You've got just eight short seconds to grab your prospect's attention and land an executive sales appointment. This sales expert shows you how. By Tony Parinello Before you pick up the phone to make a sales call to an executive, I'd like to suggest you remember the following true story: A few months ago, one of my salespeople, Daniel, had some car problems, so I offered to give him a ride to work. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity to do a little one-on-one role-playing, I suggested we go over some appointment-setting phone skills. I've had a long-standing, well-proven statistic that you have just eight seconds to grab an executive's attention whenever they pick up their phone. Daniel was a bit skeptical about my eight-second standard. He looked at me and said, "Boss, eight seconds is too short a period of time! That's hardly enough time to take a deep breath, let alone make a meaningful opening statement." We happened to be waiting at a red light when he said this. As the light turned green, I kept my foot on the brake and started counting: "One thousand one, one thousand two...." People started honking. By the time I got to "one thousand ...

Achieving sales volume goals for your business is one of the biggest challenges any owner faces. Many factors beyond your control can affect that final number--the economy, the weather, the competition. But one manageable factor is the people in direct contact with your clients--your sales team. Some business owners ask every person on the team to meet the same sales goals. That's the easiest thing for a busy entrepreneur to do. But not everyone is capable of achieving at the same level. Some salespeople are better with a certain product; others work best with a certain type of client. You just can't get away from these complicated variables. Since your business is so powerfully impacted by these variables, you should master the art of flexibility. Smart business owners work with each person on their staff to discuss what's expected of them to keep the business growing. Each person must be evaluated based on his or her skills, knowledge and interests. It's wise to set an overall company goal so you all know what you're trying to achieve. It's also a good practice to step back every now and then to look at the big picture of your business as it relates to that ...

I could have used this post last week. :) Learn how to ask the right questions that will help you complete each sale like a star. Typically, when I talk with my students on a one-to-one basis, they ask me a lot of questions about how to close sales. That's to be expected because it's the positive end result all salespeople seek in any contact with potential clients. In most situations where sales aren't closed, it's usually because the salesperson didn't ask the right question. In all my training, you'll hear it repeated over and over that every answer you need to get in order to meet someone, qualify them as to their needs, get permission to give a presentation or close a sale will come to you if you only ask the right questions. Sometimes, it's not just the question that matters, but how it's presented. You may have to set the stage or tell a story leading up to the question that helps the client rationalize the buying decision. No matter how good your lead in or story is, however, you won't get the sale if you don't ask for it. Let me give you a few closes that have proven successful for ...

There are many options out there for a customer relationship manager (CRM) available. I guess they all have advantages and disadvantages but I have grown accustomed to SalesForce and have no issues with it. Besides using it for work to manage all my accounts and prospects, I also have a personal account that is available to anyone for free. SalesForce has done a good job keeping up with the needs of there corporate customers by adding new features and having a consistent update pattern that they make visible to SalesForce admins. But this is not why I love SalesForce so much. Work anywhere SalesForce as a CRM solution allows a mobile workforce to always be connected. The old school days of field sales people running their business off of spreadsheets should be trashed. Being able to access your company information from any connected device like a computer or mobile phone allows sales people and executives to review and update important data anytime of the day from anywhere in the world. Customizing reports is easy People at the top are always asking for reports. SalesForce makes this fairly simple. You can set reports up to be available to everyone or make ...

Ten days is too long between posts. I have been busy with a few other projects I'd like to share. As many of you know I follow several other websites about making money online and internet marketing. DoshDosh is one of my favorites along with ShoeMoney and no list would be complete without John Chow Now the space of 'make money online' sites is getting full. In fact the space is overcrowded with blogs and sites devoted to teaching you how to make money online and some charge a fee for their 'secrets'. Since there are so many sites like the few I listed above available for free, I don't understand why people would pay for the same information. Then I started thinking that these people are actually getting paid though. I would think that people do pull out their credit cards and add to someones PayPal coffers for the information. The instant gratification of spending $20 or more for a PDF must appeal to someone. 1 PDF + domain name = online business.

A friend passed this article along to me knowing that I stay on top of these types of stories. Little did I know that they mentioned NetSuite as a pioneer of the Sales 2.0 era. Thanks Jake! ------------------- It's a question almost as old as commerce itself: Is selling an art or a science? For years, technology companies have been trying to transform the former into the latter. And for years, the results have largely been disappointing. Think of those days as Sales 1.0. We're now in the era of Sales 2.0. Your bottom line may never be the same. Remember the bad old days of sales-oriented technology? Customer relationship management systems that cost a fortune to install and crashed easily. Downloadable lists of sales leads filled with old or bogus data. E-mail marketing tools that targeted the wrong consumers. And on and on. Fortunately, software firms that target small companies with sales tools have been getting smarter and smarter. Following pioneers such as Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) and NetSuite, a new generation of companies is offering easy-to-use, cheap (indeed, often free) technology that can supercharge the performance of your sales force--with minimal training and virtually none of the heavy-duty installation associated with ...

If you are a professional and trying to network with other people in your industry or get back in touch with past coworkers, LinkedIn is the tool you need. CNN Money wrote about this earlier in the year talking about the growth of the site and how it is used by some of the 8 million plus users. LinkedIn is all about business: recruiting, sales, investment. It's not exactly a marketplace or a job site but rather a community of more than 8 million people who rely on one another to get things done. LinkedIn as I have said in earlier posts is an account that everyone in a professional environment should have and more importantly, something everyone should want to look its best. Think of your LinkedIn profile like your personal Hoovers page where people that find you should be given quality data.

Dave Cheong is another blogger that is working his was to entrepreneurship I was surfing through his past posts and I came across a headline that caught my eye and wanted to share it with all of you. I saw 10 R's to Apply if you want to Succeed and thought 'WTF' and had to read the entire post. In his post he give a great framework for people that want to succeed to follow. Being that I am an entrepreneur at heart I thought that all of the 10 R's are on the money.

This is an interesting article I read from Entrepreneur.com and my thoughts on it. Looking for a new way to increase employee satisfaction and loyalty? It may not be as hard as you think. A new survey by Kenexa Research Institute, a recruitment and retention consulting firm, discovered that telecommuters report the highest level of job satisfaction. According to the survey, which took place in June, about 73 percent of remote and home-based workers said they're satisfied with the company they work for, as opposed to 64 percent of office workers. Jack Wiley, executive director of the Kenexa Research Institute, said allowing employees to work remotely is a matter of respect. "I respect you and I have confidence in your commitment to the work, to do this under the conditions and at the time you feel will be most productive for you," said Wiley. But telecommuting isn't catching on at all workplaces. Some businesses worry about how to administer a work-at-home policy in a fair way for all employees. And some employers still have what Wiley called a "command-and-control mentality," meaning if they can't actually watch employees, they don't know how productive they're being. Companies should inherently trust their employees. Sure there should ...

Boost your sales by learning from experienced eBay sellers. By Janelle Elms | Thinking of starting your own business on eBay? Before you do, it may be a good idea to head back to school; eBay school, that is. On eBay, you'll find a group of trained and experienced sellers--known as Education Specialists--who can teach you the ins and outs of running a business on eBay and give you the tools you'll need to create a successful venture. Because of incredible demand for its services, the Education Specialist program has grown from just one course--"The Basics of Selling on eBay"--to a suite of classes on subjects that include buying, opening an eBay Store and fundraising. eBay education is popular even in the brick-and-mortar world, where Education Specialists are training companies to use eBay as a new selling channel. "We have found that new sellers gain confidence and knowledge about selling on eBay after taking a course from an Education Specialist," says Sharon Guldner, senior manager of eBay Education Programs. Education Specialists are trained, tested and provided with "the same course materials developed by eBay University, so students can be confident they are learning tried-and-true selling techniques from [experienced sellers]," says ...