This is is something I have helped people with over the last couple of years.
It comes back to basic selling.

Google and Facebook go to extraordinary lengths to replicate your thought process as a consumer: What are you searching for, what do you want to find, how do you rate what you find?

So if you go back to the basics of selling, letting people know that you have a solution to a problem they have (whether they know it or not!), then add in the Peter Comerford adage:

“Meet the people, Meet the people, Meet the People”

Where are they now for you to meet, if you cannot meet them physically…YET?

In Ireland we have Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and anything related to Google. If we were in Malaysia, the situation may be different, so where is your customer?

If we accept people are using Google to look for something, anything, then we have to be present there for them to find us easier: Google+, YouTube, Images, Places, Maps. Blogs are a great place to build credibility for Google rankings and for the public who read your posts.

If we want to involve celebrity or top business people, then Twitter is where we want to be active, it is an incredible way of getting right to the top, but be careful what you are saying, what would interest them in talking to you?

LinkedIn: if you are looking for a career in the corporate world, do everything they say and populate your profile 100% and be active in groups to be seen as expert in your field. You will be found by companies and recruiters. Our group has been terribly quiet though!!!

Facebook. I will show my hand here. You are not supposed to run a business on a page with friends, a profile page in other words, you are supposed to have a business page or the like. And if you have a vicious competitor, they can get you shut down with no court of appeal for the small business! So what I did was convert that page to “Shoana @ The Solicitor” or the like. Because you get access to all the birthdays and personal information of your friends, a lot more information that you get with statistics on your business page, but on that page you put the offers etc and build up credibility. From my experience, people do not like being sold anything on Facebook but they do want competitions, offers access to the company and information.

Not getting activity on a platform is probably normal as we mature in our usage and get older!!! Whatever happened to Bebo, MySpace and others? The Internet moves on.

I love Facebook and I use LinkedIn. YouTube is very handy, I have one customer, selling trucks worldwide. Without advertising the channel, he has 28,000 views in the last year!

In summary, where are you now, where are you trying to get to, what is stopping you?
Where are your customers,
what problem are they having that you could be serving?
What is your typical customer?
What impact have you had on similar customers?

They do not care about you and your business, but they are concerned about where they are trying to get, where they are now, what is stopping them and how can they get past the blocks!

Sorry for going on, but this is what I do, I go on and on and I help people get more sales or get them started in their own business with a utilities webshop!

I do coffee for free and offer a “500 club” of services for €500 a go!

Good luck,

Robert

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Forget Your Job Title – You’re In Sales

by Mind Fit on April 23, 2013 in General, Latest

Irish people don’t generally like the ‘hard sell’ approach when doing business. We get a bit sniffy, and say things like, “Oh, that’s very American, but doesn’t go down well here – we prefer a more personal approach”. Fair enough, but, there comes a point at which I wonder why so many people in this country look down their noses at sales professionals. (Think stereotype ‘second hand car dealer’.) Sales people – be grateful to bankers and property developers for dropping below you on the ladder of disdain.

The irony is – we’re all in sales. It doesn’t have to be in your job title. Whether you’re a business owner looking for finance, a scientist presenting your latest research paper, a staff member trying to get your point of view accepted, or a job applicant looking for work – you’re selling. Every time you interact with another person in order to influence them, you’re making a sale. Whether it’s a product or service, an idea, or an opinion – you are convincing other people to accept your solutions.

So, if you’re not responsible for sales in your business, why should you care? Fundamentally, if you don’t recognise that you sell, you will be less open to opportunities to develop your business.

Don’t be inward-looking

How so? If you concentrate exclusively on activities related to the function in your job title, then you are likely to be inward-looking. For example, if you are the Purchasing Manager, keeping costs down is a priority, and you might be extremely good at it. But, have you ever considered that your suppliers could also be a great source of new business referrals? After all, it’s in their interest for your business to thrive. As an R&D Director, you may develop a product with advanced applications, but if you only explain the technical features without the context of the benefits it delivers, you may not get beyond the company laboratory, let alone have the opportunity to bring it to market. Finally, if you’re the business owner, how many times a week are you asked ”What do you do?” Do you simply give your company name and function “I’m MD of X10d – we make cables”?

If you took the attitude that every conversation was an opportunity to present your business, how would that change your approach? I don’t mean to shove it down the throat of everyone you meet. Instead, think of a way to succinctly explain the service you provide so that it might be of interest, “We’re X10d, and we provide lifting solutions for large construction projects”. This response invites a conversation, which in turn, may lead to a good contact, potential new suppliers or staff, or dare I say it, a sales opportunity.

No product sells itself

Take another perspective. I often ask people who their competitors are. Some tell me that their product is so unique – they have no competitors. Wrong. No product sells itself. If you don’t know who your competitors are, ask yourself two questions.

• What budget will the client use to purchase my product?
• What options does my client have to do nothing and maintain the status quo?

Not recognising that you have to sell in these situations reduces your chances of securing a new client. The competition is not always someone else with a substitute product. You have to find ways to overcome general purchasing policies and inertia.

So, next time you find yourself exasperated at the candidates on Dragon’s Den, think about how you present your business. Then ask yourself: “What do I do to sell my product?”

Forget job titles – we’re all in sales.

Daniel sent this to me this morning and it is something I really agree with.  It came to me when I realised, that, despite having a Degree in Engineering and having the BSc on the card, I was actually a salesman! And then I realised, we all are:

When people say to me “I can’t sell”  I reply “But you are married!  You are selling everyday!”

We have a solution to help you get more sales! Talk to us.

When I finally came across this concept, I finally felt I had found the style of selling that suited  me.

Now, there is a place for the hard sell, and it is useful for clearing out the undecided or the people you do’t want to work with or sell to!!!  But it is not something I am comfortable with.

This guy argues that the client wants to be sure you can “manage” the role they need to buy.   I think that is too confusing.

I am a qualified engineer.  I used to hide the fact I was selling with various titles until a client, on my entry into a monthly service review meeting and he said “oh, this is going to cost us money”.  And I realised that was my role, to sell them what they needed to buy!

It can be summarised as:

Where are you?

Where are you going?

What is stopping you?

Take their vision, and then engineer the solution the client needs.  It is consulting, no matter how it looks, but yes, it is managing too!

http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/why-consultative-selling-doesnt-work.html

What Daniel and myself bring, is a focus on getting sales, social media is just another aid to getting the sale.  

We are all trying to have people “KNOW, LIKE and TRUST” us, and social media really helps build this credibility. We need to “Meet The People”, social media aids this process.

Here is an article I have edited to help focus on the pints not the writing.   I have added some of the comments on the post and mine too!! The full article is at this link.

Hiring a social media manager who sells: three ‘red flag’ phrases to watch out for:

One thing is certain: It’s easy to hire a social media manager who fails to create leads and sales.

The trouble is most social media managers don’t have

1. the habits,
2. point-of-view (POV) and
3. skills needed.
4. They don’t know the social selling success principles.

“Marketing and advertising are long-term, not instant”-Hmmm.

This is a clear hedge against creating leads and sales. 

• Social media marketing isn’t a shortcut to instant sales. 
• Online conversations are still but a tiny planet in the universe of all word-of-mouth. 
• We haven’t had time to understand the £ value of long term social media effect yet.
• The drumbeat on “not hard selling” on social media, is loud and clear and NOT NEW.
• Effective sales people have always known what social media “experts” seem so excited to have just now figured out, 
  • marketers can’t pull the trigger on making a call-to-action because they’re not THINKING like an EXPERIENCED sales person. 
  • A good social manager knows when to create an opening for the companies call to action.

There seems to be an opportunity to sell vouchers through Facebook for example, which would be an instant way of judging how many of your Facebook fans walk through the door of your business.  Consider the bucket of beer on ice, you might soon see how many of the fans actually drink in your Bar. (Robert)

“Social media marketing is mostly (only) about building brand equity”

Again, a hedge. This belief presumes getting and maintaining brand equity is not about selling. If your business (and its brand) is not fundamentally all about selling then what it is about… charity?

• I know, I know. Social media is not a place to be selling our wares. 
  • It’s a special place reserved for being kind, gentle, human, helpful, transparent, authentic.   
  • But what’s so wrong or objectionable about being all of those things using a system that helps customers navigate themselves toward–or away from–what we sell?
• I suspect this Point Of View comes from customers “don’t want to be sold to”. But here’s the problem with this perspective on the world.
  • It confuses what customers are often times wanting (from us) with their not wanting to be “pitched” on our products.
  • After you’ve engaged and given away some great advice (or a free sample of what you’re selling) you will have created hunger inside your prospect. Not hunger for what you sell but hunger for more knowledge, more answers, more free “tastes of success.”

If you’ve done your job right as a content marketer, now IS when a call-to-action is needed. 

• Certainly not a sales pitch. 
• Instead, we need to show them a way to get more answers, more knowledge. 
• We need to show them a clear path to take action–satisfy that urge our engagement just created in a way that gets them what they want (for free) and gives us a lead to work with.

We don’t want to offend customers by pitching them too fast, too early. But we can’t let that confuse us to avoid satisfying our customers hunger for what we can give them, for free!

Having lots of content across platforms, but minimal engagement, a dash for followers and fans, rather than a real desire to engage and build the brand, is not the way.

There needs to be a balance between connecting/engaging and pushing people through the sales cycle.

“People are not on social media to be sold”

This one is tricky. It sounds totally rational but it’s simply not true.

Yet for the sake of argument, let’s say it IS true. People don’t go to social media to be sold. But do they ever turn to social media to solve problems? Or perhaps discover short-cuts to doing something really important to them?

Do people ever turn to blogs or Facebook to discover new ways to achieve goals?

Sure they do. As people do these things do they sometimes run into businesses that can help them. Are any of these folks meeting up with businesses…and then getting courted by those businesses (via social media)?

Of course there are. Some customers even convert to customers–they purchase! So many of us selling on social media every day. Social media sales success stories abound!

Consider the millions of people each day that:

1. query Google about a problem they need solved or a goal they want to reach;
2. end up at a blog;
3. sign up for an Ebook or educational video series;
4. end up buying from the blog owner a few months later.

Saying that people are not on social media to be sold is to miss the point entirely: People use social media in ways (e.g. problem-solving) that sometimes direct them toward things to buy.

But, but, but…

“Social media is about humanizing your business, building relationships, and creating a conversation around your brand with loyal brand advocates.”

and…

“Social media serves as a platform where current relationships with customers can be nurtured and new relationships can be formed.”

Yet what’s the point of building relationships, creating conversation, nurturing relationships if ultimately it cannot sustain the business we run? Again, charity?

How do you make someone loyal to your brand without, first, selling them something?

“I don’t want to be an expense item…”

Todd Giannattasio of Tresnic Media:”I tell clients all the time, ‘I don’t want to be just another expense item on your budget.’”

That’s the kind of social media manager I want working for me. What do you think?

Jeff Molander is a professional speaker, publisher and accomplished entrepreneur having co-founded what is today the Google Affiliate Network. He can be reached at jeff@jeffmolander.com.

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Robert Moloney and Daniel Duffy, are experienced sales people!  Contact us now to discuss these three questions,

1. where you are now?
2. where you want to get to?
3. what is stopping you?

1. You can handle pressure and evaluate risk without being blindly optimistic.

2. You’ve done the market research already – idle boasts are not your style.

3. You’ve got the support of your family and friends.

4. You know you cannot do it alone.

5. You are not comfortable in regular employment – you become restless. You don’t want to hold a job.

6. You spend time talking to/meeting with people about your new business or idea while you’re working for someone else.

7. You are extremely passionate about your idea or your business.

8. You see more than one definition of “job security”.

9. Opportunity is everywhere around you –you see opportunities in everyday life.

10. You would happily launch a business that has no connection to your career to date.

11. You would happily invest your home’s equity, your life savings and borrow on a credit card for your start-up.

12. You don’t see lack of money, lack of knowledge and lack of experience as barriers to entry.

13. Your nights, weekends and free time are consumed with your business or business idea.

14. You love to create new things and enjoy the new product development process and business strategy equally.

15. You are confident and have a healthy ego - You know that you could do better than your boss.

16. You are a control freak and love running the show.

17. You just got made redundant or fired.

http://www.marketingfundamentals.com/2011/05/08/do-you-think-that-you-are-an-entrepreneur-17-signs-you-may-be/ 

Then I looked again, I agree. The lessons I have learnt are amazing.

1. Know when you are beat:When I heard that story about revenue closing a courier company, I thought, they might be doing the owners a favour. Once you have a cash flow, it hides the fact that you are not making margin. You have e few bob to pay the most pressing bill.
2. Show me the money: The Banks are not lending to small businesses. And this happened to me. I had an exceptional sales guy. He had a great order book, and you have heard that story before, we could not fund the sales. We had gone from a gross margin of 30% to 50%, but did not matter if we could not buy the stock. What I didn’t know was, that they hadn’t got the money either!
3. Focus, Cameras, ACTION: I meet so many owner managers, I love them, I love their passion, I like their businesses, I love the fact that they can make decisions on the spot, I love the fact that most win most of the business where they get in front of the “MAN” (Money, Authority, Need). But it drives me mad when I see EnterpriseBoards offering web design training courses. Are they opening a web design business? No, so why give them another distraction? FOCUS!!! What do you do well and why aren’t you doing it?
4. Time Gentlemen please. Another lesson on this line was from the last days of my last day job as a Sales Manager. I hated reporting and sales meetings with “superiors”. They were always antagonistic, emotional, judgemental. Then Deirdre Kelly came back for Maternity leave. A beautiful woman, she had run CARA Training, she had managed sales teams, she was so relaxed and comfortable, in any environment. And she used to just take a list of prospects. Next week, she would sit down for 5 minutes, what was the progress, up or down and out. We would end up with a simple list and liklihood of the money and when. Brilliant, factual, unemotional. Employees do not realise the importance o being able to predict the flow of business, how do they expect the company to have money in the bank to pay them anyway?
5. Sales Strategy: My second sales job was with a wonderful bunch of people, the Matrix Group. The Sales Director was Peter Comerford, still plying his trade. Once a quarter, we had a company wide meting and at some stage we all gave an overhead projector presentation. He had three sentences on a slide, uncovering them one by one:

1. Meet the people: he said, and outlined why. Then uncovered the next one:
2. Meet the people, he said and gave us another reason, in time for his last step of the sales ladder:
3. MEET THE PEOPLE!!!! And gave another reason WHY!

I am currently repackaging myself with the aid of VncentByrne.ie from what I have been doing:

Helping people get found on the Internet

and bringing the lessons above and many many more (I really want to tell you about

• not getting defensive and taking business issues personally, or
• how to sleep, with a conscience,

• but more of that in time!!

The repackaging is underway and I am already discussing with some of my friends about me having

A solution to getting you more sales, making you more profit

And I am excited again!

….if you “GET” me, then we will work together, and if you don’t “GET” me, we will not work together, but I will give you the contact you need to get the job done!  ….   More….

I have had the pleasure of working with three coaches over the last 10 years or so.

First was Michael Comyn, when he was doing a radio show with LiteFM.  He had a guy on from the IMI. So I contacted him to get hold of the guy and he said that was actually his line of work, but he could hardly interview himself! 

Michael helped me realise I was in a darkened room, just had to find the light switch and the door. Well, my interpretation.  One of the things that cropped up was a piece of software he had, brainworks, I think it was, it demonstrated whether you were left or right brain dominant.  Artistic or Mathematical I suppose and to my great relief, I was bang in the middle!  Which explains why sometimes I analyse to death and others I just go, F**k it and act.

What followed, was a plan for me to get out of the corporate world, set up on my own and have a business with a handful of clients.  All was going well, until EGO got in the way and I bought an IT business!  He then made me put a deadline on it, April Fools Day 2003 sounded like a nice round number, bit of a joke.  Low and behold, mid March, all hell breaks loose in the job and by the June Bank Holiday weekend, I was out on my own!

The next coach that came into my life, once again, came in just when I needed it. Coincidence? Of course, if that is what you believe in, others will have their views on it.  I had lost the IT business, fought that fight, begged, stole and borrowed, lived with the support of the State, then my Mother died.  I have always said, I have been blessed with the love of two good women, my wife and my Mother.  I was devastated and it prompted a period of reflection, what did I want, WHY, what was important, where was the passion.

Some members of Kilmacud Crokes GAA club pulled together a new business networking group. I think it was the first or second meeting and I was sitting beside Liz Barron of Realize coaching.  We had a coffee, we met in a formal session, set some tasks, set some deadlines and I was back.  She says it was an expensive cup of coffee, but it gave me back my focus, determination that I was going in the right direction, even if off track.

Last week, the same networking group invited Vincent Byrne in to talk about , well, coaching we thought, but it was so much more than that, networking, selling and again, reinforcing my beliefs, beliefs that were suppressed all those years ago when I was a teenager, when my Father died the week of my 14^th birthday, when one brother was a famous Punk Rocker, the other a radio personality, duty called and duty rather than passion prevailed.

Seemed strange, but Vincent offered a “free” two hour coaching session.  Now I believe that there is no such thing as a free lunch! I firmly believe that you should give to get, that there must be a flow, whether it is cash, barter or some trade. But just like Michael Comyn, 10 years a go, when he said “you sound like someone interesting”, Vincent seemed to have no other agenda, other than helping with a thesis.  I can be very interesting for free so off I went again.

As expected, uncomfortable questions were asked.  You get used, when working alone, not to be questioned as you would in a day job, you can walk away! But I am open, and I could see something in it.

Now, at the beginning of September, I had agreed a partnership with two great guys to work in Digital Marketing, a total inbound marketing solution.  But I was finding it uncomfortable and was secretly happy when it fella apart before it began! 

I reframed myself around this offer but the difference being me, my experience, my knowledge and emphasising that this was only one component of a “Selling Solution”!

I feel passionately about helping people and rarely reject a plea for help form a genuine person.  Not going into the case of the Pole here though!  

My preference therefore was to continue with what I had been doing over the last couple of years, helping people I whatever way possible to generate sales, whether this was using social media and SEO strategy, or getting them on the internet, getting them found on the internet or just any aspect of the business that needed to be documented and put into a plan and a strategy.  Being a help! And getting paid for helping people achieve.

If you know me, you would think confidence is not a problem, but I have been doing so much for so long that I am sometimes not sure what I am good at, what people would pay for and what they would pay me!  

Some had said I was undervaluing myself with the Internet Marketing offer I was promoting, and here was Vincent, asking the difficult questions, but then helping me see what others see, what a friend meant when he said “I get so much more from you sitting across the table from me that I get from a social media offering”.

Then he helped me package the offer and all of this in terms I believe in and not corporate bull shit and I think that is what I am going to continue with.  I am not going to focus on the toolbag, I am not going to have a rigid structure, I am not going to do what everyone else does, I am going to be me, if you “GET” me, then we will work together, and Vincent has helped me frame that agreement so it meets both parties’ expectations and budgets!  And if you don’t “GET” me, we will not work together, but I will give you the contact you need to get the job done!  

There is a lot about me above, but then again, it would be!  But the engagement is all about the client and what they are looking for, more sales!  Then again, it is me that you are engaging to help you make it happen for you and your business. 

Now, I am off to generate the offer, the engagement, the tools and then I wil be looking for someone to work with, on a contract basis, because:

“I have a Solution that helps you get more Sales!”

Selling Solutions!  

sellingsolutions.ie

• “Most people know” (the answers)
• Space to realise, to think, to create rather than being reactive to emails, customer calls
• Listen, draw out, mentor
• Hold them to their commitments
• networking events: did not work for him, but referrals, building relationships do.
  • Look for what it is you want to create, for what would be a great outcome for me
  • not necessarily a sale, maybe an improved relationship
  • what will you do after the meeting to create it
  • Who can I connect with to know more about their business, who they help
  • ultimately we do business one to one
  • you would not come back if you did not like the people
  • look to help
  • show curiosity, interest and a desire to help
  • focus on relationship building outside of the event,
  • not on the giving and getting, (look for nothing for yourself?)
  • Steve Chandler, person to person relationships
• I’m not good at sales
  • Just be there, interested, curious,
  • how could you put people together
    • know, like, trust
    • pick one person between each meeting and meet them once or twice.
  • not about selling, but finding ways to help.
  • At the side of the pitch, it is about relationships
    • so why, when we put on a suit does it have to be different?
      • keep it real!
• Where did the customers come from?
  • existing customers, friends, referrals,
    • the kind of customer you work well with
    • understand the boundaries, payment, deliverables, long-standing, sustainable relationships
  • Describe your ideal customer
    • the best you have now
    • look for more of those
  • versus trying to draw in new customers
• Talk to people about the “techy” stuff you do
  • e.g. graphic design
  • bring it into conversation, have it around, incorporate it
  • the passion, focus on it
    • general v. specific v. what you think you should do.
    • focus on what you are passionate about!
• Parallels with Sport coaching
  • see the person before they arrive/achieve their potential
  • allow them to get there easily, show them
  • allow them to sense that they can actually do it!
  • Kipp system(?) USA v. Limiting school system
    • raising the bar (of expectation)
    • the right to go to college
  • learning by chunks, small lumps
  • showing what is possible

Vincent Byrne is at  http://businessshouldbeeasy.com/

What I was adding yesterday was the idea that the whole web thing, search engine stuff, social media, is just the window dressing we have always done.

All that Google and Facebook searches are trying to do is help their users find what they are looking for so that they will use them again.

When you are using Google, what are you trying to do?

So if you want people to find you, you have to put the information out there in a way that bot the user and Google, get what they are looking for, your information!

Peter Comerford of Matrix Group told me in 1990 to “Meet the people” and hen I had done that to “meet the People” and the final leg of the sales strategy was…. “Meet the People!”

So go forth and….

Robert Moloney Selling Solutions

www.sellingsolutions.ie