A Blog (short for web log) provides commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news. A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business purposes. Blogs, either used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or PR purposes are called corporate blogs. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.

Several blog search engines are used to search blog contents (also known as the blogosphere), such as blogdigger, Feedster, and Technorati. Technorati provides current information on both popular searches and tags used to categorize blog postings.

Corporate blogs, by their very nature, are biased, though they can also offer a more honest and direct view than traditional communication channels. Nevertheless, they remain public relations tools.

The business blog can provide additional value by adding a level of credibility that is often unobtainable from a standard corporate site. Business blogs can interact with a target market on a more personal level while building link credibility that can ultimately be tied back to the corporate site.

Blogging among CEOs is becoming more popular, and more than 5% of the Fortune 500 companies blog externally. Market research done in the first half of 2006 indicated that 34% of large companies had established weblogs. Another 35% planned to do so by the end of 2006, thus bringing the total to nearly 70%.

Some points:

McDonald’s LincolnFry – a fake blog was discovered, and it generated lots of negative word of mouth and little participation. As in all fields of information there will be the worthless with the good, but that does not detract for the enormous use Blogs can provide for us in sales careers.

American Express’ billboard – a fake Blog poster told readers to check out a great Amex billboard that was found to be an Ogilvy employee; this violation of trust resulted in massive negative word of mouth which spread around the world.

So what to do?

To keep from getting lost in the internet blogs and to narrow the field down as to what will help your sales, use the different blog search engines like you would use normal search engines: simply key in the term and you will get the result.

Another way to strain the needed information from the blog forest is to note all the reviews of blogs that appear in daily newspapers, magazines and the publications like: trade publications, industry news, and the business sections of websites and print media.

To learn how to use other online resources in your search for Trigger Events, get my book today!

How to use blogs in your search for Trigger Events? is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

Imagine that you will be having a baby in two weeks. While turning around in your home, what will you see? You are missing the crib, blankets, diapers and everything else that is needed for the new addition to your family. Won’t you need everything right away? You have an immediate need and must take care of it. This is a trigger event.

If we transfer this to a business environment, you will understand what trigger events means for any existing business. A trigger is a need to buy, an event that pushes you to buy the product right now. Not six months or a year down the road, but now.

This is true for the biggest corporations in the world and the small businesses oriented locally (70 percent of all U.S. businesses are so called mom-and-pop shops). The advantage of dealing with small businesses is that they are faster in reacting when an event is triggered and changes that create a need have happened.

Without the trigger you don’t really have a need to buy someone’s product now. Some studies show that companies with a trigger event buy 400 percent more often than ones without these kinds of events.

Many businesses are putting the cart before the horse, creating the product or service for which there is no market. They fail as suppliers because they take their customers wants and needs for granted, not surveying the market and not taking the necessary steps to understand why somebody is buying and who is on the market today.

Searching for trigger events is the first step forming three main keys of every sale that are:

1. Researching and qualifying your customers
2. Being in front of them
3. Being there when they are ready to buy — timing

To start the sales process you need to find out who could be in the market today, and then recognize your selected customer’s wants and needs. You need to have 360 degree view of your prospects.

What is their business situation, what are their business issues and challenges, pain problems, internal issues, changes, motivations? And then add yourself to the equation – how can I put customers in the market? How can I make customers realize that they are on the market with trigger events happening?

Keep following my blog, in my next posts I will talk more about internal and external trigger events and how to use them to find your next customer to sell more.

Remember: All needs are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

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Get the book Trigger Events today and start selling to new customers tomorrow!

Prospecting: Intro to Trigger Events is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

Your mission as a sales person should be to find companies that have immediate wants and needs. This means that something happened or is happening to them – a move, a merger, new investors, etc. You have to look for any event that might create the opportunity for you, or better said you are looking for event that can trigger the sales for you.

It could be something internal or inside the company, like a new direction from management, a merger or an acquisition, rapid growth, or maybe a new product introduction. And it could mean the company is turning “Green” and needs new and different supplies and services.

It could be external or outside the company, like the new strategies of their competition or new legislation (Sarbanes- Oxley Act). Maybe even a natural disaster, which is a well-known external trigger for many customers.

Generally speaking, trigger events have effects inside the whole company. Suddenly new needs are recognized; previous decisions need to be revisited. Very often, management becomes aware of new priorities and changes the direction of the company.

Trigger events are extremely important when we are in the search mode, looking for our next customer, and when we need to identify our sales opportunities at a particular company from our target list.

Every company has something new happening. Maybe they improved or reintroduced their products or service. There could be new faces in the boardroom or on the sales floor. A new office may have opened up in the Midwest. A new vendor or strategic partner could have been added. Even new money or investor may come into the company.

Most important for a buyer is that the provider understands the buyer’s situation, needs and business.

Every change in the business environment causes a search for new suppliers or new service providers, and your main goal is to be in front of qualified buyers when they are ready to buy.

In these situations, I would say this is almost the perfect position for every sales person. You know there is something happening with the accounts from your list of targeted accounts and you know that as it happens – perfect timing is a key of success many times. This is equally true no matter if it is with small or large companies.

An example of the above is a situation where through your trigger event research you determine that your customer is planning to switch its ordering system to one of the new software solutions. So you know there is something going to happen. Whether the company is large or small, it can be perfect timing for you to be able to provide products and services to them using that kind of ordering/sales process.

How to use that information?

When you get the information related to a trigger event, you need to adjust your approach so the benefits of your products (or services) are closely related to the trigger event, and you are able to show your customers that you can create a value for them early in the buying process.

This is a good way to start working on the relationship and developing the customer’s perception of your value to them. This means when you speak with the decision maker and if you know exactly what this trigger event is about, you will be able to tailor your story and the benefits of your product in a way that sounds appealing and is related to the customers’ growth trigger event.

You need to adjust your presentation in the way to recognize that event and to present your offering in the most effective way.

Questions you will ask on your calls or meetings with prospects will be targeted towards their needs and you will be able to demonstrate your understanding of business situation. That should bring you step closer to get the deal done.

You definitely want to discover their hot buttons and why they could be on the market now for your products or services. Also you should find out why they are qualified now, at this particular moment, and why you should be very active with this prospect.

It is actually very simple – when you show your prospects that you actually care and you have done your homework and you know about trigger events happening inside their company (new CFO, merger and acquisition, bad 3rd quarter…) you also show them that you are interested about their issues, and most importantly concerned about their wants and needs.

You will create interest in their eyes because you are different then anyone else who contacts them who is simply trying to sell something without really understanding their needs.

When you know about different trigger events it will be much easier for you to ask questions that lead to uncovered customer’s needs and buying motives, and to put them in the market even if they feel there are not buying anything now.

If you try to make a sale without necessary information about your customers, you are just shooting blanks in the air, hoping to hit something. With full information about your prospects situation you will be able to sell easier, and that is the main purpose of this article (and my blog) – to help you to find your next customer in a much easier way for you, and yet maintain a professional, knowledgeable approach.

All needs are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

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Get the book Trigger Events today and start selling to new customers tomorrow!

What are trigger events and how to use them is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

Many sales are lost because salespeople assume they know what the customer wants. Sales people like to made assumptions of knowledge about what the buyer wants and needs, or sometimes more important why the buyer might be motivated to buy. Using one’s instincts and sixth sense is fine in the equation of success, but it should be only part of your expertise.

Consequently, through unorganized, hit-or-miss methods, his cost of selling is high simply because his methods are not as efficient as they should be.

This does not mean you shouldn’t use your instincts and training well. But it does mean that your sales assumptions must be based in a finding of facts, not guesses.

Using the dart game in the sales profession can lead to failure. You have limited time on your sales call to a prospective buyer and your darts must hit their mark. It’s even more crucial when you use the phone for your sales prospecting activities: many telephone sales calls miss their mark as being off-the-shelf calls that aren’t developed with a specific buyer in mind. Dartboard selling is a quick way to go broke.

Top notch salespeople advise that 75% of a successful sale is due to the pre-flight work. You must make sure you know what direction you want to go in, and you have to ask precise questions that will lead you to confirm needs you recognized through trigger events. You must know what direction to fly before your takeoff.

Most sales people out there are making a huge mistake meeting (or talking over the phone) with their clients unprepared. They think it is enough to schedule the meeting and they will work their magic and close the deal. They will try to break the ice with the customer by talking about the stuff in his office. Then the next misstep is to ask a few questions and not even wait for the answers, but to start with the same old sales pitch.

This kind of salesperson knows all the answers and few features and benefits later they will ask for the business. After hearing few “No’s” from customer they may give up and leave the office with the promise of a follow up a few days later. Unfortunately, the down side is that the customer will probably never return their calls.

Big number of sales people doesn’t take the time to have a conversation with their customers, because they assume that every other customer is like all the others. You will discover that your previous assumptions in sales were fatal many times. Keep those times in the past. It was necessary for you to learn a lesson every salesperson needs to learn, and now is the time to grow and develop your skills and knowledge. You will do so in developing your knowledge about trigger events. It is time to replace assumptions with research.

When you start learning how to recognize trigger events, rather than trying to assume or guess at them, will not only enhance your professional sales career and knowledge, but will increase your sales savvy to what the customer needs.

It is mind-boggling to receive a sales telephone call and the caller spits out a menu of mechanical words. The customer isn’t even, it seems, invited to be part of the conversation. It’s all about the need of the seller. Now when you contact your customers with information collected from recognized trigger events, you will have right questions to ask them, and all you need to do is listen to their answers and reshape your presentation accordingly.

Start with understanding customer’s actual situation and have their needs on your mind, but also find the way to put them on the market by making them realize their yet uncovered needs.

I hope you realize how often you barked up the wrong tree in your prospecting activities, talking to companies without the real need, following up and leaving numerous messages to someone who doesn’t see the value in your product. It is time to move on. Of course, at one time when we were starting sales, we all may have wasted our time that way, calling people from the long list of unqualified prospects we got from our manager, simply because they were in our territory or vertical market.

Now you will have a very powerful tool to change your approach to selling.

You have to understand the positioning of the company, what are they needs, does not matter if they are hidden or visible to public eye.

You need to do this ahead of the first contact as part of your trigger events research. You have to know the customer’s situation better than perhaps they know it, because at the time of presentation of your product, you will have their needs on your mind and prepare your sales presentation accordingly to information you hold.

Think value. Give to the customer what they ask for; give them what they need and more, drive the conversation to the customer’s wants and needs.
Impress them with the depth of your understanding of their position on the market and recent events that can trigger buying process, and they will sign on dotted line.

Very often you can hear how selling is a form of art, how sales people need to be creative and use their imagination, but I am not agreeing with that – sales is more science than anything. Yes you can use imagination and creativity, but after using tools available to you. With the proper tools and techniques you’ll replace guesswork with success.

Even if your company does not have automated system to generate new leads for you, when you learn more about trigger events, you will be able to find your next customer by your own. This will send the message to your manager that you care about your job and you really want to develop your career further, without waiting for someone.

Becoming best in team is an achievable goal and your self-confidence is growing as you establish a competitive advantage towards your colleges and towards your competition.

You don’t need to use old sales excuses anymore, like “territory is too small”, “need more training”, “inadequate sales tools”, “marketing provides no leads”, “we are over priced” etc.

Numbers of sales people who lose their jobs or miss their quota each year are not really important to you anymore, because you are more confident that you know what you doing in your sales role and all thanks to getting new customers from trigger events.

Now you are becoming a real Sales Professional. And it is a good feeling having control over your sales career, isn’t it?

Hit or miss doesn’t work in selling is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

If you read any of the Sherlock Holmes stories, it will interest you in the quality of observation which the salesperson must cultivate. Sherlock Holmes had a remarkable ability for finding out what sort of people he was dealing with, through powers of close observation. The author, Conan Doyle, takes pains to explain in every story that Sherlock Holmes did nothing by chance, and did not rely upon any invisible, peculiar, or mystic power to aid him in making his deductions. He had simply cultivated a remarkable shrewdness of observation. This is a quality that the salesperson must cultivate. It will enable you to understand your customer.

One of the first things a salesperson must do is to find out certain facts about his customer which are sure to be necessary or valuable to him in his work. These facts will vary in different cases. There are certain facts that it is usually necessary to know, such as the name and address, when they are essential to the transaction or needed for future reference. There are certain facts of personality and business conditions in respect to which no two customers will be exactly alike, and these facts (especially such of them as show a difference from the normal on the part of the customer) are of extraordinary importance to the salesperson.

In short, the salesperson must understand his customer, and his understanding must be based on facts.

What Can You Learn From Sherlock Holmes? is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

Today I am sharing with you my Daily Sales Tip #21 titled: “Find companies that have immediate wants and needs.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xcuv3uzWgU

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Video: Daily Sales Tip #21 is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

Three main keys of every sale are:

1. Researching and qualifying your customers
2. Being in front of them
3. Being there when they are ready to buy

To start the sales process you need to find out who could be in the market today, and then recognize your selected customer’s wants and needs. Even if your company does not have automated system to generate new leads for you, when you learn more about prospecting, you will be able to find your next customer by your own.

Your mission as a sales person should be to find companies that have immediate wants and needs. This means that something happened or is happening to them – a move, a merger, new investors, etc. You have to look for any event that might create the opportunity for you, or better said you are looking for event that can trigger the sales for you.

Selling itself is changing. Customers are more educated, they are searching for information by themselves, and they are looking from providers to understand buyer’s situation, needs and business. Salespeople need new knowledge about prospecting and new set of tools to be better prepared for challenges that customers are putting in front of us each day.

That is why we created “The Secrets of Prospecting” one-day workshop that goes above and beyond usual sales trainings about prospecting and cold calling – you will learn and practice where to find events that trigger the purchase to happen, directly from the author of the book “Trigger Events”!

After the workshop you will know who to target, why to target and how to target them; how to open the conversation and warm up cold calls; how to create interest in the first few minutes of the conversation and how to successfully follow up.  More about the workshop…

Registration options:

1. Click HERE to fill the form.

2. Visit http://prospectingsecrets.eventbrite.com to register and pay online

3. To register by phone call us at 416-840-4982 OR 1-866-876-4761

The Secrets of Prospecting is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

The successful approach is simply an advance agent of the appeal, the talking points of what you have to sell.
Instead of jumping right in and talking the points of your product before you’ve won your buyer’s interest, cloak the points and present them as something the buyer would want, provided they could be obtained. Then you’ve got an interested audience – the first essential to the sale.

You must arouse the interest of the person you are talking to. In the approach it isn’t about buying and selling; it’s about this: raising the interest of the prospect. There isn’t a product out on the market today that this simple rule cannot be applied to.
Now, what would it mean to you if every person called upon was interested beforehand – had called in or sent an email to the company asking to look at your proposition? It would mean more sales, and lots of them.

Well, you can make the first few minutes you spend with a prospect act like a double-page spread in the New York Times, and turn indifferent listeners into real buyers. Here are the two steps and standardized practice of the successful APPROACH:

• Step 1 – 0vercoming Instinctive Antagonism to Being Sold (read more about it in my previous post)
  By getting over on your prospect’s side of the fence, and working with them, not at them.
• Step 2 – Arousing Interest
  By presenting the points of your proposition as something they have long desired by establishing points of contact which make the prospect eager to go into details.

By the successful application of these two steps and the principles involved you have created the specialized situation of having your prospective purchaser interested and in a buying frame of mind.
The approach can do no more. You are now ready for the demonstration.

But showing products and demonstrating – before you have won a buyer’s interest – is like shooting at a duck before it’s within range. There is no law of humans or nature, which says you have a reasonable right to hope to connect your bullet with the bird.

To learn more about the Crucial Points to Succeed in Sales (and Life) get my e-book here.

The successful approach is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

If you want to be a successful sales person and to close the deal, very important part is to be in front of your customers at the exact time when they are on the market for goods or services. You can find companies they are on the market now, or you can put them in the market.

The only thing you can accomplish is to lose a precious time chasing prospects who are not interested for your product, or they are not a fit for your products or services at all.

Many unsuccessful sales people spend their time with customers who are not even close to sales process and to buying, but poorly trained sales person still contact them regularly simply because they are in pipeline and they need to fill their day somehow. Talking to that kind of prospects is just a waste of your and their time.

When you are selling you need to differentiate and trigger events will make this possible. You will have tools to create the opportunity for you, and not just in the visible market where customers are actively looking for provider or supplier, but also in the invisible market – you put them in the market, you are making customers realize that they are on the market now. Without trigger events you can’t force customers to meet with you because you will be just one of many sales guys knocking on their door.

Here are two examples of trigger events:

• Your research shows some trigger events like hiring new 15-20 sales reps or changes in upper management levels: this clearly sends out messages that the company is in need of new office furniture or new computers with software, or maybe a new benefits plan for employees.
• Thousands of corporate turnarounds occur every year. You may have read about a few of them in your local newspaper, but that’s not enough. There are companies in a turnaround phase that affect sales in your area all the time. I suggest keeping abreast of the New York Times or other newspapers like that in your region. Their business page carries a number of turnaround events throughout the company along with web sites by the large accounting firms and graduate business colleges such as Wharton. Turnaround time means change time: new people, new products, new services, and new sales potential for you.

Customers will be positively shocked with your due diligence and fact-finding mission you accomplished with them. When you contact your prospects and on the first conversation you leave them with impression you know their situation very well — you care to help, and you can add value to them, trust me when I say you are much closer to signing a deal than anybody else.

After discovering trigger events, the next steps are to develop the customer’s perception of your unique value. What can you do for them? How your solution can actually create value to them?

Trigger events will give you the clue about the timing too.

More about Trigger Events here:

Selling in 21st Century

Hit or miss doesn’t work in selling

Get the book “Trigger Events”

Differentiate Prospects from Suspects is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

By definition, a sale is the act of meeting prospective buyers and providing them with a product or service in return for money or other agreed upon compensation. A sale is an act of completion of a commercial activity. The “deal is closed”, means the customer has consented to the proposed product or service by making full or partial payment (as in the case of installments) to the seller.

Selling is therefore a process in which you need to follow certain steps, one at a time, to reach your final goal – the sale itself.
The same fundamentals that govern the direct sale of tangible goods govern the indirect sales of intangible goods.
Your sales process will also depend on your efforts invested in research and understanding your customer base, together with your energy and enthusiasm about your product.

Sometimes you can skip some steps if the customer is giving you signals to move further, faster. Otherwise, it solely depends on you and your readiness to be prepared before contacting the prospect.

If we simplify the whole sales process we can agree that there are four major steps in sales:

1. opening/qualifying
2. information gathering
3. presentation of your proposal, and
4. closing.

Opening phase is usually a result of a cold call to someone who has not yet heard of you or thought about working with you.

Information gathering is a second step when sales person is asking customers what they do, how they do it, and why they do it that way. Then he/she ask how his company can help them do it better. Usually second step means getting the meeting or presentation opportunity.

Proposal is next step when sales person is giving the presentation based on the gathered information, and giving the recommendation or meaningful solution to solve their pains, issues, or needs.

When customer decides to buy that is a fourth step in sales process and the only step that actually counts – closing the deal. This means they see the value in your solution and you assisted to buyer to make a decision based on information you provided.

When you don’t close the deal you did not completed your process. It is very similar to playing baseball when you get to the third base but never reach home and score; in sales this means you have gone through three steps but on the end you didn’t engaged buyer enough to see the value in your solution.

You didn’t address their needs that will trigger a buy to happen. You have wasted your time and your customer’s time, and there is hardly any chance of getting back to that customer to try to sell again.

More about the lead generation, cold calling, presenting, objection handling and closing techniques you can learn on my regularly scheduling webinars. Feel free to subscribe to my daily sales tips newsletter.

The Four Major Steps in Sales is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer