By Mark I LaRosa on May 21st, 2009
I was having a great discussion with a very successful entrepreneur yesterday, and as we were talking about articles he had read on this blog and with the things that I’ve been doing at QuotaCrush, he said to me,
“Mark, all this stuff you talk about is great. Its the right message, and the right way to sell and think about sales. However, no matter how much you talk about partnership, and solution selling – remember that most of the world still thinks of you simply as a peddler.”
How true that statement is. The first impression that most people will have from you in the cold call, at trade shows, or wherever you meet them, will be that you are a salesperson and that you are trying to sell them something. Therefore, that is why we need to work hard to make sure that our prospects understand that we ARE about finding the right solution that we ARE going to sell them something they need – and that we aren’t trying to just sell them something just to make a commission.
Establishing trust with your prospects is key to crushing quota.
By Mark I LaRosa on May 14th, 2009
Sales, in a rough economy, is not fun. Its hard, as you get a flood of recections, to not recall the famous paddle scene in Animal House. As you get rejection after rejection, you have to stand up, and try to get the next sale – no matter how much losing that last sale hurt.
But… isn’t the whole point of QuotaCrush to get LESS rejections? Indeed it is, but the facts remain that in a bad economy, no matter how good your sales process is, there are customers that just cannot get the budget for your product – regardless of how much more efficient it will make them, how much money it wil save them, or how much it will increase their own sales. Read more...
By Mark I LaRosa on May 7th, 2009
A few weeks ago, Josh Kopelman wrote a great post on entrepreneurs having transparancy with their board. Within the post, he spoke about how several of his portfolio companies give him full access to their sales data so he knows where they are at any moment. That struck me as genius – to provide the board with full access to the pipeline, and I’ve been thinking since then about a response to that – how it benefits the VP of Sales. As I thought about it, I began thinking more deeply about transparancy in the sales process. I realized in my own discussions with salespeople, I was advocating transparancy with prospects, and thought that instead I would write about that.
I got a call from one of the salespeople I work with and he asked me, “Mark, I want to close this account by Tuesday so that I don’t walk into the board meeting without this deal closed. What should I say to the customer to get them to close by Tuesday.” My answer? “Tell the customer you want to close the deal by Tuesday so you don’t walk into the board meeting without the deal closed – and you want to know if there is any way to make that happen.” Complete honesty… what a concept, right? Guess what? He closed the deal. He had to give a little on price, but he got his deal. Read more...
By Mark I LaRosa on May 3rd, 2009
In sales, its very easy to start celebrating the minute a deal is closed. In fact, celebration often starts once the verbal commitment is given. But, if there is one thing that experience in sales will teach you, is that you really can’t celebrate until the contract is signed – and furthermore – you really can’t celebrate until the cash is in the bank.
The past month has been an interesting one for two of my clients. For both of them, there were enough deals on the one yard line that the odds seemed very likely that the goal would be hit, yet so many of the deals got pushed into May that both missed the mark. Its worth noting that nearly all the deals are still in play. All that failed was creating enough urgency that the deals were able to close at the end of April.
In at least half of the instances, the objectives were very clearly outlined.. Read more...
