Hello Sellers!

I just finished a great little book from a new friend of mine Andrea Waltz and her husband Richard Fenton. Page for page this book packs in more profitable sales advice than any other publication I have read all year! 

 The book – and website – are www.GoFoNo.com.

I encourage everyone to read study and implement ALL of the Go For No practices. In particular, I love their tag line (and mantra) “Yes is the destination. No is how you get there”.  And I agree 100% with the authors message of resilience and persistence. Learn to embrace failure! We all need to – everyday –  in order to succeed in sales.

Don’t get me wrong. I hate to lose as much as the next guy. But I have come to understand that being successful in sales means you have to be comfortable failing. Andrea and Richard agree that the faster you fail, the more successful you will be!

I once read that behavioural anthropologists label successful sales people as “happy losers”. While you might object to be called a loser, no matter how happy, you can’t escape the fact that throughout your career ( if you aim to be on the top)  you have to be prepared to lose sales, fail to win contracts, and  hear NO! a lot. I estimate that I have easily heard NO! at least 4 times as often than Yes in my career. And, just this week alone  Lewis (our Sales Director at Engage) - after hearing NO! 20 times from a client, finally heard a yes….and this was a yes worth being patient for! I am proud of his persistence and encourage you all to embrace NO and the book Go For No as an essential part of your sales day.

Dedicated to increasing your sales,

Colleen

PS – I would have posted this with a book cover picture but I am trying out Delta’s in-flight wireless. I love it even if it’s a bit slow for loading graphics!

Chris and I were off last week off at a cottage – with no WiFi! I hope you are having a great last week of summer and are now geared up for the last 1/3 of the selling year! Make sure you complete a thorough and honest pipeline review this week so you know exactly what needs to be done to fill the funnel and close deals before the end of the year

Thanks again to everyone who made our Social Selling call a success. I have heard from so many of you about how Social Selling is overwhelming and I know that the step by step tips Donald and I shared on this call will help you get rid of that overwhelming feeling and get you start using the tools immediately for great profit. So go back and review your notes! You can also review this blog for past posts on social selling. I am speaking later this week to a group about how to incorporate social selling in to their sales practices and we will be ensuring everyone walks out of the room armed with the best practices for sales professionals to attract and retain clients on twitter, Linked in and by blogging.

How are you using social media? I wold love to have your ideas so we can share them with the engage community. I’ll tell you what. Share with me a success story of using social media in your sales, post it as a comment on this blog and I will send you a copy of our latest booklet “Unleash You Secret Sales Force!” Does that sound like a good deal? I thought so.

Thanks to everyone who took advantage of the early bird savings for the Sales Mastery Workshop. I am very excited to get the chance to work with you personally this year. If you are still in decision mode you should know that we are still offering a generous 3 pay tuition program of $600 per month until the end of September. I hope you jump on the registration soon because I know you would benefit greatly from the content and the networking in the room in Chicago. After all, if Donald can turn one Sales Mastery Event idea into $900,000 in sales so can you!

Have a super week

Dedicated to increasing your sales,

Colleen Francis

Test your sales knowledge with this Sales Quiz. Just answer the topical sales question below and have Colleen give you her answer!

You are most interesting to clients when you…?

1. Hang out with celebrities
2. Post updates to social media every day
3. Call your clients with regular product updates
4. Show you are interested in them and their business

Pick your answer and see how you do!

Dedicated to increasing your sales

Colleen

Last week at the Engage summer party a client with a small 3 person sales team shared his latest sales contest with us.

“The team decided that we needed ipads so we made it into a contest”. At the end of July the rep with the lowest sales numbers had to buy the 3 ipads for everyone on the team.”

I thought this was an interesting twist on a typical sales contest. And a bit “Glengarry Glen Ross” in it’s style. Motivating with the stick rather than the carrot. The typical sales contest rewards the winner financially or with a prize. A trip, cash, a new car, socks. Don’t laugh! A cash strapped client of mine once successfully used tube socks as their weekly contest prize. These contests reward the winner but do not penalize. OK sure.  The loser is penalized with  being  the “loser” and  takes a blow to their ego but they do not suffer punitive financial damages.

I am a big fan of encouraging a competitive spirit in sales. I grew up in the insurance business in an office with a publicly displayed leader board, sales chart, and contests. These selling “aids” helped me succeed because I was always striving to be ahead of someone, or on top of the board.  Competitive spirits succeed in sales. For example new sales recruits who play competitive sports, run, play tennis, hockey etc almost always out perform those who do not. In our office for Lewis is a strong paintball contender and I enjoy the occasional 10k road race!

People always ask me about the value of a sales contest and my answer is “the best contest is that contest which motivates your team to sell more”  The goal is to push the team to perform a little better than they have previously and to prove to them that they can grow. As everyone is motivated differently you can’t create a contest in isolation. For example, a contest with a ski trip as its first prize would not motivate me but it would motivate my friend Derek who is an amazing and passionate skier!

I would love to have your opinions on sales contests and compensation. How are you pushing your sales teams in Q4? What does your 2011 compensation package look like? And, what do you think of the contest stated above? My bias is against punitive damages in a sales contest. Sure as the owner told me the “loser knew what he signed up for” but in the end I think you end up with more disgruntlement on the team than you do motivation. Just my initial thoughts of course…..I might be able to be convinced otherwise.

Dedicated to increasing your sales,

Colleeen

So you’ve gone through the effort… collecting testimonials and putting them onto every web page, right next to your page copy to provide that critical social proof. You’re all done, right?

Not so fast. Ask yourself: how do the testimonials look?

I don’t mean if they are compelling – how explicit are the result?. I don’t mean if they are current – are they recent testimonial that have recently been rotated through? I don’t mean if they are credible – is the source of testimonials viewed by the reader as their peer?

I mean literally, how does your testimonials look?

There was a fascinating study conducted by Mike Reining from MindValley Labs. In it, they tested how the appearance of a testimonial impacts click-through rates. Specifically, they compared a very boring, unstyled text testimonial versus the same testimonial dressed up with a punchy font and graphic treatment.

Something similar to this:

Plain Testimonial:

Your widget increased our sales by 100% in three months.

Styled Testimonial:

Your widget increased our sales by 100% in three months.

The results? The styled testimonial increased conversion rates by over 200%!

By making the testimonial more visually appearing, it increases the odds the reader will notice it. And once the reader notices it, the natural power of the testimonial to increase conversion rates kicks in…

If your testimonials don’t look that appealing – don’t worry. To help you, we’ve provided a couple of canned styles to help give some visual appeal to testimonials on your own web site. You can download them from the Testimonial Director support site (you don’t need to be a Testimonial Director customer to take advantage of these).

Get These Testimonial Styles and Increase Your Conversion Rates!!

Dedicated to increasing your sales,