What Are the Three Most Critical Success Factors When Writing RFPs? 

Consider how much time and effort you and your sales team spend preparing RFPs (Requests For Proposals). What if you could do this faster and improve your success rate?

I think that three of the most important success factors can be summarized by these questions:

1. How can you write the most powerful executive overview? The executive overview can make a huge difference in terms of your success rate in winning more RFPs.  Many decision makers will only read the executive overview, and will ignore the rest of your RFP.
   
2. How can you set your company, service/product, and yourself apart? In other words, what differentiates you? State your differentiators as concisely as possible, for example, "The breadth and depth of our offerings allows you to reduce the number of your suppliers."
   
3. What information should you include, and what should you purposely leave out? A simple guideline to follow is “If in doubt, leave it out”.

When writing and responding to RFPs, if you keep these three questions in mind, you’ll end up winning more RFPs and spending less time on actually writing them.  Win more, work less is a great outcome.

We’d like to hear from you. Which of the three success factors have you been using? What else would you recommend when writing and responding to RFPs?
If you’re interested in learning more about the RFP process, STAR just introduced a new workshop titled Writing a Winning RFP.

2009:  Sales Indicators and Actions Needed
If you were able to sell well during the past year’s economic downturn, you are indeed a very skillful sales professional.  As cited in an earlier STAR newsletter, titled Selling During a Down Economy,  there is an  Old English Proverb worth repeating, namely that … “Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.” To the sales managers and business owners who read this blog, we offer the following important piece of advice. You must recognize, reward, and retain the sellers who did well in 2009. They are definitely worth their weight in gold.

Surely you must have your own personal examples for sales indicators that pertain to your business or industry.  Here are two important questions and actions for consideration: 

1. First, which indicators could you have used to predict that 2009 was going to be a poor year for your business?  Use these indicators in the future as an early warning system so that you can take corrective action earlier.

2. Second, which indicators can you use to assess the strength and duration of the current turnaround?  We hope that you are already seeing improvement in your business and recommend our October 2009 newsletter, titled Don’t Miss the Recovery, for some suggestions on how you can take advantage in 2010 of an improving economy.

2010:  Pro-active Changes in Sales
Although it is easy to say that all recessions share similar characteristics, many STAR clients have said that 2009 was different and that this past year created some fundamental changes that will affect the economy and their industry or business for the foreseeable future.  By the way, I personally agree with this observation.  This means that you must make changes in the way that you do business and sell to current and new clients.  Here are a couple of key examples:

• Be pro-active in helping your current client base.  If you don’t already know, make sure that you understand what has changed or is happening to your customer’s customers. Be sure to ask your current clients “How did 2009 affect your business, and what can we do to help? “

• Be sure to target your sales efforts at new markets and client segments. It is likely that some of your traditional markets have atrophied. STAR clients who did the best in 2009 were creative and persistent at going after new sales opportunities.

What Do You Think?
We’d love to hear from you regarding lessons learned from 2009 and actions that you have planned for 2010.  Finally, to everyone who subscribes to the STAR Blog and STAR newsletter, have a happy holiday season! We look forward to working with you in 2010.

It's easy to understand why salespeople have become discouraged in this down economy. Sales managers and small business owners tell us that sales to current customers have declined by 25% or more in 2009. New and current customers want special deals and concessions, or else the customer will go somewhere else.

Overcoming Negativity
To overcome a lot of this negativity, sales managers must spend more time on motivating their sales force. What can you do to motivate your sales force today?  In this down economy, two motivators from managers are especially valuable. First, since salespeople are results-oriented, anything that a manager can do to help his or her salesperson to win a sale, will be a motivator.  Second, job security and reassurance that the seller's job is safe, is a big motivator during rising unemployment.

STAR was recently interviewed by Newsday (Aug. 24, 2009) for a feature business article that claims that "...keeping a sales team motivated these days can be a full-time job".  Click on Keeping a Sales Team, well, Sailing to read comments from Bill McCormick, as well as additional tips from other experts in the field.

What Do You Think
We'd like to hear your thoughts and ideas on keeping a sales team motivated.

Studies show that average companies tend to lose 50% of their customers within 5 years? We call this customer churn, for short.  By contrast, the best companies do a much better job at customer retention.
 
Do you know how well your company currently does at customer retention? If not, make this your first action. You should gather data in two areas. First, what is the overall level of customer retention and customer attrition?  If you don’t know this information, how can you assess if you are improving?

Second, to what extent do these metrics vary by individual salesperson and/or customer support personnel? The latter data will allow you to identify the employees who are naturally doing a good job at customer retention. You can use them to develop a list of best practices that everyone should follow. 

What Do You Think?
STAR can provide coaching and consultation on how you can gather data on your customer churn and what you should be doing with this type of information.

You probably aren’t surprised to read that companies with superior levels of customer loyalty and retention have the highest profit and growth rates. Customer loyalty generates repeat sales, increased sales, and referrals.

Numerous books and studies support the connection between customer loyalty, employee loyalty and profitability.  Did you know that approximately 40 percent of the companies in the Top 100 Fortune “America’s Best Companies to Work For” list also appear on the Fortune 500 List? For more details, please visit the following links:

• Linking Employee Satisfaction with Productivity, Performance, and Customer Satisfaction by The  Corporate Leadership Council

• Examining the Relationship Between Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction, by Alpha Measure, Inc. 

Employee Loyalty is Essential to Customer Loyalty
You may be surprised, however, to learn that there is a direct link between customer loyalty and employee loyalty. You cannot maintain a loyal base of customers without a loyal base of employees!  Why is this true?  Your best and most loyal employees are more efficient than new employees, more empowered, more innovative, and more customer-focused, which improves the overall customer experience and satisfaction level.

What Do You Think?
If you’d like to learn some tips from STAR on how to improve employee and customer loyalty, please view our July 2009 STAR Newsletter. In the meantime, we’d like to hear your thoughts about these topics. For example:

• How important is employee loyalty to your business?
• What have you or your company done to improve customer loyalty and employee loyalty?

For sales professionals it is easy to get discouraged in today’s business environment. When you need to work harder to make a sale, it is difficult to sustain the extra level of effort without seeing some positive results.  In our sales training business, one of the positive indicators that sales will improve is the number of new leads who proactively contact us. For example, STAR has seen an increase in Q2 in the number of new customers who are searching for sales training, which is an early indicator that customers are feeling better about the economy. When the number of unsolicited leads starts to increase for your business, it is a good sign.  See STAR’s June 2009 newsletter for other positive indicators.

We’d like to hear from you. How can you tell when your sales are poised to rebound?    What business metrics would be a leading indicator that your future sales will increase?

If you haven't yet added webinars or web conferencing as one of your sales tactics, you are missing a great opportunity to bring in new business in a cost-effective manner.  Listed below are a few ways a seller can use a webinar or web conference as a sales tool.

Provide technical or product training to existing and new customers
A top salesperson at one of STAR’s clients used a technical webinar to generate $250,000 in new business from an existing customer.

Offer a free informational session
STAR recently presented a free 45-minute sales webinar for a select group of our clients and prospects.   We continue to use this recorded webinar as a sales tool to allow many prospects to learn about our training content and style.   
Link to our Free Webinar:  Selling During a Business Downturn

Conduct a demonstration of your product or service to a prospective client
Qualify your customer first. Then, schedule a “meeting” with the client by inviting them to a web conference. At the webinar, communicate your value and demonstrate how your product or service can be customized to meet the client’s needs.

Use a webinar with your key accounts rather than a face-to-face meeting
Salespeople conduct meetings with key accounts frequently.  Using a webinar can save travel expense and time for your client and you, but particularly if the client has decision makers at multiple locations.

We'd like to hear from you. How have you used webinars in your sales efforts? Would you like to learn more about how to design and present a sales webinar?

Prospecting for new business is essential for all sales organizations, but it becomes critically important during difficult economic times. How can you generate new leads for your sales pipeline? What are the most effective sales prospecting methods?  In the last few months, we’ve asked these questions to many sales professionals, and identified some high-gain actions that work best in today’s down economy.

Strategies for Prospecting for New Business:

• Provide a free workshop about your products/services.  This can be done live or via webinar. A webinar is a very cost-effective method because it negates the need and expense of travel, while allowing you to interact with many prospects. For example, STAR gave a free online sales training webinar titled “Selling During a Down Economy”. 
  
• Use referrals. If you call a new customer, or send an email, and can say that you were referred to that customer by someone, most of the time the customer will call back. But, if you make a cold call instead, it rarely works. In today’s economy, it takes more effort to win a new customer.  Referrals will help you to win more new business faster and easier than making many cold calls.
  

We'd like to hear from you. Which methods work best for you to generate new leads? Which methods are least effective?

Not surprisingly, we've received a lot of interest from clients and prospects on the topic of Selling During a Down Economy. In view of today's difficult economic times, we can understand why a lot of sellers are interested.

In addition to our most recent blogs on finding opportunities in a challenging economy, we've done some additional research. We’re not the only sales company talking about the topic, of course, and we found another sales blog by Geoffrey James worth mentioning.  Many of the points in his blog reinforce what we've said, but there was one particular point that I thought was good advice, namely that "...a downturn is a good time to invest in sales.  I think that any company that cuts its sales training budget during a downturn is shooting itself in the corporate foot.”

We agree. A business downturn is precisely the time to work harder and smarter at selling, and the right sales training workshop will not only teach the sales skills needed to sell well during a business downturn, but will also prevent your sellers from getting discouraged during difficult times.

What do you think? Would it help you and/or your organization to invest more in sales during a business downturn? In addition to sales training, what else would help in your sales efforts?

STAR has recently launched a new workshop "Selling During a Business Downturn", and also provides 1 on 1 sales coaching on this topic.

So how do you find those opportunities in an economic downturn?  Salespeople and sales managers should find the answer in not only avoiding some common mistakes, but by taking some proactive steps.  The most recent STAR blog presented 5 common mistakes made by salespeople during a down economy and featured the first two mistakes shown below:

1. Not spending enough time on sales prospecting, at a time when sales prospecting is needed more than ever.
2. Getting discouraged, which allows your competition to take business away from the seller’s company.

Now, we continue the topic and feature the balance of the list of common mistakes salespeople make during a down economy.
3. Not responding well when customers ask for additional concessions.
4. Failing to communicate the value that the seller’s company can provide for a particular customer.
5. Missing the opportunity to wow existing customers.

Take these proactive steps to find opportunities in spite of the challenging economy we’re all facing:
 
Don’t be surprised if your current customers ask you to make additional concessions. The prevailing bottom-line climate has created an increasingly frequent request by customers to reduce costs.  Salespeople are being pushed more and more by customers for deeper concessions, especially on price and payment terms.  The prevailing competitive culture makes Sales Negotiation Skills savvy a top priority, and requires you to be confident and skillful at both giving and getting concessions.

Highlight the value that you can provide. You don’t always have to make a concession, even though times are tough. If you can provide value to a client in ways other than reducing the price, this is the time to do so and can be a "win win" solution for both of you.  As an example, STAR was recently asked by one of our clients to make a concession but offered instead to help them in some revenue-generating actions that will end up increasing both of our revenue streams, and negated the need to make a price concession.

This is the time to wow your customers. What can you do to exceed your customer’s expectations? If you can provide them some additional service or benefit, at no extra charge, you will strengthen your relationship and set yourself apart.  For more on this topic please visit our recent blog “Last Time I Checked, Wowing Your Customers Did Not Any Include Nickel-and-Dime tactics.” 

We'd like to hear from you. Which other mistakes do sellers make during a business downturn? What should sellers do now to win and retain business?

The best companies will survive during a down economy and will ultimately thrive when the recession ends precisely because of their efforts made during those tough times. As you’ve already seen, many weaker organizations will not survive.  As one of many examples, compare Best Buy to Circuit City.

In an analogous way, the best sellers are adaptable and find opportunities during a down economy to retain business and strengthen customer relationships. By contrast, poor salespeople make several mistakes and don’t do well during difficult economic times. 

Common Mistakes Made by Salespeople in Difficult Times
• Not spending enough time on sales prospecting, at a time when sales prospecting is needed more than ever.
• Getting discouraged, which allows your competition to take business away from the seller’s company.
• Not responding well when customers ask for additional concessions.
• Failing to communicate the value that the seller’s company can provide for a particular customer.
• Missing the opportunity to wow existing customers.
 
For starters, we’ll focus only on the first two mistakes:
 
Now, more than ever, you need to spend time prospecting for new business. In our Prospecting and Business Development Workshop, we cite that successful sellers spend more time than average sellers do at keeping their sales pipeline full. This is always important but notably so when times get tough.  In a down economy, you must spend extra time on sales prospecting. In addition, a down economy is a great time to be more creative in your sales prospecting. As one example of the latter point, now is the time to explore for slightly different market segments or geographic regions that may not be experiencing as difficult a time as your existing customer base.
 
Don’t get discouraged.  It is easy to get discouraged when customers are slowing down and reducing the frequency and quantity of their orders.  Today, nearly all salespeople are likely to encounter more “no’s” when asking for an order, but keep in mind that the competition is experiencing the same difficult times.  Here is how one seller that is being coached by STAR has responded to the slower economy:  “I'm going to try to contact XYZ customer again this afternoon - I don't give up easily!”  Nor should you!
 
We'd like to hear from you. Do you agree that more time and creativity needs to be spent on sales prospecting during a down economy? How can you minimize becoming discouraged in today’s business climate?

A recent issue of Fortune magazine (Oct. 6, 2008) focused on the “…deepest secrets of great selling” and had several valuable articles, one of which was featured on our most recent sales training blog.

Another article in that same issue titled "Shelf Help" listed 8 books that Fortune feels should be in “…everyone’s briefcase”. I think you’ll enjoy skimming their entire list of recommended books, but I thought a couple things were very interesting about the list:

- 2 of the 8 books were on influence skills, which matches STAR’s experience as a sales training provider
- Getting To Yes, by Roger Fisher and William Ury, was another book on the list, and happens to be the book that we recommend the most in our sales and negotiation training workshops

Many of you already know this, but STAR’s original two workshops for sales professionals were Influence Skills and Sales Negotiation Skills, so I was thrilled to see that Fortune magazine cited those same competencies in their list of best books for sales professionals.

The two influence books mentioned by Fortune were the classic one from Dale Carnegie titled How to Win Friends and Influence People, as well as a newer book by Robert Cialdini titled Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. I have read both books and like them both. After all, a sales professional must be influential to do his or her job well.

I also agree with their recommendation about Getting To Yes, which cover to cover is the best single book that I’ve found in my 19 years as a sales training consultant. Sales professionals must excel at negotiation. Otherwise, they end up conceding too much to customers in their desire to make a deal.

Based on your experience, which books would you recommend for salespeople? Which one is your personal favorite? Let us know what you think!

- Bill McCormick, President of Sales Training And Results, Inc. (STAR)

Sales Calls: Are You Preparing Too Much or Not Enough?

A recent issue of Fortune magazine (Oct. 6, 2008) focused on the “…deepest secrets of great selling”. Among several valuable articles, one that caught my eye was titled Sales Slip-Ups, which described the top 10 mistakes salespeople make. 

Two of the mistakes appear to be at odds, but make perfect sense to me:
* Failing to prepare
* Preparing too much

Failure to plan for a sales call is a common mistake made that we frequently cite in our workshops. Consider this statistic: a typical sales call costs about $1,000. Would you purchase something for $1,000 without giving it any thought?  Of course, preparation includes knowing everything you need to know about your product or service, but most importantly knowing everything you need to know about your client or prospect, as well as your competition.  There is no doubt that this preparation involves doing your homework!

Yet, preparing too much can also be a mistake. The Fortune article states that too much preparation will make a seller sound as if he or she is following a script. Although we don’t talk about this mistake as much, I certainly agree with the author. Appearing as if you are following a script creates an uncomfortable and unnatural atmosphere.  While detailed preparation is critical, remaining personable and staying connected to your audience is perhaps equally important. 

Based on your experience, what do you think about these two questions?  First, what are some other common mistakes made by salespeople? Second, for the mistakes cited above, do you think failing to prepare or preparing too much is the greater problem?

Let us know what you think!

- Bill McCormick, President of Sales Training And Results, Inc. (STAR)