by MIMO Solutions | communication skills, sales, social media, Social Networking, tips
Many small businesses spend so much time and effort focusing on the front end of the marketing funnel that they neglect one of the most important components of the marketing process. What happens to a lead once they express interest in your business? For most small businesses, one of the most costly aspects of the marketing equation is how your staff handle the leads that come to you – whether by phone, email, fax, or in person. You’re investing a lot in generating leads, and every lead counts! That’s why training all your staff on how to properly answer the phone, respond to a customer request, and handle leads is so critical. – Tiffany Monhollon
Sales people are not the devil. Sales is not a four-letter word.
Sales are what keeps your business or organization alive. Tiffany was exactly right, but did you notice how she didn’t use the word sales even one time…
Really, it is OK. If it makes you feel better, you can call it conversion, engagement, lead handling, customer service, account management, or any of the other dozens of made up titles for sales. I don’t care as long as you realize that it is a critical part of the process. So many Internet marketers forget that sales people are a good thing!
Nobody is any company, any where, at any time, has ever made any money, until someone sold something.
I call this process Social Media Sales. It is the process converting leads generated through social media and internet marketing into actual revenue dollars for your organization. It usually goes something like this:
- Develop the personal relationship
- Identify customer needs
- Qualify customer for budget and resources
- Assist in the decision making process
- Present custom solutions not offered on the Internet
- Assist in the delivery of the product or service
- Resolve issues or concerns throughout the entire process
- Ask for referrals and testimonials
As you can see there are a lot of things that the marketing and website team are typically not equipped to deal with. A trained staff of professional salespeople can help you take the prospects from click to close, and increase your online conversions dramatically.
A lot of people are having a hard time defining a Return On Investment for internet marketing and social media, and it’s because they have left out the sales department. If your activities all eventually lead to dollars sold, then a return is right in the bottom line. Did you sell more than you spent?
by MIMO Solutions | communication skills, sales, social media, Social Networking
The art of sales is about communication. Those who can communicate the most effectively will be the most successful.
Those skills that help you to be a good salesperson – most sales training students have discovered that they become better managers, friends, parents and spouses as well. Listening, questioning, and helping people discover what is in their own best interests are valuable skills in life and social media.
If you like most people who never want to be considered a salesperson, and you certainly don’t want to be trained to act like one, READ THIS STORY:
I recently received the following testimonial from a student and want to share it with you. This is verbatim from a real client. Those of you who have received sales training through Sandler Training will recognize the questioning process:
“I am writing to inform you of an event that happened yesterday that speaks volumes of the curriculum that you teach. Standing in the upper level of one of my job sites I received a startling message. To begin with I am a true single father of two beautiful children whose mother abandoned them about a year ago; with that said here is what transpired.The startling message was from my children’s mother saying she was going to end her life. This message, of course, was returned by a phone call from me. She answered in tears stating that she had lost her children, lost her lover and was done with life. My initial response without forethought was, ‘[name omitted], what do you mean, tell me more, please.’ She responded saying her life was over. I then said, ‘Please tell me what you mean and how long has it been that you have been in this mindset.’She told me that ever since she had left me she had been addicted to prescription narcotics and in an abusive relationship. By this time I am in my vehicle racing to south Kansas City to her home. I asked her ‘since this realization’ what has she tried to do to get help or leave. She responded saying she had tried to stop using and tried to leave her lover many times. I told her clearly this has failed to work and she agreed. She then told me that this has cost her her family, children and life. With a lump in my throat I asked her what she was feeling coming to this realization.When I arrived at her house, I found a beaten woman who was in the process of ending her life. I pulled my wallet out and showed her a picture of my beautiful 6-year-old son and my amazing 13-year-old daughter and asked her, “Are you going to give up on them, and are you done fighting?’ She dropped what she had in her hands and allowed me to call for help. Less than 24 hours later, she was on a plane to Colorado to a treatment center for addiction and spiritual healing.The skills you teach in this program far surpass sales.You teach how to meet people where they are and to get the root of issues and pain. I thank you, I fully believe that without the skills you have instilled in me, I would not have had the clarity of getting through to her or a guideline to do so, and as a consequence, my children’s mother may have ended her life.”
No one can tell me they don’t sell. If you’ve ever applied for a job, asked someone on a date or raised teenagers, you’ve been in sales.
Sales skills are life skills. All of the attitudes, behaviors and techniques are directly applicable. It’s short-sighted to think they don’t relate to you. And those elements, when perfected, create better relationships. Isn’t that, after all, what we’re looking for?
Learn how to be successful in sales, and you learn how to be successful in life.
by MIMO Solutions | communication skills, marketing, sales, social media, tips
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| Generate Social Media Engagement |
I just read an email tip about how to use social media for marketing your business and the gave 7 easy steps to follow. Sounds good doesn’t it?
Step number 4 caught my eye though… Generate engagement. Sounds even better on paper! I will just get thousands of follower and then I will get them engaged in a living discussion about my business and they will have to buy something… They won’t have a choice!
If you can’t tell, I am being sarcastic here. If it were as easy as crossing “generate engagement” of the checklist then everyone would be successful already, and we would all be on permanent vacation. This is why, I have started this blog, “Following The Like.” I have read dozens of books, articles and emails about how to attract followers, but very little about what happens after the “like.”
So you can communicate will thousands or millions of people with a simple status update…
- How does that make you money?
- What do you say?
- How exactly do you generate engagement following the like?
I have an answer for you, but you are not going to like it… You have to work hard and you have to be able to sell. These days, it seems like everyone wants to take the easy way out. They want the quick buck, the magic words, the social media bullet that destroys your old sales records and shoots you into early retirement. Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist.
Communication skills, sales skills, and the ability to engage a person in a meaningful discussion are learned and perfected over time. They don’t just happen, and they don’t happen quickly. Sure some people are born with the gift of gab, but that doesn’t mean anyone will buy from them, and more often than not they over-talk people and end up failing to listen. Great communicators and salespeople are trained craftsman. They study communications, psychology and motivation, and they practice and perfect their delivery.
Over time, on this blog, I will attempt to help you do the same. I will share thoughts, tips and stories to help you perfect the art of communication in order to motivate and mobilize your social media followers into fans and buyers.
Here is teaser of my step one:
Stop what you are doing and listen! Think about it for a second. We have a social media world larger than the population of the US online posting about themselves. People are starved for attention, and they are dying for a person who listens and who cares. People love great listeners, people love people they can relate to, people love to belong, and they love to be heard.
I will share more later, but for now just listen and be real. People are bombarded with thousands of sales messages a day; adding your two cents will most likely not be heard anyway. So many companies are out there pushing products, it is impossible to pay attention to them all. So what is a business to do? Listen. How many companies can you name that are listening and following your updates? How many are responding with thoughtful, emotionally real comments without a sales message? That crowd is a lot smaller.
