Anyone that is in sales has had to, at one point or another, prospect for new customers. If you are one of the lucky ones the company you work for provides leads for you directly in to some kind of a CRM solution. For a while I was one of the lucky ones. Our website was generating about 15 new leads per day and these leads magically appeared in our homegrown CRM. But easy lead distribution, like all things, came to an end when I left that company to start my own consulting practice. Being self-employed meant I now needed to prospect my own leads.

I need prospects and I need them fast, I need leverage. When it comes to sales there are two ways to get leverage: the people you know and the tools you use. I’ll leave how to leverage the people you know for another time. Today I’m focusing on tools, one tool in particular; a way to copy information directly into your contact manager from websites, emails, documents, anywhere that has electronic text. (www.copycontacts.com/tools to get the software)

Like many people I use Outlook as my CRM. It is not the best CRM solution but it has the advantage of also being my email client. In my business, search engine optimization, my email client is always open so it makes it easier for me to also use Outlook for my CRM solution. My biggest hassle when it comes to using Outlook as a CRM is getting the contact details into the database! I hate typing in all the little contact details. I bet you do too!

A little over a year ago I asked a software developer friend of mine if it would be possible to ’scrape’ address information from a web page directly in to a database. He said sure it’s possible but he wasn’t going to do it. That sent me on a search for a tool that would make it easy for me to capture contact details in the variety of documents that I interact with most like webpages and emails.

After a little searching I found an add-on for Outlook that did an awesome job of copying contact addresses from web pages directly in to my Outlook with the press of a key. I couldn’t how easy it was! No more need to tedious copy the address then move to Outlook, then back to the web page to copy something else and then back to Outlook, it’s boring just writing about it never mind having to do it! When you factor in fixing mistakes and distraction factor I am now adding prospects to my Outlook in about 10 seconds instead of 5 minutes!

I am a self employed search engine optimization consultant. From time to time I find tools that are so good I need to help other people find them. If you would like to try this tool out as you search the web for prospects you can find it on the Copy Contacts site. You will also find other helpful Outlook Tips & Tricks on that site.

Everyone is in sales whether they realize it or not. We sell in every aspect of our lives. We sell our ideas to other people. We sell our love to our spouse and children. We sell our friendship to our friends. We sell our leadership to our customers, team members, and staff. Selling is an all encompassing function. It is also the single most important element in any business.

How can you cultivate selling skills in employees who don’t normally think of themselves as salespeople? People in your company who are tentative, introverted, and are not really inclined to engage and embrace a prospect or a customer to get them to buy from you.

You can cultivate the sales skills of everyone in your company by teaching them “strategic selling.” Strategic selling means having an advisory relationship with your prospect or customer. It is when you put the interests and well-being of your prospect or customer ahead of your own.

Strategic selling means never recommending that a prospect or customer buy or acquire any products or services from you that you don’t feel will be of benefit to him or her. It is when you assume the role of guiding, leading, and helping each prospect and customer to recognize the advantages and opportunities they will receive when they purchase your product or service.

Everyone in and around your business, whether they realize it or not, plays a selling role that can either help or hurt you in very significant ways. For example, suppose a prospect comes into your business, and a well dressed, well groomed employee meets him or her at the door with a warm and friendly welcome. Five minutes later the prospect makes a purchase.

Who made the sale the salesperson or the salesperson with an assist from the employee who greeted the prospect? The answer of course, is that they both made the sale. If the employee who greeted the prospect had been poorly dressed, poorly groomed, and had scowled at the prospect instead of smiling and greeting him or her. The prospect’s first impression would probably have been very different as he or she entered your business

The fate of a business isn’t just in the owner’s hands. Rather, it is in the hands of every employee or person that has contact with prospects and customers. And that’s true for your business as well.

Never take courtesy, friendliness, and caring on the part of your employees for granted. Discuss courtesy regularly with your staff, make courtesy a regular feature in your company newsletter and regularly spotlight “Smile of the Month” awards for your most courteous people.

What if you’re a one person shop and don’t have any employees? You should remind yourself constantly, starting first thing in the morning that you owe everyone you come into contact with today a smile, some words of encouragement, and a helping hand. This may sound silly, but it works.

To put your employees in the right mindset, don’t use the word “selling.” Instead let your employees know that they are a “business consultant” or a “service consultant.” Encourage them to recognize that they have been given a great opportunity to share with your prospects and customers all kinds of overlooked benefits about the products and services your business sells.

As important as the knowledge of the valuable contribution they make to a prospect or customer’s life is, you also need to give your employees some motivating economic incentives.

Depending upon the cost structure of your product or service, you should offer every employee who has a hand in selling, some direct or variable compensation for the results he or she produces. This can mean so much per bonus above quota or so much per transaction. You can also offer a special compensation for new customers brought into the fold for the first time.

Rewarding your employees will mean different things to different people. To some people, it’s a comfortable salary and variable bonuses. To other people it will mean being compensated in direct proportion to the tangible results they produce. Yet to some people a special plaque or award is recognition enough.

It is up to you to know what motivates your employees. Raises, bonuses, and commissions should be tailored to fit the business you’re in. Understand, that money is only a small part of the compensation. To get your people to do outstanding work, you also need to lavish them with praise and recognition.

It is important that you and everyone of your employees understands that your business is a system that starts with your suppliers or your vendors, and then moves to the creation or distribution of products and services. But this system will not work unless everyone who is part of your business understands that he or she has an important part in transferring your products and services from your business over to your prospects and customers.

The key to getting everyone in your business involved in selling is letting every employee know every day that he or she is a critical and highly respected part of your selling system. Once everyone in your business understands and believes this, everyone in your business will be highly motivated to make more sales.

Copyright©2006 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.

Joe Love draws on his 25 years of experience helping both individuals and companies build their businesses, increase profits, and achieve total success. He is the founder and CEO of JLM & Associates, a consulting and training organization, specializing in personal and business development. Through his seminars and lectures, Joe Love addresses thousands of men and women each year, including the executives and staffs of many of America’s largest corporations, on the subjects of leadership, self-esteem, goals, achievement, and success psychology.

Reach Joe at: joe@jlmandassociates.com

Read more articles and newsletters at: http://www.jlmandassociates.com

Jeff Foxworthy does a comedy routine “You might be a redneck if…..”

Here are some tips that I see most sales people do that destroy their success.
You might not be a successful sales person if….

You might not be a successful sales person if…..

Convert Leads Into Sales. Why is it that so many sales people fail to follow up on sales leads that are handed off to them by the marketing department? It never ceases to amaze me how often I hear the same complaint from sales managers and from marketing managers who are working hard to drive new opportunities in the door. Part of the issue with sales people and their lack of willingness to follow up on sales leads is many sales people have large egos and believe that anything that has been brought to them by others is probably not very good.

They have this, “I’m the king of my territory” mindset, which translates into them thinking that if they haven’t created an opportunity for the company, it must not be real. It’s the job of sales management to dispel this notion and make sure that your sales people are taking all of the leads that are coming to the company through its various marketing programs seriously. A good way to convert leads to sales, is to focus weekly attention on reviewing the sales leads that are coming in from marketing and from telesales efforts and categorizing those leads in getting a quick report from each of your sales people on what they’re doing to follow up on the leads that are coming in.

Lots of sales people are still resistant to this process. And sometimes, it makes sense to segment the responsibility of following up on leads between field sales people who don’t believe they have the time or don’t believe in the quality of the leads that they’re getting, and inside sales people, whose sole responsibility it is to qualify and further advance the sale with leads that are still in fairly early stages of gestation.

Most big, best in class companies in many industries have now gone to an inside sales function whose job it is to qualify and continue to nurture leads forward, until they’re ready for the involvement of outside or field sales. If your company is struggling because it’s not capable of getting its field sales people to follow up on sales leads, think about changing the mix of your sales organization and moving some of your field sales resources into an inside sales role. Probably this means that you’re going to have to replace a few people and you’re going to need to do some recruiting because the profile and aptitudes of an inside telesales lead generation person are quite different from the profile and aptitudes of field sales personnel.

We find that many companies are in the process of reducing their field sales head count and shifting some of that mix towards an inside sales model because of the lower cost and increased efficiency, and teaming those inside and outside personnel together is a much more effective way to make sure that you’re aligning your resources correctly and making sure that you’re following up on every single lead that’s coming in through marketing. Many companies are spending money on marketing but they’re not following up on leads. As a result, they’ve got huge leakage through their pipeline and they’re wasting resources on programs that are not being optimized. Think about how to make sure that each of those precious leads that your marketing department’s producing for your company is followed up on in 2006.

About Cube Management

Cube Management delivers sales acceleration services to emerging growth and mid-market companies. The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum of marketing, sales and business development to provide customized solutions (whether recruiting, interim management or consulting) that drive revenue and profit growth. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People to produce winning results. Download the Cube Management Inside Sales Guide and the Cube Management Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Guide.

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Relationship marketing is a powerful tool that you must use to grow your computer consulting business. Relationship marketing is how I turned a simple website demo into $175,000 in service revenue over a period of a few years. When you use relationship marketing you don’t waste your money on risky display advertisements, you don’t have to cold call, you don’t have to do any door to door selling, and best of all you don’t even feel like you are selling.

Relationship marketing centers on conveying the right kind of professional image all of the time. It is crucial that in every situation you find yourself in, you remember that you are marketing your business. You are your business so what people think of you they will also think of your business.

Another important key to remember with relationship marketing is that every person you meet presents an opportunity to forge a relationship. Obviously networking opportunities are important to remember. But the area of relationship marketing that many people forget about is developing relationships within the businesses you serve.

You may have gotten a lead from one person at a company. Or you may have one key contact at a business you currently service. Those who are savvy at relationship marketing know that one contact is never enough. People change jobs and companies all the time. You don’t want to lose a potential client or service contract because your key contact is no longer around.

When you use relationship marketing correctly you will develop relationships with more than one person at any business you enter. Think of every person as a potential source of business. Make sure you expand the scope of your accounts to at least a couple of people with whom you have a solid relationship.

The Bottom Line on Relationship Marketing

Relationship marketing is a critical element in your overall marketing strategy. You must always be aware of how you are presenting yourself. You never know when or where you will meet the next person with whom your relationship flourishes into a whole lot of business. The beauty of relationship marketing is that it seems like effortless selling but it is really the most powerful and effective marketing tool you can use.

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