28 September 2008 3 Comments

Online CRM/Contact Management Reviews

Jan Visser’s SalesTeamTools (** update – the site’s no longer available sadly) is a great site. Lot’s of useful articles, features and resources.

One area I’ve found very useful recently is the section reviewing and comparing online CRM/contact management tools.

If your contact/prospect list is longer than a handful of people, you really ought to be using something better than a spreadsheet or your normal emai address book. I’m currently using Outlook’s Business Contact Manager which works fine for a small practitioner like me (and came free with my copy of Office) – but for sharing information between sales teams and automating the sales management process you need something a bit more. I also have the problem that Outlook BCM doesn’t sync with my iphone.

The modern trend is toward online CRM and contact management. I first trialled saleforce.com over 8 years ago when it was just starting out – but it’s too big & costly for a small business like me. However, looking at Jan’s reviews has helped me identify a number of different options which would work well for me – including cut-down easy-to-use contact management, built-in pipeline management, and integrated email marketing.

Head over to the site and take a look – and make sure to read the useful comments people have posted on the reviews too – it’s real feedback from real users. Even if you’re not looking for a contact management system, there are also a number of other great posts and resources too.

Ian

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,
26 September 2008 3 Comments

Forget Your Competition

Mr ForgetfulIt’s really important to think about your competitors when developing strategy and trying to develop a unique differentiated position for your products and services.

But when you’re selling – actually communicating with customers – thinking about your competitors, or even your differentiators, can be a huge mistake.

What customers are primarily interested in, of course, is what you can do for them: the end results or benefits they get.

But when you think about your competitors your focus turns instead to yourself and what you do – and how it’s different from what they do. Your communication begins to move away from being customer-focused, to being seller or product-focused.

In fact, in the majority of cases, the best way to differentiate yourself is not to think about your competitors; but instead to focus purely on the value you bring to your customer.

If you can really understand that value – and communicate it clearly to your customer – then 9 times out of 10 you’ll be the only one doing so. And that in itself will be a huge differentiator.

Ian

PS The picture is Mr Forgetful, of course.

Filed Under: Marketing Professional Services Tagged With: ,
22 September 2008 2 Comments

Avoiding the “Treacle Effect” when Selling to Big Companies

TreacleSelling to large companies can often feel like you’re “wading through treacle”. Progress is slow at best, and it often feels like you’ve taken one step forwards only to take two steps back.

Often the challenge is not the company itself, or even their slow decision-making processes – it’s the salesperson’s lack of knowledge of how decisions are really made in the company.

When you’re selling products or services of any significant size to a large company you’ll almost always have to deal with a complex decision-making process. And unless you’re lucky enough to be selling directly to the CEO, there’ll be multiple levels of decision-maker, multiple budgets to be allocated, and an approval process of seemingly Gordian complexity.

Veteran salespeople who have worked on key accounts over a long period of time gain one of their critical advantages over “outsiders” by knowing how the decision making process works. But smart newcomers can begin to cut through the complexity – provided they are prepared to address the issue of the decision-making process openly with their potential customer.

Sometimes this can feel embarrassing or risky. It can feel like you’re trying to “play the politics” of the situation. But the reality is that effective selling relies just as much on the politics and emotion of client decision-making as it does on the rationality of product features and benefits. If you believe in your product and it’s in the client’s best interests to buy it – then it’s your duty to make sure it happens. And frequently, your clients themselves are less than expert in steering through their own decision-making processes – the coaching you can provide to guide them through this will be much appreciated.

The key to working your way through the decision-making maze is – like many things in sales – down to good questioning.

Firstly, it’s vital to identify the key players in the decision making process and to understand their motivation. Typical questions you might ask are:

  • Who else in the organization is touched by this issue?
  • What do they see as the root of the problem
  • What benefit would they see from getting these issues resolved?
  • How important is this issue for them and is now the right time to be addressing this issue?

Drawing out a decision or stakeholder map with the client at this point can be hugely beneficial – as long as they don’t begin to feel you’re being too manipulative or self-serving.

In addition to the key influencers of the decision, it’s vital to understand the decision-process itself. For example:

  • What level of approval is needed for different levels and types of expenditure
  • What is the timing of key events – tor example it’s quite normal for project or financial approval boards to meet only quarterly and require all documentation weeks in advance – you need to know this timetable and the requirements – and know how to get on the approval schedule

Armed with this information you’ll be in vastly better position to know who to meet up with, what to discuss – and ultimately, how to get your product or service sold.

Ian

PS – Many thanks to my good friend Rick McCann for providing the inspiration for this post. It was a discussion over a coffee with Rick a few years ago which provided the raw material and questions which I’ve used in this area ever since.

Filed Under: Selling Professional Services Tagged With: , , ,
7 September 2008 2 Comments

Is Business Development Important for Small Law Firms?

The Law Society (in the UK) recently released their Small Legal Business Toolkit: a guide to “Setting up, managing and retiring from practice for legal SMEs”.

The guide is mostly very thorough – it’s 161 pages of A4 and covers topics from setting up and registering your practice, structuring your firm, tax, business planning, acquiring staff, marketing, regulations, retirement, and a bunch of pages from sponsor the Bank of Scotland on setting up a business account with them.

The marketing section is pretty thin. It covers the generics of the 4 Ps and some high level advice to “do” marketing every day and “don’t do it on the cheap”. There are a couple of pages on the basics of websites and SEO and a page or so on permission marketing and e-mail newsletters. But nothing on the specifics of marketing for small practices (or even law firms more generally). In fact there’s more advice on the keyword density of your website than there is on which lead generation techniques work in different circumstances for different types of practices.

And as for sales (or Business Development for the sensitive souls who daren’t utter the S word): nothing.

Of course, there’s the obligitory mention of the Solicitors Regulation Authority Rule 7 on allowable publicity (for example restrictionson cold calls) and Rule 9 on referrals. But nothing on the actual process of selling your services: of understanding your potential client’s needs and working with them to define what you can do with them in a way that will help them to buy from you. Nor is there anything on generating referrals from your existing clients or on networking – one of the key sales approaches for professionals.

Now I don’t have any hard data on this, but anecdotally, my experience is that the number one reason for small law practices failing is their inability to bring in enough client work to sustain them. And I fear that this guide does little to help the SME in this respect.

I have great respect for the Law Society and the work they do – but I fear this is a real missed opportunity.

Ian

PS You can find the guide here.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,