If there ever were a Zen excuse for not selling, it is “I’m afraid of the process.” Oh, come on. Follow Arthur Ashe’s advice and

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

Or how about this most agonizing excuse for not selling, “I failed once; why try again?” Stop the agony and join post-mortem reviews on proposals and pitches that failed. It’s not fun to learn that you’ve failed, and it’s even less fun to sit still while other people pick apart your approach and point out your mistakes . . . but it might be the most important learning you ever do. Take advantage of your firm or company’s business development and sales training and other professional development programs, such as client retention and client management.

If all else fails, find books, podcasts or blogs that address your issues and learn from them. Ignorance is no excuse in today’s multimedia world! You can find any learning you want if you just look for it. Don’t be limited by sticking to just your field. If you sell whatsits, listening to a podcast by a guy who sells thingamajigs might just give you important insight. At a certain level, sales is sales.

How many people have you met or heard of who could “sell anything?” It’s not magic! Yes, some people are simply born to sell, but 99% of successful salespeople have spent years honing their craft and learning from experts. Learning how to get new customers in sales.

Here’s an excuse I’ve heard frequently, “I know no one who knows anyone.” Mark Twain had it right.

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

So, get started already. If you’re the one who doesn’t know anyone, find professional groups in your area and join them, even if they’re just online in social media.

It’s an oldie but a goodie, but joining network marketing groups can be a great way to connect with prospects and seasoned professionals alike to help you on your sales journey. This can be an excellent way to learn about increasing revenue through sales growth from experts who have walked the same path you are currently walking.

And don’t you just love this one, “My partner does all the selling; I deliver the work.” It is clearly the responsibility of customer relationship leaders to ensure that all team members build relationships with their peers at their business locations and in professional organizations. If you see sales as somebody else’s business, your customers will soon seek out other companies that sell to them more effectively. Harvey Mackey, an internationally known sales guru, says,

“Everyone is in sales. It’s the only way we stay in business.”

And here’s my favorite Zen excuse for not selling, “I can’t market but I’ll hire someone who can.”Oh, come on now, call your marketing department and learn to practice pitches, proposals and even lunches. Make it clear that the more you learn their craft, the more money the whole business will make and the bigger everyone’s checks will be. My favorite poetess, Maya Angelou, has it spot-on:

“Nothing will work unless you do.”

Dr. Allan Colman
Chief Revenue Officer
ClosersGroup.com
1.310.508.8600

• targeting new markets or customer types;
• shifting their messages or value propositions;
• deploying new digital marketing capabilities;
• adding new services or products;
• adjusting pricing; and
• creating special offers.

Enough with these ups and downs that we hear constantly in the news. There are spikes, there are no spikes. More businesses and parks are opening; more threats to close them down again. Wear masks; don’t need to wear masks. If you haven’t already established your operating level to build and/or rebuild your revenue stream, determine which of the following would be most helpful in enhancing your entire business acceleration efforts.

This is just one of 15 segments from our BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT RAPID ASSESSMENT we conduct with our clients.

• Making decisions on under-performing activities and investments?
• Multiplying the use of single marketing tools to leverage wider exposure and response generation?
• Expanding the number of colleagues actively selling?
• Establishing completion timelines with specific assignments for senior management?
• Could you utilize business generation training sessions?
• Providing a format for building a long-term pipeline of leads and opportunities?
• Maximizing the impact of proposals and pitches?
• Completing a success/rejection analysis of past pitches and proposals?
• Measuring and reporting results?
• Closing more business?

Which ones will help you?

• Accelerate more revenue;
• Double the number of prospects;
• Open many more doors?

  

Now you are off the COVID Carousel
and on to a Revenue Acceleration Campaign!

Dr. Allan Colman
Chief Revenue Officer
ClosersGroup.com
1.310.508.8600

[Okay! Enough of the Big Bad Wolf analogy!]

Accelerating revenue is working where the focus is on the active pursuit and moving closer to closing. That’s closing of new-client engagements or selling your goods and services. Building relationships at this stage is absolutely critical for ultimately winning new business.

THERE ARE ONLY THREE SOURCES OF NEW BUSINESS

Success happens when you have a solid strategy to land new clients from:

• Clients,
• Referrals,
• Prospects.

A professional services firm should have at least 50% of its new business every year coming from clients and referrals. This indicates a client’s recognition of high-quality work and on-going awareness of client service, which, in turn, results in more work from recent and past clients and their willingness to refer business. (And you should be referring business to them.) We find all too many clients focus on developing prospects. They should also be going for that 50% factor of past clients and referrals.

So . . .
What can you do to cultivate relationships with past clients and customers?
What resources can you turn to that cultivate more referrals?
What simple directions can you work from to find new clients?

For a complimentary copy of our business development OPPORTUNITIES CHECK LIST: acolman@closersgroup.com.

Dr. Allan Colman,
Chief Revenue Officer
ClosersGroup.com
1.310.508.8600

We have faced the big bad wolf before, confronting obstacles never amassed in such numbers or hurled with such spirit- deflating persistence as this Covid-19.

Remember, Little Red Riding Hood feared the wolf at first. Then she walloped him. Moral of the story: Rainmakers can also kick the wolf, especially the one at the door.

Of course, the facts aren’t pretty. An overview of the economy shows significant job loss among current and former clients. As a result, the fear factor (Maslow’s Hierarchy) accelerates searching for new business and prospects. Factors driving the selection process are both operational and economic.

Here’s where Little Red Riding Hood can do some serious clawing. New opportunities will be created daily. Particularly for small to midsized firms and companies that base their survival strategies on client service, an enticing new business tool is now accepting applicants.

It would be a shame to squander such opportunities by falling back on old excuses. Now is the time to sell by overcoming client resistance and offering a carrot or two to pique the buyers’ interest.

In any event, the real takeaway is that every impediment to accelerating revenue can be transformed into a revenue acceleration tool. Know where the wolves lurk and how they do their best hunting.

For the tech-savvy, the horizons are vast.
• Access the relevant sites.
• Ask your own questions, offer responses.
• Contact the questioners.
• Link them to your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. pages.

Do them now! And have them ready for the return to action.

The very fact that you are resourceful enough to do so will be a critical differentiator between you and your competition.

The Big Bad Wolf is typically a bully. But he does not stand a chance with people who fight back using our Business Development Roadmaping.

Dr. Allan Colman,
Chief Revenue Officer
ClosersGroup.com
1.310.508-.8600

With four generations now occupying the business world, knowing who you are selling to becomes a challenge.

Who are these four generations of buyers ?

1. Baby Boomers / Ages 55-73 / Work hard; first generation with women in the workforce; WOODSTOCK!
2. Gen X / Ages 38-54 / Work-life balance, and enjoying life now;
3. Gen Y (Millennials) / Ages 25-39 / Impatient and casual, but globally and environmentally oriented;
4. Gen Z / Ages 9-25 / Pragmatic and great at multi-tasking.

To effectively reach these four types of buyers, you may need to:

• Refocus your content;
• Refine your message and graphics; and
• Reposition your “reach” tactics such as social media and collateral.

In building a communications plan, advertisers recognize the need to channel and properly encode a message so the end user properly decodes it. A classic example is a mistake made by KFC. In translating “finger lickin’ good” into Mandarin, the encoder used language that translated into “eat my fingers.”

Today, it is critical to understand how our four generations in business want to receive your messages.

1. Boomers prefer solutions-oriented selling.
2. Gen X prefers value-based selling.
3. Gen Y prefers digital selling.
4. Gen Z prefers tech-detailed selling.

Selling to multiple generations means improving the ability to successfully communicate. Take into account your audience’s decoding preferences and accelerate your sales next quarter.

Dr. Allan Colman,
Chief Revenue Officer
ClosersGroup.com
1.310.508-.8600

If virtual happy hours, wine clubs, breakfast clubs, etc. are meeting regularly using video systems, how are you using video calls to stay in touch with your customers, clients and prospects?

• Are you providing consulting services via video?
• How often have you presented your newest product line directly to customers?
• Have you set up video calls with prospects to review their current needs?

In the good old days [as in last month!], seeking to identify new sources of revenue followed the Rule of 4:

• Rule #1: Find ‘em
• Rule #2: Meet ‘em
• Rule #3: Get ‘em
• Rule #4: Keep ‘em

By adding video calls, you can still find ‘em, get ‘em and keep ’em. In this manner, you can come close what we focus clients on –

50 % of new business every year
should come from clients/customers, referrals and prospects.

Check-out this 5-minute video on how to set-up great Zoom calls for selling in today’s times.

If you have tried video services, you know there are some glitches. This April 7, 2020 article appeared in Harvard Business Publishing and simply demonstrates the use and reliability of Zooming, “webcamming,” “internetting.”

“Please bear with me, this is all very new.
“In the past few weeks, you’ve likely received (or even sent) dozens of messages like this from colleagues, students, family, and friends. We’re all trying our best to adapt to a new normal that decidedly isn’t. Just as technology has become an essential part of our personal and professional lives, that technology shows us just how unreliable it can be—webcams suddenly stop working, internet connections aren’t quite as good as we thought they were, and that lecture you spent the last hour recording? Yeah . . . the audio cut out. You’ll have to do that again. “As frustrating as all of this can be, at least it’s a shared frustration. And it’s heartening to see how people are, overwhelmingly, bearing with each other. Unplanned occurrences—like a family member’s sudden cameo in your econ class—are part of everyone’s daily routine now, and there’s a level of compassion that comes with that. In The Faculty Lounge this week, we’re looking at how we’re helping one another through this time thanks to patience, empathy, and even a little humor.”

So, follow our three rules of CLIENT RETENTION: communicate, communicate, communicate. Add video communications to your emails and phone meetings. You can overcome the glitches. Get to work on what your business needed all along. Focus on what will help you when the NEW NORMAL is ready to be kick-started.

We will keep you updated as more develops, and we are always here to help answer any pressing questions on accelerating revenue. Please feel free to reach out to us for more advice on accelerating revenues.

Dr. Allan Colman, Chief Revenue Officer

Small Business Plan to Thriving During The Great Mess

Small-business owners, partners, board members and business investors have two primary concerns top-of-mind: debt and revenue. The new CARES Act and even the current SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) program might offer sufficient funds to save thousands of dollars each month. Both are now apparently offering low-interest loans AND grants for recovery from economic injury, including:
• Operating Expenses
• Cash Flow Disruption
• Delayed Working Capital
• Accounts Payable
• Fixed Debts.

Although the EIDL program is not designed to replace profits or revenues, the focus is, indeed, on paying financial obligations “directly related to disasters.” And your debt clearly meets this objective. Congress has expanded the EIDL program and relaxed the underwriting guidelines for small businesses.

Immediate Takeaways

The first step is to assess and prioritize your company/agency/firm’s needs and then scan the SBA website for eligibility definitions. This should include previewing the application process and identifying where and how your economic “injuries” fit. Next, complete and submit applications as soon as feasible, recognizing you might need to modify them as the Agency begins its review process. Note that although the impetus from Covid-19 is to streamline the government’s procedures, the volume of claims will most likely slow the process down.

Key takeaway: Act quickly and ask for help if you need it. At some point, an SBA staff member will be assigned to work with you to complete and hopefully approve your application. And there is a provision to “grant” up to $10,000.00 within three days.

Once your application(s) is accepted, there may be more forms to fill in, more tax returns to file, collateral could be required and an evaluation of business activity from past years might also be requested. Time estimates I have heard include 50–60 days before the application is completed and approved, the loan/grant documents forwarded, and another week or two for signatures. Then a check should be forthcoming.

Side note: Sometimes the SBA asks for “verified” financial statements, so it is a good idea to start this process now.

But it should all be worth it if your debt for the above expenses are covered. The Act even provides a system in which many loans granted under these programs could be waived.

Pandemic Business Life

Now we’ve covered inexpensive debt financing. So, let’s view your revenue needs next.

Our challenge is to prepare businesses to move rapidly when key “turning points”arrive. Public health experts are examining several scenarios in which social distancing could be relaxed in two months, partial operations starting in four months, and “business as usual” may be a year away. If, as one scenario suggests, warm weather brings major relief from the virus spreading, “. . . . we need to use the summer lull to steel our response.”
(Pinsker, The Atlantic, March 26, 2020).

Let’s not wait to find out what post-pandemic-life will be like. Begin building a flexible strategic business/actions plan now and start working with some of its tasks. It will provide immediate takeaways you can begin implementing now and may lead to unique solutions as we all wrestle facing uncertainty.

Get to work today on what your business needed all along. Focus on what will help you when the NEW NORMAL is ready to be kick-started.

We will keep you updated as more develops, and we are always here to help answer any pressing questions on your mind. Please feel free to reach out directly to me at: acolman@closersgroup.com

Dr. Allan Colman, Chief Revenue Officer