During tough economic times it’s very challenging to keep your sales reps motivated. Like the old saying goes “smile and dial”. But work smart not simply hard. Employ every available technique that will not only increase sales but also improve the job satisfaction of your employees. Remember, no matter how great your CRM or Internet sales leads maybe it always comes down to the people you employ genuinely going after closing the sale. No auto dialer is going to close a sale for you in this highly competitive marketplace.

Customer prospects want personal interaction and someone they can trust calling them by name. Purchasing insurance and refinancing their home are some of the top decisions anyone will ever make in life. Be realistic, certainly they are not going to rely on an auto dialer to close such an important step. The auto dialer may be a great reminder tool but it comes down to whether your sales reps are motivated to personally dial the phone number and create a relationship with the prospect. If this critical function does not occur often enough do not expect to meet your monthly goals.

Unhappy sales reps are generally a ticket to disaster. Motivate your team with high quality sales tools armed with competitive information clearly on a flash card located in each of their office spaces. While on the phone, there’s nothing more frustrating than being unable to answer a prospect’s question. This fatal missing information could be the tipping point that lost a sale.

Supply a general talking points telephone script that highlights the key information, costs, features and methods to close any sales. Make it precise, clean and crisp. Instruct sales reps to ask you or find on their own answers to question that may require a follow-up call.

Measure the individual and team progress making adjustments on the fly while testing new methods. Don’t be afraid to make changes, companies that succeed never remain stagnant. They are always innovating new and better developments.

Listen to the customers to gain critical feedback from the field on market trends, new products, competitors, etc. Empower your sales reps to think independently – working in some cases like entrepreneurs running their own business.

For the most part sales is a numbers game plus quality assurance. Pricing is key to success. Remember every Internet sales lead you contact has Internet access that means instant ability to shop around for best pricing 24/7.

Use contests and bonus prize incentives to make the job more urgent. It’s a great tool to motivate sales reps keeping them dialing. If they know it’s a $50 bonus, restaurant gift certificate or new flat-screen TV – be sure the dialing becomes much easier for most sales reps.  You bet those eager sales reps will be dialing like there is no tomorrow. I often place the bonus prize on display to add excitement i.e. put the flat-screen in the middle of the team office space for all to see as they work.

Finally, recognize good work. Even those that are not the top three reps deserve recognition. Perhaps, take your sales team out for a cost effective lunch buffet. This is a great time to gain feedback and motivate your sales reps to keep dialing.

Cold calling is really the center of the aged lead business. You are making a commitment to working hard and making a lot of calls when you buy aged leads. Chances are these are leads that other lenders or debt businesses passed on or rejected.

Cold Calling is Real Sales

I think that is kind of a noble cause. I think the work that lenders and debt businesses do to convert my aged leads is something pretty amazing. So often the articles and books written about sales is negative towards cold calling.

I don’t think making a lot of sales calls should ever be looked at negatively. It is how this business gets done. And if you are able to do it and good at it to-you should be proud.

The reality is that cold calling is real selling.

Real Salesmen Love Cold Calling

I got on this thought when I saw this article from the Sales Machine on BNET. By the way if you are not subscribed you should be,. He’s got great stuff.

His article is strong. He contends that the top sales people love cold calling. Here is his fantastic analogy:

Here’s an analogy.  Most people hate exercising and don’t it; they’re called couch potatoes. Some people hate exercise but do it anyway; they’re called healthy people. A very small number of people exercise simply because they love it; they’re called athletes.

Do you want to be a Top Sales Pro?

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I wish I could attend the Sales 2.0 Conference in Chicago this month. The conference is often full of good stuff on sales innovation and data to back the ideas. This event is going to cover topics like: improving the productivity on your sales pipeline, sales lead management 2.0, sales 2.0 driven sales process, and social networking in sales 2.0. All ideas and topics we have visited here from time to time.

At the last event, in Boston, there was a great study done on when the best time was to make cold calls, which Geoffrey James, of Sales Machine turned into a clever quiz.

You should take a few minutes and go through it. You will be shocked how many of your assumptions about cold calling are wrong.

You know I am a big proponent of lead management and social networking in your sales process. And although this seems to be more B2B focused I think there could be a lot to learn.

I would recommend attending, but if you have conflicts like I do you can go to Sales Machine and get live updates from the conference.

Are there any good mortgage or debt industry sales conferences? I would think there would be a great opportunity for something like this.

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Failure is the number one fear and enemy of a sales person. More so than any other profession, salespeople hear the word, “no.” Like a baseball player, failing 70-80% of the time makes you a rockstar. But what do all those failures do to your confidence? Being a sales person is a tough profession.

Today I want to encourage this failure. I want you to do it more often (i.e., faster). And I want you to make it more productive.

The Benefits of Failure

In business, like life, those that accidentally succeed are the least likely to reproduce or even scale that success. People that have missed the experience of failure have less understanding of what works and what does, or even why something worked.

That makes your failures valuable-embrace them as cheap education.

Fail Faster

Like I mentioned earlier, failure induces fear into a sales persons heart. This fear makes us avoid. Avoid the phone, the meeting, and the networking. We are afraid someone will reject our connection.

Guess what? They will, but that is okay.

Remember sales are fundamentally the product of large numbers. The more no’s you get the more yes’s come. The more and faster you push through the rejection the more likely you are to hit big success. All those failures mean that you are doing the hard work to make the calls, schedule the appointments, and add to your network.

Making Failure Productive

The real secret to making failure easier and more productive is setting up a process to learn from each one. Here is a useful framework to improve the productivity of your failures-after each call or meeting:

• List what kind of buyer or decision maker it was
• List objections you heard and how you responded
• Highlight objections you struggled countering
• List ideas that would have improved the interaction

At the end of the day use these notes to practice overcoming new objections, improving your sales script, or tweaking your pitch for a new type of prospect.

Ultimately, failing faster is going to get you to success quicker. Are you ready to learn from today’s failures?

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If you are working aged leads you are going to be leaving a lot of voicemails. Our lives are increasingly busy and reaching someone on the phone is nearly impossible. Therefore, to be successful you need a voicemail strategy that converts.

Credibility, Curiosity, and the Dangle

Like a good elevator pitch or phone script your voicemail messages should be practiced to perfection.

Ironically voicemails are probably about 85 percent of our sales day, the balance of which goes to phone conversations or face-to-face meetings. However, if you read any sales training it will invariably be devoted to phone scripts, conversations, and networking. If you don’t create magic in the voicemail you are unlikely to even get a chance to use these skills.

What are you trying to create in those 10-15 seconds?

• Credibility – Give quick confidence that you’re from a reputable company with the experience to help
• Curiosity – Tell them why they should be considering your services-even if they aren’t
• The Dangle – You have to give them some reason to call. Don’t dangle rate (everyone does that) try dangling news (something they can confirm), something that has changed in the market that requires their attention.

Script it, Read it, Throw it Away

Don’t wing it, script it. Don’t leave it to chance every call and voicemail is only one shot in the dark. You won’t get feedback or a second chance so spend some extra time scripting your voicemail.

Now that you have taken the time to script and tweak it to perfection-read it and throw it away.

What?

Yes, you heard me right. Nothing is worse than a script read-no matter how perfect. If you spent the time writing, practicing, and perfecting it will be natual. Don’t ruin it by reading it.

Build Instant Rapport

One last little trick: This one takes a little practice and being quick on your feet-use their introductory message to build rapport.

Listen closely to their message and try to match them as close as possible. If they speak slowly, speak slowly. If they are abrupt, be very brief. If they are long and detailed, be very specific.

You are getting a quick snapshot into their personality. Try to leverage that to build some level of affinity.

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I see this in most sales organizations-a propensity for cherry picking. Really does it add that much to your conversion rate? I’ll answer that, “no.”

Cherry Pickers Lose

Humans are always driven by intuition and “gut” feelings, but unfortunately these are often wrong. Like the classic optical illusion tests, which are a longer lines or bigger tables, our eyes often deceive us.

The same holds true for cherry picking and sales. Our eyes gravitate toward large loan amounts or fresh new leads. Meanwhile, statistics don’t conclude that those eye catchers have any greater propensity to close more often or faster.

In fact there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary.

Power Dialing Wins

At the end of the day most lead sales performance data points to consistency and persistence as the winning combination. Calling leads consistently and following up on every contact in a timely fashion dramatically increases contact rate and conversion.

It certainly makes sense. Leads sitting in your CRM or email unattended are unlikely to call you.

What’s more, as anyone that purchases aged mortgage or debt leads can tell you this can be a huge advantage. You competitors’ cherry picking is creating an enormous opportunity. They are leaving money on the table.

He (or She) with the Most Contacts Gets Rich

That’s right the path to success with Internet leads is simple-he with the most contacts wins!

Pay a lot less and get some of these neglected aged leads and test the theory yourself. Don’t cherry pick, call more and you will make more this month.

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Does your sales day start first thing every morning? “Yes,” sounds like the right answer, but it may put you behind the eight ball. You see the best feedback and inspiration for today’s sales probably occurred as you were closing down for the day-yesterday.

End Your Day with a Process

Getting your sales day off on the right foot should start with a disciplined shutdown process. Instead of hanging up that last call and dashing for the door take and extra 15-30 minutes to wrap-up your day in a productive way.

Build Your Plan for Tomorrow

Grab a pen and paper and write down the following:

• Top 10 objections you heard today
• Think of a better way to handle them
• Top 10 tips and techniques that worked
• Think of how you are going to leverage them better
• List the tope 3 objectives for tomorrow

Now you have a plan. Tomorrow is ready to execute-immediately.

Set-up a Good Start

Want to make your start even better? Leave yourself a motivational voicemail or send an email that focuses and kicks-off your morning. Good starts start the day before and good starts often produce the best sales numbers!

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Sales slumps-we all get them. However, the best in the business know the early warning signs and how to “hit” out of them.

The best way to avoid slumps is to develop a consistent sales process. These are methodical habits and techniques that create a baseline for sales activities and performance. When one or the other begins to wander you know you have a problem.

You sales process should include some of these basic activities:

• Methods for marketing or sourcing leads
• Disciplined approach to getting leads into your system
• Consistent initial contact and lead nurturing process
• Process to status and age leads in your lead management software

If you have these basic elements of lead management it will make it easy to see the 7 deadly signs of a sales slump earlier:

• Repeated (mindless) organizing and sorting leads
• Dialing without a plan or objective for the call
• Endlessly prospecting to avoid the pipeline
• Few if any measurements to gauge performance
• Competitive offers catch you by surprise
• Same “big opportunities” sit idle in your pipeline
• Begin to “whine” about product and price

Is this you? It happens to all of us at one time or another. The Secret to success is what you do about it?

In the next post we will look at battling these sales slumps.

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How you manage your sales funnel will directly correlate to your sales success. Here are some critical components that will make you more successful with mortgage or debt leads.

Get Your Leads in the Funnel

First, and most importantly, get your leads into the funnel. This means your favorite mortgage CRM. There is no way to move a prospect to a sales without some way to track and measure your progress to that goal.

This should be a very efficient process. Either have leads posted directly into your lead management system or work out a simple way to load in spreadsheets. It is very important to quickly get all of your leads in one place, including your old ones.

Track and Status Leads

Once leads are in the pipeline, use simple statuses and flags. This will help you track good and bad trends. It will also help you to forecast sales results, seeing if you are on ore off your goals.

Do not get to crazy with these statuses. A simple methodology is all that is required, like: attempted, contacted, applied, closed. You can get more complex as your sales process matures.

Measure Movement

One of the beauties of status tracking is that you can see movement. A sales funnel should be in constant motion. This motion is critical to measure.

Metrics help you to quickly see what is working and what isn’t. It will also give you insight into where prospects get stuck in your sales process…Is there a confusing step in your sales process? Is there a fee, feature, product, or rate that is causing fall-out?

Improve Sales Process

All of these elements of the sales funnel comes together to improve your sales process. Improving the sales process will pump up your revenue.

A sales funnel is like having a personal sales coach at your side constantly.

Sales is emotional, yet often we drive ourselves down into a funk. Several days of closing slump and we start beating ourselves up. This starts a counterproductive cycle of bad attitude, which leads to bad sales.

Good sales start with a positive attitude. Let’s talk about how to maintain that positive edge.

Are You Ready to Sell Today?

On the way into the office ask yourself the most important question of the day–are you ready to sell? If the answer is, “no” you might as well turn the car around and watch soap operas for the day–you will yield that same number of sales.

Getting ready to sell is a process as much as it is a state. Learning how to prepare yourself for a “sales ready” day is critical to your long-term success in sales. Develop a routine that gets you into the sales zone, building a good attitude every morning.

Get in the Right Frame of Mind

The “sales ready” process starts by focusing your mind. Athletes have been doing this for decades. They build intensity by focusing on the competition ahead. What will it look like? How will I play? How will I react to different conditions?

Many sales tapes/CDs focus this intensification process entirely on motivational techniques. Although these are important I think they often miss the important substance. Your focusing efforts should be on, “how you will play the game.

“

What are some of the key value messages you will use today? What were some of the most common objections you heard yesterday? How will you overcome them better today? Is there anything my customers need to know today–changes in the market, products, strategies?

Confidence Shows, Even on the Phone

Bottom line: If you are confident that you are going into the day with a strong plan and good stuff–your customer will know it. Confidence plays through your body language and even your voice. And, confidence is contagious. If you are confident in your performance and value, customers will be confident in buying.

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