Posted on

Three Action Steps to Avoid Lackluster Sales Quarters

lackluster sales quarters

By David Hubbard 

When revenue starts to go off plan, your gut reaction as chief sales officer or vice president of sales is probably to ratchet up the activity level of the sales force. You know the drill: institute aggressive pipeline reviews by field management, requalify all forecasted deals for the quarter, focus field management on must-win deals, try to pull in deals forecasted for next quarter, create a SWAT team for bigger deals, and the list goes on.

These tactics used to work five or 10 years ago but not so much lately, and that’s mainly because business-to-business buyers are doing things differently, by

  • self-educating online and becoming aware of industry problems and potential solutions,
  • getting vendor referrals from trusted industry colleagues through social networking,
  • deciding on a short list of “qualified” vendors after double-checking online reviews, press coverage and analyst reports.

If your sales force can’t influence buyer teams early in their purchasing process, like it could 10 years ago, you’re almost certainly going to suffer lackluster sales quarters. To reverse that trend, here are three action steps you should strive to achieve in 2015.

Action Step 1: Establish a well-defined and understood sales process.

Your sales process should mirror your buyer’s current purchasing process. A recent study by HubSpot and the Sales Management Association shows that organizations with a clear sales process enjoy 18 percent more sales growth than other organizations.

Action Step 2: Leverage social selling in the sales process.

Are your salespeople on LinkedIn? Do they tweet? Are they using those platforms as a way to attract and reach out to prospects? If not, it’s time to get on the social-selling bandwagon. Reps who use social media as part of their sales process are 79 percent more likely to attain their quota than ones who don’t, according to Aberdeen Group’s study on social selling.

Action Step 3: Align with marketing.

If your sales and marketing teams have a strong collaborative relationship, then here are the typical benefits according to multiple research studies by Aberdeen Group:

  • Seventy-five percent of your sales reps are achieving quota (versus the industry average of 50 percent).
  • Sales is achieving its sales budget (versus the industry average of 61 percent).
  • Your corporate revenue is growing at least 13 percent annually (versus an industry average of 4.3 percent).

If you’re poorly aligned with your buyer, you’re going to need a lot of help from others to fix it, particularly from your chief executive officer, chief marketing officer, and maybe an experienced outside consultant. That’s not bad news; your colleagues on the executive team have a vested interest in helping the sales force succeed. They don’t want their budget to shrink as a result of missed revenue and profit goals.

If you are willing to accept help from the C-suite, you need to present an action plan that does these three things:

  1. reframes the solution, not simply as a sales-force execution issue, but as a cross-functional team effort with you as team leader;
  1. presents an executive-team action plan that clearly articulates how each executive can actively help make the company’s quarter;
  1. ensures that your action plan contains key components that start to lay the foundation for a successful next year under your continued leadership.

By demonstrating corporate leadership and showing progress toward a better sales strategy, you buy yourself a little more time to turn the situation around permanently.

Want to learn more? Here’s a detailed discussion of a CSO Action Plan.

Dave Hubbard David Hubbard is a revenue acceleration expert, a pragmatic marketing and sales consultant, a proven business leader, and the CEO of Marketing Outfield. Find him on LinkedIn or contact him for a complimentary consultation. 

Selling Power magazine subscription

[Image via Flickr / clarkmaxwell]

 

Posted on

4 Habits Leaders Should Lose in 2015

leaders good ideas

We tend to start the year with the best of intentions and high hopes. But sometimes our bad habits are hard to shake. This year, think about saying goodbye to these four simple obstacles that often impede success for sales leaders.

1. Operate solely on gut instinct. 

Do you have good business and management instincts? Of course you do — or you wouldn’t have climbed to a leadership position.

On the other hand, we are living in the age of data. Sales leaders who want to take control of their pipeline and forecast must start tracking data and studying analytics now. For example, HubSpot Chief Revenue Officer Mark Roberge leverages science and technology to make the HubSpot sales process truly customer-oriented.

Many sales teams run on blind optimism and the best-guesses of the sales manager. However, a growing abundance of technology and sales-enablement tools are changing the way we think about managing and leading a sales team. It’s important to listen to your gut … but if you ignore data, you’ll get left behind.

2. Make your ideas conform to expected standards. 

Once they reach a certain level of success, some sales leaders play it safe when it comes to ideas. Usually that’s because they’ve become complacent and lost the hunger that once gave them an edge. Consequently they avoid or tamp down any idea that seems too weird, radical, or risky.

However, consider that commodified creativity is a race to the bottom. When you make your idea like everyone else’s, you fail to stand out and differentiate yourself. Follow the advice of author and marketing guru Seth Godin, who said in this TED Talk that bad and bizarre ideas are far preferable to boring or ordinary ideas.

3. Fail to keep learning.

What skills would make you a better sales leader? And how can you help your reps become better sellers?

The beginning of the year is a great time to evaluate everyone’s skill sets and figure out how you and your team can improve in the next 12 months. Should you take a public-speaking course? Hone your coaching skills? Tune into what analysts, authors, and thought leaders are saying about the sales profession? Foster a culture of learning, and improvements will follow.

4. Stress out.

With great responsibility comes great stress. But many leader fall into the trap of thinking about too many things at the same time. This is extremely fatiguing and stress producing.

To stop stressing out, try making a list of other things you must do, and then put it aside so that you don’t have to think about them but won’t worry about forgetting them, either. Stop throughout the day to see if you are relaxed. Are your hands clenched? Is your jaw tight? If so, let your arms hang loosely, unwrinkle your brow, relax your mouth, and breathe deeply.

Make 2015 the year you leave bad habits behind and open yourself up to greater success than you could imagine.

Selling Power magazine subscription

[Image via Flickr / Adrian Kingsley-Hughes]

Posted on

10 Signs You’re a Great Sales Manager

 

If you agree with these statements, you’re performing exceptionally well in all your roles as manager. If you come up short, it might be time for a management course or a conversation with your own manager to determine how you can do better.

  1. I know what motivates my salespeople.
  2. I’m familiar with their challenges, both professional and personal.
  3. I’m skilled at managing my time.
  4. I’m skilled at organizing my sales team.
  5. I’m a great salesperson, but I don’t step on my reps’ toes when they’re trying to close.
  6. I’m firm but fair.
  7. I always deliver on my promises.
  8. I create a positive environment for my team.
  9. I listen more than I speak.
  10. I act quickly when problems arise, and I challenge my team to come up with solutions.

Adapted from The Essential Sales Management Handbook, by Gerhard Gschwandtner. 

Posted on

The Psychology of Making Good Decisions

In his best-selling book, Predictably Irrational, MIT professor of behavioral economics Dan Ariely observed that resisting temptation is a universal human goal, but our failure to self-regulate is the source of much unhappiness. “When I look around, I see people trying their best to do the right thing, whether they are dieters or families vowing to spend less and save more,” he writes. “The struggle for control is all around us.”

To gain more control, Ariely suggests making “precommitments.” When he let his students at MIT set their own deadlines, for example, they missed them. But when he set deadlines for them – providing a “parental” voice – they got their assignments in on time.

“If we can’t save from our paycheck, we can take advantage of our employer’s automatic deduction option,” Ariely notes. “If we don’t have the will to exercise alone regularly, we can make an appointment to exercise in the company of our friends. These are the tools we can commit to in advance, and they may help us be the kind of people we want to be.”

Listen to Ariely’s TED talk below about our ability to control our own decisions.

Posted on

How Leaders Inspire Teams to Take Action

To get better results from your sales meetings, study how great speakers inspire others to take action.

Great leaders and great speakers all have carefully planned conclusions to speeches that inspire others to act. Think of President John F. Kennedy’s famous words during his Inaugural Address in 1961.

John Kennedy ask not what your country

If you want people to take action after the meeting, you need to plan and then present a convincing conclusion. Here is a step-by-step method to plan and present a convincing conclusion at your next sales meeting.

1) When you sit down to prepare your meeting, write the ending first. What should salespeople be able to do after the meeting? What will they need to do different in the future? What does your top salesperson do that your other salespeople don’t? When you write the ending first, it will be much easier to plan the introduction and body of your meeting.

2) Be very specific about what you want your salespeople to do. Avoid vague words like “understand” and “appreciate.” List no more than two or three actions, any more will be difficult to remember. Tell them what you want them to do and when. For instance:

  • Schedule five face-to-face appointments with new prospects for next week.
  • Ask each prospect what he likes best and least about his present method.
  • Ask each prospect to speculate on future time, money, and productivity costs if she doesn’t solve their problem now.

3) Make at least one of the actions something simple your salespeople can do immediately. As the saying goes, “well begun is half done.” If your salespeople leave with something simple to do they are more likely to do it. When they take action and achieve results they will be more likely to act on the other things you asked them to do.

4) Outline your conclusion. Summarize key points in two short, but memorable, sentences. Restate the main benefit and appeal to salespeople’s emotion as well as logic. Emotional appeals include financial freedom, health/vitality, safety, romance, piece of mind, and personal fulfillment.Tell your salespeople specifically what you want them to do.

5) Plan to conclude well before your time is up. How often have you run out of time at the end of a meeting and rushed to finish? You aren’t holding your salespeople’s attention if they’re looking at the clock. Anticipate that your meeting will take 30 percent longer than you think. If you normally have one-hour sales meetings, plan your agenda to conclude at the 40 minute mark.

6) Save your best “Ah ha!” points for last. Too many sales meetings flow like a bell curve, up at the beginning and down at the end. This brings your audience down just before the most important part-your conclusion. Pull out a pad of Post-It notes and write just one topic on each note. Arrange your topics to ensure that you build up to a conclusion and not down.

7) Follow up to measure the action taken. Great speakers know that their success is measured by the action that the audience takes as a result. Be specific in your follow-up. For instance, in the example cited earlier you might ask, “How many new face-to-face appointments did you set for last week? What questions did you ask? What were your results?”

What you say last is what your salespeople will remember most. A well planned and presented conclusion can inspire your team to action. When you follow these simple steps your meetings will be more effective. Plus, you’ll feel a great sense of accomplishment when you see your ideas actually being implemented in the field.

Posted on

Sales Leaders, Keep Your Millennials Happy and Hungry

By Josiane Feigon 

Unless otherwise noted, statistics and trends cited within are taken from “MTV Studies Millennials In The Workplace: Uses It To Transform Its Own, Maybe Even Yours.”

Millennials are rocking the sales world big time. We love their boldness, spirit, and eagerness to participate. Fortunately, these young and energetic team members are also savvy, successful sellers who want to learn in their own style: collaborative, congenial, and competitive.

Milennial professional
[Image: Flickr]
But they can also send sales managers scrambling; Millennials tend to want answers now, and they can become bored with traditional sales-training methods. Because these superheroes will dominate our sales universe before you know it, we’ve compiled this field guide to the Millennial generation’s special qualities:

They thrive in a chill workplace. A chill workplace feeds their soul and a work-life balance, and it encourages new friendships. Millennials are not necessarily interested in paying their dues: 93 percent say they want more than a paycheck; they want a job that works with their lifestyle.

Just ask Siri. In today’s search-driven, quick-response, high-pressure, digital and social Sales 2.0 environment, managers feel like they’re channeling Siri – and it’s not fun! The Millennial generation, who make up the vast majority of new hires, wants your answers delivered to their inbox NOW.

“Tell me why.” Millennials are also sometimes known as Generation Why, because they crave understanding. They need to smell, taste, touch, feel, and understand every reason why something works and why it doesn’t.

They fear being kicked off the island. Many Millennials grew up watching such TV shows as Survivor, The Bachelor, The Real World, American Idol, and The Apprentice. They understand (and fear) getting “kicked off the island.” They can be hard on themselves and mistake feedback for rejection. In general, they need to learn the real meaning behind customers’ objections.

Are they  always job hunting? Millennials will hold up to 11 jobs by the time they are 38 years old, but that doesn’t mean they will work for 38 different companies and should be treated as disposable workers. They have staying power. According to Hireology’s “Inside the Mind of a Millennial Job Seeker,” they will stay longer if they are kept engaged.

What’s next? Millennials tend to be hungry for new activities that keep them engaged. In the training world, that means you must vary the learning method from partnering to break-out sessions to standing up and writing on whiteboards.

Microcoaching is a must. Today’s Talent 2.0 is watching every step you make, and these employees want you to reciprocate – they love attention, and they want yours. Millennials don’t need help with the dailies as much as they need help with strategy, ideas, techniques, and tips. Sixty-one percent of Millennials say they need specific directions from the boss to do their best work.

“How am I doing?” Millennials thrive on regular – read: constant – feedback. They want to always know where they stand and are hungry for reinforcement. They always look for acknowledgment, which helps them learn and retain information.

They love rewards and prizes. They look for recognition. They want to know where they stand and get rewarded for it. But be warned: they could very well be bored by coffee-shop gift cards and trinkets. For them, it’s all about access, not possession. My take? Go with gift certificates to Netflix, Amazon, or AmEx instead.

Join us in the playroom! Taking short breaks is important because it allows your team to recharge. Some companies provide a playroom, with foosball, shuffleboard, and darts, where workers can actively take their mind off work.

Training must be very visual. Millennials need Facebook, Instagram, and video validation. They grew up with their lives heavily documented on video and in photographs and scrapbooks, and they are part of the “quantified self” generation. Forget tons of data and reading – training must include the “visual bling” component.

They defy authority. Hierarchies don’t exist for Millennials. Their parents wanted to be their “peer-ents,” so they grew up believing they were equals with authority. They trust their peers more than they trust authority figures. Sales Millennials break the barriers when it comes to hierarchy, and they place more value on their workplace being fun and social. Company-sponsored happy hours have replaced meetings.

They’re hungry for a home. According to theguardian.com, Millennials are sitting on huge school loans, so more than ever, they have to earn a steady income. They want you to provide a comfortable home – that is, a fun place to work where they can bring their friends, who are their fellow team members. Maybe they’ll never move out of the comfortable “home” you built for them.

They’re always on. The need to be “on” all the time is a reality but not a good one considering today’s multiple mobile devices. This is serious: 60 percent of workplace distractions come from email and social networking, and 14 percent of workers say they will tune out a meeting to Tweet or update their status on a social network.

Download your copy of the 14 Smart Inside Sales Trends in 2014 report and stay ahead of today’s rapidly changing Sales 2.0 trends.

Posted on

How to Move Up in Your Organization: 4 Tips from Legendary Leaders

If you’re interested in moving up to a higher position in your organization, prove you can think strategically — beyond quota — toward the good of the company as a whole. Use these tips to get started.

Bill Walsh leadership Find effective strategies. Vision is great, but if you cannot find a way to connect to it from the current reality, it’s useless. One leader who has been able to bring the imaginary to the realm of reality is football legend Bill Walsh. The legendary coach led his teams to amazing NFC division championships and NFC titles and earned a spot in the NFL Football Hall of Fame. One of his many strengths was as an offensive coach, constantly reading the field and creating strategies that would maximize his players’ skills and exploit the weaknesses of their opponents.

Tip 1: Strategy is something that’s refined every day, one battle at a time. Just as Walsh had to look at each season’s team and each week’s opponent anew, salespeople need to evaluate each customer and each competitor on an individual basis and create a plan to address each unique situation. What worked yesterday or last month may not work tomorrow.

Ronald Reagan leadership Be a great communicator. The key to communicating is connecting with the audience. Former President Ronald Reagan was so well known for his ability to reach the American people that he earned the nickname, “The Great Communicator.” He didn’t use fancy language or rhetoric to win people over; in fact, it was the very simplicity of his style, coupled with his humor, which made him so popular. A senior leader’s job is to communicate corporate goals to employees and motivate them to achieve those goals.

Tip 2: When you have something to say, say it in the simplest way possible. Save the fancy verbal footwork and piles of data for the engineering team, and stick to word pictures and vivid descriptions. Finally, remember Reagan’s advice: “Facts are stupid things.”

Meg Whitman leadership Listen. Sharing information is one skill; collecting information is another, equally valuable skill. And the queen of listening very well may be Meg Whitman, who is known for her humility and passion for listening to both her customers and employees.

“When you’re trained in an MBA program or in most businesses, you use the words, ‘Drive, push, go after,’ and it’s not that way here. Here, you have to use the community of users to chart the course of the company. You can’t direct them to do much of anything,” Whitman told CBS MarketWatch.

Tip 3: As a “trusted advisor,” it’s natural to want to share your expertise with your customers. But too much talking and not enough listening is a sure formula for alienating your clients. Take a tip from Whitman and commit to listening to what your customers are saying. Ask them what’s important, what they worry about, and what would make their life easier – even if it’s outside your typical scope. What better way to become a trusted partner than by solving problems your customer never even knew existed.

Jack Welch leadership Be inspirational. If there is one skill that can make up for a multitude of sins in other areas, it just might be the ability to inspire. People want to be a part of something great, something larger than themselves. Just ask business legend, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch. Known for his passion, commitment, and sense of fun, Welch led by example and took pride in his ability to develop his people. He regularly rewarded the highest performers (and cut the bottom feeders), thereby encouraging workers to make it to the top. “Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act,” Welch has said.

Tip 4: Unless you inspire others to act, you are a team of one. The more you can inspire your team members to be the best they can be, the further your reach as a leader. Says Welch, “If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it, you almost don’t have to manage them.”

Any of these legendary leaders would be sure to tell you that it doesn’t matter where your box falls on the organizational chart: Leaders can be found anywhere in the organization.

Posted on

Why Great Leaders Seem Crazy

All great leaders share a vision for success. Sometimes, that vision can be so new, radical, or unique that others call them crazy.

Steve Jobs famously made Apple’s slogan “Think Different,” in the late 1990s. As the television commercial said, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Ask for a leadership success story from the dot-com craze, and Amazon is sure to come to mind. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of the ultimate in one-stop online shopping, is almost synonymous with the Internet. But the dream did not start out that big. In 1994, Bezos gave up his job as a VP of a New York investment firm, packed up a used car, and moved to Seattle with his new wife and a vision – to start an online business selling books.

Of course, the idea was wacky. Of course, everyone told him he was nuts. Of course, he faced many obstacles along the way – and of course, he overcame them all. What carried him through the tough times was his clarity of purpose, his vision of what Amazon.com could be. “I knew that if I failed, I wouldn’t regret that,” he’s quoted as saying. “But I knew the one thing I might regret was not trying.”

If you want to be a great leader, know what you are trying to accomplish with vivid clarity. The more real you can make your vision, the easier it is to share it with others and convince them to come along.

This is especially true if you are asking your clients to take a leap of faith toward an unknown solution that you know will pay off for them. Paint a detailed, accurate vision, and they won’t be able to resist.

What are some of your greatest leadership lessons? Share your thoughts in the comments section. 

Posted on

How the Best Execs Get to the Top: Q&A with Joe Nocera

Joe Nocera New York TimesThey make friends. They hire smart. They take the hits. For New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera, who has written about the Buffetts, Eisners, and Trumps of the business world for more than 25 years, a few leadership qualities stand out. In this interview, he talks with Selling Power about the road to the top – and how the best execs stay there.

Selling Power (SP): What’s the different between a good CEO and a bad CEO?

Nocera: The thing a good CEO has, more than a bad CEO has, is emotional intelligence. I know that sounds soft and squishy, but all these guys know how to deal with balance sheets and income statements. They can make the trains arrive on time. But emotional intelligence is important for a number of reasons. Number one, in a modern age, you can’t just tell people to go do something and expect them to do it. So the force of your personality – the way you try to get things done – is as important as what you are trying to get done.

The second reason is that the CEOs are on such a short leash, vis-à-vis Wall Street, these days. To me the subprime disaster is [like] every other thing that I have ever covered in my life, starting with real estate in Texas in the eighties during the oil bubble, and then on to the Massachusetts Miracle in Massachusetts, and then on to the Internet bubble and the housing bubble; they’re all the same. Basically, [the situation] starts slowly, and then people start to lose their heads and think that they can never go down, and then they start to do dumb things. Banks just lend too much money, standards get lower, and people find some technique and drive it into the ground. [These techniques] probably start as good things and wind up as bad things, which was the case with subprime mortgages, and on and on and on. These things just seem to take on a life of their own and collapse of their own volition. And that’s what’s happened here. It’s happened time and time again.

SP: So emotional intelligence can help a leader navigate through the turmoil?

Nocera: A CEO who is comfortable in his or her own skin, is likeable, and who knows how to be decisive without being rude or arrogant buys more wiggle room. He or she has more allies. The example I use on the negative side is Bob Nardelli [former CEO of The Home Depot]. The stock went down, but if you look at the numbers, almost every metric went up while he was the CEO. Yet when he missteps, he has no allies, he has no friends, and he is basically out of the company.

Emotional intelligence is a quiet charisma, the ability to lead without seeming to lead. These leaders have the ability to make a decision that may be unpopular and not piss everybody off. They listen. They aren’t afraid of criticism. They’re not overly defensive. They’re not afraid of hiring people smarter than they are. Those sorts of skills in dealing with the executives who report to them make the crucial difference between a good CEO and a bad CEO.

SP: And the bad CEOs – are they just the opposite?

Nocera: Yes, they are. When you think about the 1950s and 1960s, when American companies ruled the world, we had a generation of employees who had been through the Great Depression and World War II. They came back from the war, and all they wanted was a nice, secure job. They were organization people. The boss could tell them anything. They just wanted to know how high to jump. So you could be more high-handed and dictatorial.

Today, employees don’t have the same loyalty to corporations. They have a lot more options. They don’t expect the company to protect them for the rest of their lives. They don’t expect to be at the company for the rest of their lives. I remember Fortune used to do a cover story called, “The Meanest Bosses in America.” And those guys were really well-known figures in business, like Bob Crandall at American Airlines. You could be that kind of boss back then, but you can’t be that kind of boss today because you’ll just get washed out. Today, the paradigmatic great boss is somebody like Herb Kelleher, who really cares a lot about his employees and is completely beloved and is also [the head of a company that is] on record as the only airline to make a profit.

SP: Do you think there’s a difference in the way that the public or employees judge their leaders and what they expect from them?

Nocera: I think there’s a huge difference. I think employees want to be passionate about their jobs. They want their job to feel that it has some larger moral value. And that is why so many companies are getting into the environment or doing corporate social responsibility stuff. Employees want to feel like they’re different thinkers. They don’t want to feel like cogs in a machine. They want someone to listen to them – maybe not the CEO, but certainly the immediate superior. So you have to have a culture of trust, a culture that respects the employees. Employees want to know that, when things are bad, the leader is taking a hit along with everyone else and not gorging himself or herself on options and salary when everybody else is suffering – that there is some sense of shared sacrifice.

SP: What do you think the job description of a leader is going to look like down the road?

Nocera: That’s a tough one. We’re in this era now when the baby boomers are preparing to retire. We’re going to get a whole new generation of middle and upper management that is younger and maybe has a different set of values from baby boomers. It’s hard for me to say what kind of leadership will command its respect. The next generation of CEOs is going to have to be people who can adapt to those new expectations.

Joe Nocera is author of Good Guys & Bad Guys: Behind the Scenes with the Saints and Scoundrels of American Business (And Everything in Between). 

 

Posted on

Your Brand Is Not Your Business Card: Empower a Winning Sales Culture

By Kevin Warren, president of strategic growth initiatives at Xerox. Meet him on March 10 at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Philadelphia, where he will share more insight about sales-leadership success and personal brands.

Jay-Z is one of my favorite performers, and he knows a thing or two about success. One line I borrow from him regularly is “I’m not a businessman…I’m a business, man!”

What does he mean? He’s saying that when you hand your business card to a sales prospect, unless it reads “CEO of Me Inc.,” it’s not your brand. You are your brand. Prospects and clients don’t buy the name of the business on the card, they buy you.

It’s a simple concept and a powerful opportunity, especially in an increasingly complex and digital world. We know our clients and prospects are bombarded with many options. Competition is fierce. But at the end of the day, people make decisions and surrender long-term loyalty based on interaction with other people. According to McKinsey’s 2012 B2B Branding Survey, personal interaction with sales reps remains the most influential factor for B2B customers across touch points, industries, and regions.

When you’re empowered to be CEO of Me Inc., there’s a tremendous impact on the overall business. Interaction with customers becomes more meaningful, the corporate brand becomes more human, and that focus on customers starts impacting the bottom line. By making a customer or prospect a believer in your personal brand, you’re giving your product and services portfolio exponentially more value.

You likely have an elevator speech for the products and services you’re selling, so why not create one for you? If you’ve taken time to evaluate what you stand for and where you should be focused, your prospects are much more likely to feel confident that you can help them do the same. People buy from those they know, trust, and like. By genuinely sharing who you are and what you know, you quickly become someone from whom they’ll buy, someone who helps connect them to what they need to successfully reach their own goals.

Even something as simple as highlighting general business advice or flagging relevant industry articles (via LinkedIn, other social media, or in person) creates an opportunity to share more of your portfolio and ultimately sell more, because you’ve appealed to what really matters to the client’s business. This kind of proactive value-adding is unique to you and your ever-evolving brand. Leveraging your personal and business experiences and industry expertise to show customers what they might not be thinking about or to ask questions they might not have considered is key to earning loyalty, advocacy, and even referrals.

Success as CEO of Me Inc. doesn’t just happen; it is the outcome of a formula that works, one that is evolving as digital and social change the game. But the foundation holds fast. We may not close deals anymore by knocking on doors or dialing for dollars, but at the end of the day – at the end of the business exchange – there is a person, and that person is going to choose your brand only if he or she chooses you.

Join me at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Philadelphia on March 10, where I’ll be speaking about sales-leadership success, your personal brand, and sales-transformation strategies.

Kevin Warren
Kevin M. Warren is president of strategic growth initiatives for Xerox Corporation and is responsible nationwide for revenue, profit, and operations for all Xerox business in large enterprises. He’s led an aggressive transformation initiative in which he melded two operations into one high-performing organization.