Warm Sales Message - Next Wave Marketing Strategies

Is your glass half empty or half full? Do you see the murky gray cloud or the shimmering silver lining? Are you a happy person or a sad person?

You may think that the answers to these questions affect only your personal life, but according to Shawn Achor, CEO of Good Think, Inc. you’re wrong. Achor has spent more than a decade researching the science of happiness and he has discovered several interesting bits of knowledge.

Happiness Is a Choice

This does not ignore our basic brain chemistry. Some of us are pre-programmed to look for the negative first, last, and always. Achor sees happiness as a habit that can be developed, or a weak muscle that can be made strong with daily exercises.

We Have Single-Processor Brains

Our brains tend to believe and act upon what they see first. If the first thing they see is a negative, that impression sticks with them, and we respond as if the entire situation were distasteful. By the same token, a brain that first absorbs the positive won’t have the time or the space to process negative. The happy brain is an open, welcoming brain that can always see the best possible outcome.

Happy Brains and Sales

Achor’s research shows that a happy and engaged corporate culture can increase its productivity by 31%, its accuracy on difficult tasks by 19%, and its sales by a whopping 37%.

An optimistic, cheerful orientation can make tasks like cold calling and slowly working your way through the sales process much easier. Instead of thinking of cold calling as a nuisance, for instance, you might come to view it as an opportunity to help the person you’re contacting and make his or her life better. By the same token, you might view a long sales process as your chance to build a rapport with the potential customer.

But My Company Is Not a Happy Place…

More and more employers are realizing the benefits of enacting policies and trainings that encourage employee happiness. If your employer hasn’t yet jumped on the bandwagon, though, it doesn’t mean that you are doomed to misery. You could find a job at a firm that is more dedicated to teaching employees to look for the good in every situation.

You could also use simple mental exercise techniques to train yourself to be a happier person. This is actually the better of the two options; whether you work for the best boss in the world or the worst, the decision to face each day with happiness and optimism is a personal one.

You can read more information about Shawn Achor’s work and his exercises to help grow your “happy muscle” at http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/19/opinion/happiness-success-achor/index.html

Prospecting Tips - Next Wave Marketing Strategies

It’s Tuesday afternoon when Tom’s boss finds him staring sadly at the telephone on his desk. “I’m supposed to be making follow up calls,” Tom admitted. “I hate doing that. It just makes me feel so…pushy.”

While many people can understand Tom’s sentiments about making follow up calls, the truth is that they are an important part of the sales process and that most customers do not find them annoying or believe that the salesperson who makes them is being “pushy.”

There are several important ways that follow up calls can help your agency turn an on-the-fence prospect to a committed buyer.

1. You get to know the prospect better with each additional contact.

If you came across the prospect while cold calling or responding to Internet-generated insurance leads, you may not have known very much about them when you placed that first call. Each subsequent contact gives you a little more information about their organization’s goals and needs. The more information you have, the more you’ll be able to target your sales pitch to the unique set of circumstances faced by each prospect.

2. Additional contacts can make the prospect feel important and cared about.

This is especially true if your prospects are Internet insurance leads. Research has shown that a quick first contact followed by lead nurturing is the sales process most likely to convert a prospect into a customer, but many companies drop the ball by not providing any follow up. Some don’t even make that initial critical first call. Even if a prospect isn’t ready to buy insurance from you, it’s still nice for him to know that you are interested in his or her issues. When and if the prospect does decide to join a new insurance plan, he or she will naturally think of the one that has been providing follow up all along.

3. Follow up sets you apart from the crowd.

Suppose you opened the paper today and saw that a company you had tried cold calling last week had won a national award for excellence. You can capitalize on this opportunity by sending a hand-written card to your prospect congratulating him and his company, reminding the prospect of your earlier conversation, and asking him or her to keep you in mind for any insurance needs. How many of your competitors do you suppose will go to all that trouble?

If you’re still a little dubious about follow up calls as an integral part of making sales, you might want to invest in some CRM software which can remind you when follow up calls or do and even automatically send follow up letters and emails.

The important thing to remember about following up with prospects is that you’re not being a nuisance; you are monitoring their ongoing needs and offering vital services.

Improve Closing Techniques - Next Wave Marketing Strategies

As anyone who works in sales understands, selling is more of an art than a science. Sometimes closing a deal means forgetting what the textbook says and relying on your own instincts about a prospect you have become familiar with.

Based on his years of sales experience, guru Zig Ziglar offers beginning salespeople the following pieces of advice.

1. Turn Cold Calling into Warm Calling

Cold calling means you know nothing about the person on the other end of the line, and he or she knows nothing about you. Warm calling means that you have done your research and are familiar with the company to which you are reaching out. If possible, arrange for a business person that both you and your prospect respect to arrange for a casual introduction. Warm calling makes it much easier to get through the bureaucratic red tape.

2. Build Trust, Credibility, and Integrity

If your prospect has doubts about your integrity or simply doesn’t believe what you are saying, no amount of talking, persuading, and negotiating will convince him or her to close the deal. If you have taken a misstep and lost the prospect’s trust, you have probably lost all hope of a sale, at least until the trust can be rebuilt.

3. Listen First

Many salespeople are so thrilled to get prospects on the phone that they launch into an “elevator speech” about the virtues of their products or services. Zig Ziglar suggests that instead of rushing to be the first to speak, the consummate salesperson takes the time to be the first to listen. Find out what the prospects are and take some time to think about how your agency can help solve your prospect’s problems and make his or her life easier.

4. Don’t Try to Close Too Early

Attempting to close on a deal too early is a natural mistake in the sales-driven world of insurance, but Ziglar warns that attempting to close without getting a clear understanding of the prospect’s needs is a breach of trust. Suddenly the prospect feels like he or she is just a golden ring to be grabbed rather than a living, breathing person who needs the help of your agency.

5. Prepare a Proposal Unique to the Prospect

After you’ve listened and thought about what the prospect has to say, craft a unique proposal that addresses your products needs and concerns. Then – and only then – is it wise to move in for the closing and to ask your prospect to give you a clear “yes” or a clear “no.”

If you would like to hear more of Zig Ziglar’s unique ideas, you can listen to his podcast at http://zigziglar.libsyn.com/webpage/2012/02/24. It should be required course material for everyone who hopes to make a living in sales.

Social Media Boost Sales - Next Wave Marketing Strategies

You already know social media is great for swapping pictures with old friends and keeping up with family members, but it is also a very powerful marketing tool that, if used properly, can bring customers to you and keep them loyal to your agency. Here are some ideas you might try to make the most of the social network.

1. Spread the Word about Your Agency

Most people would rather buy insurance from someone they know and trust rather than from a total stranger. Make your prospects feel like they know you by creating accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. Of course, your agency should also have its own web page. As your name crops up on one forum after another, even prospects who have never spoken to one of your sales agents may begin to feel connected to your company, and that’s exactly what you want.

2. Participate in Social Forums

Just having an account on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ doesn’t necessarily mean prospects will just stumble across your information. You need to be an active participant in social media, posting or Tweeting several times each week. Some of your posts can be direct advertisements, but the rest should be service announcements, such as passing on information about a new law that affects insurance customers, or responses to other people’s posts. The more prospects you can engage online, the greater your chances of making a sale.

3. Respond Promptly to Questions and Comments

If a prospect reaches out to you by writing on your Facebook wall or sending you a message via LinkedIn or Twitter, respond promptly and suggest ways that your agency might be able to help. Prospects who get useful information after reaching out to you to engage online will trust your agency and will be more likely to think about you the next time they need to solve a thorny insurance problem.

4. Keep an Eye on Your Reputation

Social media monitoring is a critical part of launching a social network campaign. It involves going to each of the social media websites and looking for any mention of your agency’s name. If you come across a complimentary comment, thank the person who left it. If possible, offer a small token of your gratitude such as a free ebook or insurance report.

Social media monitoring is also useful because it allows you to catch negative comments about your agency and address them before they go viral. Contact the person who made the comment and work to give him or her a better experience with your agency.

It’s important that your sales agents realize that engaging in online social networks is an important part of their work, much like cold calling or following up with purchased leads. Emphasize that being a strong online presence can help increase your insurance sales.

Customer Referral Grid - Next Wave Marketing Strategies

If you’ve ever asked a friend or a family member to recommend a doctor or another professional, or if you’ve ever selected a service based on reviews on blogs that you trust, you know how powerful customer referrals can be. Reading a carefully crafted advertisement online has nowhere near the power of a real person saying, “I used X Agency for my insurance needs, and they did a great job.”

Encouraging Customer Referrals

If you want a customer to refer business to you, the first thing you must do is earn that customer’s trust. The second thing is to establish that you are a cut above your competitors when it comes to great customer service and innovative insurance ideas.

Once you have created a loyal, satisfied customer, you can increase sales by simply asking that customer to refer others to you. Asking is important, because many customers won’t think to do it on their own. You might even start an incentive program offering discounts or special perks to customers that refer others to your agency.

There are different ways that a customer can refer others to you. One is talking about your agency to co-workers, friends, and family members. Another is writing a testimonial that you can place on your blogs or social media sites.

Another good way to increase referrals is to invite your client to connect with you on LinkedIn, a professional social networking site. Once you are connected on LinkedIn, you can ask your client to introduce you to his or her other connections who might be interested in insurance.

How to Handle Referrals from Customers

If you want to increase sales, customer referrals should always be treated with kid gloves. If the newly referred customer asks to work with a certain member of your staff, for instance, do your best to honor that request. You can also build trust by checking in with the person who has been referred and making sure that he or she is happy with the products and services you are providing. If so, encourage your new customer to make referrals, too. The more satisfied customers you have, the more you can increase sales.

Winning Sales Attitude - NextWaveMarketingStrategies.com

Working in sales can be tough. Rejection goes with the territory, and you probably deal with some clients who exaggerate the virtues of your competitors in order to get the best deal possible. No one says you aren’t allowed a bad day from time to time, but if you find yourself repeatedly making the same tired excuses to your boss and to yourself to explain why you can’t meet your targets, it may be time for an attitude adjustment. Here are some ideas for turning excuses into positive action.

Excuse #1: “I don’t have time for prospecting leads.”

Granted, you probably have a busy work schedule, but failing to perform an important function of the sales process indicates poor time management. If prospecting and cold calling your leads is part of your job description, you need to prioritize it and set aside blocks of time to get it done. Once you have scheduled those blocks of time, treat them with as much respect as you would any other appointment. This means not allowing other, perhaps more enjoyable tasks, to “bump” prospecting and cold calling from your schedule.

Excuse #2: “No one is interested in what I’m selling.”

It’s your job to create an interest in the products or services you’re selling. Find out what your customers need and explain to them how you can help meet those needs. For an example of some extremely creative selling, watch the movie, “The Music Man.” In it, a traveling salesman manages to convince an entire town that the only thing that can save its youth from falling into depravity is forming a boy’s band – purchasing the instruments and the uniforms from him, of course.

Excuse #3: “I’d sell more if I had better leads.”

Your leads are probably no better and no worse than the leads of your colleagues and your competitors. Rather than trying to cherry-pick, make a game of qualifying as many leads as you can.

Excuse #4: “I don’t like cold calling.”

Most sales people aren’t particularly fond of cold calling, but it’s a necessary part of the sales process, and no one ever guaranteed you would love every aspect of your work. If you truly dread cold calling your leads, the smartest thing to do is to get it out of the way early in the week so you don’t have it hanging over your head.

Excuse #5: “The economy is bad.”

You’re absolutely right. The economy is still weak, and customers are still reluctant to open their wallets for things that they consider non-essential. Think of it this way, though: You’re on a level playing field. Everybody in sales is contending with a difficult economy. If your competitors and colleagues can make sales, you can, too.

How Do You View Cold Calling?

Sales people tend to dread making cold calls more than any other method of selling. They often voice worries that they are “annoying” the person on the other end of the phone. Some come right out and say that it is a waste of time because conversion statistics are dismal. But that’s thinking about cold calling through your own lens.

Take a moment and try to see it in a different way. What if, instead of annoying the prospect, you were doing him or her a kindness by offering a solution to a longstanding problem? What if you are just what the prospect needs? He or she just doesn’t know it yet.

How Can I Help You?

If you use a script when you make calls, it probably focuses heavily on the strong points of your products or services. Some scripts are little more than a long, droning list about how great whatever you’re offering is.

How you would feel if you were on the receiving end of that kind of cold call? As you listened to the sales agent, you’d probably start thinking something along the lines of, “That’s all very nice, but what does it have to do with me?” The next logical steps are the brush-off and the abrupt termination of the call.

Calling from a Place of Kindness

When you make cold calls from a place of kindness, you forget about your conversion rate or your desire to be salesman of the month. Instead, you focus on what you can do to help the person on the other end of the phone. Perhaps you’ve heard through the grapevine that the CEO you’re calling is having a horrible time finding reasonably priced health insurance for his or her employees. Present your product as a way to meet that need and take a giant-sized problem off the CEO’s plate.

If you’re not sure what challenges the person on the other end of the phone is facing, go ahead and ask them. When they respond, make sure you listen to what they say instead of plotting your next line to make a sale.

When you take the point of view that you are a knight in shining armor helping the people on the other end of the phone solve their problems, cold calling becomes much less scary and much less tedious.

The good news is that you can change your attitude and increase your motivation in a matter of minutes just by listening to the words of others who have faced similar challenges.

This article features six of the most inspiring quotes about the sales process and productivity.

Website Call to Action - NextWaveMarketingStrategies.com

When potential customers visit your website, you don’t want them to just have a look around and then go on their way. You want them to do something, like buy your product, sign up for your newsletter, or agree to be contacted on their mobile device with special offers and savings. If your call to action is weak, though, the would-be customer might surf on to the next site without any idea of the opportunity he or she just missed.

The answer is simple: Create a stronger call to action.

Web Design

Web design has a lot to do with whether a prospect acts on your CTAs or not. There are several ways for creating a web that is CTA friendly. First, make sure your agency’s phone number and other contact information appears in a prominent position on each page of the website. The prospect should never have to surf around trying to find out just how to make that phone call or send an email that you’ve requested in a CTA. The information should literally be staring him or her in the face.

Second, provide a large, colorful click box that the prospect can use to send you an email or complete an online form requesting a contact. The best colors are orange and red, because they catch the eye.

A third tip to keep in mind is to make the web design consistent. For instance, don’t use a big red button in one place and a small font hyperlink text in another. The person viewing the website should get used to looking for one familiar symbol to initiate contact with you.

Finally, reduce the number of choices. Think about how frustrated most of us get with the automated answering systems that ask you to push “1″ for this, “2″ for that, and so on. Prospects don’t want to have to choose between half a dozen different buttons for different requests. They want a CTA that is easy to follow, and if they don’t get that from you, they may very well get it from one of your competitors.

Web Content

Your design can be perfect, but if your sales content is weak, you still won’t get the follow-through on your CTAs. First, prospects have to find your page before they can contact you. Use strong SEO, or search engine optimization, techniques such as using keywords strategically.

SEO may get a prospect to your site, but it won’t make him or her click the big red button. Your sales pitch has to give him or her a reason to take action. Don’t focus on what you can provide. Focus on what the prospect stands to gain. For instance, instead of saying, “Our helpful book contains tips about SEO,” you might say, “You can improve your keyword skills in minutes with the free e-book you’ll receive when you…”

Remember, potential customers come to your site because they want help. Show them that you are the ones who can provide that help, and they’ll be eager to respond to your call to actions.

Improve Your Office Space - Next Wave Marketing Strategies

Are you a “piler,” one of those people with ceiling-high piles of paper on his or her desk? Do you routinely reassure yourself that, in spite of the mess, you know exactly where everything is? Are you embarrassed when your boss, co-workers, or customers see your workspace? If so, this article is for you, because no matter how well you think you understand the chaos around you, the fact is that office clutter can slow your sales significantly.

Misplaced Papers

In a cluttered office, papers tend to get misplaced. They are usually not lost for good; in fact, they are usually not even lost for very long. When you’ve got a customer on the phone waiting for you to look up the information he or she needs, though, even five minutes of searching can seem like an eternity. Do yourself and your customers a favor and file any customer-related information within an hour of the time it lands on your desk.

Slow Response Times

When your boss, colleagues, clients, or prospects ask for information, they don’t want it when you happen to come across it. They want it now. If you can’t produce it, you are wasting their time as well as your own. Once again, a good filing system can help you avoid these difficulties.

Forgotten Follow-Ups

Has this ever happened to you? Just before lunch, you receive a message to call Prospect X. You put it on your desk and plan to get to it after you return from your break, but by the time you get back, the matter has slipped your mind and the memo has been covered with interoffice mail and other materials your co-workers have placed on your desk. It may be weeks before you come across that memo again, and by then it may be too late to make a sale.

There are two ways to prevent this type of problem from occurring. First, set up an inbox and ask everyone delivering new papers to you to place them in the box. Second, review your box at least once a day. Each time you touch a piece of paper, take one of four actions: Do it, dump it, delegate it, or defer it. By the end of each day, your inbox should be empty.

Lack of Preparation

It’s hard to prepare for a meeting or presentation if the data you need is strewn all around your office and desk. Taking the time to stop and find papers slows your productivity and cuts into your sales time. Showing up unprepared can damage your career.

Bad Impressions

If you bring prospects or clients into your workspace they’re likely to think that you have a problem getting organized. A bad first impression may not necessarily cost you the sale, but it does make your work harder and take up more of your time.

If your office is a jumble of cluttered papers, set aside an hour or two each day to go through each of them and either throw it away, delegate it to the person whose job it is to follow up on such issues, or assign it to a specific place in your office. As new papers come in, organize them the same way. In no time at all, you’ll have a clear desk and will no longer have to waste time shuffling through piles for information you need immediately.