Our last webinar, video, and podcast have all carried a consistent theme to building successful relationships with A&E Firms and Consultants:  You have to educate them.

One of our action items this month is to identify a topic to teach your specifier targets.  

Hello everyone.  Great session on Selling Hosted and Managed Services to the IT Department.  Besides driving home the fact that IT will embrace these services today, the most important message was for you to master the clues that the IT department is having a problem.  In fact, I’ve created a one-pager for your reference. 

Remember when we started our last webinar and I asked you to write down the topic that was occupying your mind?  Over 90% of you said it was something other than our presentation that we were starting.  I delivered a live session last week in Toronto to about 30 sales people, and every single one of them were thinking about something else… not one of them claimed they were thinking about our workshop. 

Now, let’s think about your customers.  When you arrive to deliver the presentation of your life, they’re finishing up an email or preparing for a meeting later that day.  Even though you can’t think about anything else, your presentation that’s about to start is probably third or fourth on their minds.  How do you shift their attention?

As we discussed in our last session, you’ll receive this objection more than any other when trying to sell service agreements. One of the action items was to become so good at answering this objection that you can address it in your sleep.

Well, what have you come up with? How would you answer this question: “Why should I buy you service agreement now?” Please offer your answers in our comments below. If we can get just 10 comments, think of the help you can gain from all the other Security Net professionals.

As we discussed in our last session, one of the most common sales obstacles is dead silence.  We work our tails off trying to get in front of clients and prospects, with absolutely no reaction.  Sometimes, it would be better if they’d just take our call and tell us to leave them alone!  How about the times a client calls us over and over again, and becomes our best friends until they get what they need – and then you never hear from them? 

I’ve found that the Break-Up Email that I shared in our session is the most effective way to get a response.  See example:

 

As we discussed in our last session, discouragement is one of the most common obstacles for all sales people, regardless of industry.  Not only can this negative emotion be miserable, it takes away from every area of your sales performance, and can throw you into a downward spiral – the worse you feel, the worse you perform; the worse you perform, the worse you feel.  Obviously, being able to overcome or avoid discouragement can be a huge advantage for you.

In our session, I shared six ideas to overcoming discouragement and have shared them below.  However, I’m interested in your real world feedback.  What have you done to get past being discouraged in the past?  What activities or people have you avoided? 

Ideas shared in our webinar:

As we discussed in our last session, simply providing solutions to known problems is a commodity today.  In 2016 and beyond, we have to be the ones to find problems before they arise.  That’s hard to do.