Thinking About Trying A New Sales Approach?

Think About Your Solution

I witness this one a lot in the software space.
What you say: "The next version of our software is going to fix all of the problems".
What the other person hears: "Wait until the next version comes out before you purchase or invest the time to learn something that will be replaced." This is very similar to the Osbourne effect mentioned below. Keep a tight lip on upcoming releases or improvements to your product. Always surprise to the upside.

Let these hilarious, but very real samples of boneheaded business moves inspire you today.

A value proposition is a statement, made by your organization, of the tangible value customers get from using your product or service. It refers specifically to the value derived from your offering, not a description of the solution.

There are 2 ways to grow your company

1. More time: Nights and weekends
2. More creativity: Change something operationally (stay creative)

You can spend more time, working nights and weekends to help your business grow. You can also use that same time to get a little creative. Your time is finite so there is only so much more value you can add by continuing to operate the same way you always have. You need to devote more time to being creative, critical and forward thinking. Easy to say, harder to do. The hard worker mentality is not enough to grow your business, or your individual brand. This is because hard work without creativity will only allow you to compete on price instead of benefit when you are selling a product or service. The image above is from Google CEO, Eric Schmidt’s new book and has been circulating around the internet. It emphasizes the point I am making, but the caption might be ignorant of Android and Google + being obvious clones of successful products. The image does capture something interesting about creating additional benefit. Maybe the lemonade everyone drinks tastes fine and is downright inexpensive. Maybe you have to look at your market, get creative and solve a different problem. Maybe people aren’t just thirsty, maybe you can make them feel differently. If you think “Hard Lemonade” is the answer, you should probably have the foresight to see “Harder Lemonade” open a stand right next to you.

Want to grow your business a certain amount this quarter? Focus on the process and let the rest fall into place. The problem with goals is that a single victory appears long off on the horizon. The fragile creatures that we are don’t like feeling inadequate on our journey towards a goal. Large goals make it so much easier to tell yourself, there’s always tomorrow. You want to achieve success every day, not beat yourself up chasing it.

 

There’s a deranged set of values propagated in society that separate hard work and success. A misconception implanted as late as late as the 1960's by our own department of labor that predicted a 14 hour work week. Do you even want a shorter work week? Well, you voted no when you enrolled in college, bought a smartphone, and started saving for that luxury car. You must have changed your mind when you realized how hard it is to actually get everything you want. The challenge placed in front of me and my team is to scale the education and tools to take a majority population of average sales performers and enable their potential to be top performers. They all want a shorter work week, but that will not likely be the outcome of our solution and shouldn’t be our goal.

Still trying to sell a set of cool functions and features to an exec? You might be relying too much on comfort with your own product. The key to shortening sales cycles is to get to decision makers right away. If you're not comfortable talking about your product in the following terms, you won't be successful selling to decision makers. Take a step back and think like an exec with these 7 critical business issues an executive is always trying to solve

The first phase of SaaS is a land grab. The second phase of SaaS is maximing revenue per customer, and minimizing churn. Customer retention, or churn, is a key metric on the radar of every executive. You simply cannot build a sustainable business without measuring and maintaining an acceptable level of retention. Now what that retention rate is for your business will depend on the industry, but it is important to identify and fix churn issues that are in your control. The cost of acquisition is the leading economic factor in reducing churn. It simply costs more in sales and marketing to bring in a new customer than maintaining and growing the customers you already have.

The Hype

I simply can’t help myself when I see names like Instagram, Friendfeed, OMGPOP in the headlines. I blow through those articles like a set of self-help tapes wondering why I can’t devise one of these seemingly simple schemes. Its just those simple ideas that everyone thinks they could have come up with. When you hear these names they are probably being criticized, or adored because of their recent acquisitions.