SalesDog Quick Tip

Think differently.

Not every group of prospects is going to be interested in the same things. Learn to differentiate between the companies and contacts on your list, so that you can grab their attention in your cold calls and lead generation activities.

Today's quick tip comes from Kendra Lee, a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book "Selling Against the Goal" and president of KLA Group. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.741.6636

SalesDog Quick Tip

Find the real value.

If your company offers a lot of different products, think carefully about where their real value lies. What end result are your customers really buying from you? That's the best place to begin your prospecting and lead generation messages.

Today's quick tip comes from Kendra Lee. Kendra Lee is a Prospect Attraction Specialist and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group helps companies rapidly penetrate new markets, break into new accounts and shorten time to revenue with new products in the SMB segment.

SalesDog Quick Tip

Become a CRM Expert

Become an expert on your Customer Relationship Manager software. Learn the shortcuts and get into the habit of updating it with brief notes and a follow-up activity after every client call. You'll miss fewer details, and make more sales.

Today's quick tip comes from Kendra Lee, a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book "Selling Against the Goal" and president of KLA Group. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.741.6636

SalesDog Quick Tip

Open emails with a welcoming greeting.

Start your emails with an inviting salutation. Use the prospect's name ("Hi Tom!") so when they glimpse it, they immediately know this email was written for them.

Today's quick tip comes from Kendra Lee, a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book "Selling Against the Goal" and president of KLA Group. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.741.6636.

SalesDog Quick Tip

Funnel your questions

It can be easy to miss key information about your prospect's needs, or forget to ask the right questions in the first place, if you don't have a questioning strategy. Use a questioning funnel to stay on track and ask the right questions in the right order.

Today's quick tip comes from Kendra Lee, a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book "Selling Against the Goal" and president of KLA Group. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.741.6636

SalesDog Quick Tip

Hear More Than Words

When you listen to recordings of your prospecting telephone calls, use a checklist to see how well you're consistently achieving your primary objectives. Are you reaching decision-makers, using a confident tone, focusing on their business needs, handling objections well, and asking for referrals?

Today's quick tip comes from Kendra Lee, a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book "Selling Against the Goal" and president of KLA Group. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.741.6636

SalesDog Quick Tip

Record Your Cold Calls

The information you'll get from these recordings can help your sales immensely. You'll catch phone habits - good and bad - that you didn't even know you had. (Remember to confirm if in your state you have to ask the other party for permission to record.)

Today's quick tip comes from Kendra Lee, a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book "Selling Against the Goal" and president of KLA Group. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.741.6636

SalesDog Quick Tip

Devote One Day a Week to Prospecting

Treat that day as a client appointment. Don't let anything interrupt you, and just concentrate on making as many new calls and contacts as possible.

Today's quick tip comes from Kendra Lee, a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book "Selling Against the Goal" and president of KLA Group. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.741.6636.

SalesDog Quick Tip

Try Different Prospecting Methods

Many sellers develop favorite ways of prospecting because they feel most comfortable. Even though you may prefer face-to-face networking, for example, devote some days to other activities like phone or email prospecting. Create multiple sources of leads.

Today's quick tip comes from Kendra Lee. Kendra Lee is a Prospect Attraction Specialist and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group helps companies rapidly penetrate new markets, break into new accounts and shorten time to revenue with new products in the SMB segment.

Cold Calling Perfection: Are You Hearing This?

Today's article comes from sales trainer Kendra Lee, who shares great ideas for how you can better your cold calls!

In email prospecting strategies, one of the first things I advise is that you send yourself a draft before hitting the final send. That way, you get a sense of what it's like for your prospects to receive your emails. You can quickly see where you need to make adjustments to grab your prospect's attention and get a reply.

This same checkup strategy works well for your cold calls, too.

Many of your best and worst phone habits are the ones you probably aren't even aware of until you hear them. 'the same habits that may be keeping you from closing more first appointments.

So, how do you assess your cold call effectiveness? Record them.

It used to be that only the largest companies had access to telephone recording equipment. These days, however, numerous recording options exist. Recording functionality may already be built into your company phone system. If not, at the very least, you can use one of the free conference calling options that record calls.

Depending on where you live, there could be legal issues that require you to notify your prospect that you're recording the call, so do confirm that first. And if recording cold calls makes you uneasy or isn't possible, ask a peer to listen in while you make calls instead

Here's a quick checklist of 10 things you should listen for in your cold call reviews.

1.Are you opening the call with a compelling value proposition? The better you get at grabbing a prospect's attention during the first few moments of a cold call, the easier time you'll have of advancing the sale.

2.Are you talking about products, or business needs? Prospects care most about solutions to their problems, so be sure to frame your call in those terms.

3.Do you sound like an expert? It's important to be authoritative if you want prospects to trust you with their time, much less their investment.

4.Are the suggestions you make, or situations you talk about, accurate? For your discussion to have any weight, it has to focus on a need the prospect considers to be valid and important.

5.How are your listening skills? No cold call should be a one-way conversation. Ask questions that engage your prospects and learn to listen closely to the feedback you're receiving from prospects.

6.How does your telephone voice sound? Is your voice clear and relaxed, or full of "um's" and "ah's?" Cultivating a strong, clear phone voice is important for making prospects comfortable with you.

7.How skilled are you at dealing with objections? Cold calling is full of objections. Practice dealing with them over the phone and your appointment closing ratio will improve drastically.

8.Are you building enough interest before you ask for an appointment? Asking for an appointment too early is a common sales mistake. Make sure the prospect is interested enough in what you're talking about before you propose the next step.

9.Do you look for referrals if your contact turns out not to be the decision maker? Sometimes our research lets us down, but finding the wrong contact doesn't have to halt the sales opportunity. Ask for a referral to the correct decision maker and reference your initial call as an introduction.

10.Is the voicemail you leave one that you would return? If you're going to make cold calls, you're going to leave voicemails. Learning to leave the prospect with a compelling message – and clearly spoken return phone number – are great ways to make your telephone prospecting more effective.

If you can refine your cold calling, you'll get past gatekeepers more effectively, leave more compelling messages, gather more relevant information, and close more first appointments.

And who doesn't want to do all those things?

Kendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book Selling Against the Goal and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.741.6636.

SalesDog Quick Tip

Keep prospecting emails succinct.

The goal is to make your email look like something they can quickly read and address. Limit them to 175 words or less. Use 3-5 short paragraphs. Hold attachments back until you start the sales process.

Today's quick tip comes from Kendra Lee, a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book "Selling Against the Goal" and president of KLA Group. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.741.6636.

Selling and Prospecting Are Different Skills

Remember that selling and prospecting are different skills. To be the top sales dog, you have to be good at both. Practice each consistently, work on your technique, and you'll improve over time.

Kendra Lee is a Prospect Attraction Specialist and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group helps companies rapidly penetrate new markets, break into new accounts and shorten time to revenue with new products in the SMB segment.

5 Keys to Uncommon Email Prospecting Results

Email is a huge part of selling now - but it's definitely not easy! Today sales trainer Kendra Lee tells you how to get amazing results from email prospecting.

A big part of selling has always been finding a way to stand out from the crowd. Amazingly, that sometimes means just coming across like an actual person. Nowhere is this more true than with email prospecting and lead generation, where sending messages that look automated is the kiss of death in your prospect's in box.

Remember the Glimpse Factor - it takes prospects three seconds or less to decide whether they want to read your email, have time to deal with it, or can delete it without any consequences. And since deep down they might want to get rid of it and get back to work, it's up to you to make them feel like they need to respond right way.

Nobody answers mass marketing emails.

So, if a prospect is going to read your email, much less respond, it needs to seem like it came from a colleague, not a faceless Internet marketing firm. The best way to get uncommon email results is definitely to avoid looking like the common email marketer.

Here are a few things to try to increase your response rate.

1. Write subject lines that invite a quick response. If your prospect can't glean the purpose of your email from the headline, then it's probably not going to make it through the delete barrier. I like to use something that sounds personal like: "Can you talk Monday at 2pm?" Of course your subject must relate to the body of your email, so if you ask for a meeting Monday at 2pm, make sure you ask again in your email.

2. Start your email with a statement, not a question. How many messages do you send to your customers that begin with a question? That's right, none of them. Avoid the temptation to try to pique your prospect's interest with this tactic - it just doesn't work.

3. Use paragraphs rather than bullet points. This just tips contacts off to the fact that you're trying to sell them something. While your real objective is to make the email easier to read, your prospect is thinking "sales person - delete!" Use bullets once you have a working relationship, but stay away from them in your prospecting emails.

4. Send your message without fancy graphics or headers. There's nothing wrong with text, a few paragraphs, and a single link in your email message. Complicated layouts and pictures make it more likely that your note will be caught by a spam filter. And besides, how often do you put large graphic headers at the top of your client emails? The point is to look like you just dashed off a note to a colleague or customer, so forget the extras.

5. Write to another person. If your message doesn't read like something that could be spoken naturally, you have a problem. The idea is to connect with your prospect on a personal level and invite them to take action, not convince them that you're part of a faceless organization. Envision a customer and write your email as if you were sending it to him or her. Be sure that your message focuses on your prospects' issues or triggering events, not on your company. That's good selling advice in any situation, since customers care more about their needs than your generic solution features and benefits. Keep revising your emails until you have something that sounds natural and customer-focused, because that's what buyers - like all humans - respond to.

Kendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book "Selling Against the Goal" and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.741.6636.

4 More Steps to Achieve Your 2011 Sales Goals

Today sales trainer Kendra Lee picks up where she left off yesterday, with more tips for helping you achieve your sales goals this year. Her advice will definitely help you to meet and exceed your goals!

1. Look for growth in existing accounts. Of course, the easiest sales opportunities are to existing clients, so look at them next.

Where are there solutions you could be offering to customers you already have? Are some clients not taking advantage of all the services you provide? Are there other contacts or departments you could be selling to?

Find a realistic amount of growth you can expect in your current accounts, and then subtract that number from your existing total, too.

By now, your quota goal has probably shrunk considerably!

2. Uncover accounts, or revenue at risk. While you may see significant growth in many of your clients, sadly, the opposite is true as well.

No matter how great you are, some small percentage of your existing customers is likely to leave, merge, or take their business elsewhere.

Try to figure out which of your clients might be most vulnerable. You can subtract a percentage of that revenue now, for planning purposes, while making a note to yourself to pay special attention to them this year.

3. Leave yourself some wiggle room. Whatever number is remaining in your revenue goal, add 20% to it. Why? In the event that you unexpectedly lose a large account, a big deal doesn't close, or some of your plans don't work out the way you had anticipated, you'll still be right on track to achieve your revenue goal!

4. Establish your lead generation strategy. Once you've taken these steps, now comes the fun part.

Look at your remaining revenue goal – the amount you still have to generate after you've figured in your visible pipeline, existing customers, and the small percentage of accounts you might lose – and start to break it down into activity goals.

How many new accounts do you need to meet your remaining revenue goal? How many new leads will it take based on your past closing ratio? What kind of lead generation campaigns should you do to find those leads?

The second year in one of my most memorable territories I had no existing customers and little carried over in the sales pipeline. (You can see why it was memorable!) I ran lead generation events every quarter and email campaigns every two weeks.

Knowing the number of leads you need to achieve your revenue goal helps you determine what your lead generation strategy needs to be, too. It'll be easy for you to figure out what you need to do every week, month and quarter to stay on track.
The key to making it work, though, is taking your time on each step in being realistic in your estimations.

Lots of sellers fail to accomplish what they'd hoped from year to year because they never really bother to figure out exactly what they have to do to reach their goals – so take this template and use it to create a stellar 2011!

Kendra Lee is a Prospect Attraction Specialist and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group helps companies rapidly penetrate new markets, break into new accounts and shorten time to revenue with new products in the SMB segment.

4 Steps to Achieve Your 2011 Sales Goals

Today and tomorrow we'll be featuring a great article from sales trainer Kendra Lee. She will be sharing easy steps you can take to achieve your 2011 sales goals - so let's get started!

The end of one year and beginning of a new one is a great opportunity to examine your successes from the previous year, determine what you want to replicate, what you want to change and then set some goals for the new one.

Because setting attainable sales goals can be a lot trickier, and more stressful, then people tend to think, I'd like to offer a step-by-step guide to help you set and reach your 2011 target.

1. Start with revenue. Some sellers, and particularly business owners who think in terms of profits, like to start with margins or other metrics when setting their sales objectives. But whether you're setting your own goals, or assigning them to a sales team, I encourage you to begin with revenue.

Customers buy based on revenue. They don't agree to pay you a certain profitability margin. If they knew your margin, they'd surely negotiate for deeper discounts!
Revenue makes sales objectives a lot more concrete for sellers. (Of course margin is a critical metric, but you need a revenue goal, too.)

2. Make it your own. There's no law that says you have to be satisfied selling at the revenue level your company needs, or the amount assigned to you. Find the figure that will allow you to reach your personal goals for the year and use it as your real quota goal. It might seem tougher at first, but it's also a lot more motivating!

3. Don't get overwhelmed. When you first see your quota or personal goal, it can seem like an enormous number, especially if it's significantly higher than last year.

Push those thoughts aside.

Concentrate on seeing the goal as a figure that will shrink as you move through your planning process.

4. Figure out how much you've identified already. Look at your sales pipeline. Examine what you already know, or have a strong suspicion, will close. Often you can see opportunities you anticipate will close through the first quarter. Depending what you sell, you may even have annual services contracts you can count on already. Subtract this number from your revenue goal.

Kendra Lee is a Prospect Attraction Specialist and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group helps companies rapidly penetrate new markets, break into new accounts and shorten time to revenue with new products in the SMB segment.

SalesDog Quick Tip

I love this quick tip from sales trainer Kendra Lee - especially now that things start to get really crazy with the holidays coming up! It's a great reminder of keeping your priorities in check - and if your priority is a full sales funnel, then you need to keep prospecting regularly!

Never be Too Busy Selling to Prospect

While writing proposals and closing new clients is rewarding and fun, remember to prospect regularly so you aren't back to square one after those orders come in!

Kendra Lee is a Prospect Attraction Specialist and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group helps companies rapidly penetrate new markets, break into new accounts and shorten time to revenue with new products in the SMB segment.

Emails Not Getting Through? A Quick Tip!

For the non-tech savvy (like me!) this is a great tip. When you work really hard to create excellent prospecting letters you want to make sure you do everything you can to make sure they reach their destination. This quick tip from sales trainer Kendra Lee makes for one less thing to worry about.

If your prospecting emails aren't getting through spam filters, check to see if you're emailing out through your CRM system. Sometimes companies' spam blockers flag the data associated with a CRM system and block the email. Try emailing directly from a personal email system like Outlook, or through Twitter or LinkedIn's internal mail systems and see if you're able to break through that way.

Kendra Lee is a Prospect Attraction Specialist and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group helps companies rapidly penetrate new markets, break into new accounts and shorten time to revenue with new products in the SMB segment.

Sales Quick Tip

I saw this quick tip from sales trainer Kendra Lee, and thought it was a great idea! As sellers in a fast-paced business world we need to use everything we can to reach customers with our value.

Use Your Email Signature to Your Advantage

Start building a relationship with your prospects through your email signature. Include a links to your social network profiles and something interesting about your company, such as an article, recent report or cool free tool.

Kendra Lee is a Prospect Attraction Specialist and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group helps companies rapidly penetrate new markets, break into new accounts and shorten time to revenue with new products in the SMB segment.

Revisit Your Goals

As we go into the weekend, I thought this tip from sales trainer Kendra Lee was especially appropriate. Use some of your time this weekend to think about where you want to be, so when you go into the office on Tuesday (remember, Labor Day holiday on Monday!) you'll be ready to sit down and set out a plan of attack to meet those goals.

There are only 4 months left in the year. How are you doing against your 2010 goals? Revisit the account growth and lead generation objectives you had. How are you doing at bringing in new customers? Consider what lead generation actions you can take to impact the last 4 months of the year.

Kendra Lee is a Prospect Attraction Specialist and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group helps companies rapidly penetrate new markets, break into new accounts and shorten time to revenue with new products in the SMB segment.

Cool Sales Tools to Make Prospecting Easier - Part 2

Yesterday we featured some excellent tips from sales trainer Kendra Lee that will help make prospecting much easier for you. Thankfully, she's back today with even more tips that are incredibly helpful!

1. Watch your prospects. No, we aren't talking stalking. Watch what your top prospects are doing using alert services like Google Alerts for free. Set up a daily alert and see all the tweets and comments they've made and where they're mentioned. You'll know what to talk about when you call and more importantly, when they need you to call.

2. Make your emails stand out. Use Gobbledygook.grader.com to pick out trite or hype-filled words and phrases you don't even know you're using. It's a great tool to increase the impact of your brochures and online copy, too.

3. Know if they're listening. One of the biggest challenges with email prospecting is knowing if anyone has read what you sent. Use ReadNotify.com to trace email opens and forwards, numbers of times read, and URL clicks. Use Bit.ly to shorten long links for social network comments and emails. You can track how many times the links are opened, forwarded and by whom.

4. Increase your own productivity. If you're a Microsoft Outlook user Xobni.com is a plugin that makes searching your inbox and finding information about your contacts fast and easy. You can even search social networks for information about your contacts.Getting people to reply is the most difficult aspect of prospecting. These tools give you new levels of information and insight to grab their attention and increase your odds of success.

Kendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book "Selling Against the Goal" and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.773.1285.