1. How you close is the key to getting the sale. Research shows that successful closes result from a series of events that precede it. Most prospects are more interested in how salespeople open sales calls, not how they close them.
2. Persistence is the key to closing success. If a prospect has no need, interest or want in what’s being sold, no amount of persistence will close the sale. Showing persistence with a qualified prospect is a lot more valuable that being too aggressive with an unqualified one.
3. If prospects don’t like you, you have zero chance of closing the sale. Studies show that prospects place much more emphasis on trust than they do the personal feelings they have about the salesperson.
4. Salespeople who open with friendly small talk set the stage for a successful close. According to a recent survey, almost 75% of executives labeled unsolicited small talk as negative. Most are too busy to worry about the weather or the latest sports stories. If prospects want to engage in a little small talk to open the meeting, respond in kind. Otherwise, try to make your opening provocative and credible.
5. The best way to increase your closing ratio is to step up the number of calls you make. Prospecting for qualified customers is critical for salespeople. The key is the word “qualified.” Simply making a lot of calls on prospects who have no interest, budget or purchasing authority will hurt, not help, your closing ratio.

Adapted from The 12 Clichés of Selling by Barry Farber, a sales consultant.

The subject got close examination in year-long, post-2008 research and a book, Responsible Restructuring: Creative and Profitable Alternatives to Layoffs, by Wayne Cascio. He notes:

•  In 2008, more than three million Americans lost their jobs, but 81% of the top 100 companies in Fortune’s 2009 list of “Best Employers to Work For” had no layoffs
• Companies that did have layoffs generally suffered a continuing loss of business because (a) cuts in personnel hurt sales and development of new products and (b) productivity dropped because high performers were more likely to leave after a layoff, and
• Companies with very deep layoffs underperformed the market by as much as 8% over the ensuing three years.

That’s not to say that downsizing is never an option. There are slow times when a company is forced into it. When that happens, Cascio suggests a five-step procedure:

• Identify departments and functions that are strategically critical, along with critical employee skills
• Identify criteria that reflect legitimate business needs
• Use a “funnel” approach to selection; that is, evaluate employees by critical skills first, followed by job performance, disciplinary actions, and seniority
• Document the criteria and processes used, and
• Conduct analyses to ensure that there isn’t a disproportionate effect of layoffs on members of protected classes, and have all analyses and documentation reviewed by an attorney.

Some take prospecting seriously only during those periods when sales are down. Then it’s forgotten once orders begin coming in.

A better goal is to be “prospect-driven,” focusing total attention and resources on uncovering prospective customers regardless of the state of the economy or current sales results.

Your salespeople can develop prospecting skills by following these six steps:

1. Make the commitment. It’s always easy to put prospecting off until a later day when the circumstances will be better, but the time is now. Effective salespeople place prospecting in the same category as meetings with important customers. They routinely include prospecting appointments in their daily planners.
2. Profile existing customers. Some salespeople fail to meet the prospecting challenge because they don’t put enough effort into studying their existing customers. Knowing why customers chose you can give you an edge in finding qualified prospects. By reviewing your customer base, you’ll get a clearer picture of your best customers and prospects.
3. Realize that the goal of prospecting is to build a bond. The key is to learn how the prospect thinks and what the prospect wants to accomplish. Successful salespeople know that ideas are the basis for an enduring bond with prospects. Once they establish the bond, there’s a good chance that the prospect will become a customer.
4. Understand how resistance to change works for and against you. People have an almost natural resistance to change. While this works to your benefit when it comes to your existing accounts, prospects also prefer the status quo and are more resistant to changing suppliers.
5. Give prospects opportunities to become customers. You never know the exact moment when a prospect makes the decision to become a customer. But the mental process of moving from prospect to customer is the key element in making the sale. The vital element here is to make certain that the prospect has the opportunity to make the purchase. Just because the sale isn’t made today doesn’t mean there isn’t future business potential with this prospect.
6. Regularly review the information you use to evaluate prospects. Buyers retire, are promoted or simply leave. Their needs and relationships are also subject to change. Some of them may move from prospect to customer quickly if you are there on a timely basis. Try to use a regular monitoring process to stay up-to-date with all of your prospects.

Adapted from the book Are You Ready to Sell by Mike Whitney, a sales trainer.

Benefits consultant Towers Watson recently surveyed 260 employers regarding their 401(k) plans. The results:

• 75% have restored matching contributions that had been suspended between January 2008 and January 2010
• Of those who have restored matches, 74% have reinstated the match to previous levels, 23% are matching at less than pre-crisis levels and 3% are offering increased matches, and
• The median duration of the match suspensions was 12 months.

That means the recruiting-and-retention impact of the 401(k) match has lessened, particularly for companies that touted the benefit as an alternative to pay raises and bonuses. Workers these days can look around and see that the match isn’t as rare as it was a couple of years ago and thus isn’t as much of a reason to sign with, or stick with, an employer.

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“The strategic threat to Facebook is that power users have gone to Twitter or to Google+,” Parker explained, during an address at the annual Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

According to Parker, a power user is “any user that regularly contributes [significant] content to Facebook which is being consumed by everyone else.”

In other words, a lot of influential companies and celebrities are migrating to sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Google + that are set up to maximize the ROI on their status updates/tweets.

A quick look at Facebook on any given day reveals a snapshot of what Parker’s referring to. The overwhelming majority of Facebook users post and respond to info about their own personal lives, whereas Twitter is more geared toward a person or entity promoting a brand, product or image.

People don’t follow nearly as many friends on Twitter as they do on Facebook. As the social media landscape shifts, the question becomes: What will Facebook do to evolve beyond a site where people go to see what their friends are up to?

More importantly, what will attract the power users to Facebook, as opposed to Twitter and Google+? As the power users go, so does a social media site’s popularity, assuming Parker’s on the money.

Source: “Facebook power users have gone to Google + and Twitter,” by Emma Barnett, Telegraph, 10/18/11.

What if your company could add 5% to its bottom line this year?  Don’t look to Sales or Marketing for this one — turn an eye to Finance.

Turns out you can do it without adding a new product or service or landing a major new customer?

The revenue booster: Plug the holes that allow organizations to lose 5%  of their revenue to fraud each year, according to the Association for Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE).

Whether it’s expense padding, inventory shrinkage or phantom vendors, occupational fraud costs … big. Unfortunately, most companies still take a reactive rather than proactive approach to financial funny-business.

That’s one trend you want to buck in 2012, says James Ratley, President of the ACFE, in a recent podcast. His appeal to companies of all sizes and in all industries: It’s much more cost-effective to prevent fraud and detect it early.

And how successful your company will  be rests on the people you tap to do that.

Have you assembled the right team?

In fact, there’s one key trait you need the people in charge of ferreting out fraud to possess: sharp investigative skills.

That’s what sets apart your peers who are most successful at fending off fraud from the ones who take the bigger hits, says Ratley.

No one’s talking about the ability to play amateur P.I., per se. But just because someone works in Finance doesn’t make him or her best at spotting financial funny business. There’s a specific skill set your company should seek out.

Encourage your CFO to zero in on which of his or her staffers possess the following three traits and tap them to drive your fraud prevention efforts:

1. Attention to detail. Hopefully the majority of your finance staffers have this – it’s key in Finance overall. But hunt for your sharpest staffers who’ll spot the tiniest discrepancy others might overlook.
2. Strong communication skills, particularly interview skills. Staffers will have to ask probing questions when they find something fishy. Not only must they be good at interviewing, but they’ll need to be able to switch gears mid-interview if they uncover something new.
3. Strategic thinkers. Your more tactically-minded staffers won’t have the big picture awareness to understand all the places fraud could extend nor know the right questions to ask.

Of course, it’s more than just your Finance department that needs keen investigative skills. Another critical area? IT. The tech members of your fraud prevention team should include “forensic” experts – folks who can retrieve vital info that’s been deleted, for example.

1. Capitalize on how digital technology has changed the sales game: If Marketing was 80% creative and 20% logistics back in the early 90s, it’s the exact opposite now. Social media, email and other resources give marketers access to honest, instant feedback and analytics whenever they want it. That means companies can adjust on the fly, tweaking their sales and marketing processes to reflect changes in buyer behavior, then monitoring the business impact of each adjustment.
2. Fuse Marketing and Sales into one department: Research proves time and again that the more Sales and Marketing work as a unified front, sharing info and ideas, the more successful a company becomes. With that in mind, a lot of successful companies are consolidating their Sales and Marketing under one large umbrella, creating more cohesive value propositions via stronger customer focus.
3. Interview your customers: Make it a priority to schedule face-to-face interviews with loyal customers and ex-customers at least twice a year to gain a one-on-one sense of what they like, don’t like, and what changes they’d like to see.
4. Map out the buying process: Once you’ve gathered and assessed all the feedback from web analytics, social media and one-on-one interviews, determine what adjustments you’ll make to the selling process to reflect buyers’ needs.

Based in part on “4 tactics to create a customer-centric sales and marketing strategy,”  MarketingSherpa.

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The biggest challenge web marketers faced in 2011 was generating relevant email copy, and delivering it at a time that maximizes open/response rates.

This according to MarketingSherpa’s newly-released 2012 Email Benchmarking Report, which also found:

• Nearly a third of companies have identified a strategy that works effectively in terms of increasing open/response rates
• A fifth of marketers are still sending email without paying much attention to timing and/or the impact of copy on response rates
• What’s proved most effective in segmenting email lists is separating leads and email copy by buying history, stage in the lead pipeline, and/or specific preferences customers have mentioned during the online registration process
• Despite the fact 13% of execs are now primarily checking their email via a mobile device (a number that will continue to climb over the next five years), less than half of websites/emails are optimized for customers to view or respond to via handheld resources, and
• For the first time ever, landing pages that emails link to were found to have more impact on whether a prospect made a buying decision than the subject line of the email itself.

Source: MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Email Benchmarking Report.

Customers’ interest in products or services extends only as far as those products or services can help fulfill these goals.

A survey of B2B customers by HR Chally Group pinpointed seven things customers expect to get from salespeople in addition to the product or service they’re buying. They are:

1. Personally accountability. The salespeople who get the largest part of customers’ business take personal responsibility for the customers’ results. They act as business agents who are responsible for every aspect of the relationship between buyer and seller.
2. Business acumen. This requires understanding how the customer’s business works — its competencies and business strategies. It means understanding the customer’s customers. It means seeing the customer’s business as its CEO sees the business.
3. Being an ally. Customers expect salespeople to be their representative within the salesperson’s organization. The best salespeople ensure that the solutions their customers purchased are delivered as promised. They act as the voice of the customer, keeping their company informed of customer needs.
4. Providing applications. Customers want salespeople who think beyond features and benefits to applications. They want to know how to use products and services to achieve their goals. They want to be sure they can properly implement the solutions they buy.
5. Accessibility. Global is local in today’s 24/7 B2B environment. Today’s best salespeople are always available to relieve customer stress.
6. Problem-solving skills. The closing of the sale mustn’t mark the end of the sales engagement and the end of the salesperson’s responsibilities. Now the closing of the sale simply marks the end of the beginning. Customers expect salespeople to not only solve their problems during the transaction itself, but throughout the business relationship. The best salespeople act as troubleshooters, committing to solving problems quickly and effectively.
7. Innovation. Salespeople must be innovative in responding to customer needs. Because change is the only constant in today’s B2B environment, customers expect salespeople to respond to their spoken and unspoken needs. To meet this demand, the best salespeople adopt the role of the innovator, being the first to recognize and react to new business opportunities.

Adapted from the book Accelerate the Sale by Mark Rodgers, a sales consultant.

The IT consultants at Forrester predict that in the next year, global corporations will purchase $10 billion worth of Apple  and leading the buying frenzy will be company CEOs.

Because of the enthusiasm company leaders are showing for the device, the Forrester analysts predict that the trickle-down impact of their popularity will lead many companies to adopt the tablets for a wide range of business purposes.

According to Forrester, the increase in IT spending on Apple products is also a result of the growing trend of employees bringing their own devices into work. Many users already own iPads and are using them for work anyway. Therefore, Forrester says, many IT departments have started buying those products so users can at least be working on company-owned and IT-managed devices.

While Apple doesn’t break out consumer and business sales in its earnings report, the company claims 92% of Fortune 400 companies are deploying or testing iPads. Industries shown to be aggressive iPad adopters include healthcare, financial services, airlines, and even manufacturing.

The bottom line: IT has to support the Apple tablets organizational leaders are using, so it’s a short hop to supporting the devices for others in the company. This also opens the door for more Apple products — from iPhones to desktops.

What do you know — and what have you done — about what you shouldn’t talk about?

There are several taboo topics for your social media account, experts will tell you.

Four areas to avoid:

1. Posting worthless updates. Sure, you feel the need to “feed the beast.” But if there isn’t anything worthwhile to say, don’t force it. It’s difficult to generate excitement about something you don’t believe is worthy.
2. Trashing your competitors. It only makes your business look petty, no matter what’s going on with a rival. Keep an eye your competition’s pages to see how they’re drawing traffic, and make plans to capitalize on those topics.
3. Overdoing it when answering customer concerns. You can still handle questions, but don’t clog your site with intricate answers.
4. Playing Candid Camera. Maybe you did get some great shots of employees and customers during that holiday party. Don’t post them. Don’t even tag customers. What’s the point? There’s too much at risk to do something so silly.

1. Biology: There are nearly 2 million Bio majors out there, and 6.7% of them are in the top 1% of earners in the country. In terms of what portion of the entire 1% of earners Bio majors account for, they lead the pack at 6.6% (See chart below).
2. Economics: A lot of Econ majors go into Finance, which is why it should come as no surprise that more than 8% of them are in the top 1% of gross earners in the country. Overall, Econ majors account for more than 5% of the top earners in the U.S.
3. Biochemical Sciences: This is a highly specialized degree program, a fact which is reflected by the fact there are less than 200,000 BioChem majors in the workforce right now. Yet, those who graduate with a degree in BioChem are on the fast track, as more than 7% of those with an undergrad or advanced degree in this field are in the top 1% of earners.
4. Zooology: Who would’ve thought, right? But, again, this is a specialized field where high-level professionals are in demand, and well-compensated for their skill set. Of the 160,000 Zoology majors out there, nearly 7% of them are in the top 1% of U.S. employees.
5. Health/Medical: Anyone who studies to go into Health or Medicine (e.g., Doctors, Nurses, etc.) is in very exclusive company. According to the New York Times, nearly 12% of medical professionals are in the top 1% of earners, accounting for nearly 1% of the overall 1%  (Say that 5X fast).

(For the full breakdown of 1%ers, see the chart below)

1. Get more from existing buyers. When it’s difficult to grow your business horizontally, look vertically. How can you increase your average volume per sale? What products and services can you cross-sell or up-sell to existing buyers? Can you offer package deals, volume discounts or upgrades that’ll provide an automatic boost?
2. Alleviate buyers’ fears. During a recession one of the biggest obstacles is overcoming buyers’ fear of making a poor buying decision. Uncovering what motivates that fear (e.g., leaving an incumbent supplier, repercussions from upper management, etc.) puts salespeople in a much better position to win the buyer’s business.
3. Qualify, qualify, qualify. When times are tough, managers need to provide reps with the best leads possible. That means identifying which prospects (i.e., SIC, title, region, etc.) are most likely to buy and moving them to the front of your lead pipeline. But it also means having a system in place to ensure salespeople are qualifying prospects early and often. If your average sales cycle has become longer, it’s a sure sign salespeople are wasting time with prospects who are either stalling or have no intention (or power) to buy.

You can get a good fix on a customer’s cost-benefit by looking at two underutilized metrics:

1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): From lead source to the selling process to maintaining relationships, how much is it costing you to win (and keep) every customer.
2. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): How much revenue has the company earned as a result of that customer relationship? Or, how much does it stand to earn?

Of course, when it comes to numbers like these, managers generally need to assess results on a case-by-case basis before deciding whether a customer is actually “worth the trouble.”

Some intangibles to consider:

• Does the customer provide valuable word-of-mouth business, referrals, or a certain degree of prestige in the eyes of other prospects?
• Is there a good possibility the customer will increase in value
  over time, as it grows and increases its volume per sale?
• Has the customer’s CLV decreased consistently year after year? If so, what’s changed? How can you reverse that trend?
• Break down CAC by rep to determine whether specific reps spend far too much time and money focusing on customers who don’t provide a significant return.
• Are there specific salespeople who know how to increase CLV over time? If so, how do they do it, and how can you train other reps to do the same?

Source: ““How Sales Process Can Grow Share of Wallet,” by John Kenney, Sales Benchmark Index, 1/12/12.

Despite warnings from experts and a growing body of research, many businesses still haven’t optimized their website to appeal to mobile users.

About 70% of websites continue to overlook this critical flaw, according to a survey from RedEye.

Even grimmer: 84% of companies still haven’t designed emails that can be clearly read and understood on a mobile device.

Customers are going to spend only so much time trying to decipher your email or guess what’s on the rest of your web page — before they turn to a competitor who’s more equipped to meet their needs.

Mobile use is growing and isn’t going away. More people are using mobile devices to check their email regularly and make purchasing decisions.

Fortunately, there’s a relatively simple solution: Run an in-house quality test on your web page and your email. What do your own people see on their small screens? What needs to be improved? How can you do that?

You can use this information to upgrade your message to potential customers, and then send out something you know will get and keep their attention.

For more information on optimization for mobile users, RedEye has made public a synopsis of its Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011.

These statements come from actual performance reviews researched by Dick Beatty of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business:

• “I would not allow this employee to breed.”
• “The gates are down, the lights are flashing but the train isn’t coming.”
• “He’s so dense, light bends around him.”
• “The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.”
• “Since my last report, the employee reached rock bottom and began to dig.”
• “He would argue with a signpost.”
• “If you stand close enough to him you can hear the ocean.”
• “Takes an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes.”
• “If he were any more stupid he’d have to be watered twice a week.”
• “His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of morbid curiosity.”