What is one piece of advice you would give a new sales manager?

Question posted by Jill Myrick at the Sales Playbook Group on LinkedIn

Blue Collar Sales Response:

Having been on both sides of that coin it will be difficult to pick just one piece of advice, especially since so many good points have been made.  Here goes:

Don’t ask your sales people how you can help them – you should already know.

Don’t ask them to call when they need you – you should already know.

Focus on maximizing technology (CRM, MA, etc.) to eliminate ALL manual reporting (outside the CRM) and time wasting meetings.  If sales people are filling out spreadsheets, sending word docs, written call reports, or emailing updates you are not leveraging technology, your CRM is not optimized and both you and your team are wasting valuable time.

Go fight for maximizing these tools instead of hounding your team for updates.

This week alone I heard several senior level sales leaders mention, “clean up” in the field.  Not one of them, all of them!  It was almost as if they met prior and shared notes – and they were all from different companies.  It was clear they meant administrative clean up.  It was clear that the topic was a dead horse when the comments were delivered and it was certainly clear that it was the damper on an otherwise good meeting.

If you can fight to put the systems in place and maximize their automation so that sales people can quickly update leads, accounts, and calls and you can include the fields that allow you to analyze the situation you will simplify both the salespersons life as well as your own.

Then you can focus on creating a collaborative environment where you can learn to win as a team.

You do not have to settle for doing things the way they always have been.  Fix the mechanics of the system, establish the proper analytics within those systems,  use them yourself,  and you will know when and how you can help your team.

Good Luck and Great Selling

Blue Collar Sales

What Google Analytics Won’t Tell You

What Google Analytics Won’t Show You:

The Reasons Why Customers Don’t Buy

I got a note from a client who said that she wanted to buy our product, but that certain things on the website made her unsure. So to put this in perspective, she was looking at our website at 5000bc (which is a membership site). And she said:

1) I found a spelling error on your front page.
2) The screen shot of the forum is from 2007. That doesn’t tell me how active the forum is right now.

Now normally you’d look at your stats in Google Analytics and see a bounce rate. Customer enters. Customer leaves. And you’d think, ooh, my keywords are not working or my CPV (cost per visitor) or RPV (revenue per visitor) sucks. And all that yada, yada will circulate in your brain for no reason.

But you can’t see the reason why the customer is shying away from the purchase, can you?

She didn’t have a problem with the product.
She had the money to buy the product.
She was on the tipping point and something stopped her.

It was the tiny little glitches that Google Analytics can never catch.

And these little glitches are called ‘objections.’ Yes you’ll roll your eyes, because it’s more than likely that you know all about ‘objections’.

But there’s a massive difference between knowing and doing (For example, someone who’s fussy about grammar may notice that in the previous lines I put the period before the quotation mark. And then shortly after I put it after the quotation mark).

These are objections. And objections are distractions.

And distractions do their job: They distract.

There are things on your site that your clients see that distract them from buying. And there are things on your site that clients ‘don’t see’ that distract them from buying.

And while you can depend on any analytics software for several issues, all the software is doing is giving you is data. It’s not telling you what’s going on in the head of the client. It’s not telling you why the client won’t buy.

Ugh comes to mind, doesn’t it?

Ugh: As in, yes you and I are probably measuring correctly what’s happening from an analytics point of view, but ignoring the issues. And the issues are the distractions and objections.

So what’s a business to do?

View the full article at: (Reprinted with permission.)

http://www.psychotactics.com/artgoogle-analytics

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Article written by Sean D’Souza.
Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas. Find simple, yet electrifying ideas,on website strategy, marketing strategies, copywriting, public speaking, article marketing, sales conversion, psychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com today and judge for yourself.

Like the world needs another blog about selling!

So this is a first post; not like there aren’t a few sites, blogs, groups, communities, associations, etc. available that talk about selling! Or another several hundred that wax eloquently about marketing!

You may find this accidentally, you may know me or my company, Blue Collar Sales and if so you might get my droll sense of humor. If this is your first exposure I mean no offense; just imagine a Jersey (Soprano’s) accent from a guy who drink’s way too much coffee/red bull, talks to fast, works way too hard for too many hours, and faces pressure like a piece of coal hoping to become a diamond.  I expect that you’ll understand the strong sarcasm – what we in Jersey usually find funny and translates into a sign of real friendship – if we are successful in creating this community or eventually connecting in this Web 2.0 world.

Welcome to my blog. I started selling life insurance commission only some 20 years ago.  I was green, scared, broke, and proud.  Since then I have moved through many companies in B2B sales, sold millions of dollars in product and services and lost many more millions of dollars in product and services opportunities.  I have had the as mentioned short lived pleasure of achieving targets and receiving large commission checks and the unforeseen termination for not achieving enough.  In this blog I will share many of those experiences as I hope you share yours and through that collaboration we will discover new ideas and perhaps even a chance too LOL.

It is here I hope to espouse my learning’s and insight into selling, accumulated during 20 year’s of chasing quota. I say chasing because I have said ‘exceeding quota’ in enough interviews to frighten an MBA grad.  If you are a seller, one that seriously measures yourself or is compensated on achievement of quota, you know that the moments of satisfaction are far too short.  Everyone you work with will let you know, “Great job, what are you projecting for next quarter?”  No one really cares, not your manager, not your executives, not your spouse and perhaps not even you care about what you did lately.  They and you are for more caring about what you are gonna do next!

Blue Collar Sales as a name; Do you get it?  You would not believe the questions I get asked.  “What do you sell, Laundry?”  another person asked if I sold tools, another asked if it was cleaning services.  I told them in not too many words, “What different does it make, the name is not to describe what I sell but how I sell it.”  Needless to say they did not become customers.  I am curious, what does the name Blue Collar Sales bring to mind for you?

And so there is our introduction:  It is not about what we sell but how we sell it.  Do you work your white collar job like a blue collar laborer?  Is it as important for you to understand your pipeline and activity numbers and meet those blocking and tackling goals as it is for a guy building a foundation to mix concrete correctly and sweat it out to be on time for other contractors to achieve their goals?  Do you spend more time with your SFA tools, pipeline reports, prospect lists,  than you do your significant partner?  Do you lose sleep thinking about  discovering untapped markets, forgotten prospects, and uncommunicative customers?

If so, this is the blog for you to share and grab ideas and hopefully work a little smarter. If not then this is the blog for you to learn something, improve your work hard ethic and achieve goals. I’m not asking for your money here, your not gonna get steak knives or a Cadillac. There is no commission check, pat on the back, or pink slip.  I plan to introduce topics and create discussions that help salespeople take back control of their territories, leverage internal resources like they were your employees, discover tools that leverage technology and allow you to get back to delivering the value you thought you would when you claimed the title of salesperson.

So, here we are on the eve of a new calendar year, in the midst of the worst economic climate since my father’s father facing the inquisition of management as to how you are going to hit your number?  If you are fortunate enough to work in a company with a marketing department then it is likely you are calculating this achievement on some promised number of leads delivered, events planned, etc.  You are analyzing the deals that slid and looking to find ways to get prospects to turn loose the funds to purchase your product.  if you are like me you are concerned about what is going on in the world but realize there is little to do except tighten the belt, cut your own costs, and find those prospects that can and will become customers.

Mentioning the economy, I am thankful that I am currently one of the employed.  During the last 5 weeks I have been averaging 16-18 hours a day revisiting the basics I have learned and forgotten, began investigating new means of optimizing selling, and promoting collaborative work practices for both my employer and  my side job, owner of Blue Collar Sales.

What are you up to?  How are you getting ready for the new year, the new quota, the new manager, the new job, whatever?  If you are in sales or marketing and facing some of the pressure I mention let’s COLLABORATE!

Best Regards for a Safe, Humble, and Joyous Holiday!

bluecollarsales