Rick Erling's Revenue Growth Acceleration Strategies Blog

Do You Have Value to Sell in a Recovering Economy?

2010-10-06T15:56:00.000-05:00

Take the "Value Forward" Test

By Paul DiModica

"Value" is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as "relative worth, utility, or importance".

Value during a recession often becomes clouded and harder to identify. Yet many sales and marketing teams during this economic position still utilize standard methods of vendor communication by talking about their firm's value and how great they are. This generalist approach places salespeople in a defensive position with prospects about why they should buy from them, especially when funding is tight.

To sell more in a recovering economy, you must have a premeditated value program. Companies need to have their value out in front before the sales cycle begins to make it easier to sell.

Most marketing programs use a passive communication model of "here it is, this is what we do". This process over the long haul just wastes money and valuable selling time.

How much time during an average sales cycle does your sales team spend prospecting, educating new prospects on why your product or service is different, and managing competitive issues?

Too much!

To sell more, you need to use "experiential marketing" techniques to help the sales team get inbound qualified leads where prospects see your business value BEFORE the sales team tries to sell them.

If a prospect "experientially" experiences your business value before the sales team talks with them, the result is competitors are eliminated, the sales cycle is shortened, and a profitable gross margin is maintained.

WHY?

When a prospect approaches your firm after having experienced your business value prior to the first sale, your sales team can then spend most of their time personalizing how they will help the prospect use your product or service as a business tool, instead of spending a disproportionate amount of time in the sales cycle cold calling.

So should you advertise more?

No.

Advertising is a passive medium and does not educate prospects on your value. It is a means to express why "you think" you have value. Prospects must confirm you have value based on their own internal metrics which cannot be done through ads in magazine, TV or direct mail.

In fact, most advertising is focused on projecting what the advertiser wants the prospect to "see". But at the end of the day, the prospect does not care about anything except their personal business needs.

So how do you create a "value forward" approach to your sales?

Instead of talking about how great you are, show prospects your product or service value by giving them business content for FREE up-front which will induce them into a sales action step to call you. We call this the Value Forward 5% Marketing Rule. Give 5% away to prospects to get them to pay retail for the remaining 95% and you and I make up what retail is.

Marketing tools like webinars, teleseminars, social media, newsletters and workshops are the key to communicating your value first to generate qualified leads. These marketing devices allow your prospects to learn about your value through their own filtering and judgment process and if done correctly, they will call you and say "I am interested."

Take the following Value Forward Test to see if you pull your value behind you.

Value Forward Test

When explaining your sales value proposition to prospects, do you sound like everyone else?
When you present your offering to prospects, do they expect you to drop your price to match your competitors?
Do prospects see you as a peer and provider rather than a vendor and a predator?
When you explain your product or service, can the prospect visualize the difference between your company and your competitors?
Every time you meet or chat with a new prospect, do they say they have not heard about your company?
Are most of your qualified leads generated from cold calling?
Does your marketing generate at least 3 qualified leads per salesperson each month?
Has your sales cycle timeline increased by at least 25% during the last two years?
When you meet with a management prospect, do you have a lot of competitors?
Does your marketing budget allocate more money for brochures and tradeshows than engagement devices like newsletters, webinars and teleseminars?

Correct Answers:

1. No 2. No 3. Yes 4. Yes 5. No

6. No 7. Yes 8. No 9. No 10. No

Scoring:

80% and Above

Your value is well defined and during a recovering economy your business revenue capture program should hold up well and allow you to grow your business regardless of the economic environment you are exposed to.

50% to 70%

If you score in this zone, your business value is confusing to targeted prospects and your sales and marketing operating costs may increase and be less effective during the recovering economy. You need to create more in-depth communication on why prospects should buy from you and how you are different.

40% and Below

Your value is buried deep inside your company, it will be difficult to grow your business during a recovering economy.

So . . . stop saying how great you are and start proving it before the sales cycle begins -- and you will sell a lot more!

I welcome your comments.

To your success!

Rick Erling

About Rick Erling and The CxO Group

Rick Erling is CEO and Founder of The CxO Group, LLC. We are a managing partner of the Value Forward Network and have business coaching partners in five countries making us one of the world's largest management consulting groups focused on helping companies increase corporate revenue capture.

We work with senior executive teams to integrate sales process, marketing methodology, corporate strategy and financial management into one outbound revenue capture program to increase corporate revenue. We do this by assessing the value your customers see and the value you think you have and then measure the "value variance" gap between the two. Once we have identified the "Value Variance" between the two, we then make appropriate strategic and tactical recommendations on your corporate strategy and marketing programs to close the gaps. When this is completed, we then train your sales team to sell to management more effectively using techniques that are linked to our recommendations.

Top-performing organizations are increasing their companies' revenue, within a constricted economy by investing in business growth acceleration strategies. For more on increasing your revenue capture effectiveness, subscribe to my Email Newsletter, follow me on Twitter, connect to me on LinkedIn, or friend me on Facebook. If I can help you or your firms revenue growth acceleration strategies, check out my coaching and consulting firm, The CxO Group, email me, or call me at (972) 727-6880.

New Research - Sales and Marketing Metrics - Are Your Marketing and Sales Processes Working?

2010-09-17T16:30:00.001-05:00

By Paul DiModica

Marketing and selling products and services is a metric game and time management business model. In this economy, success is all about knowing your numbers and managing your time — number of leads generated; the number of qualified prospects generated from those leads; the number of leads that progress through your sales cycle steps; and ultimately the number of deals closed.

Do you know your metrics?

How do you compare?

Every lead that is not qualified distracts from your available time to find and sell product and professional service prospects that are in the buying cycle now.

Speed is a business success tool.

When your sales pipeline is small, your sales forecast accuracy and lead quality diminishes.

To increase the size of your sales pipelines and time management success, focus on making your targeted prospects take action steps with you during your sales cycle to prove that they are qualified. The world is full of professional lookers that will waste your time . . . and ultimately reduce your revenue capture success. The faster you qualify a prospect based on the action steps they take . . . the more you will sell.

“There are a lot of things that go into creating success. I don’t like to do just the things I like to do. I like to do things that cause the company to succeed. I don’t spend a lot of time doing my favorite activities.” –Michael Dell

To be more successful, do what you don’t like doing first.

What kind of action steps should prospects take to prove that they are qualified?

Have your prospects confirm their targeted date of purchase and when they want to be operational – to make sure it is within your normal selling cycle time.
Have them tell you who will be signing the contract.
Get them to verbalize how your offering will fix their business issues. If they can’t, then you may have incorrectly communicated your business value.
Get your prospects to talk to your existing customers earlier in your sales cycle. Customer referrals communicate your value three dimensionally through the eyes of others.

In sales, you work for yourself and you are an entrepreneur. You own your business. Accelerate your speed, improve prospect lead qualification and apply perseverance and you can sell more even in today’s crazed economy.

“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.“ –Steve Jobs

I welcome your comments.

To your success!

Rick Erling

About Rick Erling and The CxO Group

Rick Erling is CEO and Founder of The CxO Group, LLC. We are a managing partner of the Value Forward Network and have business coaching partners in five countries making us one of the world's largest management consulting groups focused on helping companies increase corporate revenue capture.

We work with senior executive teams to integrate sales process, marketing methodology, corporate strategy and financial management into one outbound revenue capture program to increase corporate revenue. We do this by assessing the value your customers see and the value you think you have and then measure the "value variance" gap between the two. Once we have identified the "Value Variance" between the two, we then make appropriate strategic and tactical recommendations on your corporate strategy and marketing programs to close the gaps. When this is completed, we then train your sales team to sell to management more effectively using techniques that are linked to our recommendations.

Top-performing organizations are increasing their companies' revenue, within a constricted economy by investing in business growth acceleration strategies. For more on increasing your revenue capture effectiveness, subscribe to my Email Newsletter, follow me on Twitter, connect to me on LinkedIn, or friend me on Facebook. If I can help you or your firms revenue growth acceleration strategies, check out my coaching and consulting firm, The CxO Group, email me, or call me at (972) 727-6880.

How to Use Reverse Value Methods to Close More Deals

2010-09-03T16:43:00.000-05:00

By Paul DiModica

As salespeople, we have become subservient to our sales quota, prospect opportunities, prospect expectations, and the pressure to beat the competition so much that we often come across as weak-kneed caricatures of ourselves when interacting professionally with prospects.

As salespeople . . . we need to eat more Wheaties!

So often, you hear marketing and salespeople talk to prospects about their business value and how great their firm is by saying:

“We are the largest provider in the world!”

“We have the greatest support!”

“Our service is the best!”

This all comes across as white noise to management prospects who hear the same thing over and over again.

Due to companies’ efforts to become more “customer centric” sales organizations, many have become too accommodating and predictable in their sales approaches and are now being trampled by prospects who manage their sales cycles (and your sales commissions) for you.

To sell more, you must become a strategic advisor to management. The key words here are “strategic advisor.” Strategic advisors help prospects fix business problems. As you know, prospects are not always well-informed. So sometimes the prospect does not know what the problem is, or worse, they “think” they know how the problem should be fixed. If you are trying to be a strategic advisor, speak-up, be heard, and stop being so passive in your value demonstration.

Use a “Reverse Value” sales approach to sell more.

“Reverse Value” communication is a sales methodology of proving your value to management by not talking about your product or service, but instead proving you are a knowledge center that can help them by challenging their own current thought process.

By disagreeing with management prospects (when they are wrong) and informing them (by proving your value) how their observations can be modified by your firm to help them reach their business objectives, you are proving you have value greater than your competitors who all speak in lockstep.

If you sound like the competitors (for all practical purposes), you are the same as your competitors (a commodity).

How do you know if you have enough business confidence to use “Reverse Value” techniques with management prospects? Take the following test.

“Do I Need More Wheaties” Test

During the last six months, have you told management prospects that their business or assumptions were wrong (in a professional way)?
___ Yes ___No

During the last six months, have you verbally explained in detail to a management prospect the business risks of not making decisions or what could happen if they buy from the wrong vendor?
___ Yes ___No

During the last six months, have you submitted in writing to a management prospect the business risks of not making decisions or what could happen if they buy from the wrong vendor?
___ Yes ___No

During the last six months have you told a middle-level manager that you cannot move forward (give them a presentation, give them proposal, etc.) in the current sales cycle unless you meet the executive who signs the contract?
___ Yes ___No

Have you ever asked a prospect to explain your value to you and why they want to buy from you?
___ Yes ___No

Do you focus on three or less business industry verticals when trying to sell your offerings?
___ Yes ___No

Can you describe how your product or service increases income or decreases expenses to your prospect?
___ Yes ___No

Do you feel more comfortable talking business strategy than features or functions?
___ Yes ___No

Do you feel more comfortable talking to prospects at the level of VP or above?
___ Yes ___No

Do you read five or more industry trade publications a month like Restaurant News, Manufacturing News, etc.?
___ Yes ___No

Correct Answers

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. Yes
7. Yes
8. Yes
9. Yes
10. Yes

To feel comfortable using the “Reverse Value” selling concept, you need to score 70% or more on the above test. Reverse Value methods require confidence, professionalism, industry knowledge, and the ability to intellectually discuss with management prospects business issues that position you as a thought leader.

Be a seen as a thought leader, and sell more.

To your success,

Rick Erling

About Rick Erling and The CxO Group

Rick Erling is CEO and Founder of The CxO Group, LLC. We are a managing partner of the Value Forward Network and have business coaching partners in five countries making us one of the world's largest management consulting groups focused on helping companies increase corporate revenue capture.

We work with senior executive teams to integrate sales process, marketing methodology, corporate strategy and financial management into one outbound revenue capture program to increase corporate revenue. We do this by assessing the value your customers see and the value you think you have and then measure the "value variance" gap between the two. Once we have identified the "Value Variance" between the two, we then make appropriate strategic and tactical recommendations on your corporate strategy and marketing programs to close the gaps. When this is completed, we then train your sales team to sell to management more effectively using techniques that are linked to our recommendations.

Top-performing organizations are increasing their companies' revenue, within a constricted economy by investing in business growth acceleration strategies. For more on increasing your revenue capture effectiveness, subscribe to my Email Newsletter, follow me on Twitter, connect to me on LinkedIn, or friend me on Facebook. If I can help you or your firms revenue growth acceleration strategies, check out my coaching and consulting firm, The CxO Group, email me, or call me at (972) 727-6880.

6 CEO Success Scorecard Attributes Needed To Grow Revenue

2010-08-27T14:12:00.002-05:00

by Paul DiModica

When coaching CEOs to increase corporate performance, we holistically assess our client’s business and look for operational variance gaps and best practices usage in the company’s business marketing, sales, strategy and financial management approaches to help them maximize their year over year growth.

Through our advisement programs, we assess their current financial position and compare their P and L’s (profit and loss reports) against their competitors from our proprietary database of financials submitted by over 50,000 CPAs. Using this analytical methodology, we have identified six specific business benchmarks that we use to chart our client’s current position as compared to their unique industry and that is used as a CEO success scorecard.

If you are looking to grow your business — metrics is a key business driver. If you are trying to succeed in a down economy — then your action steps must be proactive, not reactive.

Are you managing your company by business and financial metrics? Is your management team knowledgeable about your industry or are they just ambivalent?

6 Scorecard Areas You Should Manage Monthly

Financial LIQUIDITY

Measures your ability to meet daily financial obligations and includes:

Inventory (or staff bench unitization rate) in stock in days
Account Receivable in days
Accounts Payables in days

PROFITS & PROFIT MARGIN

Are profitability trends favorable in the company?

Gross Profit Margin
Net Profit Margin
Advertising Cost to Sales
Rent to Sales
Payroll Percent to Sales
Operating Cash Flow Margin

SALES

Are sales growing?

Sales Year Over Year Growth
Sales by Product Year to Year
Sales by Services Year to Year

BORROWING Capacity

Is the company borrowing profitably?

Interest Coverage Ratio
Debt to Equity Ratio
Debt Leverage Ratio

Corporate ASSETS Usage

Is the company using gross fixed assets effectively?

Return on equity
Return on assets
Fixed asset turnover

Employees Performance

Is the company hiring effectively?

Revenue per employee
Employee turnover by department
Profit per employee

Each one of these assessment areas should be placed into a monthly scorecard that gives you month to month and year to year comparisons. If your CFO or accountant does not do it, find someone who will.

Growth can be attained for those who manage metrically — those who don’t will get the same results that they got last year . . . and may not be around next year.

To your success,

Rick Erling

About Rick Erling and The CxO Group

Rick Erling is CEO and Founder of The CxO Group, LLC. We are a managing partner of the Value Forward Network and have business coaching partners in five countries making us one of the world's largest management consulting groups focused on helping companies increase corporate revenue capture.

We work with senior executive teams to integrate sales process, marketing methodology, corporate strategy and financial management into one outbound revenue capture program to increase corporate revenue. We do this by assessing the value your customers see and the value you think you have and then measure the "value variance" gap between the two. Once we have identified the "Value Variance" between the two, we then make appropriate strategic and tactical recommendations on your corporate strategy and marketing programs to close the gaps. When this is completed, we then train your sales team to sell to management more effectively using techniques that are linked to our recommendations.

Top-performing organizations are increasing their companies' revenue, within a constricted economy, by investing in revenue growth acceleration strategies. For more information, visit: http://www.thecxogroup.com/

8 Role Playing Tips To Increase Your Sales Success and Improve Lead Quality!

2010-08-19T12:22:00.000-05:00

By Paul DiModica

Role playing is an underused sales tool by most technology and professional service companies. When employed correctly, it can increase your sales team success, improve your market lead to prospect conversion, identify sales skill gaps and allow you to develop an esprit de corps amongst your sales team as they experience sales education as a team.

Conversely, when incorrectly used, it embarrasses your sales account managers, produces poor sales/management interaction, diminishes lead generation quality and hides sales training requirements from your executive staff.

It is estimated that only 21% of sales teams actually role play sales issues and objections during the sales year.

So, how should role playing be used?

Role playing is a business tool to manage sales stress when communicating to prospects.

As sales stress increases during prospect interaction, salespeople lose control of their verbal responses, shoot from the hip and simultaneously lose control of the sales cycle. Sales stress develops when salespeople are not prepared to respond to the weaves and bobs of prospect questioning. Managing prospect questioning through a trained process will reduce sales stress and increase sales success.

Sales role playing, like any other training tool, needs to be a structured process with guidelines in order for your sales team to get the most out of it. The sales program should have specific goals based on written objectives. Pulling a salesperson into a corner office and grilling them as a CEO buyer may be as effective as focusing on targeted sales skill improvement based on increasing sales efficiency on sales techniques like prospect questioning, cold calling, demos, etc.

8 Role Playing Tips To Increase Your Success!

Never make role playing easy. Salespeople must learn to be able to handle pressure (and stress) in the form of difficult inbound questions from prospects based on the prospect’s probing need to know about your value, price, competitive positioning and feature/function offers. Being tough in role playing makes salespeople ready for any outcome.
Role play by title of buyers. Salespeople need to adapt to their sales verbal communication skills by buyer title. The way you sell a CFO of a Fortune 1000 firm is diametrically different than a president of a small private firm. If you are selling a VP of Marketing, than role play with someone who will act like a VP of Marketing.
Create a Prospect Buyer Dictionary. Catalogue the words that your targeted prospect buyer will use during your sales cycle and use them during your role playing practice. The more you sound like the buyer, the faster they will see you like themselves and as a peer.
Split role playing between sales peers and sales management. Sales role playing should be carried out by both sales management and sales team members to allow for diversity of approach and experience. Have each team member take turns being the buyer or the seller.
Make a list of your top ten sales objections and use them during your role playing sessions. Selling management is just managing their understanding of your value. Value is communicated based on your ability to show the prospect how you can help fix their business pain. Always role play your 10 toughest sales objections so salespeople can see how to manage value expectations with their most common objections and questions.
When role playing with salespeople, redirect all conversation away from the sales process. Prospects (even qualified prospects) at times will change subjects and “steer” salespeople away from sales cycle conversation. To sell senior management, salespeople need to chit chat less and stay on the targeted goals of the appointment or conversation by qualifying the prospect and moving forward in the sales cycle. Role play with sales team members to see how quickly and succinctly they bring back the conversation to the discussion about relevant business issues.
Tape record all role playing sessions. Role playing is a reusable, educational tool that should be listened to over and over again. By recording your sales role playing session, you can later document great sales objection responses and disseminate them in written form to your sales team.
Document each salesperson’s role playing strengths and weaknesses. Role playing is a replicable, scalable sales tool. Understanding and managing your sales team’s skill sets will help them hit their sales quota faster. If a salesperson crumbles under the pressure of sales role playing with their peers or their direct sales manager, how will they perform in person? And how many qualified prospects are they burning through by saying the wrong thing? Through role playing, you can help individual salespeople increase sales quota success.

To Increase Your Sales Income and marketing lead quality – Role Play More!

To your success,

Rick Erling

The Five Stages of Prospect Value Identification

2010-08-19T11:13:00.001-05:00

By Paul DiModica

Prospect value identification is an integrated process of perceived and actual value delivered based on your offering and your customer's perception of that offering at various stages of your sales cycle. There are five steps of prospect value identification that take place during your sales cycle and they include:

The Vendor's Perceived Value - This is a vendor presented value and is based on how you see your value and how you communicate its status to your prospects or existing customers during the pre-sales cycle through your firm's marketing communication and sales step process.
The Customer or Prospect Transitional Value - This value happens in tandem during the discovery process where the prospect matches or rejects your perceived value (vendor's perceived value) with their perception of your value. This is a value conversion step during the sales cycle.
The Prospect's Perceived Value of Your Offering - This value happens when your prospect or your customer finalizes their perception of your value relative to your competition and makes an assumption (correctly or incorrectly) of the value of your product or service relative to price, the business results it produces and the alternative options they have for purchase or non-purchase.
The Prospect's Actual Value - This is the alignment by the prospect or customer during their post-sale decision process to determine if the perceived value communicated by you in the pre-sale matches their perception of your actual value in the post-sale.
The Value Gap - This is the measurement or gap between the vendor's perceived value believed during the pre-sale steps and the prospect's actual value calculated after the first sale.

Prospect value identification by its very nature is a layered, intricate process that must be aligned with your sales and marketing communication as an integrated approach. Prospect value observation starts at the beginning of your sales cycle and your position is often determined based on your entry point into the organization.

Enter into a prospect's organizational chart below the title of Vice President at the beginning of your sales cycle and you are entering into the commodity zone of buying. Prospects below the title of VP generally make business decisions based on your offering's features, functions or price.

When you sell management at the Vice President level and above, they buy based on their perceptions of your business offering's value. This is a variable option that you can manipulate if you can sell correctly.

Often there is a gap between what firms believe in themselves and what their prospects actually experience.

It is not what you sell, but how your prospect positions the value of your offerings against the alternative buying options they have that must be managed.

To sell more, sell above the commodity line, manage the prospect's perception of your business value, and control the value gap between their perception of your value and your perception.

What the customer demands is last year's model, cheaper. To find out what the customer needs, you have to understand what the customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it. Nicholas Dewolf, Founder Teradyne Corp

To your success,

Rick Erling

Use Geo and Spatial Marketing Segmentation to Grow Your Business

2010-08-19T10:50:00.003-05:00

Think Small to Grow Large

By Paul DiModica

When working with clients, we often help identify new business market gaps to launch into as well as existing markets to exploit using a segmentation model based on multiple variables including, but not limited to, the client’s core competence, competitive position, corporate financial capabilities, market demand, business assets, and risk tolerance.

■Are looking to open a new office in another city?
■Should you sell overseas?
■Will prospects in London, Las Vegas and Chicago buy your offering based on the same marketing characteristics?
■Should you increase your offering’s price?
■Should you set up a channel partner program to expand?

These are all relevant business growth questions that CEO’s ask on a regular basis.

When trying to expand, it is important to know the best practices needed to grow your business. To answer these questions, consider enrolling in one of our coaching programs.

Segmentation marketing is one key business driver to understand how to maximize top line revenue growth.

To answer these questions correctly, management teams must understand the basis for business growth.

Two types of segmentation marketing methods are:

1.Geo-marketing segmentation
2.Spatial marketing segmentation

Geo-Marketing Segmentation

When building your business growth plan, there are different marketing propositions that must be developed for the geography that you market to. Prospects are not rigid, stone-like clones of each other. They have unique value identification demands based on the geography they live in. Prospects in London, Tokyo, Boston, Chicago and LA all have different drivers that make them acquire. Do southern people in the U.S. buy different from people in the midwest?

Geo-marketing is the subsegmenting of these unique buyer variables around the traditional 4 P’s of marketing — Price, Promotion, Position and Product.

Geo-marketing can:

■Subsegment for you geographic opportunities within larger geographies (Dallas within Texas)
■Help identify new markets to enter
■Refine sales and marketing budget allocation
■Personalize your marketing messages

Spatial Marketing Segmentation

Spatial Marketing goes even further than geo-marketing by helping you analyze not just the geography of where your targeted prospects live, but also the intersection of buyer value based on your offering’s distribution capabilities, competitors, buyer lifestyle, communication capabilities, buyer financing capabilities and even weather, all within the same buying zones. When creating your value forward marketing programs, remember to build value uniquely, not globally, based on the spatial buying characteristics of the prospect you are trying to sell (i.e., well-to-do retiree buyers in a waterfront community may perceive value for the same offering differently than prospects who live in a midwest farming community).

Spatial marketing can help you:

■Forecast demand
■Profile your customers
■Minimize marketing investment mistakes
■Increase customer satisfaction levels by understanding the demographic flow of complaints (who complains and why)

Use spatial and geo-marketing segmentation methods as business tools to increase the return on investment of your marketing programs and as a foundation to make premeditated business decisions based on logic, not emotion.

“If you want to be a big company tomorrow, you have to invest and start acting like one today.”
Thomas J. Watson, Jr., Founder IBM

To your success,

Rick Erling

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About Rick Erling and The CxO Group

Rick Erling is CEO and Founder of The CxO Group, LLC. We are a managing partner of the Value Forward Network and have business coaching partners in five countries making us one of the world’s largest management consulting groups focused on helping companies increase corporate revenue capture.

We work with senior executive teams to integrate sales process, marketing methodology, corporate strategy and financial management into one outbound revenue capture program to increase corporate revenue. We do this by assessing the value your customers see and the value you think you have and then measure the “value variance” gap between the two. Once we have identified the “Value Variance” between the two, we then make appropriate strategic and tactical recommendations on your corporate strategy and marketing programs to close the gaps. When this is completed, we then train your sales team to sell to management more effectively using techniques that are linked to our recommendations.

Top-performing organizations are increasing their companies’ revenue, within a constricted economy, by investing in revenue growth acceleration strategies, For more information visit http://www.thecxogroup.com/

Managing Your Prospects Using CIA Philosophy

2010-08-19T10:38:00.000-05:00

7 Stages of Prospect Commitment

by Paul DiModica

I have four brothers in my family . . . I am the quiet one. Years ago, one of my younger brothers Mark was an airborne ranger in the U.S. Army attached to an intelligence unit at Fort Lewis. Every day, he would get up and follow around Russian sailors in Seattle to see who they talked with when they came ashore off of their “fishing trawlers.”

After doing that for several years, he was then transferred to work at the White House, where he and other paramilitary types like Navy Seals and SF (Special Forces) commandos were co-mingled with secret service agents for presidential security. During his tenure, he often worked with Caspar W. Weinberger, the secretary of defense at that time, traveling the world.

To be honest, I wouldn’t give my brother a sharp pencil, but he was always carrying around automated machine guns in a bag, a locksmith license, and a bullet proof vest. A long time before 2001, it took him hours to get through airports because he had to check in ahead of time with airport security to show his “hardware”.

Then he left the secret service and kind of disappeared for a while. My family and I thought he went to work for a black bag division of the Pentagon, training counterinsurgency and intelligence tactics to Fortune 100 CEO bodyguards — but, we never really knew.

Then he resurrected again and went on to work in technology security (one of the three things secret service agents monitor) for a global accounting and consulting firm and often traveled to Moscow to help a national truck rental company set up Russian transportation distribution channels.

I know this is hard to believe . . . but it is all true.

Through his travels and his adventures, he often talked about how he and his cohorts always managed the environment they were operating in. They never assumed that people (even those who had appropriate authority) knew what they were doing regardless of what they said or did. He often stated, “It’s really up to me — to manage . . . not to be managed. Being managed can be dangerous. When dealing with people, you need commitments . . . not just intentions.”

And this is the point. You need to get commitments.

Spending time with prospects who are supposed to be qualified, but never buy depletes and wastes your available selling time and effort. In IT marketing and sales, you must force prospects to take parallel action steps with you to prove that they are qualified buyers – not professional lookers.

The 7 Stages of Prospect Commitment You Should Manage to Accelerate Your Sales Cycle

It is important to manage prospect expectations. Selling is a profession where you must subliminally drive the prospect to appreciate the time limitations you have in moving them through the seven stages of client commitment and helping them fix their business needs.

The buying cycle and the selling cycle are always different.

Nobody has a two-year sales quota!

So, to sell more, you must manage the prospect’s buying expectations.

You can combine some of these expectations (listed as stages below) and shorten your sales cycle even faster, but if you do not manage ALL of these expectations, you will not close the deal.

7 Stages of Client Commitment

1.Prospect Attention — Capturing the prospect’s attention happens when you successfully cold call, network, or respond to an inbound lead by making contact with an appropriate prospect who has economic approval to buy.

2.Prospect Disbelief — Prospects automatically tend to disbelieve you on the first pass for this simple reason: You’re a salesperson. Use your knowledge of their business model and business pain to break through their disbelief filter and “prove” that you sell a business tool which can help their business.

3.Prospect Value Identification — Based on your firm’s unique sales value proposition, you must position yourself and your firm differently from your competition and get the prospect to verbalize the difference.

4.Prospect Action Step Commitment — To sell more prospects, you need to drive them to take “action step” commitments not just “verbal” commitments. Has a prospect ever told you “we are going to sign the purchase order next month” and then not respond to any of your calls or email inquiries until 6 months later? Prospects need to show action steps that move your sales cycle forward to prove that you should spend time with them.

5.Prospect Time Management Commitment — To close deals, management must commit their time for project scope development, demo’s, executive briefings, and contract negotiations. If you have a prospect who will not commitment their time, then they are not ready to buy.

6.Prospect Financial Commitment — There is an old Sicilian saying that my grandfather (a successful entrepreneur) use to say — “No money? Call me when you have a nickel in your pocket.” Spending too much time on a prospect because they “should” buy or “will” buy sometime in the future will not help you hit your sales quota now. Prospects must make a financial commitment by giving you their budget or by confirming your investment is affordable, otherwise you are just making friends — not customers.

7.Prospect Decision Commitment — The goal of every sales cycle is for the prospect to make a decision commitment. It’s one thing to take a prospect through 6 steps and at Step 7, they buy from someone else. It’s another for the prospect to decide NOT to buy from you or your competitors. You must force prospects to make a decision or else you are wasting your time with professional lookers.

Prospects must prove they are buyers through commitments . . . not just words.

Many salespeople “project” these steps as being completed before they have actually occurred and end up incorrectly making an assumption that the prospect is going to buy.

Once you have networked or cold called your way into the beginning of your sales cycle with a prospect and established there is a business need for your product or service, give the prospect a “Client Briefing Document” (after Stage 3) as a preliminary sales tool. It is a quick way to establish and manage prospect commitments.

A Client Briefing Document is a written outline of the expected sequence steps for the prospect to buy. It should identify dates, action steps, and timelines for each part of the sales cycle that should be completed by you including forecasted time for demos, contract negotiations, etc. In short, it lists each step so both the vendor and the buyer know what is expected.

It is a sales tool called an anthropomorphism.

Anthropomorphisms assign human characteristics or actions to be taken by non-human things like the theory of sales steps.

By listing human steps in a Client Briefing Document, you can gently “push” the prospect through the 7 steps of commitment.

Use Client Briefing Documents to manage prospect commitments.

Remember, the faster you premeditatively manage sales commitments by prospects, the shorter your sales cycle will be.

So, act like a special agent and manage your prospect selling environment . . . instead of letting it manage you.

Regards,

Rick Erling

(972) 727-6880

Case Study — Ibertech Gets 300 Qualified Leads in Two Days

2010-08-19T10:23:00.001-05:00

by Paul DiModica

Some years ago, I was walking the floor of the National Restaurant Association Show (NRA) in Chicago on one of the lower floors of the convention. I was looking for a technology company to buy in the hospitality market space.

As I walked through rows and rows of vendors, I came upon a company called Ibertech-Aloha Systems who was sharing a booth with a hardware manufacture. In the booth were two engineers from a military airplane manufacturer who had developed the first restaurant computer system that was a Windows-based touch screen point of sale system. Over the next couple of months I tried to buy them but they were not interested. Instead, they hired me to develop their strategy, marketing and sales and their national expansion plans. Ultimately they offered me 5% equity in their firm and made me their VP of Sales to implement my recommendations.

Having a great technical product and one customer (like they did) will only take you so far. So, at the next big industry tradeshow, we decided to launch bigger than we really were. So, we rented a 20 X 20 foot both in the middle of our global 1000 competitors like NCR, Micros and IBM and brought in family and friends to fill the booth with “employees”.

To increase our tradeshow success, we deployed Value Forward strategies and techniques that included handing out sales objection white papers to every booth attendee, and stress balls that said “DOS IS DEAD” with a ghost buster symbol over it and our company name on it (at that time our competitors were only selling Microsoft DOS-based systems). We left the message stress balls in the show break rooms, snack bars, restaurants and in our competitor’s booths and ended up handing out thousands at the show.

Using our sales objection white papers as talking points along with other prospecting techniques, we created a stampede of traffic between our booth and our competitors across the ten foot aisle as prospects were forced to see our value three dimensionally through our marketing methods. Our methods challenged our larger more established and better funded revenue stealers to be perplexed and undecided on how to respond because all they wanted to do was tell their booth prospects about their brand name and current market share penetration.

As the trade show continued on, we started to create lots of PR because of our marketing methods and walked out of the show with over 300 leads from C level executives of restaurants chains U.S. wide.
After that tradeshow, Ibertech-Aloha grew year over year in revenue until they were sold to a public company called Radiant Systems for $30 million.

So why did this tradeshow approach work?

Most companies just go to tradeshows year after year with no pre-show planning, specific messaging, competitive positioning, or marketing strategies other than just having sales reps stand in the booth and hopefully look refreshed.

■Don’t go to tradeshows because you went last year.

■Don’t go to tradeshows because you have no other lead generation methods that work.

■Don’t go to tradeshows because your competitors go.

■Don’t go to tradeshows because your sales team says you have to.

Tradeshows cost too much money. Costs are going up, attendance by qualified prospects is down and in a down economy, tradeshows can be your greatest opportunity to increase your revenue or . . . just another alcohol and binge party event for your sales and marketing team.

It is up to you, but in an economy like today, you can grow your business quickly and economically if your tradeshow strategy uses a premeditated process . . . not a reactive course.

But if you go to a tradeshow, follow these guidelines:

■Create a pre-show marketing plan to tease qualified prospects to come to your booth . . . or don’t go. If you can’t afford pre-show marketing, then you can’t afford to go to the show.

■Don’t just go to tradeshows — create an event that forces your value to be experienced not just heard.

■Develop specific handouts with unique messaging that forces prospects to listen and competitors to fear you. (Brochures are not specific handouts.)

■Do market brand, but sell value.

■Understand that it is better to go to 2 tradeshows a year that are planned than 6 tradeshows where you just show up.

If you are looking to increase your success at tradeshows and maximize your qualified lead generation right now using a proven method like I used at Ibertech, then learn more about our business coaching here.

It’s up to you!

To your success,

Rick Erling

Growing your Business in an Economic Downturn

2010-08-19T10:15:00.000-05:00

Special Report – 10 Tips to Grow Your Business in a Recession or Economic Downturn

by Rick Erling

While there is widespread disagreement as to if the U.S. economy is on the edge of a depression, a recession or is just experiencing an “anxiety economy”, no one can argue that the financial crisis is not having a huge ripple effect and its going to take years to work out.

Rick Erling, President of The CxO Group, LLC, a Dallas, Texas CEO Coaching, Sales Training and Business Performance Improvement firm adds “Today’s uncertain economic times are forcing all executives, managers, and business owners to adopt new strategies for navigating through the current business downturn. At times like these many companies prefer to move into a survival strategy to ride out the storm. Survival strategy, while conservative, has one underlying problem. In today’s hyper-connected economy things can unravel quickly, and when your business is not growing and improving it is falling behind and headed for extinction. Keep in mind that even though your business may be slow today, your business will return to profitability in the future, IF you do what is necessary to survive today. “

So, what are you going to do? Let employees go? Cut back on marketing? Squeeze your current clients for more money? Yes, you can do all of this, but is that going to help? What can you specifically do during a recession to grow your business profitability?

Rick adds, “Now is the time for you to re-evaluate your strategies. The CxO Group has published a complementary Special Report, 10 Tips to Grow Your Business in a Recession or Economic Downturn. In the report we’ve listed ten effective, proven, practical keys for maintaining profitability-with the latest, best information and advice direct from one of the world’s largest management consulting groups focused on helping companies increase corporate revenue capture that will help you answer those questions.”
Anyone wishing to receive the complementary special report titled “10 Tips to Grow Your Business in a Recession or Economic Downturn” can visit this special link http://growth.thecxogroup.com/ to download this invaluable special report. Alternatively, you can contact us by email at info@thecxogroup.com, or call (972) 727-6880 to request a copy.

The CxO Group specializes in CEO coaching and business performance improvement by integrating financial management, strategies, marketing, and sales to maximize corporate revenue growth. We use a copyrighted methodology to advise CEOs on action steps to take to grow revenues, consult with management staff on sales and marketing best practices and train sales and marketing teams on tactics and strategies that put your business value in front of you so your prospects see you differently than your competition and take action steps to buy.
“A recession is when your neighbor is out of work. A depression is when you are out of work.” Rick Erling – President The CxO Group, LLC.

Sales & Marketing Metrics Balanced Scorecards Improve Performance

2010-08-19T10:08:00.000-05:00

by Rick Erling

It’s been said that money hides mistakes. Corporate earnings are down, the market drops and gains triple digits on multiple days, housing prices continue to fall and foreclosure rates are skyrocketing. It’s no question that we are in an un-stable economic environment. Are we in a recession right now, if not today will we slip into one next week, or perhaps next month?

With economic uncertainty looming, many of our clients are asking: How should I position my firm in the months to come?

We are fast approaching the end of the first quarter. Today, we cover a topic that just might contain the insight you need to uncover any hidden mistakes and help you surpass your 2008 goals.

The “Balanced Scorecard” is a strategic management approach developed in the early 1990s by Dr Robert Kaplan of Harvard Business School, and Dr David Norton.

Much like the “Balanced Scorecard” of the 1990s, that focused on linking business performance to department metrics, The CxO Group uses a “Sales Balanced Scorecard” (http://www.sales-scorecard.com/) with a similar approach, but designed for today’s economy.

Today’s scorecard creates interaction and links between five sales management pillars as a packaged team to help drive performance.

– Sales

– Marketing

– Strategy

– Operations/Development

– Partners/Alliances

First, we create identifiable tactical measures or Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for each of your sales team members and contributing departments. Then, we develop and help you implement the scorecard into a living, breathing business tool to proactively manage and link strategy, marketing and sales.

This tool becomes a leading business driver that when used correctly, increases corporate cash flow, accelerates operational success, and allows companies to manage their business model by proactive metrics, not reactively by emotion.

With this linkage, the sales and marketing scorecard provides clarity in strategic and tactical goals that can be readily monitored to understand where performance is coming from and where remedial attention is needed. As I mentioned, we are regularly asked about the best improvement initiatives to be made in this uncertain economy. We always suggest companies look towards sales metrics as the way to grow their business and uncover those “hidden” mistakes.

Start with the foundation. If your sales and marketing organization doesn’t have clear objectives and metrics for accountability then you probably have a few mistakes hiding in your process that are costing you money. Clear sales objectives that are aligned with company strategy is one way you can be assured of hitting your goals in uncertain economic times.

At The CxO Group, we believe the entire company, not just the sales department, is responsible for revenue capture! Visit us online at http://www.thecxogroup.com/, give us a call today at (972)727-6880, or email info@thecxogroup.com to chat about how we can help you create a sales & marketing metrics scorecard that is custom fit so your firm’s business assets are centralized on revenue development and all departments are linked to the performance.

Sales Training * Marketing Advisement * Strategy Consulting * Growth Strategies

by Rick Erling, President and Senior Thought Leader at The CxO Group, LLC
http://www.thecxogroup.com/
info@thecxogroup.com
(972) 727-6880

8 Ways to Get More Sales Leads From Your Web Site

2010-08-19T09:23:00.001-05:00

by Rick Erling

Does your website create website traffic and generate enough sales leads? If you are like most CEO’s, sales and marketing management I speak with on a daily basis, the answer is probably no.

If you perform a Google search on “sales and marketing strategies” you’ll be pleased to find over 62 million web pages devoted to helping market a business and increase sales. Spend just five minutes looking at the search results and two items become very apparent . . .

You can’t expect to compete in business today without leveraging your reach with online digital marketing tools and having a Web Site Marketing Strategy. If you’re not appealing directly to the person who is reading your ad, you risk them seeing it without realizing how it relates to them. Considering there are over 65 million pages devoted to “sales and marketing strategies” validates the importance of creative writing and how to appeal directly to your customers’ need to increase traffic and conversions.

Keep in mind that when people meet in a live in-person business meeting, we introduce ourselves with some statement about what we do, and why we should work with one another. In a live meeting it’s important to show very quickly that we understand their issues and needs, and that we have ideas and solutions to address these.

Your website is a virtual meeting tool. It must accomplish the very same objectives of an in-person meeting. It must convey common points of interest, whether personal or professional. The virtual visitor must begin to feel that they can relate with you, and this helps to build the beginning of a business relationship. Studies show you have 8 seconds to build this relationship before they click to the next site listed in the search listings. If the visitor doesn’t feel they can relate to you, if they’re overwhelmed, confused, can’t easily navigate your site or simply not interested in your site, they’ll leave in very short order — 8 SECONDS!

Keeping the above strategy at top of mind, here are the top seven smart ways to get your business noticed on the Internet.

1. Keep it simple.

Get rid of Flash and fancy intro pages! Studies today show you only have 8 seconds to convince a prospect how you can help. Does your website describe your product or service in a succinct, compelling and visual fashion in that timeframe?

With thousands, perhaps millions of Google hits for a given search term, prospects are looking for exactly what they’ve typed in or they move on to the next search result.

2. Value First, Brand Second

Don’t make the mistake of dragging your business value behind you by leading with the brand name of your product, service or company. Push your business value out in front of you and set yourself above the competition by using “Value Forward” methodology!

3. Call to Action

Once you’ve got their attention you must have calls to action like an offer of a free white paper, webinar, or newsletter to harvest prospect contact information.

4. Easy Navigation

Your website must be easy to navigate with less than 7 navigation buttons on the home page.

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Make sure your site appears high on search engines’ results pages. By including the right keywords and phrases, your site will appear higher up on Google, Yahoo! and other search engines.

The key to keywording is translating what your product or service does into appropriate “Value Forward” keywords and phrases that will turn your visitors into qualified sales leads.

6. Pay Per Click (PPC)

Your sponsored or PPC listing on a search engine results page (SERP) must call out to the person reading it. If you’re not appealing directly to the person who is reading your ad, you risk them seeing it without realizing how it relates to them.

In many situations it may even be necessary to develop new landing pages to help increase site level conversion.

7. Podcasting and YouTube

Podcasting and YouTube are new and simple technologies that you may want to take a look at. All you need to get started is a decent microphone, a digital audio or video recorder and editing software.

This is a great strategy for many small businesses for several reasons. A voice, or video reference or testimonial rather than words on a website can convey conviction, credibility and personality.

8. Track Your Customer Conversation Ratio or C.C.R.

It is not how many unique visitors come to your website that is important. It is how many you can identify as prospects. Most companies today spend large amounts of marketing dollars on tradeshows, advertising, email marketing, corporate branding and direct mail driving thousands of potential buyers to their website . . . yet they don’t know who is there and don’t have engagement devices to capture their name. To generate more leads, track your C.C.R. through your daily audit logs as well as the names of those who sign up for your free information.

Are you interested in insuring your solutions, products and services are conveyed in a compelling fashion on your website? Yes, your web designer will provide the actual website design and artwork, BUT it’s up to you to know what the content should be. Most importantly, you need to supply content that will trigger search engine hits and drive qualified traffic to your website.

When you’re not experienced or don’t have the budget to have web strategy, marketing, sales or systems people on staff, or simply don’t have the bandwidth, get help! Smart business owners surround themselves with consultants that are strong where they are weak. Please consider having us help with your sales, marketing, and website strategies improvement projects.

Rick Erling, is the President of The CxO Group, LLC in Dallas, Texas. The firm specializes in sales, marketing, growth and website strategies to improve revenue and they can be reached at info@thecxogroup.com , http://www.thecxogroup.com/ or 972.727.6880. The CxO Group is a managing consulting partner of the Value Forward Network, one of the world’s largest management consulting groups focused on helping companies increase corporate revenue capture.

Sales Training * Marketing Advisement * Strategy Consulting * Website Strategies * Growth Strategies

Value Forward 8 Step Business Growth Methodology

2008-10-24T09:29:00.005-05:00

Planned business growth starts with defining your targeted prospect's needs and understanding how they perceive your business value.

To grow your business successfully year over year without just relying on a one-time purchase anomaly from a large key account or hoping your largest client just increases their orders, you need to build a business operating model designed for growth.

Through our best practices research at the Value Forward Group, we have identified an 8 step methodology to build a replicable and scalable revenue capture process to increase success.

These eight steps when implemented together maximize your business process of revenue capture. When each step is addressed in a silo approach, your corporate growth success diminishes.

How many steps have you thought through?

We’ve put together some questions to help you get on track with your strategy. When you try to answer these questions, are you guessing? Are you tied emotionally or financially to your observations?

Step 1: Market and Value Gap Identification

Do you know what your market gap opportunities are and what your current business value identification is? Often corporate divisions, new product/service lines, and private companies are launched based on the gut feeling of the management team and/or the founder?
What is your value? Do know why people buy and don't buy?

Step 2: Operations Model Review and Best Practices Adjustment

Have you analyzed your operations or delivery capabilities for growth? Is your operations or services department holding back your sales and marketing success? Is your operations department an asset or a competitor?

Step 3: Strategy Model Review and Best Practices Adjustment

Have you analyzed your current strategy model for growth potential and best practices? Are you selling red shoes (because you overspent on R&D or inventory) to a blue shoes market? To learn more about the 8 Step Business Growth System, visit this link for more information http://www.thecxogroup.com/intro-business-growth.htm.

Step 4: Financial Management Review and Best Practices Adjustment

Are you managing your company by business and financial metrics? Is your management team knowledgeable about your industry or are they just ambivalent? Growth can be attained for those who manage metrically -- those who don’t will get the same results that they got last year . . . and may not be around next year.

Step 5: Marketing Model Review and Best Practices Adjustment

What is your marketing model? Does your website create website traffic and generate enough sales leads? Do you just keep going to tradeshow after tradeshow spending money and hoping for qualified leads? Do you know how to track marketing return on investment? Is your marketing a planned process or a reactive process?

Step 6: Sales Management Model Review and Best Practices Adjustment

Does your sales management approach operate on metrics and key business drivers? Do you make up your sales quotas and targets in the backroom? Is your sales process replicable and based on best practices?

Step 7: Sales Process Review and Best Practices Adjustment

Does your sales team feel they are a silo or part of a team process? Does your sales team hunt for new business? Do they cold call? Does your sales team lead or feed? Do you provide sales training updates for your team?

Step 8: Business Department Alignment, Gaps Closed and Integrated Together Into One Outbound Revenue Capture Program

Can you access the business growth gaps between your departments? In your company, is revenue capture a company responsibility . . . or the sales team's responsibility?

Each of these eight steps is critical in building a business growth infrastructure and strategic process focused on profitable growth.

The CxO Group’s Value Forward Business Growth System is where you can learn to apply the latest strategies to grow your business using our planned 8 step process. You can learn more about the Value Forward Business Growth System at http://www.thecxogroup.com/intro-business-growth.htm. You may also call us at (972) 727-6880 or email us at info@thecxogroup.com .

The new quarter is upon us . . . are you thinking . . .or are you planning?

"Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning." Ben Franklin

10 Tips to Grow Your Business in a Recession or Economic Downturn

2008-10-24T09:01:00.002-05:00

Growing your Business in an Economic Downturn
Special Report - 10 Tips to Grow Your Business in a Recession or Economic Downturn

While there is widespread disagreement as to if the U.S. economy is on the edge of a depression, a recession or is just experiencing an "anxiety economy", no one can argue that the financial crisis is not having a huge ripple effect and its going to take years to work out.

Rick Erling, President of The CxO Group, LLC, a Dallas, Texas CEO Coaching, Sales Training and Business Performance Improvement firm adds “Today’s uncertain economic times are forcing all executives, managers, and business owners to adopt new strategies for navigating through the current business downturn. At times like these many companies prefer to move into a survival strategy to ride out the storm. Survival strategy, while conservative, has one underlying problem. In today's hyper-connected economy things can unravel quickly, and when your business is not growing and improving it is falling behind and headed for extinction. Keep in mind that even though your business may be slow today, your business will return to profitability in the future, IF you do what is necessary to survive today. “

So, what are you going to do? Let employees go? Cut back on marketing? Squeeze your current clients for more money? Yes, you can do all of this, but is that going to help? What can you specifically do during a recession to grow your business profitability?

Rick adds, “Now is the time for you to re-evaluate your strategies. The CxO Group has published a complementary Special Report, 10 Tips to Grow Your Business in a Recession or Economic Downturn. In the report we’ve listed ten effective, proven, practical keys for maintaining profitability-with the latest, best information and advice direct from one of the world's largest management consulting groups focused on helping companies increase corporate revenue capture that will help you answer those questions.”

Anyone wishing to receive the complementary special report titled “10 Tips to Grow Your Business in a Recession or Economic Downturn” can visit this special link http://growth.thecxogroup.com/ to download this invaluable special report. Alternatively, you can contact us by email at info@thecxogroup.com, or call (972) 727-6880 to request a copy.

The CxO Group specializes in CEO coaching and business performance improvement by integrating financial management, strategies, marketing, and sales to maximize corporate revenue growth. We use a copyrighted methodology to advise CEOs on action steps to take to grow revenues, consult with management staff on sales and marketing best practices and train sales and marketing teams on tactics and strategies that put your business value in front of you so your prospects see you differently than your competition and take action steps to buy.

"A recession is when your neighbor is out of work. A depression is when you are out of work." Rick Erling – President The CxO Group, LLC.

P.S. Sign-up for our FREE Sales, Marketing and Strategies e-Newsletter - The CxO News - http://www.thecxonews.com/