Registration for Thursday’s webinar on Top 10 Email Habits to Keep you Selling through a Downturn is out of control? Why so many registrants? Is it the topic? The Felicity/Josiane/Karl combo? The Email Control Hotlist I publish each year? I think everyone is scrambling to figure things out right now and this session is loading with insightful information so sign up.

Gary Halliwell is the founder of Netprospex, a new and upcoming company that is sponsoring Thursday’s webinar. NetProspex is an information exchange allowing B2B sales and marketing professionals to buy or exchange executive contacts. I had the pleasure of talking with Gary, a fellow blogger and a smart guy who comes from 15 years in electronic publishing and was President of Zoominfo prior to launching NetProspex.

Why did you launch NetProspex? We launched the company a couple years ago as a result of the web 2.0 movement which made it possible to create an on-line executive directory that goes deeper than has been traditionally possible. We do this by pooling the combined knowledge of the sales community to create a database that includes difficult-to-find decision makers across a broad range of industries.

How do you see this helping salespeople? It’s really a time management tool for salespeople because they have better chances of getting to the right person by calling deeper and wider into a target account. If a sales person has greater visibility into more prospects in their territory with information on job titles, addresses, phone and e-mail contact information  we can save the sales person a lot of time digging for the right contacts.

We make it easy for the salesperson, what does that mean? We believe that having the salesperson spend as little time as possible trading data or exporting data is important. We make it really easy for them by having them spend only a few seconds with the data and we take it from there. We invest a lot on the back end by cleaning, processing, verifying, and validating the data for accuracy.

There’s a lot of dirty data these days, how accurate is your data? Yes, contact data is like fish - it soon goes off.  This is one of our biggest differentiators as our quality standards are extremely high. We validate all contacts traded into the database, so our accuracy rate is about 80% which means that 3 out of 4 calls must have the right contact. In addition, we throw out all contacts older than 2 years as older data becomes less accurate as executives change positions and companies.

You mentioned in your blog that outbound solicitation such as phone or email could be a thing of the past? Well I was suggesting that it sometimes feels like that.  There have been so many advances with the web in the past 10 years primarily around inbound lead generation and lead management. We are just starting to see technology impact the outbound lead generation market, so now more than ever, hunters are a valuable commodity in many sales organizations. I don’t think it’s ever going to go away for salespeople to get on the phones and talk with more customers, especially in a down market.

In outbound efforts, calling on multiple contacts is the way to go? Collaborative decision-making is how most decisions are being made so the more people you call on and understand their roles, job functions, the better you can leverage this into your discovery calls.

What’s next? We want to stay focused on building the content and continue to increase the quality of the database by improving our technologies for automatically processing and cleaning the data that is contributed by users. Today, there are 3 million b2b salespeople out there and that is a massive runway for our on-line research tool. Ultimately we predict this sort of user-contributed contact database will morph into a true electronic marketplace which has fewer gatekeepers, and which delivers enormous value across the network of sales users.

I have to admit I haven’t done any business development in many months because I’ve been so busy with projects. But all projects seem to have the same lifespan- they all end at the same time. Actually I wouldn’t have it any other way- it’s my business cycle and after 15 years, it works.

I’m spending 99% of my time marketing- new webinars, negotiating partnerships, blogging, podcasting, video blogging, writing articles, columns, recording interviews, updating my LinkedIn contact, etc. This is a good start because anyone I contact gets a quick marketing rundown of what’s new and improved.

So last week I started pounding the phones and sending emails out. It’s like going to the gym after a long holiday or going for a long hike in the early hours when your body is still asleep. I felt creaky, sore, rusty, unwelcome, irrelevant and outdated. After I built some momentum I realized my emails and phone calls just sounded too salesy- they sounded cold and hungry- that’s a turn-off.

When we send cold and hungry emails- we reduce the chances of getting a response. But how do we know we sound so cold and hungry? And who said that contacting people cold is out? Joanne Black wrote a book on No More Cold Calling and Jill has written a great article on Does Email Cold Calling Work. With all the social networking and pre-call research tools out there today, there shouldn’t be any such thing as cold anymore. Because we all are coming in with some knowledge and the ability to listen to needs about our prospects than making this all about us.

I am procrastinating and looking for every excuse not to do what I need to do. It’s amazing the projects one starts when we are avoding what what is in front of us.

Tony Robbins continues to be one of my favorite motiational speakers and his video at the TED conference last year is very inspiring. He doesn’t call himself a motivational speaker but instead refers to himself as the Why Guy- trying to understand what really drives you. What drives a salesperson to sabotage their success while another blows their numbers out? Why are some salespeople very happy coming in at 90% of their quota while some are hitting their accerlators. And I assure you it’s not just because they have a happening territory.

Last month I wrote about Rediscovering Your Insight Sales Self- which relates to this. In the many years of coaching and observing thousands of inside salespeople and listening to their self-talk, I believe it boils down to the decision they make to either do something or not. They must have this type of insight to understand why they hold back from achieving their goals.

Although there are a few days left to the month, there is still time to make something happen. How motivated are you to go out there and grab more business before your competitor steals it away? Check out this great video.

I like to bring small groups together from similar skill sets and meet in an informal sales training roundtable. It is for a shorter period of time and it dives into one specific skill.   Recently, I met with a few reps for the sole purpose on focusing on net new business.  I asked each of them to bring one target account they wanted to penetrate this quarter. Before talking about skills, I wanted to examine their choices and what accounts they wanted to target.

This was a great exercise because it taught me so much about each individual, what they strive for, how they prepare, what they believe they deserve and how many of them settle for less. Here’s what they brought to the table and why:

 1. One rep brought a very large high profile strategic account which was entrenched with the competition for some time. She wanted to get more visibility within the company and knew that going after such a high profile account would score her more points.

2. One rep brought a prospect he worked on for months but just lost the opportunity a few weeks ago. He believed this prospect owed him something since he had invested so much time on this account.

3. One rep brought a webinar lead who signed up but never attended. He figured they had expressed some initial interest and this was a warm lead.

4. One rep wanted to go after their installed base and up-sell them into a new solution. They were a good solid customer and the chances of getting more business was high.  

5. One rep wanted to chase a prospect who had a good relationship with this rep but had put off buying for many months. This rep believed he was getting much closer and predicted the deal to close in the coming quarter.

It’s so interesting what we reach for when we prospect. The time of the month plays into this =  If it’s the beginning of the month, we may go after something more strategic or at the end of the month or quarter, we become more desparate and look for low-hanging fruit to just bring something in.

In general, I find that salespeople deserve more and tend to settle for less. Here are some ways I believe they settle:

1. They are very quick to offer discounts without investing time in selling the value.

2. They become impatient and settle for a smaller sale versus a bigger sale.

3. They invest too much time talking with the wrong people or the No-Po’s.

4. They have unrealistic and unatainable goals and sabotage themselves into being disappointed.

5. They settle because they are tired, lazy, desparate, panicked, insecure, apathetic.

“I’m sorry I just can’t help you, that is something you will have to figure out.”

That’s what I heard yesterday when I approached someone about my creative paralysis. That response flattened me out temperarily and then the pendulum swung back to full force.

Perhaps it’s the rebel in me who hears NO and says, watch this. Perhaps it’s the hopeful part of me that believes there is always a way and NO is not the path. Perhaps it’s the ambitious side of me that believes we fail when we say, I’ll try it or I can’t do it. So when I hear NO from someone else about my work and my contribution, I feel compelled to convince them otherwise.

It is a sad sales reality when many salespeople accept NO from someone who can’t say YES. 

I couldn’t stop reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.  He is brilliant and captures the essence of Resistance. Yes, thats’s right, he has written an entire book on this topic. He refers to The Unlived Life as what we want but never really get to it. He asks “are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture?” Yes, all of us have something we have wanted but it has never materialized because we haven’t focused on it.

He refers to specific goals and activities where a higher degree of Resistence interferes and some of these include:

1. Writing, painting, music, film, dance or any creative art

2. The launching of any entrepreneurial venture

3. Any diet or health regimen

4. Any activity whose aim is tighter abdominals

5. Any act that entails commitment of the heart

I call these barriers to success and found a pictures that sums it up.

We surround ourselves with Resistance and he describes it as invisible, internal, insidious, implacable, inpersonal, infallible, universal, it never sleeps, plays for keeps, fueled by fear, most powerful at the finish line, recruits allies.

So true, I haven’t finished reading this book and no, I’m not resisting it- I’m actually devouring it because it’s spot on.

Many salespeople live the lives of artists. They must be creative, inspiring, dedicated, motivated and get past resistance. Just like the artist who starts with a blank canvas, the salespeople starts each month with an empty pipeline. Salespeople are only as good as the last sale they closed or lead they passed and they have to start all over again.

Tomorrow is a new month- don’t procrastinate, plan, prioritize and prepare. Make sure you hit your numbers half way through the month of February instead of the end of the month.

It’s time to hit refresh and start selling and managing in a new way. If you are driving with your eyes on the rear-view mirror you are not going to get there any faster.  This will slow you down and paralyze your risk-adverse mind.

So welcome this new year by decided to get out from your comfort zone- time to shake things up. If we sit in the comfort zone too long, we miss out on change opportunities that can move us and our customers to a better place.

Managers- don’t just manage by the numbers anymore. Get creative so you can encourage new behaviors.

Teams- don’t just sell the way you have always sold before, do something different and change it up.

Here are my innovation rules for the new year:

1. Look for new ways to prospect and create a 7-touch strategy that incorporates both phone, email, eblast, Texting efforts.

2. Create a 10 second credibility statement about your company and practice it over and over.

3. Have a stronger pre-call, on-the-call and post-call strategy and don’t get sloppy.

4. Stop staring at your Blackberry while people are talking to you.

5. If you are too comfortable, you know it’s time to change.

You would think after all the traveling I’ve done, I would learn how to pack.   Nope- I still don’t get it. Here I am in Amsterdam freezing and thinking of everything I left behind. I have a hooded coat with fur, big heavy boots, thick cashmere scarfs, wool tights and every hat imaginable. Where are they? Neatly folded in my closet back home.

So what goes through my mind when I have to fill my suitcase? I look out my window and see a sunny San Francisco day and an ocean view and believe the whole world looks like this. I’ve been known to dress in what I hope the weather will be and not by what it is.  I have to admit that I pack lighter now but the down side to packing light is when all the wrong things are sitting lightly in your suitcase, you have blown it.

I can relate this to our qualifying efforts. After dialing for hours, we finally get someone live on the phone. We are so excited to speak with them and qualify the opportunity that we fill up the time with conversation that doesn’t help move the sale forward. After we hang up and we are ready to document the call, we realize all the critical and essential questions we left out. We kick ourselves because we are so much better than that, we know better but haven’t learned how to pack the right things and keep it light.

 At holiday gatherings, I like standing under the mistletoe and waiting for a kiss. This simple ritual warms everyone’s hearts and brings romance in the air.

In sales, when we search for low-hanging fruit, it can seem like standing under the mistletoe. It is passive, we get a good feeling and we spend too much time waiting. There is nothing wrong with looking to sell low-hanging fruit but the problem is that nothing in sales is always that easy.

Closing a sale requires more skill than ever before. A salesperson must work and develop the opportunity, qualify it over and over and over and carefully listen for impact of not having the solution. They must present the solution based on the needs they identified and identify a compelling event to move the sale along. They must also become a resource for their prospect, an conduit for information and a champion in helping their prospect sell the solution internally. And when the sale actually closes, it’s a combination of luck, tenacity, motivation and very hard work.

Last week Adobe announced some restructuring in their sales organization and many talented field salespeople were let go. The good news is that their restructuring efforts will be focused on setting up a robust inside sales organization out of San Francisco. Good move. Adobe isn’t the first to do this, we will see a lot more of this in the coming year.

Setting up an inside sales organization isn’t as easy as it sounds and unfortunately many well-intentioned high level executives tend to set up inside sales organizations to fail. Here are some common traps to watch out for:

1. No defined structure- How will the organization be structured? Will there be Lead Development, Inside Sales, Renewals teams? What is the hand-off and sales process?

2. Not taking a stand- There is power in numbers and many don’t set up teams but individuals and keep them disbursed throughout the country. You must have continuity and uniformity.

3. Lack of respect from the field- If the reps in the field are weak, they rely too heavily on the inside team for the wrong reasons. They insist on half-baked leads, or cancel appts with well qualified leads, or ask the inside to help them on brainless admin tasks they could do themselves.

4. Long sales cycle- Inside sales team members need easy wins to keep them focused on the daily grind of pounding out calls. It’s important for the inside to have an easy low-cost solution to provide early adoption opportunities for their prospect. Product evals are a good vehicle and can convert to a potential sale.

5. New messaging = new confusion- When the product focus changes so much, it confuses the inside teams and this keeps them from positioning it effectively.

6. Who should buy it? Back to basics on who actually should buy your product or be a coach on buying your product.

7. Set unrealistic quota goals too late- It happens all the time, inside sales waits to get their quotas assigned and then they finally come around two quarters late and they are much higher than expected. This impacts their productivity and their focus. 

8. Marketing is disconnected- Marketing is off doing their own thing, blasting out to thousands of disqualified leads they never bothered to scrub and expect the inside teams to follow-up. When leads are so bad, this affects the lead conversion process and the inside gets blamed for it.

9. Providing training that is field focused- Skills training is great when it is most appropriate to the team receiving it. Inside sales requires a very different skill set than field sales and training that is appropriate makes more sense.

10. Too much- Before this group didn’t have enough and now they have way too much. Too much technology and tools can paralyze and create ways to avoid what they have been chartered to do. Picking up the phone and selling is a good start.