Revenue-IQ for BSCs

Losing a Sale is So Easy To Do

Chris Arlen — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 23:34:00 GMT

Paul Simon sang there are 50 ways to leave your lover but I was only able to come up with 31 ways to lose a sale.

Seems crazy to list ways to lose a sale.

But it's reverse logic.

If you avoid most, if not all of the 31 ways to lose - then you're getting closer to making a sale.

This list also provides a good check sheet for doing the things you need to do.

Here it is: 31 Ways to Lose a Sale

Read it or suffer the consequences.

Prospecting: The hard but necessary sales work BSCs must do

Chris Arlen — Fri, 04 May 2012 20:36:00 GMT

Prospecting for sales is about as much fun as slamming your fingers in a drawer, over and over again.

But of course every BSC needs new business because some of your current customers will leave for reasons outside your control.

Remember when a new owner showed up and immediately changed out every incumbent supplier? Or that new building manager came onboard and brought with them their favorite team of suppliers and you weren't given the chance to become one of them. Or maybe your current contact finally fell for some outlandish sales promise from your competitor. It doesn't matter. Customer attrition rates range from 5% to 20% annually, more if you happen to lose a big one. And it is going to happen.

What do you do?

Well, it ain't glamorous and it ain't pretty but at some time your going to have to get dirty and prospect. And while the latest technologies promise you only have to pay them and new customers will throw themselves at you - it just ain't so. Sorry to burst that bubble.

Prospecting has been around for centuries. However, that doesn't mean it has to be the dumb hard work it once was. You can always use your brain, that often overlooked sales muscle. So why not give it a try. Put your brain to work and Prospect Intelligently, here's how you can do that.

There's Only One Right Time to Ask for the Sale

Chris Arlen — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 20:32:00 GMT

Contrary to Alec Baldwin's character in Glengarry Glen Ross, there is only one right time to ask for the sale.

Yet many sales reps believe that ABC (Always Be Closing) is the right way to sell.

To avoid falling into the ABC trap you've got to know when it is the right time to ask.

That's explained here in Revenue-IQ's "The Most Damaging Sales Tip to Avoid".

Referrals: Everyone Wants Them - Not Much Talk About How to Get Them

Chris Arlen — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:06:00 GMT

The goose and the golden eggs are nothing compared to a sales rep with a steady stream of warm referrals. Yet referrals are tougher to get than one might guess. Here's an in-depth look at referrals and how to get more of them, and get more from them.

By breaking a referral apart into its components, it's easier to see how to make the most of them. Here is the article at Revenue-IQ, all 1,385 words of "Deconstructing Sales Referrals to Get More Juice".

Is Your Prospect Database Obsolete?

Chris Arlen — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:54:49 GMT

You have to know who to sell before you contact them - that's prospect data.

And the problem with that data is that it's typically stored on one's computer. The moment you receive that prospect data it's ticking away, slowly or quickly, becoming obsolete. Your prospects move from job to job, companies merge, or are acquired. Who do you sell to then?

All prospect data has a shelf-life, it's just not printed on it. So you have to guess, and suffer.

In the latest article from Revenue-IQ "Is Your Prospect Data Sour?" there are 4 workarounds to help keep contact data sweet smelling and useful.

Creative Commons image by Alison Wardman

The Beauty Contest: Winning Competitive Bids

Chris Arlen — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:47:00 GMT

Service contracts come in all sizes, as measured by BSCs' monthly billing and customers' annual spend.

Customers with smaller contracts have more flexibility about who they hire and when. If you can walk in and persuade them to hire you, you are likely to start up in 30 days or less.

However, the larger contracts (this varies wildly but think of contracts worth more than $100,000 per year) require customers to go through a full blown Request for Proposal (RFP) bid process.

In these situations the game is winning bid competitions.Also known as a beauty contest.

This Revenue-IQ article has a number of insights, tips and tricks that will help you win more large bid competitions.

"Winning Bids: What Your Competitors Don't Want You to Know"

Good luck in your swimsuits.

Cold Calling --> One Way of Getting Sales Appointments

Chris Arlen — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:48:00 GMT

Every BSC needs to get sales appointments. While you can't sell a contract over the phone, you can use it to get that first face to face meeting. Once in front of customers, then you sell.

Cold calling over the phone is still used, despite its bad press. So here is my take on it --> "Cold Calling - Last Question First".

P.S. a client of mine with 15+ sales reps experimented using the approach described in this post. They landed more first appointments than their previous methods, many times over. Nice to have proof.

Customers Have Changed

Chris Arlen — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 00:45:00 GMT

Back in the day, customers who bought janitorial services knew their stuff.

They had the time to talk with potential new suppliers.

Not so today, customers are different. So too is how they buy janitorial services.

Read about the "New School of Customers" and how to approach them.

Ignore this new reality and suffer the consequences - or face it and adapt.

Selling in Tough Times

Chris Arlen — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:10:00 GMT

In one of my very few conversations with Sydney Rosenberg, the late son of the founder of ABM, he once told me the beauty of the cleaning industry was that during hard times it got squeezed but never went away.

Offices needed cleaning, manufacturing floors cleared for work, schools healthy for students, hospitals sanitized for services, etc.

If Sydney were here today he'd say we were just being squeezed. But what about selling in the midst of this?

5 Questions about Selling in the Fear-based Economy

Take this really brief 5 question survey about selling in the post, double-dip, great recession.

Don't forget to see the results of what others thought, after pushing the submit button, scroll up to the top of the page for the link to others' responses.

Go on try it, what have you to fear but fear itself?

Sales Plan in Action: 6 Ways to Keep Success on Track

Chris Arlen — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:48:00 GMT

A sales plan is more than an annual exercise. It provides direction and data to course correct and win more sales.

However, a sales plan is a "use it, or lose it" proposition. If you're not getting more out of it than the once a year song-and-dance, you've probably wasted your time creating it.

First, the plan has to be created. If you don't have one here’s a free template and instructions on “How to Write a Sales Plan“.

If you've already completed a sales plan, here are 6 Ways a Sales Plan Keeps Your Success On Track.

Let me know what you think

Are sales plans a waste of time?
Do you look at yours anytime after you've completed it?
What other ways is a plan helpful?

Personal Brand is Your Best Sales Tool

Chris Arlen — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:39:00 GMT

For customers to buy your cleaning services they must believe you, trust you, rely on you.

How can you demonstrate you're all those things before they contract you?

It's through your personal brand. Your personal brand is the accumulation of your actions, not what you tell others you'll do - but what you actually do.

So demonstrate your reliability and trustworthiness to customers before they sign you, in the opportunities you have.

Those opportunities are returning phone calls and email promptly (not instantly, but relatively quickly).

Here's a 10-Minute Challenge for a Greater Personal Brand. It's something to aspire to, you'll not be able to achieve it all the time. But trying for it will make your personal brand that much greater. And as a result, your customers will feel more comfortable selecting you as their cleaning service.

Give it a try.

Selling to Big Companies

Chris Arlen — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 16:41:52 GMT

Most BSCs have aspirations of selling large, landmark cleaning contracts.

Their reasons are many but with that big contract comes a big company as customer.

And that can be a painful awakening when BSCs learns what it means to really be under contract to a big company.

It's not all unicorns and rainbows as Anthony Bourdain would say.

Here's a realistic look at what the contractor gets and what the big company gets: Selling Large Service Contracts to Big Companies.

Let me know what you think.

23 Ways to get a First Meeting with Prospects

Chris Arlen — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 17:00:00 GMT

"If I could only talk with prospects I could sell them."

This is heard from almost everyone who's ever tried selling cleaning contracts. That first meeting with a prospect can be extremely elusive. It's even harder today in the post recession economy and with prospects who are over burdened and worrying about keeping their jobs.

It'd be wonderful if there was one way to get that first meeting and it worked every time. However, the truth is more complicated. No one way works in all situations. The more ways you have to try though the better your chances of getting more first meetings.

Here's a list of 23 ways that are worth looking at. See if there's a new one you haven't tried
"23 Ways to get a First Meeting with Prospects".

They include using inbound marketing techniques such as Linked In, blogs, etc. but there are also the older, tried and true outbound marketing such as telemarketing, direct mail and in-person networking.

23 is a lot of ways to reach out and ask for that first meeting. Take a look here.

How do you get a first meeting?

This list isn't conclusive, there are other ways. Tell me your most successful ways of meeting prospects for that first time. Post your comments here.

The Secret Trigger to Successfully Launching Social Media & Online Marketing

Chris Arlen — Thu, 19 May 2011 14:19:00 GMT

It's now old news that social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) is the buzz in marketing and new business development. As a result, BSCs, like many other businesses, are trying figure out how to use it for tangible results.

However, because social media is still relatively new there's a lot of confusion and anxiety around it. That newness leads to wasted time and money trying to learn social media that's still defining itself, or missing opportunities by taking no actions at all. Understanding social media's place in the big picture is a good place to start to make sense of it all.

The Big Picture

Here we go.

Social media is one of three categories that make up inbound marketing. The others are content (blogs, ebooks, white-papers, etc.) and search (keywords searched in Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.). Inbound marketing is a group of techniques and programs that engage buyers before they buy, developing a relationship about value before trying to sell. This puts sellers (BSCs) in positions of influence when the buyer is ready to buy. Inbound marketing is 62% more cost-effective per lead than traditional methods and better at targeting buyers (HubSpot’s “The 2011 State of Inbound Marketing“). However there's a catch to inbound marketing, buyers must first give permission for ongoing, online interaction with sellers, which is also called opting-in.

In contrast to inbound marketing is traditional outbound marketing. Outbound you know as advertising, promotions, and PR and its typically inefficient (low success rates of 1-3%) and more costly per lead than inbound marketing. Buyers don't give permission to being contacted. Sellers spend lots of money on interruption marketing, which is what ads and direct hard selling pitches really are.

For a brief overview of both types of marketing read Revenue-IQ's Outbound & Inbound Marketing

The Big Question

If inbound marketing is so great, why would anyone continue with ads, promotions and other outbound marketing?

Well, social media and inbound marketing can't do it all. They need help launching their programs. They need help getting buyers to notice them that very first time so they can sign up. Otherwise sellers' online presence goes unnoticed and ignored. There's a secret to launching inbound marketing and it doesn't seem to get mentioned online.

The Secret Trigger

There's a Secret Trigger to Inbound Marketing and unless it's used, social media and online marketing efforts flounder.

That secret is using outbound marketing techniques (ads, promotions, collateral materials, direct mail, etc.) to enlist buyers to opt-in. It's necessary to use traditional outbound marketing to launch the power of inbound marketing, such as social media. Ads and promotions help sellers raise their hands online and get noticed by buyers. Once buyers see the value a seller can bring, they'll happily give their permission to engage with that the seller. And online that permission and engaging conversation is done through social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook - as well as through email subscriptions and RSS feeds to sellers' blogs. For more information read Revenue-IQ's The Secret Trigger to Inbound Marketing.

Unsolicited Sales Proposals are a Double-edged Sword

Chris Arlen — Mon, 09 May 2011 20:17:00 GMT

Unsolicited sales proposals are given to buyers who didn’t ask for them, didn’t know they were coming, and may not need your service at this time, or ever.

But with your sales hat on unsolicited proposals can feel like your only hope. Remember how frustrating it can be to reach some buyers?

Unfortunately unsolicited proposals cut two ways. They're definitely a useful tool but only in a very limited context.

The painful side, the side to be avoided can really hurt your business both in the short and long term. Those painful things to avoid are covered in Unsolicited Sales Proposals: Part 1 – The Downside.

This doesn't mean unsolicited proposals don't have their usefulness. When used in appropriate circumstances they're pure gold. That upside is addressed in Unsolicited Sales Proposals: Part 2 – The Upside.

When using unsolicited proposals recognize they have the potential for both good and bad. Use them intelligently and you're more likely to produce the results you want.