Target the Wrong Person First

A lot of what The Rafters Group does is assist companies in their penetration of new markets. In fact, most of our engagements are outsourced business development focused. Today's tip is a practice which helps immensely in door opening.

Target the wrong person first. What does this mean? If you ultimately want to talk to the CIO, target the COO or the CFO first. If you can get the wrong person talking, sometimes you can glean more information so that, when you DO get the right person on the phone, you are better prepared. There are many reasons why this works:

1) When you are targeting a person, a specific person, you are pushing. When you are calling into the wrong person, you are travelling in the world of the unknown. This puts you into a pulling mode. You are asking questions and looking for information, instead of trying to sell your product or services.

2) You are asking for help. When you are calling the wrong person, your approach is generally one of, "I was wondering if you could help me..."

3) You are using this "wrong person" as a champion. You are building a referral relationship from scratch. It's not hard to do and doesn't take long if you are truly asking for help...sincerity makes this approach work.

4)Sometimes the best "wrong person" to go to is the Chairman of the Board or a prominent board member. Imagine a conversation that starts out like this:

John, I was just looking on your Website and reading about XYZ, Inc. I thought I might give you a call to see if you could help me. I work for a company that offers a particular service that I think might be of interest to your company because...(fill in a relevant message here). Any thoughts or ideas about the viability of an idea like this? Any idea who I should start with in the organization?

5) I find that the gatekeeper can even be the "wrong person" you start with as long as you treat him/her like they have a brain in their head. In fact, explaining very simply what your company does and asking if he/she thinks there might be interest somewhere in the organization can get you a meeting with the exact right person.

Good luck and have fun talking to the wrong person today!

Relevance Makes the World Go Round

relevant
Adjective

1 relevant
having crucial relevance; "crucial to the case"; "relevant testimony"

2 relevant - having a bearing on or connection with the subject at issue; "the scientist corresponds with colleagues in order to learn about matters relevant to her own research"

Relevancy is key in today's marketplace. Imagine getting forty voicemails a day, five hundred emails, inundated with offers, pitches and sales calls. What will separate you from the pack? RELEVANT MESSAGES So few marketers use personalization in their messages – less than 10% in fact. And of those, a majority utilize less than 5 points of personalization. Personalization used properly will make your emails stand out from the clutter, increase your response and conversion rates, and ultimately drive sales. A study done by YesMail showed response rates triple when the number of personalization elements were increased from 1 or 2 to 7 or 8.

I’m not referring to simply saying “Dear First Name” in an email salutation – even spammers can do this today, but thoughtful idea sharing. Show the prospect you are targeting that you have read their entire body of Web work. Relevance comes at the point of intersection between your offer and their needs. Find the general vicinity of this intersection and they will listen.

What does THIS prospect need from you?
Always make sure it's a message that speaks to the need your prospective customer feels, not some self-centered stuff about you. Your message should change for each and every prospect you contact.

Imagine your client is thinking:
What’s in it for me?
Why do I care about your idea?
Why should I listen to you?

Ask yourself:
What does my prospect do?
What do they care about?
What events impact them personally, professionally, and as an industry?
What's in it for them?
If I ran their business, why would I care about this solution, offer, idea?

The Uplifters Program

If you are the owner of a small business, you have no doubt figured out that to succeed, you must wear many hats. From hiring and firing, to training and motivating, it all falls on your shoulders. When it comes to selling, your passion about your business is palpable. When you walk into a prospective client’s office, they feel that and they are sold partially by what you bring to the table, but more by who you are and what you believe in. They admire that. So, you sell and you grow.
 
You grow to a point where you are working ridiculous hours and feeling genuinely tired of success. You can’t believe that you are so frantic, a mere handful of years ago you were waiting for that first order. You realize that something has to give. If you could find a salesperson you could trust, one you knew would do a good job, you would be set. But, how do you start? How do you transfer all your knowledge to another? How do you take yourself out of the field for long enough to hire, let alone train and ramp up a new person? You’ve always been able to create documents, sales tools and proposals out of you head, how do you pass that information on to someone new?
 
Finally, a break comes, you find your salesperson. They’re hired. You are both excited. Ah…you imagine a day when you will be free to golf while this new salesperson opens doors, sells your solutions and wins business for your company.
 
Soon things seem a little less shiny. You wonder why it is taking so long to get into top prospects, write proposals, close deals. It feels like you are still intimately involved in every sales call, every presentation and every detail. Resentment starts to build. You have other business concerns to worry about. Why isn’t your new hire performing at peak?

Now what do you do? You have invested three, six, nine, twelve months in this person. You just cannot start over.

Wouldn’t you be a lot better off with The Rafters Group at your side for 90 days?
We help you with the process of re-invigorating or hiring good salespeople.
We help your salespeople figure out how they are going to attack the market, how they are going to sell your solution, and we do weekly workshops to make sure that each step of the sales process is perfected.
We train them on all sales basics and help them to build their sales resource kit.
We work on cold calling for them and with them. This gets your sales team comfortable with messaging and helps to build quick successes.
We schedule new business meetings for you to attend with them.
We ride-along on meetings with them.
For the second ninety days, we are your sales management “hotline.”

Should you want to start a new search…
We have a proven process for screening for excellent salespeople.
We engage your help in final interviews. You only meet the potential candidates when they are determined to be a good fit.
When the person starts, we are there with them for the first 90 days—see above.

The Rafters Group

If you are in Sales and Marketing, you know that no sales funnel runs perfectly smoothly from start to finish. Every single person you talk to in the beginning of the process does not become a paying customer. There are ratios and fall-out that occur throughout that funnel.
So:

If you have problems figuring out WHERE the fall-out is occurring, I can help you find out where and then solve the problem

If you need to increase the number of prospects suspects ENTERING the top of the funnel, I can help you open doors

If you need someone to BUILD sales pipeline for you, you can hire me to get your sales executives into potential client meetings

If you have low performing salespeople who need individual attention you can’t give, I can determine if they are capable, and if so, TEACH them how to sell more effectively

If you are targeting a NEW MARKETS or need to know how to more effectively reach decision-makers in your market, I can help