Archive for April, 2009

Selling in Difficult Times

April 17, 2009 by Scott Olsen

A good friend of mine shared a short story with me about a software sales person who told his boss,  “I can’t sell anything… half the country is unemployed!” The boss replied, “Then sell the other half.” I love that story!

Based on first hand experiences and the situations I help my clients deal with, these are very difficult economics times with countless examples of empowered CFO’s scrutinizing every current decision as well as reviewing any past decisions to explore ways to unwind or minimize their expenses. In the big picture, economies go up and down, trends come a go, but solutions to problems never go out of style.

Are you selling products or solving problems?

-Scott Olsen

→ No Comments
Categories: Sales Skills, Sales Stories

Where Are Your Prospects?

April 10, 2009 by alnodarse

When the market gets soft, the first thing that many companies do is “go back to basics”. This has always driven me crazy. Shouldn’t you always focus on the fundamentals?  I remember hearing how Larry Bird was always the first one to show up to practice. Even though he had one of the best free throw shooting percentages, he still felt that he always needed to focus on the basics.

When it comes to your database, the same holds true. You should always be “fine tuning” to make sure all of your prospects are on your radar screen. If you don’t know where they all are, how can you sell to them?

One big challenge most companies have (even Fortune 500’s) is that they lack visibility. I have found that many companies that are household names don’t even know about 65% of their prospects. They are not even on their radar screen?

Just like there is a process in free-throw shooting, there is one for building and maintaining a database:

Start by making sure that everyone who should be in your database is.
Continually look to update your database by adding or deleting companies.
Verify and validate the critical info to make sure it is always up to date.
For large account sales, make sure you know of all sibling companies and their relationships to the parent.

To have and maintain a world-class database, you have to commit to the process. No matter how good you think your database is, you can always do better. That’s the first step. Just step up to the line, commit and shoot.

→ No Comments
Categories: Prospect database, Prospecting, Sales Management

The Olsen Group Blog

Archives

Categories