#4 ZMOT Selling Strategy, 65% Close Rate, and The Best Sales 2.0 Tools

This blog post is about three things:

1. The #4 ZMOT Selling strategy
2. How to get a 65% win ratio
3. The best sales 2.0 tools and how to use them

In my last three blog posts I shared ZMOT Selling Strategies:

• #7 – How to create content that resonates with the best prospects
• #6 – The best way to follow-up with someone who expressed interest
• #5 – What offers compel a decision maker to start the process of becoming your customer

This blog post is about the importance of timing along with tools, tactics, tips and even a webinar on how to reach executives so they are most likely to buy from you.

When reaching out to executives (aka decision makers) it’s important to understand which buying mode a decision maker is in – the image above shows the three different buying modes. The best timing is reaching a decision maker while they are in the Window of Dissatisfaction™.

The two key components to the Window of Dissatisfaction are that decision makers are dissatisfied with their current solution (or supplier) BUT they have not started doing anything about it yet.

It’s critical to reach these recently motivated decision makers as soon as possible  because while they are not actively Searching for Alternatives their selective perception has been turned on.

What this means is that all of a sudden they start noticing all the relevant marketing, banner ads, emails, and webinar invitations from you AND your competition!

McKinsey’s Customer Decision Journey shown on the left  shows this is the time prospects make a decision around how they are going to address their emerging need.

Don’t wait until for prospects to call you! Research by the Corporate Executive Board shows that by the time you get called almost 60% of the decision has already been made.

The Corporate Executive Board’s research also shows that top performers hunt down “emerging” needs in the market place.

Some people still believe that a prospect should be BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) qualified before you spend any time with them. While I believe BANT has a place in sales I don’t believe that you should wait until the prospect is BANT qualified because you will miss the opportunity to set yourself up as the preferred supplier/solution.

Check out the recording from a recent webinar I did with Dan McDade that explains which leads are five times better than BANT.

For me sales IS NOT ABOUT trying to getting the attention of a lot of executives and telling them what you want to say IT IS ABOUT getting the attention of the right executives and telling them what they want to hear.

That’s one reason I think Top Sales World got it right when they selected Oren Klaff’s  book Pitch Anything as the Gold Medal Winner of the Sales Book of the Year.

So you can learn more about getting the attention of the right people and telling them what they want to hear, below is information on a free webinar and Sales 2.0 tools you can use to reach executives, and successfully pitch them.

Read the rest of this blog post if you want to start winning on value instead of losing on price.

Join Forrester Research, OneSource, and myself as we share how your sales team can win 2/3 of the deals they chase.

• Do you want your sales reps to increase their win rate?
• Do you want your sales team to call higher in an organization?
• Do you want your sales team to win on value instead of lose on price?

If you answer yes to any, or all, of the questions above then this webinar is for you and your team.

Register even if you can’t make the live event because the event will be recorded and registrants will receive access to the recording and receive the handout from the event.

See below for speaker bios

http://bit.ly/65PercentWinRate

Speakers Bios

Norbert Kriebel is a Principal Analyst serving Sales Enablement professionals. He has advised and coached Forrester’s vendor strategy clients on their messaging strategies for over a decade and in over 20 countries. His mission is to transform product-centric go-to-market content into customer-centric outcome driven conversations.

His practical experience in product and marketing strategy makes him very familiar with the challenges, frustrations and triumphs that content creators experience as they endeavor to communicate the business value of increasingly complex and configurable solutions to equally complex networks of buyer audiences.

Norbert’s perspective has driven him to investigate deeper into addressing the (sometimes uncomfortable) patterns that systematically divide buyers and providers; the patterns that manifest themselves into increasing cost-of-sales and dysfunctional revenue cycles.

Roger Ciliberto is the Director of North American,New Business with OneSource Information Services.  He has been selling the concept of “Trigger Based” selling since 2000 when he was in a similar role with TrueAdvantage, a Westborough MA company that was one of the pioneers in the trigger based, SaaS space.

He has built several sales teams within organizations from ADT, to TrueAdvantage, to Reed Business Information to his current role at OneSource Information Services.  He has a keen understanding of how to leverage triggers across multiple industries and how to best set up a sales call in the right place, for the right reasons and at the appropriate time.

Craig Elias is the creator of Trigger Event Selling™ and author of the award-winning sales book “SHiFT! Harness The Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers”. For almost 20 years Craig used Trigger Event strategies to be a top sales performer at every company he worked for - including WorldCom where he was named the #1 salesperson within six months of joining the company.

Craig’s knowledge of Trigger Events has also resulted in winning a $1,000,000 prize in a global billion dollar idea competition, coverage on NBC news, in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Nikkei Marketing Journal, and having his last company chosen by Dow Jones as one of the 50 most promising companies in North America.

It’s been a while since I compiled my original list of top 7 sales 2.0 tools and a lot has changed since then so here is my revised list of top 7 sales 2.0 tools.

Part of the Challenger Sales’ perspective is that to be successful at selling in today’s world you need to sell to mobilizers – those most likely to initiate change in an organization.

My perspective is that executives who are new in their role are often the best mobilizers because they seek to make change happen, make it happen fast, and they have no or few ties to the current solution or provider.

If you don’t believe me check out Jill Konrath’s recent blog post on how to Get the Jump on New Sales Opportunities.

So here is my list of top Sales 2.0 tools to reach and communicate with executives who are new in their roles.

This is not a theoretical list of Sales 2.0 tools – It’s the list of the tools I use, in the sequence of which I normally use them, and how I use them.

I’ve set these tools up to maximize the likelihood that I learn of key executive changes and then follow-up on the 3 opportunities that executive changes create.

1. Outlook Social Connector
The Social Connector for Outlook allows me to integrate my LinkedIn account into Outlook.

From there I can send a LinkedIn connection request simply by clicking on the arrow next the plus sign below their LinkedIn profile picture.

It also allows me to see the most recent emails so I can see what last transpired before I call them.

2. ToutApp
When people accept my LinkedIn connection request I use an email template to send them the preview chapters of my book and provide a link to request a no-charge copy of my book.

ToutApp then lets me track which emails are opened, can be set up to automatically send follow-up emails and simplifies setting up meeting times.

It works with Outlook, Gmail, and integrates with  13 of the top sales tools

3. LinkedIn
LinkedIn has a really cool saved search feature that tells me when those I’m connected to change jobs. Remember someone new in their job is up to 10 times more likely to switch suppliers.

So every week I get an email telling me who in my network has changed jobs. Another cool thing about LinkedIn is that most people use a personal email address and this allows you to contact them even when their work email address bounces.

4. PostWire
I’ve learned that many executives search their inbox before searching Google. But one of the challenges of emailing executives is that IT often limits their inbox storage size which deletes any emails that are more than a few weeks or a few months old.

Postwire allows me to create personal pages for individuals or groups so that the information I send them will always be available. That way when the time is right they can find all the resources I’ve sent them. And if they can’t find it I can easily send them to a page where all the resources I previously sent them are available.

5. OneSource
I admit that sometimes (ok often) I get so caught up in chasing new opportunities that I lose sight of opportunities that are in my pipeline but have stalled.

On top of making me aware of new opportunities, OneSource also notifies me when additional events – afford and justify events  - move a prospect further down the funnel.

E.g. Product launches, fiscal year-end, etc.

6. BriteVerify

BriteVerify allows me to take my list of 500 top prospects and for only 1¢ per contact allows me to see if their email address has bounced.

When I recently checked my list, I learned that 46 of the most senior VP’s of sales for the largest outside sales forces in North America had changed jobs in the last quarter.

Now that I’m using BriteVerify I’ll be checking my list of 500 target accounts on a monthly basis, so I can be on top of those key executives that change jobs.

7. Beep!
One of the hardest things to do is stay in touch with a large number of prospects.

Beep allows me to leave a voice mail for executives and ask if anything has changed recently that makes what I sell more important, more relevant, or more affordable.

After each campaign I receive a report which tells me which executives received my voice mail message and which ones did not. This allows me to tailor the email I send the day after.
7.5 HootSuite

The reason HootSuite is not in my top 7 is that I have not had the time to fully learn it and integrate it into my sales system. I’m hoping to learn more about HootSuite on my March webinar with LinkedIn, HootSuite, OneSource, Selling Power, and Sales For Life.

Notice I did not say process. For a me process is a series of steps and very often when you reach executives who recently experienced a Trigger Event they either want to do things in an order  that is different from your sales process or they want to skip entire steps all together.

3 Actions You Can Take

1. Register for the February 12th webinar with Forrester
2. Check out each of the Sales 2.0 tools above
3. Call me (+1.403.874.2998 or 866.744.7904) to schedule a 10-15 minute brainstorming session on how you can set up the tools above so they work for your specific situation.

Have an eventful week!

Craig