In 2006 I heard 58 times from prospects – “It’s not in the budget, that’s more than we had planned to spend, maybe next year we’ll have more available cash, we need to do it but can’t afford it at this time but keep in touch, get back to us next year - whatever,” or something similar. Ever heard any of these? Well, if you have been selling for more than twenty minutes I’ll guarantee you have heard something similar until you are blue in the face.
Here’s the problem from my perspective. What I am offering (selling) is a solution to these circumstances or conditions. What I provide is sure-fire techniques, ideas, concepts and solutions that will improve sales performance, income, margins and results that will solve this problem of a shortage of cash – or sales.
Believe me, either I am really lousy at selling or this is just a lame excuse to maintain the status quo.
If you offer solutions to your prospect’s problems, needs or circumstances that will improve their business or their personal life in some vital or important way and they tell you they can’t afford it – I ask you – what else could they be saying other than – we are really happy the way things are! We don’t want to change our state of affairs!
Or, could they be saying that you just haven’t convinced me that what you are offering will really do what you say it can or will do?
I have to believe that out of the 58 times I heard this reason for inaction last year at least some of them (I would like to think all of them but I have a lot to learn too) were just techniques used to get rid of me. Boy, does this really hurt when all I have in mind is their best interests at heart. Sure, we all make money when we sell, but I am sure you have figured out that the money you earn just comes and goes.
If you don’t get a certain degree of personal satisfaction and pleasure out of helping others, I urge you to seriously consider another career other than selling.
So, why don’t prospects just tell you and I that we just haven’t done a good job of selling or creating perceived value for them? Why the need to be illusive and give us some lame excuse for not buying? Why can’t they just say, “You are not any good at this selling stuff. Or, “We have bigger problems than the one you product or service will solve.” I don’t really care. Why do people feel they can’t just tell the truth? Are they trying to avoid hurting our feelings? Are they just lying and don’t want us to know? Who knows!
What I do know is that two things are going to happen.
First -They are not going to solve their problems or improve their circumstances or conditions unless they take corrective action. I don’t mean to imply here that there are not other sales training programs out there that are not as good or even better (Although unlikely) than mine. I love the line, “Expecting different or better results from repeated or not improved behavior is a mild form of insanity.” If you have heard this line before you may have noticed I took a little license with it. Delaying this corrective action only says that, “It’s not a problem or we have bigger problems to deal with.”
Saturday, December 9, 2006
Friday, December 8, 2006
Sales Networking - How To Research Potential Contacts
I truly believe that every individual in the whole world is potentially only five or six contact steps away. This ‘five or six degrees of separation’ shows that even an entire population of over five billion people is still highly accessible.
However, for practical purposes, we don’t necessarily want or need to meet millions, or even thousands of people in different organisations, age groups, religions, professions, culture or places. We are just looking to develop a network that will eventually provide us with additional business.
Ideally therefore, we need some kind of filtering or research system that will help us to build a set of relationships of high quality, or a strong network that can find people and resources both efficiently and effectively.
First Steps
The first step in the filtering process is to establish what sort of contacts or relationships you think may be of value or benefit to you (or the organisation of which you are a part). This is not to run counter to the idea that networking is primarily about giving, but suggests that some relationships are clearly more valuable in the long-term for both sides, given careful thought in the first place. Only you can determine this ‘value’.
You may already know, or be close to, someone very powerful or influential but gain no benefit from association. On the other hand, you may find someone in the street where you live who can bring you great benefit if you build a relationship with them. You just need to know what you’d like to achieve in order to make reasonable assessment.
Networking Pyramid
When you start to network more widely, you quickly realise that there is a pyramid, or hierarchy of depth or quality in all of your potential relationships.
However, for practical purposes, we don’t necessarily want or need to meet millions, or even thousands of people in different organisations, age groups, religions, professions, culture or places. We are just looking to develop a network that will eventually provide us with additional business.
Ideally therefore, we need some kind of filtering or research system that will help us to build a set of relationships of high quality, or a strong network that can find people and resources both efficiently and effectively.
First Steps
The first step in the filtering process is to establish what sort of contacts or relationships you think may be of value or benefit to you (or the organisation of which you are a part). This is not to run counter to the idea that networking is primarily about giving, but suggests that some relationships are clearly more valuable in the long-term for both sides, given careful thought in the first place. Only you can determine this ‘value’.
You may already know, or be close to, someone very powerful or influential but gain no benefit from association. On the other hand, you may find someone in the street where you live who can bring you great benefit if you build a relationship with them. You just need to know what you’d like to achieve in order to make reasonable assessment.
Networking Pyramid
When you start to network more widely, you quickly realise that there is a pyramid, or hierarchy of depth or quality in all of your potential relationships.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
How To Create A Sales Network Map
There is ultimately no better way to start networking than to try it for real. The easiest way to do this to commence with the clients you already have, rather than to find new ones.
One highly beneficial task you can undertake at the outset is to map or chart your contacts. This mapping can be done in a number of ways.
Network Mapping Methods:
• Write a manual list of who you know and what they do
• Build an electronic database of contacts
• Keep a journal or diary of who you meet, where and when
• Draw (and keep updating) a contacts map
Mapping Your Network
Whilst you may eventually choose to adopt two, three or all of these methods, in the early stages it is the last of these options that is often the most helpful and potentially revealing.
A network map is simply drawn (using squares or circles). You start by putting your name in the centre of the page in a circle and commence drawing connecting lines to people you know, before drawing connecting lines from these people to others that they know.
One highly beneficial task you can undertake at the outset is to map or chart your contacts. This mapping can be done in a number of ways.
Network Mapping Methods:
• Write a manual list of who you know and what they do
• Build an electronic database of contacts
• Keep a journal or diary of who you meet, where and when
• Draw (and keep updating) a contacts map
Mapping Your Network
Whilst you may eventually choose to adopt two, three or all of these methods, in the early stages it is the last of these options that is often the most helpful and potentially revealing.
A network map is simply drawn (using squares or circles). You start by putting your name in the centre of the page in a circle and commence drawing connecting lines to people you know, before drawing connecting lines from these people to others that they know.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
The Nature Of Sales Networking
Networking effectiveness starts with a positive personal attitude and an understanding that successful networking is built on a spirit of giving and sharing and not of bargaining and keeping score.
Armed with this knowledge, we can now look at how the process of good sales networking actually works in practice.
The first thing to realise about networking is that everyone you meet is a useful prospective network contact. This seemingly simple fact is often overlooked, as people engage in their own private screening process before they will talk to anyone.
There is obviously a line to be drawn between talking to anyone and everyone in the street and talking to almost no one. However, if you want to network more and to do so successfully, there are many situations that qualify as “the right opportunity”.
Taking An Interest in Anybody & Everybody
It is often the case that we don’t really know very much about even close people around us (let alone distant contacts). Even if we do know a little, we are less likely to know how far or deep their skill, knowledge or resources extend. If this is true of your knowledge of others, how much do they really know about you?
Herein lays the basic secret of networking success:
• You have to become interested in anybody and everybody
• You have to share more about yourself than you may have done in the past
It is out this mutual exchange of knowledge that network contacts will connect and start to offer support, help, advice, favours, referrals and other benefits on a regular basis.
Core Processes
Developing a conscious understanding of this giving and sharing strategy can take some time and some practice.
In her book ‘How to master networking’, Robyn Henderson calls this process earning the right to ask a favour of another person, or giving without hooks. Both of these statements imply two processes that operate pretty much at the same time (and neither of them necessarily out first reaction).
Armed with this knowledge, we can now look at how the process of good sales networking actually works in practice.
The first thing to realise about networking is that everyone you meet is a useful prospective network contact. This seemingly simple fact is often overlooked, as people engage in their own private screening process before they will talk to anyone.
There is obviously a line to be drawn between talking to anyone and everyone in the street and talking to almost no one. However, if you want to network more and to do so successfully, there are many situations that qualify as “the right opportunity”.
Taking An Interest in Anybody & Everybody
It is often the case that we don’t really know very much about even close people around us (let alone distant contacts). Even if we do know a little, we are less likely to know how far or deep their skill, knowledge or resources extend. If this is true of your knowledge of others, how much do they really know about you?
Herein lays the basic secret of networking success:
• You have to become interested in anybody and everybody
• You have to share more about yourself than you may have done in the past
It is out this mutual exchange of knowledge that network contacts will connect and start to offer support, help, advice, favours, referrals and other benefits on a regular basis.
Core Processes
Developing a conscious understanding of this giving and sharing strategy can take some time and some practice.
In her book ‘How to master networking’, Robyn Henderson calls this process earning the right to ask a favour of another person, or giving without hooks. Both of these statements imply two processes that operate pretty much at the same time (and neither of them necessarily out first reaction).
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Stating the Case for Online Sales Taxes
The Internet has Congressman Ernest Istook all worked up. That was plain to see at the press conference he held on the Hill last week. But it wasn't music piracy, child porn, ID theft or the other usual hot-button technology topics were riling the Oklahoma Republican.
Istook took his time on the steps of the Cannon building, just across the street from the Capitol, to talk about taxes. Sales taxes to be exact. His new bill, introduced last week, would offer the federal government's stamp of approval for a national online sales tax plan.
Istook is a proud Republican -- not exactly a pro-tax poster child. But Republicans also call themselves the party of states' rights. Simply put, the Washington politicos should keep their grubby hands out of the states' affairs. And that means if they want to tax Internet sales, so be it.
Most states require citizens to pay use taxes on things they buy online or in another state, but few consumers comply because it's almost impossible to enforce. Not only that, a 1992 Supreme Court decision forbids the states from forcing businesses to pay up if they're located in another state.
That's why people in Washington, D.C., like buying big-ticket items in sales-tax-free Delaware. It's what sends Mainers over the border to buy their liquor in New Hampshire. It's what is sending more people than ever onto the Internet to buy just about anything.
The national sales tax plan would throw all this aside and let the states take the money they say they need to keep vital services up and running.
That argument has found little support on Capitol Hill so far, prompting Istook and William Delahunt (D-Mass.) to take the first step.
"If Congress does nothing, then we will be besieged with larger-than-ever requests that Congress make up the difference to support local schools, roads, public safety and hospitals," Istook said.
Istook and his congressional allies are proof that a quiet effort, led mostly by state-level tax experts and a handful of their allies in the business world, is starting to pay off. Officials who gathered under the auspices of the "Streamlined Sales Tax Project" cleverly drafted an Internet sales tax plan that offers something to everyone: States get the money to shore up their cash-starved budgets, online retailers get an easy way to collect taxes for many different masters and offline retailers don't have to feel like they're getting a raw deal because thrifty shoppers choose e-commerce instead.
The result is that for the first time in the short history of the World Wide Web, Internet shopping could be taxed like any other business.
But the taxman is not here yet. After all, it is unclear whether Congress will approve any proposal that boils down to "taxing the Internet." Nor is it certain whether the major retailers that would be most affected will actually endorse the online sales tax campaign.
One of the chief obstacles to the legislation is the House Republican leadership which, under Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), advocates a decidedly anti-tax platform.
Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) believes it "very unlikely" that the House will enact the legislation.
Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), who co-chairs the U.S. Congressional Internet Caucus, shares Cannon's opinion.
"I would rate the chances of this bill passing at the present time at close to zero," said Boucher.
Steve Kranz, tax counsel for the Council on State Taxation and a supporter of the online sales tax legislation, said action on the bill needs to happen now because it won't have a chance in the 2004 election season.
Even if the legislation were signed into law, it would take months to change the way the system operates. That includes certifying tax software vendors, educating and auditing online merchants, exchanging tax revenue between the states, dealing with popular "sales tax holidays" to encourage more people to shop and dozens of other daunting tasks that will cost the states time and money.
Powerful lobbyists for online and online-related businesses that are fighting to keep their tax-free edge over their brick-and-mortar counterparts have helped fuel the opposition on Capitol Hill.
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA), whose members would be affected by the sales tax plan, released a study in June undercutting estimates of how much revenue would be generated by Internet sales taxes. The study said that the amount of uncollected taxes on e-commerce would be $3.2 billion by 2006, far lower than the $45 billion projected in an often-cited 2001 study by two University of Tennessee professors.
Online auction site eBay is against the plan as it's currently written. The Information Technology Association of America, an influential technology trade group that lobbies on behalf of more than 500 of the nation's largest high-tech companies, also stands against it.
NetChoice, a lobbying group that represents online retailers, said that supporters of the sales tax plan leave too many questions unanswered and instead are "rushing to sneak this legislation through Congress."
Istook took his time on the steps of the Cannon building, just across the street from the Capitol, to talk about taxes. Sales taxes to be exact. His new bill, introduced last week, would offer the federal government's stamp of approval for a national online sales tax plan.
Istook is a proud Republican -- not exactly a pro-tax poster child. But Republicans also call themselves the party of states' rights. Simply put, the Washington politicos should keep their grubby hands out of the states' affairs. And that means if they want to tax Internet sales, so be it.
Most states require citizens to pay use taxes on things they buy online or in another state, but few consumers comply because it's almost impossible to enforce. Not only that, a 1992 Supreme Court decision forbids the states from forcing businesses to pay up if they're located in another state.
That's why people in Washington, D.C., like buying big-ticket items in sales-tax-free Delaware. It's what sends Mainers over the border to buy their liquor in New Hampshire. It's what is sending more people than ever onto the Internet to buy just about anything.
The national sales tax plan would throw all this aside and let the states take the money they say they need to keep vital services up and running.
That argument has found little support on Capitol Hill so far, prompting Istook and William Delahunt (D-Mass.) to take the first step.
"If Congress does nothing, then we will be besieged with larger-than-ever requests that Congress make up the difference to support local schools, roads, public safety and hospitals," Istook said.
Istook and his congressional allies are proof that a quiet effort, led mostly by state-level tax experts and a handful of their allies in the business world, is starting to pay off. Officials who gathered under the auspices of the "Streamlined Sales Tax Project" cleverly drafted an Internet sales tax plan that offers something to everyone: States get the money to shore up their cash-starved budgets, online retailers get an easy way to collect taxes for many different masters and offline retailers don't have to feel like they're getting a raw deal because thrifty shoppers choose e-commerce instead.
The result is that for the first time in the short history of the World Wide Web, Internet shopping could be taxed like any other business.
But the taxman is not here yet. After all, it is unclear whether Congress will approve any proposal that boils down to "taxing the Internet." Nor is it certain whether the major retailers that would be most affected will actually endorse the online sales tax campaign.
One of the chief obstacles to the legislation is the House Republican leadership which, under Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), advocates a decidedly anti-tax platform.
Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) believes it "very unlikely" that the House will enact the legislation.
Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), who co-chairs the U.S. Congressional Internet Caucus, shares Cannon's opinion.
"I would rate the chances of this bill passing at the present time at close to zero," said Boucher.
Steve Kranz, tax counsel for the Council on State Taxation and a supporter of the online sales tax legislation, said action on the bill needs to happen now because it won't have a chance in the 2004 election season.
Even if the legislation were signed into law, it would take months to change the way the system operates. That includes certifying tax software vendors, educating and auditing online merchants, exchanging tax revenue between the states, dealing with popular "sales tax holidays" to encourage more people to shop and dozens of other daunting tasks that will cost the states time and money.
Powerful lobbyists for online and online-related businesses that are fighting to keep their tax-free edge over their brick-and-mortar counterparts have helped fuel the opposition on Capitol Hill.
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA), whose members would be affected by the sales tax plan, released a study in June undercutting estimates of how much revenue would be generated by Internet sales taxes. The study said that the amount of uncollected taxes on e-commerce would be $3.2 billion by 2006, far lower than the $45 billion projected in an often-cited 2001 study by two University of Tennessee professors.
Online auction site eBay is against the plan as it's currently written. The Information Technology Association of America, an influential technology trade group that lobbies on behalf of more than 500 of the nation's largest high-tech companies, also stands against it.
NetChoice, a lobbying group that represents online retailers, said that supporters of the sales tax plan leave too many questions unanswered and instead are "rushing to sneak this legislation through Congress."
Monday, December 4, 2006
Study: online sales to top $200 billion
After topping the $100-billion mark just three years ago, online sales will soar to $200 billion this year, according to the 2006 State of Retailing Online study conducted by Forrester Research and Shop.org. The study found that this year's online sales, including travel, should rise 20% to $211.4 billion, and will reach $138 billion, excluding travel.
Sunday, December 3, 2006
The Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International launched eConnect, an online source for hospitality and travel sales and marketing informa
* The Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International launched eConnect, an online source for hospitality and travel sales and marketing information, research, contacts and best practices. The content of the six key subject areas are continuously updated. To log on to eConnect, go to www.hsmaieconnect.org or access it through the resources section of www.hsmai.org.
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