Ask and you shall receive

“To solve any problem, here are three questions to ask yourself: First, what could I do? Second, what could I read? And third, who could I ask?” Jim Rohn

You have got a sales appointment to meet the decision maker. The initiatives which you took in the last step are paying dividends. The sales pitch goes off well, there is excitement in the room and after a few words at the end of the meeting you are told they will be in touch. Feeling good about the pitch and thinking that the probability of securing the client is high, you are disappointed when there is no follow up from the client and after a while, the lead goes dead. This happened several times at the start of my journey and I always wondered what went wrong. I was really happy when I learned the answer to this conundrum.

An experienced entrepreneur I spoke to asked me whether I had been “Asking for the sale?”. Initially the question was confusing, but when I started to put the pieces together it made a lot more sense. I realised that whenever I was pitching to clients and enthusiasm was generated, I did not focus on closing the deal. I never asked the client for the sale! Psychologically I was avoiding being the pushy salesman, afraid the client would say the dreaded word ‘NO’. As a result I was repeatedly leaving money on the table by not asking the right questions.

Armed with this advice I went back to my script and practiced closing strategies for sales pitches. There are many interesting articles and training courses out there on closing strategies. I have taken the Neuro Linguistic Programming which has helped me tremendously. I have since formulated a way to subtly and politely ask the client for their business at the end of the presentation. Initially it felt strange and I was not  confident about asking, however, over time I have honed my skills. Now ,it has become second nature for me to go into a presentation and confidently, politely and subtly ask the client for their business.

The next time you are making a client presentation, make sure you formulate a strategy to ask the client to give you their business. You will not always win the business, however, through this process you will learn what you could be doing differently and then go back and ask for it again which should win you the contract!

Be Proactive

 

“You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.” Anthony Robbins

You have developed your product/service, have your pitch ready, and are ready to go. Unfortunately, customers don’t usually start banging on your door as soon as you announce your product/service to the world. If you are serious about getting that first sale, and more importantly getting it soon, you need to put yourself out there. Take the initiative to set a target, get a list together and start making those calls and visits to prospects. This is the only way you are going to see momentum in your business. Don’t worry about refining it to perfection, you need to go out there and see what the market thinks about it. Writing story boards and doing research from the comfort of your office is important, but you need to start taking action if you are want to see results. Listed below are a couple of pointers to get you started:

1. Set SMART targets: To get to any destination, you first need to know where you are going, what route to follow and an approximate lenght of time to get there. Charting the course of your first sale works pretty much in the same manner. Set yourself aggressive goals which are time bound. Specific targets keep you more focused and create a greater urgency to get things accomplished within stipulated time frames.

2. Put a list together: Do an industry analysis and select an industry in which you believe your product/service will have the greatest uptake. This will lead naturally to the next step, which is creating a list of prospective companies you can visit in this industry. After the completion of this list of companies, chart out references or friends you may leverage on to approach these companies. This step creates a greater degree of focus and increases the likelihood of closing a deal at a faster pace.

3. Start making those calls: Pick up the phone and start making calls to references, friends or directly to the company to get appointments or even sales. At this stage, you really kick it up a gear as you are now in direct contact with target customers. The impressions you make at this stage will be critical, especially if you are a new company. Have a scripted pitch which should not sound too rehearsed, be very polite and execute it all with the utmost professionalism. Follow each call with standardized follow up emails and start  building connections to get closer to closing that first deal.

4. Network Endlessly: If you are not selling, you should be networking. Use tools such as linkedin to help expand your current professional network. This expansion helps you get more qualified leads, greater access to a much wider net of companies and the opportunity to get your product/service known in the market without spending too much on advertising. The next time you get an invitation to mixers or industry specific conferences, use these opportunities to go out there and get known in the market place.

Use this list to get started. This is not the time to procrastinate. If you want success, you need to be willing to go out there are start looking for it. There is no better time than now to start your sales campaign!

Related Articles:

- SMART Goal Setting

- Industry Identification

Learning from Experience

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Bill Gates

We have all been exposed to bad customer experiences. For those of us in the business or corporate world, we have also been on the receiving end when things didn’t work out as expected. That is part of life. Trying to please every customer to their complete satisfaction is a gargantuan and uphill task. However, it is essential to learn deeply from every complaint and put into place systems, which will take care of such incidents in the future. Listed below are a few pointers which should help expedite the learning process:

1. Refrain from pushing the blame onto external circumstances. Sometimes your supply chain gets delayed, it could be a mix up which your delivery system made or bad weather which resulted in your receiving a mouthful from your client. Accept the blame rather than pushing it onto someone else in the organization because that is the last thing an angry customer wants to hear. Once you have accepted the mistake you can go about resolving the issue in a more efficient and effective manner.

2. Extensively document the mistake. This will force you to think and put into a process the actual course of events and why they occurred. I have found the discovery process extremely interesting because you are forced to map out where the entire process started, who was responsible for what, at which stage and most importantly where we need to focus to ensure that the problem doesn’t happen again. It creates ownership in a business and a team constantly striving to deliver their best.

3. Finding the most efficient and effective solution. Once the mistake has been clearly identified the team should reach a collective decision regarding how to avoid a similar issue in the future. Control measures must be put into place and ensuring responsibility for its proper execution is essential. This is a critical step which should be documented and circulated to all team members to show that a decision has been taken.

Such experiences provide a great learning opportunity for the entire team. Once a mistake has been committed there is nothing we can to do to undo it, however , we can set into motion a series of actions which will alter the way we respond to them in the future. With a fanatical focus on ensuring that you cater to your customers every need and make the experience of doing business with you as seamless and comfortable as possible, will garner massive long term benefits.

What was your last customer experience horror story and did your organization do anything about it?

 

Please hold your call is important to us

“The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.” Peter Drucker 

Those are 8 words I really do not  enjoy hearing from a machine, especially when I am not having the best of days. In this day and age when customer service is a deciding factor in whether a company is successful or not I am continually surprised by the lack of importance given to this function. This blog series was inspired by a nightmarish episode of customer support at one of the largest telco’s in the country. It took them approximately 30 hours to reconnect me with the world.

During this 30 hour period I went through a gamut of emotions ranging from diabolical anger, confusion, disappointment, curiosity, denial to euphoric happiness. I learnt about the intricacies of mammoth call centers, the lack of sufficient support systems, just how insignificant one complaint can be when you process thousands of such queries every hour and how destructive one such incident can be to a company’s reputation. (Lost Laptop = $54m , Bloggers reaction) The internet has transformed the voice of the customer and corporations must definitely factor this into their customer service strategy.

Over the course of this week I will be talking about how to put customer service into your startup strategy from the word go and other topics related to improving and focusing on the customer service department. We have to carefully balance technology with human element to ensure that customer issues are resolved promptly and efficiently. However contrary to common belief, that the customer is always right, this author & blogger has generated a lot of buzz promoting the fact that the customer is ‘not’ always right. What do you think?

What was the worst customer service experience you have been through? How do you think the company could have reacted differently to address your complaints? I look forward to hearing from all of you.

Business Case

“The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the far greater value than what you get.” Jim Rohn

The concept of purpose which was discussed in my prior post deals with the ability to create a compelling business case surrounding the objectives of the client. In most cases the client has reached a situation where they require some assistance to take them from their current position to where they want to be eventually. To get to that final destination several deliverables will need to be met and, as a result of them the client will enjoy certain benefits.

The tricky bit here is to firstly understand the clients current position and then, where they eventually want to be. Lets take Innovo as an example , I deal with the psychometrics division of the company. A lot of the time I get calls from prospects who may have heard of us and want to integrate psychometrics into their company. There are times when the client is clear as to how they want psychometric evaluation to help them decrease the time of the recruitment cycle by eliminating 2 interview rounds, other times the clients want psychometrics to help their recruitment cycle but are not sure how and some times the client just wants to integrate psychometrics without any end goal.

From a business point of view you could sell to all 3 potential clients and make money. However it is client #1, who is aware of the limitation of his current scenario and wants to achieve a certain result using our tool, that we take on. It all comes back to the concept of value creation and delivering tangible results to the client. You need to help identify the potential clients position clearly and decide precisely what the final outcome will be.

Steps to develop a business case :

1. Identify your client’s current situation (any problem or opportunity)

2. Clearly define clear results which will be required at the end of the process

3. Outline the deliverables at each stage

4. State all the benefits which will accrue along the way.

Squash and strategy

“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” Sun Tzu

I started playing squash around a year ago with a lot of enthusiasm. Like all sports, on the surface it looked like a simple game. Four walls, two players one ball; first person to miss the ball loses the point and the game is played up to 11. I was like, how hard can this game actually be. So I started off with a coach who taught me the basic rules, how to hold the racket and basic squash etiquette. That took around 3-4 lessons and by the end of the 4th session I was like “Bring it on”. However, he told me at this point that there was a lot more to learn regarding the game and it would take at least another 3-4 months till I got some basic strategy pat down such as serving, placement, running and steps.

That didn’t sit well with me so I told him that I would learn along the way and we should just start playing games and he could monitor my progress. He told me this wasn’t advisable but in the end agreed and we started playing. I noticed another guy who had started at the same time as me and who was getting regular coaching . I made a mental note that I would play him in a couple of months to test how well our two different routes had turned out. Fast forward to 3 months later, my coach told me that I had made good progress and was getting better. So I asked him to set up a match with the other regular. It was setup shortly thereafter and we decided to play a best of three. I sort of crushed him in the first game 11-5 and remember thinking this was going to be a cinch. Sadly I ran out of gas in the middle of the second game and lost the remaining two matches.

With my ego fairly bruised I spoke to my coach and he pin pointed the areas where I was handicapped. My opponent had learnt his steps correctly which directly impacted stamina as you use less energy to move around the court correctly, he had also learnt how to use less power in his shots to get the same impact I was getting, using the greater force I was generating. It was apparent I had a lot of catching up to do and a year into training I am still unlearning all the bad habits that I picked up earlier on.

This holds a very clear analogy to startup businesses. We start off thinking we have got the next best idea after google and begin to pursue it without getting the groundwork settled. We start with a vague or no business plan and without a clear short term or long term strategy. We face competition in our sphere very soon and others appear to be moving faster, more effectively and efficiently as compared to us and we wonder why. Its all about strategizing and getting those foundation blocks right. Don’t just push yourself to get into the game as fast as you can, take a step back and get a better idea of where you want to go and how. Plan diligently and follow it with perseverance. There is no short cut to success.