How Do You Screw Up?

February 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Power Questions = Power Selling

Looking for a power question to make your customers stand up and pay attention to you? Ask them to list the top three mistakes people in their position make when making a similar purchase.

There are two possible outcomes to this question:

  1. They don’t know the answers and will defer to your expertise.
  2. They will think hard about the question and come up with the answers.

In scenario #1, you earn their trust by knowing the answers to questions they didn’t know they had. In scenario #2, they will give you insight into their doubts and you will be better prepared to preemptively address those misgivings. Either way, you will earn the buyer’s respect by being knowledgeable and not asking outdated questions like “what keeps you up at night?”

One Moore Thing: If you ask the same questions everybody else asks, you get the same answers everybody else gets… and the same results.

Filed Under: Attitude, Customer Service, Relationships, Sales

How To Earn Trust

February 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Trust is easy to build and even easier to lose

Do what you say you’re going to do.

One Moore Thing: Don’t overthink it. People try to play games and use different psychological tactics to “earn” trust when all they’re really doing is trying to trick somebody. Trust is built over time and earned by simply doing what you said you’d do.

Filed Under: Attitude, Customer Service, Feature Post, Motivation, Relationships, Sales

New Beginnings

February 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Congratulations to my little brother, Brian, who was married yesterday. He and his new wife, Debbie, have given themselves a new beginning for a future filled with promise and love.

As a society, we celebrate the new beginnings that weddings, births, and graduations signify. But why is it that in personal relationships we are typically quick (sometimes too quick) to make changes, yet in business we drag out important decisions because we are afraid of the unknown? Because we don’t trust ourselves.

One Moore Thing: If you consider yourself successful at personal relationships, then use same decision-making criteria to flourish in business… your gut.

Filed Under: Attitude, Customer Service, Motivation, Relationships, Sales

Just Give

February 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

When you’re feeling your in a rut or experiencing a lull in performance, take a little time and give:

Give Time: Go to lunch with a customer. Talk about anything except business. You’ll learn new things, build a deeper connection, and be under no pressure.

Give Back: Take a day and volunteer at a homeless shelter or swinging a hammer for Habitat for Humanity. At the end of the day you’ll be dead tired, but thankful for what you have and refreshed to tackle a new day.

Give Ideas: Come up with three ideas that will help one of your customers increase their business. These ideas should have nothing to do with your offerings. You will be forced to look at things from a different view and your customers will start to view you as a trusted adviser.

Give It A Rest: Take a day off. Go see a daytime movie, enjoy a great lunch, and surprise your wife with dinner when she gets home. Don’t check your email or take phone calls all day.

Give Thanks: Take the day and drive to as many clients as you can. Show up without an appointment and tell them you just stopped by to thank them for their business. Have a brief conversation (don’t overstay your welcome) and tell them to have a fantastic day. They’ll always take your call after that.

Give Hugs: Show some love to people. Hug your husband, your kids, your friends, your assistant, or your customer. How can anybody feel bad after a good hug?

One Moore Thing: The more you give, the more you get back from the universe. It may not always be in the way you expect, but good always comes back to you.

Filed Under: Attitude, Customer Service, Feature Post, Motivation, Relationships, Sales, Training/Education

Shopping or Buying?

February 16, 2012 By 3 Comments

It’s more fun that it looks…

I love shopping. I know I may lose my Man-Card for that, but it’s true. It doesn’t matter of I’m buying Christmas gifts, clothes, electronics, or even groceries… I just like to shop.

One reason I like shopping is because I like “stuff”… who doesn’t? But the other reason is that I find it cathartic; the process of buying something is relaxing to me. I know what I’m looking for and when I find it, I’m typically ready to purchase. Rarely, if ever, do I buy the lowest price because for me it’s more about value and service. And because I value those things, I also don’t negotiate prices.  I want my seller to make money. I want them to be around next year. I want them to look forward to me walking in their door because I’m a friendly and profitable customer.

I don’t have to be sold, because I’m a buyer.

One Moore Thing: Are you trying to sell to people or talk to buyers?

Filed Under: Attitude, Customer Service, Motivation, Prospecting, Relationships, Sales

Speed Is The New Killer App

February 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Speed equals sales

Today’s prospects are handling hundreds of emails, dozens of phone calls, and several meeting each day. They don’t have time to do an in-depth analysis on every single item they’re working on. That’s the downside.

The upside is they are so incredibly busy that if you can answer questions, return calls, and schedule resources faster than your competitor, you can save them time… and time is more valuable than money in today’s economy. So it stands to reason that if you can save your prospects time, you will win more business.

To capitalize on that advantage, you need a killer app. What is a killer app? Here’s the definition from Wikipedia:

In marketing terminology, a killer application (commonly shortened to killer app) is any computer program that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, gaming console, software, or an operating system. A killer app can substantially increase sales of the platform on which it runs.

This has nothing to do with software. Although the iPhone has a killer app (Siri), so does Zappo’s (customer service), and Walmart (low prices). In today’s hectic sales world, your killer app should be speed.

Imagine if you needed a plumber or a moving company. You call on Monday and customer service schedules an appointment for Thursday. The salesperson meets with you for an hour and then moves through the rest of their daily appointments. On Friday, the salesperson goes through their process to get pricing, and after engaging their resources, they email pricing the following Tuesday. You’ll probably receive a follow-up call a week after the email seeing if “everything looked good” on the quote.

What started as a pressing issue to you was just relegated to mediocrity by the salesperson. Instead of having the same sense of urgency as you, they went about their business at their own speed. You needed immediacy and instead had to wait 1–2 weeks to get an answer.

Now you know how your prospect feels.

One Moore Thing: Every business is different, but in most instances, speed can be a competitive advantage that can increase your win rate by 10–20%. You just need to determine the best way to streamline your sales and customer service processes to ensure you are faster than your competitor.

Filed Under: Customer Service, Feature Post, Motivation, Prospecting, Sales, Technology

When The Cat’s Away…

February 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This guy should not stop you from getting your cheese

… the mice will play.

That’s the saying. For those of you who haven’t heard it before, it means when the person in charge (cat) is gone, the subordinates (mice) will be less careful. That’s fine if you’re one of those mice that sit around waiting for a piece of cheese to come to you on the end of a mousetrap. But if you were one of those mice you wouldn’t be in sales. When the cat (boss) is away, you should work just as hard as if she were there. Hell, you should work the same no matter where she is, because you don’t get any cheese unless you go hunt it down.

One Moore Thing: Decide what kind of mouse you are, then ignore whether or not the cat is away… just make it rain cheese.

Filed Under: Attitude, Customer Service, Sales

Creating Clients

February 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Ring the cash register by selling

Advertising and marketing departments believe they create clients. They must also believe in unicorns and flying carpets, because ad campaigns and viral videos don’t ring the cash register. Sales ring the cash register.

Before you send me hate mail, let me assure you that advertising and marketing are important in raising awareness and finding prospects, but they don’t create clients. Sales and customer service people are responsible for converting prospects into clients. They create the relationship that turns a company into a living and breathing entity.

One Moore Thing: Sales without marketing makes selling more difficult, but marketing without sales is a waste of money.  You need a proactive plan to make both work together.

Filed Under: Customer Service, Feature Post, Relationships, Sales

Fill Everybody’s Inbox

February 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

You must fill your own inbox

Many people make their work fill their day instead of their day fill their work. It’s human nature; if people don’t have something to do, they will work slower, waste time, and become easily agitated. They will also be more prone to mistakes, less creative, and eventually become disgruntled enough to either leave or cause others to leave.

So rather than waiting for work, these employees should create their own work. They need to find things that will make a difference and begin working on those items, not mindless tasks meant to make chew up chunks of time. My first career was doing computer graphics and if I didn’t have work in my inbox, I would sit around all day figuring out new ways of doing things, or read trade journals, or take extra-long lunches. Before I could do something that affected the bottom line, I had to wait for somebody to give me work.

That’s how I got started in sales… I was bored with sitting around doing nothing and instead decided to go sell my services, then go back to the office and do the work I just sold. It gave me a tremendous amount of satisfaction to start a relationship, convince them to let me do their work, and then go do the work. My productivity went up about 400%. It was a great feeling, but required a much different mindset to leave the cave, find something to kill, and drag it back. But by doing this, I was able to give myself and the people around me something meaningful to do in our jobs.

It’s amazing to have that feeling of freedom, but it’s also scary for most people. Honestly, most of the population doesn’t have that instinct. If you’re in sales, you have the ability to fill your own inbox. If you don’t have anything to work on, you go find a new client. That process gives everybody else around you things to work on, because you just filled their inbox.

One Moore Thing: Creating work is hard work, and it’s not for everybody. If you find somebody that can create work, find ways to motivate them to continue creating work. They can be the lifeblood of your organization.

Filed Under: Attitude, Customer Service, Feature Post, Motivation, Sales

How Much Will They Pay?

February 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The wrong price could have disastrous results

Organizations price their offering based on production costs and then mark it up by a predetermined percentage. That percentage is based on conjecture from previous experience or maybe a few customers not buying because of the price. The reality is your product may be worth different amounts to different customers. If you sell a piece of software in Apple’s App Store for 99 cents but a customer is relying on that software everyday for their employees, it is worth significantly more than what you charged them.

People decide with their emotions and then justify the purchase with logic. In order for someone to commit to buying, your product or service either needs to be worth more than the financial commitment or fulfill an emotional need.

So what is the right price? Only your customer knows, and you’ll need to talk with them to figure it out.

One Moore Thing: If you charge too much for your product, people won’t buy. If you charge too little for your product, people may undervalue it. If you do have price increases, communicate it to your customers, or you could be the next Netflix.

Filed Under: Attitude, Customer Service, Sales
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