May 2020

Enjoy these awesome threads about the copier industry 5 years ago this week.

It's late Friday night. I had a decent week for short week.  In 30 days we'll be halfway through 2020. Continued prospecting in during the summer will fill the pipeline for the 3rd and 4th quarters. It's time to grind!

Enjoy these awesome threads from ten years ago this week!

A quick update on New Jersey for everyone.  We're pretty much still locked down.  Not much has changed in the last two weeks, although the Governor is giving us back some small freedoms from time to time. 

Today he announced the horse racing can resume in New Jersey by next week, although none of the grandstands will be open. I'm seeing this as a Governor that is desperate for tax revenue and placing wagers on the ponies and sports betting will generate some additional cash. 

Yesterday we were notified that tolls on our two major highways the NJ Turnpike will see a 37% increase along with the Garden State Parkway receiving a 27% increase.  Way to go Gov, just keep making it harder and hard to stay in New Jersey.

All non-essentials stores can open but only for curbside pick-up. Hotels, motels, bars, diners, restaurants are still closed to the public.  Although diners and restaurants can be open for curbside pickup. 

For the most part office buildings are still a shell of what they once were in New Jersey.

Today was a decent day for prospecting since I was able to add another existing client opportunity. I wasn't able to manage many calls because of three appointments along with researching three opportunities so I could move them further along in the order process.

My earliest appointment was for a wide format net new prospect.  I'm offering a pre-owned MP W6700SP and hopefully replacing an order ink-jet plotter.  Initially I thought I would get some push back on my toner based wide format because my prospect is coming from ink jet.  I crammed for about 45 minutes this AM listing the pro's and con's of each device. I calculated the cost difference for black ink compared to black  toner. I was ready with all of my notes for the call.  

As we got deeper into the call it was evident that my prospect was tired of ink-jet, the waste of ink, the small paper rolls and the constant ink head replacements,  We left it with I would forward the docs asap and he would discuss with his partner. We planned a follow up call for next Wednesday.  I've been after this account for 26 months with at least 6 touches or more per year. Getting this one would be nice after all this time.

My second appointment of the day resulted in a verbal order for a small A4 color device. Not a record breaker for revenue but the ice breaker I needed for June.  Docs are going out Monday AM for this one.

My third appointment was unique to say the least. The suspect was new and our call lasted an agonizing 45 minutes.  In baseball scouts will look at a player and they'll put an NP next to their name.  The NP stands for Not A Prospect. I should have done that 10 minutes into the call but I hung on and we agreed that we would touch based in 6 weeks and exchange leads. Okay not a prospect but you never know about the leads.

I did have a great call from someone I recently met from Dove Print Solutions today. Nice call, nice person and I'm looking forward to additional calls down the road. It was also good to hear what's happening in other parts of the US.  

Last part of the day ended with completing an upgrade review for an existing account.  I could have stopped at 4:30, but I didn't because if I had left the rest to Monday I would have had to review the entire account again.  Finished just before 5PM and sent my email off to the client. This opportunity is for about $8k.  

End result of the short week saw me add four opportunities and move three of them to the point where they could close next week.  Revenue wise somewhere in the $20K range for all three. Not a bad week.

-=Good Selling=-

• Always schedule the next appointment with the client
• Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today
• Research and prep before every meeting

I received my early constant contact numbers from the email I sent yesterday.  It was a little better than I thought for and much better than the first. 

17% open rate and 5% click through. That translates to about 120 opens and 6 of the opens clicked through.  I even had multiple clicks from multiple people.  The plan is not to call the clicks right away but to collect some data on who is clicking what.  I'm thinking after 120 days (4 campaigns) I'll be able to generate some net new leads.

The reason I'm doing this is simple, I need to develop net new prospects for this year.  Heck after June we only have six months left in the year.  There's also another reason and that's because it's still so hard to get DM's on the phone here in Jersey.  Today I had to deliver a beta wide format exit tray (Courtesy of Copier Solution Shop) to one of my clients.  I left my house at 8AM and there was no traffic, there's always traffic in New Jersey. In addition I made sure that I scoped out office buildings as I passed them. Most parking lots were empty.  I did run across one parking lot that was full (kinda surprised me) and you know what they means right, yup they will be getting a phone call tomorrow.

I had a good day of setting appointments via email and a few phone calls.  I was able to set four appointments along with developing another two opportunities from existing accounts.  Thus the reason for the email campaign,  I need net new in my funnel know.  

The prospecting that you do for these summer months will be the prospects that you get orders from in the third and fourth quarter.  Over the years I've noticed too many sales peeps that will dog it over the summer and then wonder why they have no orders for the end of the year.  One of those peeps used to be me many years ago. We live and we learn by our mistakes.

Thinking I bagged about 20-25 calls today, maybe a dozen emails and created those opportunities.  As of right now I'm thinking I have a decent shot to have 50K by the second week of the month. It's not solid and needs work, but I rather be able to work them then have nothing at all.

My lunch was a working lunch today.  At 2PM I was on a call with Arlington as one of their guest speakers.  Each week since COVID19 started Arlington has been on every Thursday at 2PM with Navigating Business During These Unprecedented Times. Today was week eleven of the series. This way my second quest appearance with them and I'm hoping for a third in the near future. If you have the time catch the webinar and or the recordings it's all good information.

I have three appointments scheduled for tomorrow and another three accounts that I need to research for possible upgrades.  The highlight of the day is that a net new got back to me and wants to schedule something for next week.  That's a $35K opportunity, just wishing I had 5 or six of those in my funnel.

Here's a interesting piece from today. I received an email from a client stating this.

Been paying for this machine for to long. This invoice is out of order. We’ve paid enough for this machine. Please make arrangements to pick this machine up. We’re not going to renew. 

Okay my first thought was this was not a nice email and maybe I should not be such as nice in my return email. Meaning "you signed for x amount of months and we can't pick it up and you'll have to pay to ship it back", and then leave things like that. Because by the tone of the email this wasn't going anywhere!

I took a different approach and here's what I sent back.

You signed a 48 month lease. You still have 12 months or so left. At the end of the lease it’s your responsibility to return the copier to the leasing company. I will double check and confirm later today

We can help but there’s nothing we can do with the lease cost per month unless you’re interested in trading in and reducing the monthly lease cost.

It was worth a shot right?  Here's the response I received

Then let’s trade in then. 

Bang, opportunity created. Not the biggest but not the smallest but a simple email offering to help seens to have done the trick.

-=Good Selling=-

• Turn a negative into a positive
• Prospect your ass off all summer
• Develop your own email campaign 
• Invest in yourself

Day fifty-one now since I've been optioned to remote working from my home office.  In 15 days we'll hit 66 days, those 66 work days represent and entire quarter of the year.

There may be some good news on the horizon though. Today a gym in South Jersey filed a law suit against our Governor, the AG, the head of the state police and the top health official.  Below is a snippet from a recent article.

I"an Smith and Frank Trumbetti have filed a federal lawsuit that challenging the constitutionality of the state's "Draconian" shelter-in-place executive orders, which resulted in the closing of non-essential businesses. An injunction to allow the gym to reopen would be filed on Thursday, attorney James Mermiglis told Patch Wednesday morning."

I can only hope that this mirrors what happened in Wisconsin where the Governor was sued and lost. In a matter of hours the entire state was open gain for business.

Today

I had a couple of plans on tap for today.  One was to send my once a month email campaign to my list of 600 plus AEC contacts in New Jersey.  From start to finish I probably spent about 3 hours with deciding on the content, the call to actions and the verbiage for each of the four points I wanted to cover.  I try to make these more educational for the reader than pummeling them with some stupid special for a copier.  That email was sent about 1PM and by tomorrow I should have some early results.  I know I won't have sensational results, I'll be delighted with a 10% open and 5% click through.  For me it's all about doing this on a consistent basis and develop a following from all of these net new prospects. 

My second plan was to write some content for my Jersey Plotters site, however that didn't happen because I had an issue with my VPN that I couldn't figure out.  Guess this will have to wait for another day.

Afternoon

My after noon was dedicated to prospecting via email and phones until I received an email from a contact at one of my recent installs.  The email came across with an audio file (recording) that was left for me.  First things first is the file was not an MP4 file in fact it had a weird .eml or something like that.  I then emailed the person who sent me the email told him that I couldn't (wouldn't) open the file and to please let me know how I can help. I received a reply that stated "just click on the attachment". Okay that message just confirmed that persons email was hacked.  I immediately called the CFO and text'd him in case he was not aware that someone's address was hacked.

To make a long story short the CFO and I spoke, he was aware of the hacked email but found it rather odd because on Friday his IT company approached him with a "add on" his managed IT plan for cybersecurity the "white glove plan".  He's convinced that it came from his MSP and was livid. I took the high road and stated, "if you're really sick you'll get a second opinion from another doctor, maybe it's time you called us in for that second opinion".  The talk track finished with he would have that discussion with the principal.

I believe I logged one opportunity, set two appointments for the entire day. Not a great day but we have to have a plan to move forward. Tomorrow I've got an early on-site appointment to help an existing account with wide format, it's not an opportunity but a good account that I need to nurture.

Thus I'm back to "0" for the new month. May is over and I can't rest on my laurels and make **** happen again. 

-=Good Selling-=

• have a plan for each month
• develop original content (video or blog)
• prospect your tail off

This morning started last night (Sunday) for me. I had booked a 10AM to get docs signed for a new color wide format MFP. It was about 9:30PM when I tried to access our CRM and it was down. The site wasn't down but I couldn't access it because I still needed to be setup as a user and didn't have credentials. 

The plans of printing off the order doc, the ma and the lease wasn't going to work.  Next course of action was to pull up order docs that I had already used for other accounts. Never the less there was much redacting and editing of those pdf's and the final result was a set of documents in the printer just waiting to be signed.

My other dilemma was creating the second set of documents that I wanted to email to the client for the order I received a verbal for on Friday.  That was a $15K order and I wanted to send the docs super early to give the DM enough time to sign and email back to me. It was about 9AM when I finally had access to my CRM and I was able to complete 50% of the order docs. It was then off to my 10AM appointment.  There's just no way you can be late for signing orders with a client.

The 10AM meeting was my second on-site meeting in recent weeks. The meeting was another masked event and after some great conversation with the client I was back at my home office by 11AM.  Once I arrived I had to tune into our weekly TEAMS meeting.  Thank goodness we ended a little early today.

All I could think about was if I would get the documents signed and emailed back to me before the end of the day.  The thoughts of,  did my client take an extra day for the holiday, did I sent the docs too late and were there other pressing matters or maybe there was a change of mind. Funny how all of these thoughts process in a few seconds when you don't have ink in paper.

It was around 12PM when I finally sent the docs, now the waiting game begins. I started with processing the the docs from my 10AM meeting which took a good 30 minutes.  Just about 1PM I checked my email and there it was the second set of signed docs and the order that put me over $200K for the month!

Never have I had such a month in my 40 years of doing this. For May I processed eight or nine orders, placed 14 units, 12 of those devices were sold in the AEC market and a net new in a CRD.  Thus this month made up for the first four months of the year which were terrible.  Coming into June I'm thinking I'm one month ahead now in my annual quota. 

In the past I would have maybe taken a couple of hours and enjoyed the accomplishment, but today I took a different road.  If I can do $200k in a month, why can't I do it again?  The funnel is somewhat there, and continued prospecting will only increase the funnel right?  Why not try and do it again I thought.

After making sense of why not I dove right into to a $40K opportunity and started the wheels in motion to move it down the road. 

The month of May is over for me, the accolades are over and I'm back to only being as good as your last month.

Goals for June is to add $100K in opportunities, take a day off and goal fishing when the weather is spectacular and look under every rock for an opportunity.

End result for May:

• I never thought it couldn't be done
• I never gave up prospecting
• I worked my tail-off
• Some times you are in the right placed at the right time
• I was patient and let the ball travel with some clients
• I planted seeds early in the month with clients
• I still love what I do

-=Good Selling=-

Down to one day left in the month on Tuesday.  Going to enjoy tomorrow however need to put in a few hours of work in order to make things happen.

Enjoy these awesome threads from ten years ago this week!

Topic

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"The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it."

Laurence Sterne

Feedback isn’t just for rookies. As the leader I know you are, it's part of your job to evaluate yourself, solicit feedback, and then hold yourself accountable for how you apply it.

Throughout your sales career, the feedback you’ve earned is necessary for continued growth.

Sales is a competitive and tough. It's not for the weak at heart. The highs are high and the lows are low.

There is a massive difference between a sales rep and a sales professional.

Some may say it's the competitive inner drive. How do sales professionals continually get better?

• They constantly work on their mindset, heartset and skillset
• They are locked in on their goals
• They have relentless determination
• They have uncompromising discipline
• They have a huge desire to outperform their best and others’ best

“Feedback is a gift. Ideas are the currency of our next success. Let people see you value both feedback and ideas.”

Jim Trinka and Les Wallace

I believe there is ONE THING that separates sales professionals from sales reps. It's the passion and thirst-quenching feedback they get from their clients.

THE THIRST FOR CLIENT FEEDBACK

If you fail to continually find out what your clients think about you and your service, you'll never be able to give them the best experience they deserve. It's their opinions about the experience they have with you that is helpful to use to adjust your support to fit their needs more accurately.

Insincere and canned emails soliciting feedback doesn't cut it. And, lord knows you know what I mean because many of you send them out.

To truly serve your clients is to listen to them. 

Sales professionals intently listen to their "client voices" through consistent and constant feedback. They treat clients like royalty, providing everything to match their wants and needs all the time.

Together, let's think for a moment...

• How do you know if what you're doing is working?
• How do you know if your clients are happy with their experiences or with you?
• What do they like and dislike?
• How are you keeping up with what's going on inside their company?

Sales professionals quench their thirst with client feedback

Feedback is the breakfast for sales champions. They quench their sales thirst with meaningful and heartfelt feedback.

The best thing you can do is to go to your clients and get feedback.

"When you give your buyers feedback, you are giving them a gift. In turn, they'll understand what works and what doesn't work in your interactions. When you seek and respond to feedback from your buyers, you differentiate yourself, set an example, and make it easier for them to hear your suggestions."

Deb Calvert

You must be willing to look for honest, candid and sometime uncomfortable feedback from your clients. Sales professionals know this makes them better. To get great feedback, one must become vulnerable and shall I say, surrender.

QUENCH YOUR THIRST WITH A CUP OF COURAGE

How can you take your sales career to the next level? Simple, feedback will set you free! It's the feedback you get from a cross section of your clients that will provide the avenues to grow relationships, grow yourself and grow your referrals.

Here is a suggestion, place your clients into three buckets. Sort your clients by...

• You love them and they love you
• Challenging
• Middle of the road clients, ones you just don't hear much from

The best place to start gathering feedback is from those clients who have been placed in the "middle of the road" bucket.

Why? You may not see them on a consistent basis and you may tell yourself, "all is well" but in actuality they may become vulnerable to a hostile takeover.

You must be willing to quench your sales thirst with feedback. Your clients are the best source of help. You must be willing to ask.

You have not because you ask not

THE THIRST AND DRIVE TO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS

The opportunities for growth inside your client base are enormous. I'm sure you've established a relationship, but the question becomes, "How credible is the relationship?"

Professionals dig in and ask...

• What can I do differently?
• What can I do to improve or enhance the experience I provide to you?
• What can I do to help you do better business?

I'm asking you to rock the boat on this one because a comfortable mindset with your clients is a terrible thing to waste. Think of the all your competitors circling your clients just waiting for the right moment to reel them into their establishments of paradise.

STAY THIRSTY MY SALES FRIENDS

The client comfort zone is a terrible place to be in. You will be amazed what you learn outside this zone.

Imagine for a moment that your smack dab in the middle of the Sahara Desert. You've been wandering aimlessly for hours, you're tired and thirsty. Suddenly you come across a watering hole or is it a mirage, a figment of your imagination.

Well my sales folks, investing in your client relationships shouldn't be a mirage. Fill up your pipeline with client feedback and stay thirsty my friends.

Client feedback is a terrible thing to waste

I understand, I get where you all are coming from. Every day, I walk in your shoes. I am fully committed to helping your sales team integrate social aspects and heartfelt strategies into your current sales process to grow new business. I want you to get results. This is why I am passionate about doing this the right way, the genuine way, the authentic way! It's about understanding value before visibility.

Selling From the Heart is making a difference! I poured my heart into every page of this book and I think you're going to love it. You can find it on Amazon in paperback, kindle and in audio. You can click on the book image below and this will take you to Amazon.

You can find more material inside Selling From The Heart.

In a world full of empty suits, I'm passionate about helping sales reps succeed by getting valuable before they get visible. I help sales teams understand the true value they bring to the market. 

I appreciate getting the opportunity to share my stories. Integrating the use of social and sharing my story on LinkedIn was my “game-changer” in the highly competitive office technology world. With great pride I transform, challenge, coach and inspire sales teams to grow new business by helping them share their story and how they communicate it out by integrating the use of social inside the sales process. You can follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and on my podcast by clicking on Selling from the Heart.