Go Magazine: I’m the centerfold!

Check out the Jan issue of Go Magazine, Air Tran’s in-flight publication. After training In Publishing’s sales team (the magazine’s publisher) in London back in October, one thing led to another and I am now being featured on a two page spread in the January issue on pages 90 – 91.

Tomorrow, I get to watch other passengers read about me on my flight to DC. Very cool, and hopefully informative. Check it out for yourself HERE.

What were you doing on Jan. 1st?

When I first started out in sales, I always felt like an underdog. I was scratching and clawing to make ends meet, and each sales opportunity seemed like a battle. Honestly, it was overwhelming on many occasions to feel like an under-achiever.

It turns out that people respond to pressure in different ways. Some people, when they start to feel overwhelmed, fade into the background, not wanting to bring attention to the fact that they are struggling. As for me, increased pressure tends to make me more indignant. If I am going to fail at something, I would rather go down in flames.

Thus, on January 1, 1988, I made a career-changing New Year’s resolution. I had just finished yet another mediocre sales year, and damn it, it wasn’t going to happen again. So, I headed to the office on New Years Day. While everyone else nursed their post New Year’s Eve party hangovers, and watched college football, I cleaned out my office. I worked the entire day and got seriously organized.

It was no surprise that my SUV was the only car in the parking lot since it was a holiday. But by the time I left the office, I felt a very clear sense of satisfaction and preparedness. I was ready for the New Year.

Have you ever noticed how good it feels to be ahead of the game? That first week of January, everyone else was trying to catch up, while I was moving forward and feeling productive. In fact, it felt so good that it motivated me to want to stay ahead. Consequently, I often stayed at the office late into the evening and came in frequently on weekends, each time noticing that mine was the only car in the parking lot.

My strategy was simple. I was determined to outwork everyone else on the sales team. That way, if I did fail, I wouldn’t have any excuses. Besides putting in the time, I also made it a goal to work harder than everyone else. I made more cold calls than anyone else and scheduled more appointments. I also asked more questions in order to uncover more needs. I even made it a point to take the most notes at every meeting.

After a very short period of time, I had become more knowledgeable about our product offerings and target industry, which in turn, made me a much more credible resource to my prospects and customers. As the year progressed, I began to feel less overwhelmed and more in control.

It didn’t take long before I became the “go to” guy in the office. When someone had a question, they came to me for help. Lo and behold, the sales manager started sending opportunities my way, knowing they would be handled with a greater sense of urgency. By year-end, I had become the top producing salesperson in our office. Essentially, I had earned the right to outperform everyone else whose car wasn’t parked in the lot back on New Year’s Day.

*Excerpted my second book, It Only Takes 1% to have a Competitive Edge in Sales.

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2009 was a difficult business year for many. If you were fortunate enough to not among the masses who saw declining opportunities as the result of a recent back-flip in the economy, I’m sure you have customers, friends, colleagues, employees, or coworkers who have felt the impact in a very personal way.

Perhaps the economic gods with wave a wand and return everything to normalcy. Me, I’m not sure what normal is at the moment, nor have I ever been one to bet my lot on magic.

I have said before, “The best way out of any recession is to sell your way out.” The difference this time is the game of selling has changed—I call it a Darwinian-style recalibration, where the salesperson will play a more important role in their own success than ever before.

With that, I hope you enjoyed a nice holiday break with your friends and family. But, please realize that the new sales year begins tomorrow. Me, I might dedicate some time to get a jump on the competition because who knows, they might be reading this as well!

**New** Implementation Tips

Scroll through pages and pages of QBS techniques and coaching tips that will increase your probability of success and further your implementation of Question Based Selling!

Tip topics range from needs development strategies, to how to kick off more interactive product presentations, to Coaching the Softer Skills, to leveraging curiosity to leave more effective voce-mail messages.

Click QBS Implementation Tips to get started. No cost or subscription required.

Photo Shoot tomorrow: Go Magazine

As part of a training engagement I recently delivered for Ink Publishing, an article about me (& Question Based Selling) will be featured in the January issue of Go Magazine, the in-flight publication you can find in the seatback pocket on AirTran.

Tomorrow, we have a photo shoot scheduled, so I will be spending the rest of today getting appropriately coiffed. Maybe they can Photoshop out some of those gray strands on top that seem to be multiplying.

The Last Mile: Sales Effectiveness

Salespeople and sales teams have been inundated with strategies, process, and automated tools, particularly within the last year since the economy turned. But, if you stop and think about it, most salespeople don’t need more selling philosophy or management tools. What they need is something that will increase their value in the eyes of potential customers in order to increase their success rate.

Our focus has always been on bringing sales philosophy to the customer conversation level. The value your company offers is really a function of customer perception. I’m not suggesting that your company and products aren’t valuable! Just the opposite. Your solutions are valuable, but only to the degree that customers recognize their needs and trust your ability to provide the best solution.

If you look around your sales organization, you will notice that some salespeople are more effective than others when it comes to helping customers to identify needs, and positioning the value of your products and services. Why is that?

One could attribute this difference in capability to personality, charisma, or the salesperson’s DNA. While I agree that people sometimes have certain gifts, I disagree with the adage that you are either born a salesperson or you aren’t. I wasn’t a born salesperson, and I have transformed enough people over the years into top performers to know that I can assure you it’s not about personality, style, or charisma. This is good news, because there not much that can be done to adjust someone’s DNA to increase their performance.

Today, the difference makers in a competitive selling environment are the intangibles that get communicated over the course of the sales process. In 100% of your interactions, customers are forming impressions about the salesperson, in terms of their competence, credibility, confidence, knowledge, thought leadership, integrity, work ethic, passion, experience, and preparedness, not to mention whether or not you seem customer-focused or self-serving. These are not just training buzzwords, rather these are the girders that ultimately foundation the customer’s perception of your value.

Note that intangibles like credibility or experience are not something you can just pull out of a briefcase and hand to a potential customer. The problem is, a salesperson can’t really claim these intangibles verbally. Humility, for example, is a very attractive human quality, but imagine declaring to a customer, “I am the most humble person in the world!”

Intangibles like competence, credibility, experience, confidence, knowledge, thought leadership, integrity, work ethic, passion, preparedness, and being customer-focused must, in fact, be demonstrated as opposed to being claimed. How exactly can a salesperson demonstrate their credibility, competence, or experience in a particular industry? That’s where sales philosophy and process must be distilled down into something that can actually be applied to the customer conversation.

Last week, a colleague and fellow trainer, Steve Thompson, likened this to a similar challenge facing the telecom industry. Large telco companies have been building their bandwidth capabilities and infrastructure for decades. But, the ‘holy grail’ for these companies has always been what they call The Last Mile–connecting the capabilities of a large telecom backbone to the end user’s computer or television set.

Many sales organizations now face a similar challenge. Do you have an internal sales process? If so, I assure you that your competition does as well, and I bet their sales process looks very similar to yours. Do you have talented and experienced salespeople? So do your competitors. Has your marketing team been hard at work trying to craft a new message to give the sales team? Guess what, your competition has a marketing department, too.

The decision to buy (or not) in your next prospect account will likely to have more to do with the customer’s perception of the person representing the product or company, than the actual product itself. Even so, companies have spent the bulk of their resources and productivity efforts developing strategy, process, and tools, when your sales effectiveness, including whether you win or lose will more likely be determined by “how” those tools are implemented.

As my wife (Laura) has been telling me for years, it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. She’s right! We live and compete in a rock, paper, scissors world, and “technique” wins over “process” every time.

–Thomas A. Freese
President/Author, QBS Research, Inc.

Labor Day Special Edition

Sept 7, 2009, 11:30amEDT, please join us LIVE where five-time bestselling author Thomas A. Freese will show you how to Paint Pictures with Your Words.

Monday’s Topic: Paint Pictures with Your Words

It’s true that people think in visual pictures, not just words. This simple fact disctates that sellers must get buyers to visualize their value proposition in order for customers to feel comfortable enough to move forward with a purchase.

Login Details:
Date: Monday, September 7, 2009
Time: 11:30am Eastern / 8:30am Pacific
Location: QBS LIVE MONDAYS Login
Cost: It’s Free!

QBS now on iTunes!

By popular demand, QBS LIVE Mondays podcasts are now available to be downloaded via iTunes. URL: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=322849834

We’ve had a lot of fun with QBS LIVE Mondays. More importantly, lots of people are tuning in to participate at our new time, 11:30amEDT. Our next LIVE broadcast will be on August 10th. Hope you will join us.

Tom’s New Book Released!

Selling Yourself in Today’s Competitive Marketplace is now shipping. From my perspective, this book comprises what I would basically characterize as ‘Advanced QBS,’ especially since it shows you how to be more effective given the recent economic turbulence.

For a short time, this book (286 pages) is being offered at an introductory discount.

Order the Book Online!                       

Unfortunately, we have spent the last 30 years focused on how to sell during strong economic times. While I am not one of those dooms-dayers who’s predicting another Great Depression, I do believe that we have entered a period in history that could one day become known as "The Great Adjustment."

Frankly, it’s easy to sell when everyone has lots of money. It has become a bit tougher now that people are more cautious with their decisions and more judicious with their spending.

Is it still possible to be successful in sales? Absolutely, but it is clear that your success moving forward will depend more on you than ever before.

Here are a few selected excerpts from the book:

"Everything seems eerily different now, as we slowly come to grips with the reality that the field on which we work and play has changed dramatically. Even those of us who were minding our own business when the downturn began breathed a collective gasp as the era of unabated growth and prosperity that our economy has enjoyed over the last thirty years seemed to collapse overnight."

Never before have individual salespeople been so willing to put their egos aside and adjust their approach to make themselves invaluable to their company and customers…which will require a conscious effort on the individual’s part to hunker down and honestly evaluate your current sales process, strategic mindset, and interpersonal skills.

I hope you enjoy it. I know it will make you more effective in terms of Selling yourself. Please also let me know your feedback.

Download QBS LIVE Mondays-6/1

If you were not able to attend the June 1, 2009 edition of QBS LIVE Mondays, featuring a live discussion and excerpts from my fifth book about “Tom’s New Favorite Sales Movie,” this episode is now available to be downloaded free as a podcast. Just visit the http://www.QBSresearch.com homepage and click QBS LIVE Mondays.

6/1 QBS LIVE Mondays: Tom’s New Favorite Sales Movie

QBS LIVE Mondays broadcasts every other week, on the first and third Mondays of the month. We figured this was the best time for salespeople who are planning a successful week. Definitely, mark your calendars. The next episode is scheduled for 6/15 at 10:30amEDT. In fact, we’re putting together some cool stuff, specifically for this forum.

FREE - “Live” QBS Coaching

Starting June 1st, QBS LIVE MONDAYS is a twice-monthly sales coaching program hosted by five-time author, speaker and trainer Tom Freese.

Implementation is the key to reaching your full potential with Question Based Selling, and ongoing coaching is the key for any successful implementation.

Day: First and Third Monday of each month
Time: 10:30AM Eastern / 7:30AM Pacific
Location: QBS LIVE MONDAYS Login
Cost: It’s Free!

Delivered as a live streaming video production, please join in as each edition of the show is recorded on the first and third Monday, before a live online audience featuring the latest Question Based Selling tips and sales techniques along with a live Q & A session with Tom.