SPG Blog

1. Make your goal incredibly specific. If you are setting a goal for cold calls, make the number specific. Decide whether it means calls or contacts or conversations. For example, “I will make 100 cold calls where I talk to a new potential client by phone or email.”

2. Set a “complete by” date. A goal without a deadline is like a fishing line without a hook. It looks great on the surface but you won’t catch anything! We all need targets and timelines so that we can pace our progress and establish when we’ve met our goal. Again, make your goal specific, like “I will make 100 cold calls where I talk to a new potential client by phone or email in the month of October.”

3. Imagine the impact of your goal. What is the expected impact of the new activity? How will completing the goal improve your sales in the long term? Short term? This will help motivate you to achieve your goal, and also give you a good sense of whether your goal is worth pursuing. (more…)

Steve Wheatly, the manager of a successful luggage and travel accessories store, recently cut off a Google ad campaign that promoted a product on the company’s website. He was paying as much as $93 per sale, but the product retailed for only $53. That kind of upside-down ROI was the impetus for immediate action, right? Nope. Wheatly reluctantly admits that he’d been watching the situation for more than 18 months before finally pulling the plug.

“I just didn’t want to give up on the sales,” he says, sheepishly.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated example. Wheatly’s tale—the story is true, though his name has been changed to protect the guilty—is not uncommon. Many business managers are much more focused on—and have a much better picture of—their revenue than they do of their profit. The focus on the top line versus the bottom line is an issue for companies of all sizes. For example, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that one of the Fortune 500 was reviewing its cost structure for the first time in 10 years. But it is a more pernicious problem for many small businesses that don’t have the luxury of deep pockets and complacent investors. (more…)

By Neil Rackham
Review by Jennifer Dawson

There’s a scene in the critically acclaimed but very nasty 1992 movie Glengarry Glen Ross that sticks in my head. Alec Baldwin, who plays a bad-ass consultant “from downtown” charged with increasing sales in a Chicago-based real estate office, introduces himself to his incredulous sales team with a profanity-peppered monologue. At one point he flips over a blackboard, revealing several chalked words, their first letter highlighted. Against an ominous backdrop of lightning flashes, Baldwin reviews the words. “A-B-C,” he rants. “A, Always, B, Be, C, Closing. Always be closing.”

ABC. Always Be Closing. According to Neil Rackham, a psychologist whose substantial research on the sales process has revolutionized sales training around the world, ABC has been a widely repeated sales mantra since the 1920s. But Rackham is a bit of an iconoclast. In his book Spin Selling—which was first published in 1988 and is still earning devoted followers around the world–Rackham asserts that ABC doesn’t work, at least for large sales with higher price tags and longer sales cycles.

SPIN stands for Situation, Problem, Implication and Need-payoff. Each word describes a kind of question that a salesperson should ask a prospect in order to strengthen the relationship and increase the perceived value of the product or service that is being sold. Rackham’s model is founded on questions: intelligent, considered in advance, and designed to help the customer see problems as needing to solved and the salesperson as a problem solver. (more…)

1. Provide easy access to clear and accurate information about the change. Ensure that all departments and areas have equal access and receive the same message.
2. Allow opportunities for people in the organization to provide input and feedback. Don’t consult after key decisions have already been made. Close the communication loop by letting those who contributed know how their ideas and opinions were (or were not) incorporated into the change process.
3. Enroll leaders in adopting the change. Include both leaders by position and natural leaders. Enlisting the support of natural leaders will encourage organic change within the organization.