Join us for the ARRiiVE: Innovations In Business Radio Show tomorrow on "The 100 Most Productive Sales Forces" with special guest, Greg Alexander of SalesBenchmarkIndex.com. When: September 24, 2008 at 2:00 PM PST / 5:00 PM EST Topic:"Learn how your sales force can become world class by using sales benchmarking to drive performance."
Learn how the top sales forces in business today use sales benchmarking to maximize their success. In this talk, you'll gain an insight into sales analytics, benchmarking for both hiring and promoting, and other valuable tools to help you build a more productive sales team.
Greg Alexander's Bio:
Greg Alexander serves as CEO of Sales Benchmark Index, a leading strategic advisory firm that helps executives understand how well they are performing relative to a peer group and world class levels. SBI is differentiated through its use of empirical data, a repository of over 11,000 companies, 12 years of history, 19 industries and over 250 sales metrics. Through SBI's benchmarking services a company can deploy comparative data sets to identify improvement opportunities available through leveraging the best practices from world class sales forces. In 2004 Sales and Marketing Management Magazine named Greg Sales manager of the Year. In 2008, Mr. Alexander co-authored two books published by Portfolio -- Making The Number: How to Use Benchmarking to Drive Sales Performance and Topgrading for Sales: World-Class Methods to Interview, Hire, and Coach Top Sales Representatives.
Visit www.SalesBenchmarkIndex.com to download a copy of World Class 100 report to find out the world's top sales forces or call (888) 556-7338 for more information.
Call in - it's simple & easy, fun & educational to join the call and ask your questions!!
The two strongest motivators in selling are the FEAR of LOSS and HOPE for GAIN.
When you're making your sales pitch, how often do you utilize FEAR of LOSS to persuade people to buy your product or service?
While many people claim that "fear of loss" is a negative tactic, it nevertheless is proven effective by many of the most effective salespeople throughout history.
Military Generals use fear to intimidate their opponents. Politicians use fear to throw their opponents "under the bus" and win elections. Business leaders use fear to position their company as the "gorilla" and their competitors as "chimps". Salespeople use fear to undermine the strength of competitors and maximize their own product's benefits to a prospective customer.
I recall a saying in the high tech industry, where it was widely known in the early 1990's that IBM, the large technology service provider, utilized FUD (fear - uncertainty - doubt) tactics to create doubt and undermine credibility of their competition to such a high degree they could charge 30 - 200% more than competitors for essentially the same levels of service. They also won business that otherwise might have gone to a competitor.
Examples of ways you can use FEAR of LOSS to position yourself as the best choice include:
"How can you be sure your current provider will be there when you need them?"
"Who will answer the phone at 3:00 a.m. when the system goes down?"
"What training have they received on the products they recommend?"
Some ways you can demonstrate you meet the fear or concern include:
"You're on our mind: With our "alert-status" 24/7 service and 4 hour response, you can rest assured your system's care is in good hands. Not only that, but our "proactive care" program will make sure you have fewer needs for alerts or downtime in the first place."
"You come first: With our "executive alert" plan you will know you always have top priority with our company."
"Your needs - delivered professionally: our people are trained on the systems you use. As a result, we're able to deliver more knowledge, keep your systems running with the least amount of hassle. This will keep your team focused on your business, and both save and help you make more money doing what you do best."
These are examples of marketing statements within the high tech industry that would position one company above another.
Individual competitive situations can get even more nasty. I once saw my coworkers work hard to win a large mainframe support contract - or so they thought. The agreement was signed by the CIO (Chief Information Officer responsible for technology at the prospective company) earlier in the day. During the "celebration dinner", the CIO received a phone call. When he returned to the table, he bore a troubled look on his face. "Fellows, I'm not sure how to say this, but I've been overruled and we're going with IBM," he said. He then explained that IBM made it clear that they might not be so agreeable to offer the code for their new chip if they weren't responsible for supporting the mainframe service. They cast doubt on whether updates would happen in a timely manner and basically said the customer would be a fool to switch vendors. They delivered this message by calling their "friend" on the board of the prospective customer. That board-member then overruled the CIO. That's how high IBM's relationship went. And that is how powerful the fear-tactic ended up costing a multi-million deal for a sales team that they'd seemingly won just moments earlier. Months of hard work and countless hours went down the drain.
Fear of loss is a strong motivator. Fear, properly applied, will help you win more often. Make sure both your marketing and sales pitch utilize this tactic.
Join us for the ARRiiVE: Innovations In Business Radio Show tomorrow on "7 Secrets of Inspiring Leaders" with special guest, Carmine Gallo of Gallo Communications: When: September 17, 2008 at 2:00 PM PST / 5:00 PM EST Topic:"7 Secrets of Inspiring Leaders" How to Participate:
Fire up your colleagues, customers and employees by learning the language of motivation. In his new book, Fire Them Up, Carmine Gallo reveals the 7 keys all inspiring communicators share. He has spent two years interviewing extraordinary leaders and entrepreneurs like Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz, Ritz-Carton President Simon Cooper, Google Vice President Marissa Mayer, and many others. Learn how these men and women use language and presentations to engage their leaders.
Carmine Gallo's Bio:
Carmine Gallo is a communication skills coach for the world's most admired brands. As a former journalist for CNN, he leverages his skills as a journalist to help company executives tell their stories through presentations, pitches, and media interviews. He is here to discuss the insights he learned after interviewing more than two dozen well-known business leaders and entrepreneurs for his new book, Fire Them Up!
"Do Something Different: The Savvy Entrepreneur" on ARRiiVE: Innovations In Business Show
When: September 3, 2008 at 2:00 PM PST / 5:00 PM EST Topic: "The Importance of Doing Something Different" Host: Scott Andrews, CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions
Call In: Call in at (724)444-7444 and enter 37798 # 1 # Text chat online:http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/37798 to text questions or listen online. Details: Visit http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/37798 To hear Scott Andrews, CEO of ARRiiVE Business solutions, discuss ways to be different to increase your sales and grow more business today at 2PM PST / 5PM EST.
Stop butting your head against the wall and copying all your peers. Figure out why most companies succeed where others fail: by differentiating and offering a different look, product, or service, you can dramatically improve your sales results, starting right now! Don't miss this fun and educational call with Scott.
Show hosted by Scott Andrews, CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions (www.ARRiiVE.com)
It's simple and easy to join - call (724) 444 -7444 enter 37798#1# to dial in or visit http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/37798 OR http://www.ARRiiVE.com (see radio show link) to visit online and/or text chat questions to Scott.
What are you doing? Where are you right now? What did you just post on your blog? Are you inspired by a website link? Where is everyone? What do you need to communicate quickly? Hey guys! What do you think of THIS!?
Keep up with people – where are they? What are they doing? What is IMPORTANT to friends and associates…
Question: Why is Twitter the fastest growing Social Network on the Internet?
Answer: TWITTER is fast, simple, easy, and concise.
What is Twitter? Twitter is an instant online status update limited to only 140 characters, so you are FORCED to be brief! Hallelujah! It is super easy to add people you want to follow and also easy for them to follow you. You just type in their name and find them, then click "follow" by their name. It's that easy. Then, on your home page, you'll receive their updates every time you log-in to Twitter.
The only thing is, if you follow a lot of people, you’ll get so many updates, it is impossible to read them all.
Are you building a fan base? What do they want to know about you? I like Twitter because I can post a question and get quick feedback. I can also share feeds. I also TWEET when I publish my blog updates as Twitter is another way for people to find my blog feed through TWITTER. The number of people you can follow is limited to 2,000 (to reduce SPAM).
Who do you FOLLOW on Twitter? Why? What are you looking for?
Most people will get followed when they have important things to say, their posts are meaningful, or they are popular to certain other people. Or, all of the above. As with blogs, the more useful your content of "tweets" the more likely you will be followed by other Twitter users.
By the way, if you want to follow me, use these shameless promoter links (heh heh):
Ways You Can Make Twitter More Useful To YOUR Activities:
Bands: A band sends their tweet to fans that they're going on stage. Fans tweet back "play XYZ song" so they can coordinate their set list to what the crowd actually wants to hear at that moment!
Journalists: A journalist sends a tweet asking what topics people want to see next, then writes to the responses she receives.
Web Designers: People tweet the web designer their ideas for improvement directly to their @tweet twitter address. The designer then incorporates changes more quickly with the real-time feedback.
Political poll: A politician is giving a speech. People start twitting their tweets about reaction to the speech into Twitter, and the Politician's writers can give them an instant teleprompt to change the speech on the fly with the feedback from Twitter.
Business announcement: A group of users within a large company want to send instant communication out to the group. They send a tweet which is then accessible to all the members of the group to comment and provide instant feedback.
Business PR: Announce new products and services, or innovations to existing products and services, through your TWIT feed.
Personal network: have friends know what to bring to a party or meet at a certain location through your tweets.
We help executives launch products, improve sales & marketing, and build dynamic teams through proven design, process, systems, and training.
email: info @ ARRiiVE (dot) com
or call: 805.459.6939
Join us for the ARRiiVE: Innovations In Business Radio Show tomorrow on "The 100 Most Productive Sales Forces" with special guest, Greg Alexander of SalesBenchmarkIndex.com.
