(Photo by Abhi Ryan)
You might have noticed that marketing and sales tactics that worked successfully in the past, no longer return great results. That’s not surprising. The economic stress everyone has been under has forced businesses and people to scrutinize all purchases, cut back expenses, and do more with fewer resources. At the same time, they’re bombarded with offers by what seems to be an ever-increasing pool of providers. They’re tired, stressed, and short on time.
So, if you’re fortunate to get a meeting with a prospect to discuss your services, you can’t blow it. You will not get a second chance. One sure way to ruin a meeting is by overwhelming the prospect with too much information, writes Jill Konrath in her article, Whatever You Do, Don’t Do This during a Sales Meeting. But no matter how strong the urge to tell them everything about your business and your services, suppress it.
“Prospects who receive massive information dumps unconsciously erect barriers to slow or even derail your sales efforts,” Konrath says. “Top sellers understand it takes time to demonstrate value and develop strong relationships. Knowing this, they put together a one-step-at-a-time account-entry strategy that advances the sales process much faster than if they tried to do everything in a single call.”
Know what else will cause sales to fail? Your mindset, says Nancy Fox in her article, How You’re Sabotaging Your Sales Effort. If you find yourself thinking negatively about money and your ability to sell, chances are those thoughts are affecting your client and prospect relationships. If you are shy and uncertain, prospects will think you lack the confidence and enthusiasm to help them. If you are uncomfortable talking about money, you won’t stand up for yourself when a prospect pressures you on price.
Fortunately there are several ways to help you change your mindset and truly boost your business, such as positive visioning, avoiding using words that don’t express confidence such as “I’ll try” or “hopefully,” and committing to what you really want.
For leaders of firms, it’s time to make a similar type of mindset change. It’s time to stop thinking about leading in a down economy and instead think about how to lead in an upturn, writes Mike Schultz in his article, Economic Storm Clearing: Time to Change Your Leadership Strategy. Push aside thoughts of merely surviving and return to thinking innovatively and competitively.
“Now that the end of the Great Recession is here, services firms must renew hustle, passion, intensity, and competitiveness. It’s time to roll out words we haven’t used for a while: innovation, opportunity, and progress,” Schultz says.
Are you afraid to poke your head out from behind the bunker where you’ve been waiting out the storm? Not sure how to get back into competitive mode? Schultz has a four-step process to get you going.
Your mindset also plays a critical role in blogging to generate business. That’s because it takes time to attract prospects, and you can get discouraged and give up waiting for that to happen. But don’t, stresses Scott Ginsberg in his podcast interview, The Secret to Turning Browsers into Buyers. Continue to write meaningful content, get it in front of your target audience, and provide ways to interact with you, and you will eventually start getting people interested in buying your services.
“Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get comments right away. You have to keep doing it because you have to build up that mass of information that establishes you as a trusted authority,” Ginsberg says. “There’s a way to convert eyeballs into dollar signs if you do it in a respectful way that gets people’s permission and does it through a continuous stream of education.”
