Consider the following scenarios:

1.  You want a backup of all of your customer data
2.  You want to change the software you are using to track sales

Two very reasonable requests, wouldn't you say?  Well, try to do either and you will see how easy it truly is!

CSV, Tab and Comma-Delimited Data Files

The common data exchange of most software is the CSV file.  This is
the file type that a software program will import or export.  Data
fields are separated by tabs, commas or double-quote characters. 
Usually, you get to choose which character it is.

Just for fun, try to perform a backup of your precious customer
data.  In most applications, this is as easy as pressing the "export"
or "backup" button. 

In the course of a normal business day, I find myself using a land line
telephone, a cellular telephone and a computer-based Voice Over
Internet Protocol (VOIP) application such as Skype.

The Scenario

Here's a typical scenario: 

Skype. 
Daily meeting with outbound call agent.  Vhanessa works in a call
center in Manila, Phillapines. I work in Vancouver, Canada.  Our calls
last from 30-90 minutes.  We use skype because it is decent quality and
it's free.  I have been using a Labtec C-322 headset
for skype calls.  The voice quality is good enough for business
communications.  I don't like the way I am confined to the distance of
the headset cable or how I need to take off or put on the headset when
working with one of my other phones.

Who do I sell to?

My marketing study says that my target market is roofing businesses
withing a 2-hour drive of downtown Chicago. How do I get the names of
those businesses so I can call
them?

Terminology

Before I launch into the how-to part, I thought best to clarify some terms that come up a lot when discussing sales.

Most sales folk refer to the people they sell to as their
"prospects". Those with a bit more experience in sales segment
prospects into "qualified prospects" and "suspects", where a suspect is
unqualified in terms of decision-making authority, timeframe, budget
and needs and the qualified prospect is.

I like the way my friend Pauline O'Malley of The RevenueBuilder refers to sales prospects "Customers-to-Be". It's so much more positive and personal.

My friend Kerry is a recent graduate of the University of British Columbia. He had planned to travel a bit this summer before embarking on his career, but family issues caused him to change those plans. He called me the other day and asked to meet.

 

I quickly learned that Kerry was bored. Goodness, what a convenient problem to have just as I figure it's time to start researching the options for how to publish this book to be!

Over the next week or so, Kerry is going to look into it. By about the time the sticky buns were devoured, we had come up with the following options:

• publish as an eBook
• self publish
• find a publisher

The next step, which we will discuss in a week or so, is to determine what is involved with each option. Ahhhh... where the rubber meets the road!

Yikes. I've been receiving a lot of concerned calls lately. "Have you died, Jackson?"

No. All's well. My sincerest apologies. I didn't think anyone actually read my museings and rants, so this blog has not been getting my attention.

Since my last post, I have been working very intensively on completing and cleanly wrapping up a Sales Jumpstart program for a business association. I've also been busy ramping up another for a vendor of municipal infrastructure services. There's more... but today I will assess the project for the association.

Goodness, if only there were a formula that we could apply that would answer this question!
I've been trying to track down statistics on this for some time. When doing research on the Internet, I keep running across the following:

According to the National Sales Executive Association

Most people don't buy things for their businesses on impulse. A bad buying decision can be career-limiting.

Given that a B2B sale takes time and often includes multiple decision-makers, I find that good second step in the sales process is an viral email "advertorial". This short, informative note gets right to the point of the value proposition, provides relevant links for more information, provides permission to forward and provides my complete contact information.

I'll get to some examples of what I mean by a viral email advertorial another day because the focus of this post is simply identifying the correct email address to send the message to.

Four days ago, I hired Vhanessa.

On our first day we did a lot of housekeeping things.  Like picking a name, for example.  (Most agents have a "stage name" they use for work.)  Or taking a geography lessons.  (I wanted Vhanessa to learn about the geography of where she was selling into, and I was curious to get a geography lesson on her area of the Philippines.)  We also went over scripts in infinite detail and role playing for what seemed like hours at a stretch.  We studied the business my client is in and reviewed websites she could reference for more information.  I even asked her to listen to Internet radio and watch the live news over the Internet so she'd get a feel for the events that the people she would be speaking to might want to chat about.

The last six weeks have been a learning experience.  Learning experiences are great for books and blogs.... bad for sleep and usually involve a lot of the unexpected, which can also cause indigestion.

Fast forward on my last post.  I recently opted to work with a North American business that provides offshore call center agents.  I chose the agency not so much based on a thorough investigation, but on trust. 

You see, I love to be sold.  One day, I received a cold call from a very articulate, very professional person by the name of Alain offering me contract sales help.  I told him straight up that I already had an agent and a relationship with an agency in India, but that I had grand visions of writing a book and would likely need several agents in the future.  I invited him to sell me on the idea of working with him.

Last year, my buddy Steve and I were having a chat in the chairlift at Whistler about business development.  We'd both recently read "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman and were curious about how we might leverage some of opportunities that Friedman discussed.  In the time it took us to get to the top of the hill and mostly on a whim, we decided to hire someone in India.

Steve outsources his manufacturing to China and sells his products over the Internet.  I am a consultant who helps a range of growing businesses in the tech sector with their sales.  While our needs were slightly different, our goals were the same:  How could we generate more sales with minimal cost and risk?

It was a great day of skiing! 

We returned home to a pile of neglected work and it was a couple of days before we got back to one another.  OK, now what?  Where do we start?