A Friend’s Perspective on Your Business

A Friend’s Perspective on Your Business

Over my 25+ years as a sales professional, I’ve come to realize that none of us will ever know all there is to know about any of our professions…..and sales may perhaps be the hardest one of all to conquer.

I’ve attended dozens of conferences and seminars, hundreds of webcasts, internal training, external training, new hire training, I even once took a course on how to train.  Still, with all this training, I will never fully understand all there is about selling.

I have worked with loads of other sales professionals…. some old, some young, many my age, and learned something good or bad from each and every one of them.  In our early years, it seems easy to pick up closing techniques, prospecting tricks, and perceived shortcuts to success.  Later in my career, I’ve found it more likely to observe people using methods that involve new styles, like social media, SEO, self-branding, and using other modern systems to succeed.  Today, the information available to us through the internet is almost infinite.

But to put this all into perspective, is using Hoover’s or Jigsaw or Linkedin to research companies and prospects any better than the old school method of “dialing for dollars” out of the phone book?  I’m not sure; I guess it would depend on what works for you….

But over the years, I have learned that the best method to get a neutral perspective on how your sales pitch works is to simply run it by one of your personal friends.  I have a lot of friends outside of sales and many work in fields completely removed from my product line.  There is no better test for your pitch than running it by one of your friends who has no idea whatsoever what you really do for work and what you really sell.

If you can maintain the interest of your friends with your sales pitch and at the end of your five minute pitch, they understand your product,  you’re on the right track.  I have even had the pleasure of hearing some great ideas from some of my friends which I have put into play and had great success with.  I consider this a bonus, but it happens more than you think.  It just takes you to practice perhaps the hardest sales skill of all…Listening!

So the next time you’re at a lunch, a ballgame, a cookout, or perhaps on the golf course with one of your friends, take a couple minutes and give him or her your pitch.  You might be surprised at what comes of it…and you might even discover they have a great contact or two for your to reach out to.  They had them all the time but never truly understood what you did or what you sold?  

But be prepared...good friends are brutally honest.  Just as quickly as they'll tell you your clothes don't match or you car is filthy, they'll tell you your delivery stinks!  If after you've finished, they still have no idea what you sell, you need to go back to the drawing board and rework your story.

I'm looking forward to hearing how successful you are in the coming weeks after you try this technique.  If there's someone's friend out there who's had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of someone's sales speech, I enjoy hearing about that too.

So let's get out there and engage our Friends!

Become an Expert and Grow Sales

Today’s information explosion has created limitless opportunity for a person to grow his business exponentially. The only thing required is a new perspective and some time to implement a new strategy.


Years ago, in order to write more sales and close more deals, a company had to have an extensive sales force, trained in the 3 major aspects of a successful salesperson: prospecting, presenting, and ultimately, closing. Today, I’m not sure that’s the best method for business growth.

Remember the famous quote in the 1992 movie Glenngarry Glenn Ross, “You want to work here? Close!”? This movie was shown over and over by sales managers across all industries for years. I personally had a sales manager in my early WorldCom days, who could recite nearly all of the sales quotes in the movie. I too developed a fond memory of the quotes and remember many of them to this day.

“The leads are weak!” cries Shelly Levine (played by Jack Lemmon). Blake from Mitch & Murray (played by Alex Baldwin) then counters....”The leads are weak? You’re weak!”.

That’s one of my favorites. Translated into today’s sales market, I agree the traditional “leads” are weak. Today’s buyers were yesterday’s sales people and they know all the old tricks of prospecting. Think of it this way, how often does the executive staff at your company take “cold calls” from sales people? I’d bet not very often. This habit of rejection has turned the job of prospecting into an endless repetition of voice mail and unreturned emails.

So you ask, “Ok, if traditional prospecting methods don’t work, what do I do to generate leads and write more business?”.

Simple. Make yourself into an expert and make people want to buy from you. That’s how.

Today’s decision makers know what they want and typically research it on the web prior to making any purchases. Your goal is to create a personal brand (and not necessarily a business brand) which positions you as an authority on your specific product or industry. When people search the web, you want your name to appear as high on the search engines as possible. In order to make this happen, there are a lot of “get rich quick” schemes advertised. Companies promising Search Engine Optimization or SEO are popping up every day. My advice to you is ignore the website promising you “1st page listing on Google” and get to work on it yourself. It will take some time and effort, but you can do it. It won’t happen overnight but with some persistence and perseverance you can get there.

The easiest way to start building your brand is get a Twitter and Facebook account. These are free and will begin to get your name out on the web. Next, join Linkedin (http://www.linkedin.com/). It is basically Facebook for the business professional. Create your profile and start linking with your business connections.

Next comes the fun part. Start a blog. Even if you’ve never written before, start a blog and jump in. Blogger from Google is free or you can search the web for “free blog” and you’ll find an extensive list to choose from. Now you won’t have thousands of readers right away, but trust me. Keep at it, post regularly, “tweet” on Twitter, build a following and before you know it, your brand will start creeping up the search engines. Once you get a base of followers, consider going to a hosting company like Go Daddy (http://www.godaddy.com/) and purchase a private web domain. It's not expensive and really gives your writings some credibility.  Remember, you want your writing to be informative, not necessarily a constant sales pitch. Readers want information so include links to support your opinions whenever possible. You can write on a variety of topics, so have fun with it and you’ll get results.

These are just the basics to start building a brand. There’s lots more to it like using backlinks, becoming interactive in social media, webinars, etc. we can talk about in another post but you have enough to get started on your way to success in today’s sales environment.

Don’t wait another day. Start right now and set aside an hour or two a day to work on your personal brand. The returns will be slow but constant and once it gets going, the growth is almost impossible to stop. Before you know it, you’ll be getting inbound calls and direct messages from prospects looking to buy!

I enjoy hearing about your successes or any ideas you might want to add to my techniques. Feel free to leave a comment or I can be reached @DaveHanron on Twitter or at dave@davehanron.com