: Sales, Sales 2.0, Sales Training, Social Selling

I was on a conference call with a prospective customer this week.  We discussed an engagement for the sales organization.  They are experiencing the challenges of the ‘Sales Shift‘.  Lengthening cycles, discount competition, margin pressure, anxious buyers and less budget all together.  Tough landscape for the sellers.  The world has changed. It isn’t going back.

What was good enough to get us here isn’t going to be good enough to get us there.

They know this.  That is the reality of their reality. So they are making moves.  Upgrading talent (firing and hiring). Improving process.  Investing in development. Solidifying strategy.  Socializing best practices.

During our discovery call we discussed the outcome objectives of the event.  In addition to sound process and core sales competency they are hungry for a little bit of the sales passion:  competitive spirit, hustle, attitude, persistence, follow up, accountability, relationship strategy and a ferocious commitment to making plan…to exploding past plan.  Some sellers have it. Some don’t.

So, she asked me the big question: “Can you really tech this to our people?”

My answer:  YES.  I can.  I will.  If I don’t?  Don’t pay me.  That simple.

What I cannot do is MAKE THEM DO IT.  I cannot put inside them what was left out.  If the pilot light is out we have a problem. That is why I was excited to learn they are focused on getting the right people on the bus.  They recognize the shift.  Not everyone is up for making the transition to what is next and new.  That is why the people strategy comes first. Get the right kind of sellers in the seats and we’ll put the process in place to accelerate performance and move them past plan.

We spent a little time talking about what kind of person is making the shift.  Wants to make the shift.  Wants to put in the work to make plan.

We agreed.

Focus on the people strategy first.  Once you have the right kind of people in place you can teach them to sell more.

Included is content from our keynote at the ACA Convention, Sales 2.0 & The Social Shift:

Posted in Recruiting, Sales, Social Media

Tags: Sales, Sales 2.0, Sales Shift, Sales Training, Social Selling

This afternoon I will be speaking on Sales 2.0 & The Social Shift to Executives at the ACA International Convention.  We will address a few core issues that will be top of mind to attendees:

1.  Is social media a business tool or waste of time?

2. Show me the money (this one is easy).

3. Can I get an advantage over my competition?

4.  Do my prospects and customers care about social media?

5.  Won’t my competition be able to see who I am connecting with or learn more about us if we are more social?

I just finished reading the Ad Age article, How Social Media Can Derail Your New Business Efforts.  I was also asked during my breakfast business summit last week about the danger of the competition seeing your contacts on Linked In.

It is true.  Your competition can and will learn more about you if you go social.  My thought about that.  So what?

My advice to any sales organization, leader or individual contributor would be to focus on being better than the competition.

Social Media doesn’t make or break your sales strategy, process, work product, pitch plan, preparation cycle or prospect and customer experience.  They merely serve as access points and additional opportunity to demonstrate your value proposition.

I hope my sellers (they know who they are) are reading this and connecting on linked in early and often.  I hope they are selling with carefully researched and expertly crafted POV (Point of View & Position of Value).  I hope they are presenting clear and compelling proof of concept with case studies that include ROI. I hope they wake up ready to step into the arena of competition and lean into the challenge of taking on the very best.  I hope they out prepare, out think and out hustle the competition.  I hope they present to win. I hope they put their process, strategies, ideas and insights on display for the whole world to see, including the competition.  I hope they earn commitment and identify next steps at every inflection point in the sales cycle. I hope they never worry about what the competition might see, think or know about what they are doing, who they are connected to or where they are checking in. I hope they are that confident.  I hope they are that much better.

Sell from a position of strength.  Not fear.  Focus more on the customer.  Less on you.  Even less on the competition.

If you are with us in Dallas join me this afternoon at the #acaconvention.

Posted in Sales, Social Media

Tags: ACA International, Ad Age, Sales 2.0, Social Media, Social Selling

I assume you want to grow your business?  Find a solution to the stalled economy?

We’ve all seen and heard the standard solution set to these challenging times: Map headcount to revenue; right size; cost containment.

This is one approach.  You can make short-term gains and improve the balance sheet by playing defense and hoping your category improves.  If you’d rather play offense and focus on long-term growth, sustainable advantage and bigger and better returns here is the answer:

SELL MORE!

You can sell your way back to performance and even prosperity.  And that is something you can control.  The competition, economy, customer expectations and the accelerated pace of change, you simply cannot.

The sale is the solution to so much of what ails many companies.  New customers.  More revenue.  More opportunity to invest and innovate.  Growth.

Sounds simple?  It isn’t.   Professional selling has evolved.  Gone are the days of the easy order and the 20 closing techniques that really work.  They don’t.

Professional selling today mandates new foundational skills and competency, elevated expertise and sophisticated business acumen that most organizations have been hard pressed to develop or acquire in the preceding 24 months.  And its increasingly evident that what was good enough to get us here isn’t going to be good enough for what is next and new.  Professional selling has evolved.

If you are struggling to make the Sales Shift consider if these 5 essential elements are embedded into your enterprise sales strategy:

PROCESS:  Selling today requires a disciplined process founded on best practices and key performance indicators.  The individual contributor should be able to map quality activity through each critical inflection point in the sales cycle.  And mapping process to buying behavior is an essential element of being well positioned to the outcome objective.

URGENCY: Selling today requires driving an elevated sense of urgency into the sales cycle.  If you are experiencing stalls, stops and longer cycle times it is likely you aren’t building any urgency into the decision cycle.  Urgency is a function of value escalation and experiential visioning in close collaboration with the potential customer.

LEARNING:  Selling today requires constant evaluation, assessment and investment to improve.  When the expectation is expertise learning is a mandatory.  And when you achieve expert status and are well informed then will you be appropriately positioned to add increasingly more value to a customers business.

SOLUTIONS:  Would you rather be a strategic advisor or a sales rep?  We all know the customer prefers a consultant and trusted advisor.  Customers don’t want your stuff.  They want to solve problems and accelerate opportunity.  Know enough to know how to help.  Partner in a way that improves their business and deliver consistently. You’ll build relationships for life.

EXPERIENCE:  Sell a vision of the experience.  And deliver more.  The only acceptable experience is extraordinary.  Here is the key:  WHAT you do isn’t all that special.  What you do is available from ten competitors and likely a commodity.  I can probably buy it for less and find it to be quite the acceptable alternative.  HOW you deliver is yours alone.  Make HOW something you cannot get anywhere else. Make HOW something the customer covets and cannot live without.  Differentiate and win with HOW by delivering an experience that people never forget.

If you are an executive or sales leader that wants to put your team in the best position to perform…if you are and individual contributor and want to accelerate past plan to new levels of performance and compensation…. join us this October.

We will be presenting the first PULSE Selling Open Workshop founded on the 5 core principles outlined above.  The PULSE Selling Methodology was developed through 20 years of enterprise sales application combined with innovative ideation around what will be required to sell amid this time of unprecedented transformation.

I personally believe this is the single greatest time to be in professional sales.  The skills gap is widening, providing the proactive, strategic and prepared seller an abundance of opportunity to explode past the competition.  On October 28, 2010 we will demonstrate HOW.

If you want to talk about how this seminar fits with your sales performance objectives email me directly at ryan@ryanestis.com.

Register for the PULSE Selling Open Workshop here.

See what others are saying about our Sales Training & Transformation events:

Posted in Sales, Social Media

Tags: Sales 2.0, Sales Shift, Sales Training

During our Sales Shift Seminar yesterday we had a conversation about the characteristics of a Rock Star Seller.  You know the type…always makes plan…is a step ahead of the competition…builds deep and meaningful relationships….is an informed expert…puts in the time…listens and adds value…is constantly improving and competes to win…the total package.

You can see our list from yesterday’s session.  What is on your list?  Sales Leaders, what are you benchmarking against?

Something interesting landed at the very top of our list in yesterday’s session:

Switched On.

What does that really mean?  After a deeper dive discussion there was consensus that someone ‘Switched On‘ is both deeply engaged and fulfilled by what they are doing. Focused for sure…..Confident no doubt….Prepared, always.  And the output often looks effortless…because when someone is Switched On they are purposeful and passionate about the work. I’ve heard this referred to as “in the zone” or “flow”.  I am going with Switched On.

Are you Switched On everyday by 9 am?  Are you aligned, purposeful and passionate?

Important considerations…(hint: that place is where you will do your very best work).

I read a quote of the flight home last night in Minnesota Business from Bruce Lambrecht, “Find something you love to do and don’t look for immediate or short-term financial rewards.  Be passionate, persistent, work hard and understand the financial rewards will come later.”

Good advice.  Get Switched On..

Posted in Employee Engagement, Sales, Uncategorized

Tags: Sales 2.0, Sales Shift, Sales Training

Would sales be easier if every call you made was to a prospective buyer who was aware of both you and your organization prior to talking?  Would it be easier to sell to qualified prospects reaching out to you with a direct inquiry?  What if you could turn virtually every cold call into a “warm call”?  Sales Nirvana?  Perhaps.

And it’s all very possible today with a shift in strategy and through the adoption of new tools and technology.

The blend of a traditional networking philosophy and technology integration can transform the opportunity to develop higher levels of awareness and more attention from your TAU (target account universe).  Social selling is all about being expertly informed and demonstrating value early in the sales cycle to achieve elevated interest specific to your product or solution.  While you cannot automate relationships, you can dramatically expedite quality introductions and knowledge transfer by leveraging a Web 2.0 selling platform. Consider:

How easy it for your customers to intersect with your BIG idea?

Are your channels alive with your very best new content?

Is your value proposition abundantly clear, compelling and so differentiated its worth considering a change?

Is it clear at “the moment of truth” why urgent action is required?

Are you leveraging quality assets early and often in the cycle to add value first?

Now, benchmark against your competition.

In Professional Selling YOU are the the brand, company and marketing strategy in the eyes of the marketplace.  A good foundational strategy will get you off the phone and in front of customers.

Building Sales Influence with your customer community make sales happen.

Posted in Sales, Uncategorized

Tags: Influence, Sales 2.0