Is the internet really to blame for loosing a 60 year old competitive advantage?

Last week I had the pleasure of doing a Sales Cats keynote at the Albury Northside Chamber of Commerce. A wonderful group of business owners joined me and we spent a morning tossing around ideas of how to sell in tough times. There was however a sad start to the day.

The night before on local Prime News, I noticed the story of Matthews Cycles in Albury closing after sixty years of trading due to the 'internet'. I was sad because this was not due to the internet.

This business had tradition, clients, reputation for incredible service and most importantly it had a sixty year old brand. Unfortunately this 'brand' was painted on the outside of the business sixty years ago but had not been repainted/repurposed for the modern consumer. As this bulletin was read I jumped online and typed Matthews Cycles into my search engine. And guess what?! Nothing! No website. Plenty of secondary links that lead me to browse and buy elsewhere.

While there is no doubt that service, and exceptional service at that, is critical to sales success today, the melding of web, social and online technology to your brand is critical. This wonderful icon of cycling in Albury should never have been lost. It should have been leveraged with innovation, tribe thinking, sixty years of selling data and branding that uses the internet as a new source of business not as a barrier.

Look at this current study to understand the importance of blending a modern brand and the internet to build success. 

Should Matthews Cycles have had a Facebook page?

This demonstrates that businesses can of course blame the internet for their downfall but at some stage they will have to take responsibility for shifting to new and innovative ways of selling to customers.

The buggy whip maker made that shift when he discovered that driving gloves may be required for that dirty, smoking, noisy machine called the automobile as it rolled into to town.

Boiler

Get some real action into your sales pipeline.

As you know, sales leads can grow cold quickly. Every lead and opportunity is like a ticking bomb. If your recon says that somebody is shifting, looking to buy, you have to move within a few hours, not days. If you get a web lead that looks promising, you want to call that lead within minutes, not hours. Research shows that the odds of calling to qualify an online lead decreases by more than 6 times in the first hour.

As you convert sales-ready leads in your sales pipeline into opportunities, ask yourself:

Is there a great fit for your product or solution?

Is your prospect actively looking for a solution?

What is the prospect's timetable for finding the best solution?

What are the competing solutions?

What does the company have to lose if it did nothing about the problem?

What is the company's process for making a decision?

What are the company's preferred steps involved in a purchase?

Is there a budget?

What is the full potential of this opportunity?

Do I have access to all the decision makers, and how many of them can I convince?

How long will it take until the sale is converted?

What are the potential obstacles that stand in the way of the sale?

What are the realistic chances of closing this sale? (25 percent, 50 percent, 75 percent)

These questions will help you prioritize the opportunities in your sales funnel, and they will help you develop a realistic sales forecast every month.

Action 1: create a list of your most important and most urgent opportunities, and refresh this list daily by checking it against the questions.

Action 2: check again and if the prospect does not fit find more prospects to open.

Good luck.

Boiler

What sales problem did you solve today?

I found this in Selling Power and thought, "Yes that really makes sense."

An extract from the wonderful work of Dr Norman Vincent Peale - author of The Power of Positive Thinking.

Problems Are Opportunities in Disguise

Dr. Peale suggested that salespeople can be more successful in dealing with problems: "A problem is a concentrated opportunity. The only people that I ever have known to have no problems are in the cemetery. The more problems you have, the more alive you are. Every problem contains the seeds of its own solution. I often say, when the Lord wants to give you the greatest value in this world, He doesn't wrap it into a sophisticated package and hand it to you on a silver platter. He is too subtle, too adroit, for that. He takes this big value and buries it at the heart of a big, tough problem. How He must watch you with delight when you've got what it takes to break that problem apart and find at its heart what the Bible calls 'the pearl of great price.' Everybody I've ever known who succeeded in a big way in life has done so by breaking problems apart and finding the value that was there."

So what sales problem did you solve today?

Do your sales techniques and questioning style have a problem solving inclination?

Think about the great sales calls you have had. Was there a problem solving inclination? Success does leave clues.

Be positive and solve one problem for one customer tomorrow. They may just love it, and you.

Boiler