Shop Talk Podcast #14 - Jill Konrath on selling to big companies

I had a great time talking recently with Jill Konrath, author of "Selling to Big Companies." She had a lot to say about, among other things, how some tried and true sales techniques are outmoded. Jill's website is sellingtobigcompanies.com.

Download the podcast here (20 minutes, 27 seconds).

Segments:
0:00 Introduction
0:30 The difference between selling to big companies and to small ones
1:50 What's changed in selling in the past decade?
7:30 On follow-up
9:10 On "always be closing"
11:25 Using web2.0 technology to help make sales
15:20 Learning from mistakes

(Theme music: "Nova" by NOMO, from their album "Ghost Rock")
Tags:
sales, sales improvement, podcast, lead generation, web2.0

Michael Dell on generating sales leads

I found this great Michael Dell story in "Lessons Learned: Starting a Business." In case you thought his success with Dell Computers was a complete accident, read this:

The first job I got when I could actually drive...was with the Houston Post newspaper. My job was to call people on the telephone and convince them to buy the newspaper. The first partial month I worked there, I figured out that when people wanted to buy the newspaper, either they were moving into a new house or an apartment, or they had just gotten married.

The way to find people who'd just gotten married was to go to the county courthouse. They have the applications for marriage licenses, which are a matter of public record in the state of Texas. And there is a place on the application form where you could request the license be sent. So that turned out to be a really good place to find people to whom I could send an offer to get the newspaper.

The other thing I found was that you could actually get lists of people who had applied for and received mortgages. And that was another great list of people. My first full month at the paper, I was the top salesperson of newspapers, and I had a great time. This was a summer job. I started hiring my friends and sending them out to all the surrounding counties to collect all these lists of people who had applied for marriage licenses and just had a blast. I was sixteen years old. I saved my money and bought a BMW.

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Press. Excerpted from Lessons Learned: Straight Talk from the World’s Top Business Leaders--Starting a Business. Copyright (c) 2008 Fifty Lessons Limited; All Rights Reserved.

For more information about the "Lessons Learned" series, including a showcase of 50 Lessons video stories, please follow this link.

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The value of not caring in the workplace
A new midlife crisis story from Williams-Sonoma
Be careful using other people's money to make acquisitions
Bosses, choose your words carefully

Tags:
narrative, career, sales, resourcefulness, lead generation, reading list

More learning from mistakes

I saw my hairdresser the other day. She's one of the most impressive entrepreneurs I know. We were talking about this idea of learning from others' mistakes. And she said, oh yeah, when I started this place the first thing I thought about was all the things my previous bosses had done that I didn't want to repeat.

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mistakes entrepreneurism learning narrative spoken post

Prospecting yields are low--get used to it

I've recently talked to a couple of self-employed folks who came out of corporate staff jobs. Their unanimous opinion: marketing is a pain in the neck!

When I probed a bit, I found their frustration centered on the low conversion of prospects to sales. And on further probing, it became clear that their expectations for closing rates were much too high. "I meet someone, or get a referral, I give them a proposal. How come they don't buy?"

Buyers need to be ready, willing and able to purchase your product or service. Many of the prospects you encounter are: unqualified, not interested, not ready, not able to make purchases, distracted, etc. Depending on your business, 80%/90%/95% of the leads you get won't pan out, even if you do a good job selling.

The key is to find the nuggets of gold in your prospect list as quickly as possible, and don't waste time on the others (though you want to keep their information handy for future marketing--so that when they are ready, willing, and able, you are top of mind for them).

And that implies you must focus on lead generation. Frustration at conversion yields often truly means you didn't get enough prospects into the top of the funnel to have an adequate level of closed business out the other end.

So stop complaining, and start prospecting.

marketing, sales, lead generation, sales process