Rumors can occur for many reasons:

Rumor has it your company will bring out a new product.
> Your current offering suffers in sales and you need to give additional discounts to sell.

Rumor about your company or competitors can be and is likely to have a negative impact on your sales:

Rumor has it your product is not up to competition
> Trying to prove the contrary will be an uphill battle. Still you need to try.

Rumor has it your main competitor will launch a new product or concept.
> Tell your customers your product is available now and uses proven technology

Rumor has it regulations will change requiring modifications to the current range of products.
> You can take the gamble and promise a free upgrade in order to comply with the new regulations.

Rumor has it your company is facing bankruptcy
> Will will need to show the results and balance sheet of last quarter or year and explain why it isn’t so.

Rumor has it your company will be acquired
> Deny the acquisition completely stuffed with many good reasons
> Admit and promise the current products and service will remain the same and the financial backing will be greater

Rumor has it there will be a management buyout
> Tell them that in the management buyout there will be even more focus on customer care and service.

If rumor has it
Rumors require action in order to explain or to stop them.
If rumor has it about your company or industry you will need to inform your sales, indicate or train them how to react and act. Back up the salesmen with a marketing campaign for fighting the rumor.

As Adele sings:
All of these words whispered in my ear,
Tell a story that I cannot bear to hear,
Just ’cause I said it, it don’t mean that I meant it,
People say crazy things,
Just ’cause I said it, don’t mean that I meant it,
Just ’cause you heard it,

Rumour has it, rumour,

When running a business getting sales is of up most importance. Without sales, there’s no business.

There are 3 sources of possible buyers in B2B:

New leads

These are the most exiting, the most promising: the unknown, the big expectations.
However they will be the most expensive as:
- Leads need to be generated
- Contacts within a company need to be found
- You have to define the Influencers, the Catalysts, the Decision makers, the Gatekeepers
- Products and solutions need to be explained
- Relations need be build
- Trust needs to be gained

Finding visitors on your website is a simple solution for low cost lead generation. Qualifying visitors as leads based upon website visit information is a straight forward task these days. Finding contacts within a company is now much more feasible, thanks to the information available on the Internet.

You know the search terms they used and the pages they visited. This allows you to address the contact with the best suited message and solution.

The leads generated by the typical channels will also visit your website, revealing their real interests in your products and solutions. Using a website visitor identification service your sales people will be alerted when they visit.

Customers

Keeping relations and customers is far less expensive compared to finding new leads or making new customers.

When customers visit your website again, it is often exactly the right time to contact them.
Your website visitor identification service will notify you about this event.

And again, by the pages visited you will know what they are looking for so you can address your relations with the appropriate message and information.

Ex-customers

Although they have selected another vendor, you still know the different people involved within the company.

When such a company visits again, there must be a good reason… time to find out!

Once a lead is qualified it gets distributed to the salesmen. As all salesmen are not equal, the lead management should match the best salesman with this particular lead.
However typically a lead gets passed on to a salesman based on the geography as most sales teams have been organized by geography.

In this way a salesman will get all kinds of leads: the large and the small, the business focused and technical, the special cases and the standard demands.

A salesman is good in persuasion, convincing and selling. However he will not be able to sell all products or services of a company equally. Certain salesmen will be better in large deals having a long sales cycle, whereas others prefer fast closing deals. Some salesmen are more technical educated than other who are solely focusing on business matters with tangible and intangible benefits.

There are salesmen who can handle difficult deals or difficult customers or complex sales better, but who are not interested in making price quotations for yet another standard product with a predefined discount.

Hence lead management and distribution should not be based upon geography but related to the nature, capacities, maturity, past successes and interests of each salesman.

Do you distribute your leads based on geography?

Gossip instead of prospecting

Sending salesmen as attendees to a conference or any other industry event has many purposes like brand presence, prospecting and lead generation.
However when two salesmen colleagues go to such an event it is likely they will stick together and start discussing their experiences with the company and remarks about colleagues. Subjects ranging from the latest gossip about other employees to criticizing management and reasons of lost deals. Budgets, bonuses, commissions and even potential customers will pass the review.

Lone rangers

This probably originates from the fact that salesmen are like lone rangers: they hardly ever meet as they are alone on the road for meeting customers or prospects throughout the year. And there is not control of management about their doings on the conference. The conference or the industry event brings them together, which happens only once or a few times a year.

These mostly negative discussions are only interrupted by attending the presentations and answering the all important telephone calls or emails on their smart phones.

Sole attendee to keep focus

Instead the salesmen should be focusing on the people present in the conference in order to tell them about the products or services of the company for creating presence, awareness and even look for potential customers amongst the audience.

As these discussions about internal matters seem to be part of their normal drive the only way to avoid these and make the presence on the conference of industry event effective for business is to send only one salesman. Then he is likely to focus on prospecting, awareness building and lead generation.

Will you still send more than one salesmen to conferences or industry events ?

The Internet revolution

The Internet is a revolution in any industry and thus for any business. It has already and will continue to effect all businesses even in B2B.

The salesmen that have changed their lead generation, their approach to suspects and prospects, and renewed their sales methods have adopted the Internet as their companion, not as their enemy. Instead of fighting the Internet they have started to use the advantages of the Internet to their benefit. They will know which companies are visiting the company website, the interest of them in the products or solutions and when they have buying intentions revealed by their digital body language.

Insight instead of functions and features

These salesmen know that potential customers have investigated into their products or solutions and also those of the competition. The probable customer is knowledgeable and informed.
Instead of educating and informing the employees of the potential customer on bits and bytes or obvious functions and features, which they all can find explained on the Internet, these salesmen will give the overall view of the industry and where it is heading too. They will also explain the total concept where the functions and features fit into.

The value of the salesman is in the insight and helicopter view that can only be obtained after several years of experience in the business.
The main goal of the salesman is to convince the potential customer of the level experience, knowledge about the industry as it is and will be in the future. All for limiting or taking away the risk that the purchase decision contains.

The salesmen who have adapted to the changes induced by the Internet are the salesmen of the revolution.

Are you a salesman of the revolution ?

Early versus qualified leads

Obtaining qualified leads requires less time to be wasted on dead-end leads and will result in more sales in less time.
Obtaining leads early in their purchase cycle has the advantage of being able to participate earlier in the discussions and influence the outcome which might result in more sales but with much more effort and time.

The dilemma is that getting early leads is getting less qualified leads.
Still all salesmen want more leads !

Lead scoring and lead profiling for the easy salesman

A lead scoring method or system can help out to filter out quicker the better leads. The same is true for lead profiling in order to increase the speed of qualifying leads.

In most cases salesmen want leads that will buy in the shortest amount of time. However if they only would obtain very probable customers then sales would have not much of challenge in the job as they just need to visit or call the lead, make a price quote and wait for the purchase order to arrive. The easy life of a salesman with hardly any challenge.

Early leads for the value-add salesman

In order to obtain very probable customers the lead qualification, lead scoring and lead profiling will be very strict and precise allowing to pass only very typical customers.

The job of the salesman is to fiddle out the real issues and problems of the potential customer and propose the best matching solution and at the same time remove the level of risk of the purchase as much as possible. This is the salesman that brings added value for the customer and probably added sales for the company.

This value-add is exactly what a stringent lead qualification, scoring and profiling won’t permit. Hence the better, higher value or more profitable leads could be thrown away before the salesman even knows about them.

So what do you prefer: qualified or early leads ?

The exclusive CxO conference

Lately we were called by sales reps from exclusive event/conference organizers that offer 14 meetings over two days from a selection of CxO’s from leading companies the industry. Only offered at a steep price to 20 or 25 vendors in the business for meeting up with these CxO’s that have expressed being interested in the type of solutions we provide.

These events or conferences are being held in an hotel and consists of a gala diner on the first evening for networking and 2 days of meetings.

How can one be sure any of these CxO’s are really interested in your solutions ? Especially if the sales rep uses your company’s selling points or features as main   interest of these CxO’s ?

If you hold off your participation because of the high cost, you will get a call from a manager who offers you a 30% discount as first time participant.

What is the benefit for a CxO ?

Isn’t it strange really important CxO’s would come to such an event for a series of sales pitches during 2 days ? Even if they get accommodated, taken care off and nurtured for free ?
Why should any CxO take the time to be hassled by pitches of sales reps for solutions they might not need ? Are they masochistic ?
What is the benefit for the CxO and for the company of the CxO ?

Return On Investment

For the vendor aiming to have 14 sales pitches the steep price ($30,000) comes at a high cost per lead. Even if 5 out of 14 (36%) companies can be qualified as lead, the lead price is $6,000 per lead. Even qualified leads are not sales. Even if these 5 leads would result in 3 sales (60%) the price would be extremely high: $10,000 initial cost for a sales deal (the total sales cost will be much higher).

Thus the vendors can only pitch solutions with a high ticket (>$100,000) and with very high margins in order to cover the lead generation and sales costs.
In most cases with industry leading companies when the price of the solution is high, then an RFI followed by an RFP will be issued by the company. Thus inviting all your competitors almost for free.

The CxO swindle

These exclusive CxO meeting events and conferences seem to be a swindle, only beneficial for the even organizers as the poor CxO’s have to pay by meeting sales reps and listening to their sales pitches.

If these CxO’s were really interested or looking for a solution, then they would order their staff to investigate and setup meetings in order to evaluate and find the best, most feasible or most appropriate solution for the company.

Did you ever participated in such an exclusive CxO conference ?

Perceived value is not the list price

In all sales deals there are two values:
- The cost price or the actual value
- The perceived value

In any case the perceived value should be higher than the actual value. People will only pay a premium over the cost price for your product or services in case the perceived value is higher. In all other cases it is likely they might just not buy at all. maybe in an exceptional case the customer will buy on this occasion due to all kinds of circumstances beyond this sales deal, but that won’t happen again as he wants a lower price than his perceived value.

Increasing the perceived value

The trick is to add on value by services or features to your product that increase significantly the perceived value to your product or services at a lesser cost for your product. This allows inflating the list price without any significant cost increase. Sometimes people are to much blinded by the additional services or features that they miss to see at what cost (price) they come.
For products adding functions or features – which they might never use – or add on a service ‘for free’.
For services it requires demonstrating tangible and/or intangible benefits that appear to bring value.

The higher the difference in value between the perceived and the real price increases your margin significantly.

The higher marketing or the salesrep can push the perceived value, the higher the margin on products, thus the more profit will be made.

How much does the perceived value of your products differ from the real price ?

Reading emails before action

When an email lands in your inbox do you really read the email content or:
- Do you just reply with your standard reply email ?
- Do you forward it without really reading to your supervisor as prescribed by the workflow ?
- Do you try to up-sell in the first reply ?

It is imperative that you read the email and answer appropriately to his request for information or solve his problem or issues. That is the first goal of your reply as you need to satisfy his first demand.

The impression of the potential customer

If the potential customer gets:
- A standard reply then he will feel unimportant
- Forwarded to a supervisor then why was he wasting time communicating with the first person
- A solution but also an up-sell then he will feel the focus is too much on up-selling as the expected revenue is not enough
- A reply several days later then he might have taken his decision already
- A not then he is left in the cold and needs to hope other vendors bring a solution

The cheapest leads

You should grab this kind of opportunity as these are the cheapest leads you can get: apparently without any effort from your side or your company they present a potential sale for you for free. You or your company save upfront the cost of the lead generation.
All you need to do is:
- To read the inquiry email
- Investigate into the company: what does the company do
- Investigate into the person who addresses to you (using LinkedIn, Xing, Ecademy, Viadeo or even Facebook)
- Reply solely to his question as an expert as you still need to build trust.

Read the emails of potential customers and answer them appropriately within 24 business hours.

Do you really read the emails of potential customers?

In some cases you should say “NO” to your customer and not proceed in selling to him. This “NO” is hard to do but it is better in the long run.

Saying “NO” to your channel-partner, system integrator-partner can be appropriate too when they:
1. Impose their requirements on projects for their benefit
2. Increase complexity of projects (like adding on third parties)
3. Change the requirements (rule of the game)
4. Mange you instead of you managing the partner
5. Change due dates (earlier) without having discussed
6. Change your price quotations by increasing the deliverable(s) without notifying previously
7. Call after business for urgent decision hours so you miss feedback of your staff and employees
8. Put you under pressure to decide fast upon new issues as quote needs to be in
9. Complain about everything including your products or competing products
10. Want special discount for each and every prospect
11. Discuss every item on your invoices
12. Pay always overdue
13. Want free inventory
14. Asks commission on top of received discounts
15. Ignore RMA (Return Material Authorization) procedures
16. Refuse to accept and handle faulty goods from customers
17. Call you and several employees about the same issue or problem
18. Use your information to sell the solution of your competitor
19. Pick up leads beyond their geography defined in the Partner Agreement
21. Get drunk at your yearly partner event – never sober
22. Occupy your booth on the trade show without any effort
23. Play games (sound/noise) during conference calls with potential projects
24. Receive MDF (Marketing Develop Fund) or Co-op Marketing but never spend it effectively or wisely
25. Blame you for any kind of mishap in projects

In many of these cases you might be better off without the partner as he creates:
- Overhead
- Not recoverable additional costs
- Confusion amongst your staff and employees and prospects and customers
- Loss of time and efforts
Instead of bringing in money this type of partners will cost you money.

You should evaluate:
- The amount of sales the partner brings
- The amount of additional costs he generates over one year
- How many potential customers he drove away by his actions.

Did you ever said “NO” to your partner ?