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

1990's Sales vs. 2010 Sales

“Sales”……What a vast term. Everyone knows someone who is in or at least has tried a “sales” career. However, very few of us know those who have been successful in making a true lifelong career out of sales.

Has everyone read “Death of a Salesman”, a book written by Arthur Miller? The book is based on an aging salesman named Willy who was once successful but has seen his business drift away. Willy recollects the good times throughout the book, then phases back to reality and the fact that he’s lost his “personality” and wasn’t well liked any longer.

Why did Willy lose his personality? Because he never adapted to changing technologies and ever-changing methods of achieving “Power” status. “Power” is the technique of building your professional reputation as a person of knowledge, being perceived as an expert in your field. People always want to listen to experts, and people who make buying decisions are no different.

Back in the 80’s and 90’s, all the sales courses used to talk about terms like “close ratio” and “value of a sale”. The accepted process to achieving sales success was take your quota, whether it be monthly or annual, divide it by average value of sale, and that’s how many sales you needed to make to hit your number. Take your number of sales, divide it by your close ratio, and that’s how many proposals you had to make throughout the year. Figure your percentage of attaining appointments from prospecting, divide it in your number of appointments, and VOILA! That’s how many customers you needed to cold call…..sales is that simple, right? We all know the answer…..WRONG!

Using this formula today, the results are often impossible to achieve based on this 20+ year old premise. There are only so many hours in the day and quite frankly, cold calling doesn’t work these days. Why? Because today’s Executive are often promoted from the most successful producers within a particular company. That is often the salespeople and thus today’s “Buyers” were yesterday’s salespeople. They know the old techniques as well if not better than you do and won’t be talked into a purchase using them.

So how do we succeed in today’s markets? I say indulge yourself into the information and social media world, and build your reputation “Power”using all the tools available to you today.

1. Start a blog using your own domain. You can purchase one from Google or GoDaddy for as little as $10 per year. You can talk about anything you want on it, your products, your advice, a new sales tool, it’s up to you

2. Join Linkedin and build your profile. Linkedin is basically a Facebook for business professionals. The more connections you can make on Linkedin, the more “Power” your profile has.

3. READ…READ…and READ. Read all the sales e-letters and books you can find. Lots of people have great ideas and techniques (there are lots of “experts” like me out there) and you can pick up something new from everyone. One of the best courses I’ve taken over the years is “Cold Calling is a Waste of Time” by Frank Rumbauskas Jr. It’s about 120 pages + 2 audio CD’s. Lot’s of good stuff in this one. Here’s a link if you’re interested in it.. http://www.nevercoldcall.com/?10072  Trust me, this one is worth the small investment.

4. There are other techniques but I can’t give away all my secrets!......Sorry…

Try using these techniques to help build your professional “Power”. Start building your “Power” and you’ll find prospects will be calling you, not the other way around. Before long, you’ll have more leads than ever before, without using 20 year old techniques….Welcome to 2010!

Good luck and if anyone else has some sales courses they like, I’d love to hear about them…post them hear so we can all benefit! Thanks and Happy Selling