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Events may be off but your audience may need you more than ever. What’s more, your business does not have to grind to a halt even though in-person presentations are no longer an option.

You can still reach your audience by taking your presentation online in the form of a webinar.

Like any presentation, planning is important for you to achieve your desired objective with your webinar. With this in mind, we’ve put together a few pointers to support you…

1 Begin with the takeaway

What’s the one key message you want your audience to remember after the webinar? When you begin your slides, think about your takeaway and make it clear from the start.

GotoWebinar found that the average audience viewing time for a webinar is 57 minutes, so you want to seed your message early, support it throughout the presentation and then come back to it in your conclusion.

2 Tell a story

Hook your audience from the first slide – storytelling techniques are essential for sustaining interest. Try mapping out your story using the following format:

· Introduction – Build empathy with your audience and create tension by amplifying the gap between the problem you identified and the solution you’re offering.

· Middle – go back and forth between the problem and the solution. Show your audience how much better their situation can be.

· Conclusion – The closing slides are not the end of the story but the beginning of a new one: reinforce your message so your audience can share your vision of a better world.

3 Complement sound and visuals

Your audience is going to be listening to what you say while looking at and reading your slides, and perhaps even taking notes. Align what’s being shown on the screen with what you’re going to say so it makes sense to your audience as they do so. It’s not a good idea to reuse an old presentation as it needs to satisfy what’s being discussed during the webinar.

Incorporate enough visual aids in your webinar slides that are simple, clear and consistent with your script. These can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from symbols that represent keywords to metaphors that put ideas across in a simple way.

Remember that your audience can also participate in your webinar, so if your slides are too busy or you go through your main messages too quickly, they’ll struggle to stay engaged.

4 Deliver useful information (not a sales pitch)

Many people are using webinars only to pitch their products. This should be avoided, webinars are used to deliver valuable facts, insights, and information. Delivering this type of content will help you build a good relationship with your audience. The goal is to keep them coming back for the information you’re providing. It’s much better than tricking them into listening to your sales pitch and have them running away.

5 Mention your product or service

We just covered why not to pitch during an instructional webinar. This is different. Let your audience know that what you’re teaching is relevant to your business. If you’re doing a webinar on marketing networking, for example, it’s a good idea to let your audience know you wrote a book about the very same topic. This is to be done in moderation – the point is to establish yourself, not sell your products.

6 Use this opportunity to gain a new audience

Try to keep the conversation going with the attendees of your webinar. Ask questions, interact and make yourself easily accessible on social platforms such as Twitter or Facebook. This way you can gain your following while perhaps gaining some valuable feedback.

You already have their emails, so it’s important to keep in touch with them. You can start sending them an email thanking them for their attendance. Then, you should send updates they might be interested in, but be careful about the frequency of your emails.

If your audience took interest in you and you delivered well in your webinar, there’s a chance they’ll speak well about you to their friends, family or colleagues. Spreading the word about your webinar gives a good chance to boost your next webinar’s attendance.

7 Show your audience that you appreciate their participation in your webinar

Make your audience feel special and reward them for the time they spent with you. Offering something they will appreciate like a discount, a limited time offer, or a free product/service will help them feel good about the whole experience.

And remember…

A webinar becomes an asset that can keep on giving… Record it and make it available to those that couldn’t join live.

Nathan Jackson is Managing Director of presentify. His company supports businesses with presentation solutions, animated videos and presentation coaching.

Get in touch with Nathan

#presentify #webinars #sales #marketing #workingfromhome

2020 is here, well almost. It is that dreaded time to think about what sales we hope to achieve from our key accounts.

Why? Have you heard of the 4 P s? Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

Below is a simple guide to a solid account plan for key accounts. It takes no longer than a few minutes to get going and easy to refer to during the year.

The job of a key account manager is to grow and retain key accounts. I define a key account as delivering between 3 and 5 % of total revenues/profits.

If the account deliver more than that it is a strategic account as that performance can make the difference between profit and loss.

It makes sense having a planned approach with key accounts.

In addition to obvious numbers such as quote to order history and annual turnover, there are just six fundamental areas for each key account relationship to answer.

Having the answers should help to improve sales, retain the customer, deliver great service and earn bonuses.

Here they are:

1. Current relationship:

What is our current position with this customer?

Do we get all the orders we could get from them? If not, why not?

How does the customer see us? A partner, a fall-back supplier, expensive, fabulous?

How would you describe the key challenges we face in developing and managing the relationship?

2. Customer Agenda:

What is the customer’s agenda of essential goals and priorities?

Like most companies, they will have a monthly, annual or even longer plans. If we have good knowledge about this plan, we should be able to gain more business from them.

We should help the customer achieve their plans. Some customers would be very happy to share their plans or vision. The latter can often be found on the website or in brochures.

3. Our Aspirations

What are our aspirations for this customer relationship?

What should it look like in terms of turnover, product mix, order methods and relationship with key contacts?

Numbers are good to state our timed, objectives, yet the quality of the relationship should also be articulated. The best account management includes sharing some of the aspirations with the customer. The larger a customer, the more they want a deep relationship with their suppliers and see them as partners.

4. Major Opportunities:

What are the most promising opportunities to deepen and grow this customer, given their goals and priorities?

This could be through products, service led, relationship based or projects the customer is hoping to win.

5. Key Relationships:

What (senior) relationships must be deve

loped or deepened to capture the opportunities?

This should cover decision makers as well as influencers. It makes sense to matrix this with other people in your company.

6. What help do I need?

What internal resources and people do you need to leverage to capture the best near-term opportunities and reach your ultimate aspirations for the relationship. This can include products, delivery mechanisms, bespoke pricing or even customer incentives like football tickets or other entertainment.

---

Key account template

Key Account Name: 2020 GP/Revenue target:

Key Account Manager:

Describe the current relationship

2. What is the customer’s trying to achieve this year?
3. What are my plans with this account for 2020?
4. What are the major opportunities I aim to achieve with this account?
5. Who are the key relationships that need developing for this account?
6. What support do I need to grow this account?

Good luck planning your success in 2020. It will help to make it better again than 2019.

Feel free to get in touch with any questions.

+447738010170 or gert.scholts@thebestsalescoach.co.uk

#salesplanning#thebestsalescoach#keyaccounts

This sales tip is for sales leaders taking on new staff and how to support new starters.

For sales leaders September is a month when new starters join the team. Some managers apply the “in at the deep end” approach. Others offer training in a protected environment first.

So how do you lead a fresh sales person who has all the attitudes yet lacks experience?

Here is a view based on the situational leadership model.

New sales people need a lot of direction from their Manager when they start (S1). Good examples are product knowledge, systems knowledge and teaching how the sales process works. It also includes KPI driven activity management like 100 relevant new connections a day, x number of calls or y number of meetings booked per week.

As they develop, direction keeps being a key part of the support yet a sales manager should also deliver on the job support (S2). This includes joint sales visits, calls or proposal writing and of course 121 meetings.

When sales people perform and achieve their targets, the sales manager keep supporting (S3) yet KPIs become more outcome focused like quarterly targets or landing a large new client in 2018.

The very experienced and high performance sellers set their own targets and are motivated from within. They need low support and low direction (S4).

Situational Leadership describes the styles of management a manager could adopt based on each team members’ competence level. By adapting their management style the manager influences effectively and gets closer to the (sales) results needed.

Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard devised it in 1972. It still makes a lot of sense today for sales managers.

A bit more about the different leadership styles:

Telling And Directing

In telling/directing, the sales manager is the one making the decisions and informing others in the team of the decision. This style of leadership may also be referred to as micro-management as the sales manager is very involved and closely supervises the sales people. With this style of leadership, it is a very top-down approach and the sales team simply do exactly what they are told. A good example is repetitive Telesales activity where 100 calls a day have to be achieved using set scripts. In my experience many sales people find this style oppressive and pointless. However, if they are not achieving the results needed and not active enough, this style can be right to get people back on track.

Selling And Coaching

With the “selling” and coaching style of leadership, the sales manager is still very involved in the day-to-day activities. The decisions still ultimately lie with the manager, however, input is requested from the team before the decision is implemented. With this style of situational leadership, sales people are still supervised but it is in more of a coaching manner rather than a management manner. This style typically works well with those who are inexperienced and still learning how to sell. It involves direct praise to increase their confidence and self-esteem. In my experience, many sales people love praise and recognition. They see this as motivation and a way of getting better at their job.

Participating And Supporting

The participating and supporting style of situational leadership passes more responsibility to the sales people. While the sales manager still provides some direction, the decisions ultimately lie with the sales person. The sales manager is there to provide feedback and to increase their confidence and motivation with praise and feedback for the sales tasks completed and achieved. Those who work well under this style of situational leadership have the necessary skills but lack the confidence or motivation to achieve them. Experienced sales people who are out on the road a lot, could fall into this group.

Delegating

Delegating is the situational leadership style where the sales manager is involved the least amount with the team members. They are responsible for choosing the tasks and the directions they will take. Although the manager may still be involved for direction or feedback purposes, it is on a much lower level than with other situational leadership styles. With this style of leadership, the sales persons know their role and perform it with little supervision required. I have seen this style being used successfully with long cycle high value sales processes and key account managers.

When used with new inexperienced sales people it often ends in tears!

If you want to find out more about sales leadership and managing sales people feel free to contact me direct on 07738010170

salesteammanagement #teamwork #salesresults

Very pleased to be speaking at Colchester Digital next week. During the talk I hope to explore the universal elements in making sales and point at the star questions that help closing deals

And for those who believe selling is hard to get to grips with, I hope to share some shining examples of process, process, process.

Why not join the fun:https://www.meetup.com/colchester-digital/events/242230403/

Here are 10 top tips for a great commission scheme. It will work for your business and encourage your sales people to go the extra mile.

1. Design a commission scheme that supports company strategy 100%
2. Keep the scheme super simple to understand
3. Get sales people’s input when designing the scheme
4. Pay commissions very soon after sales are made
5. Reward on-target performance and increase rewards dramatically for outstanding performance
6. Pay sales hunters a lower base with a higher commission scheme.
7. Pay sales farmers a higher base with a lower commission scheme
8. Launch the scheme with examples and show its potential
9. Avoid any discretionary payments
10. Make the scheme the same for people who perform the same job but allow for different target levels

A great commission scheme directs sales people to what you want to achieve and how you want them to achieve it. It also helps to attract and retain top talent. If you need some help with your commission schemes feel free to contact me.

gert.scholts@thebestsalescoach.co.uk

#salestarget #motivate #salesteammanagement #success

Here is a free short and simple effective telephone script you can use when you do not know the decision maker in a company you are targeting:

“My name is First Name, Surname I work for The Widget Company. I hope you can help me?

We are a market leader in Widgets and work with other retailers such as Kingston’s and Chelsea.

We not working with you yet, and I wonder who the best person is in your company to speak to about this…………”

Get name and contact details and proceed by asking to be put through.

Download the script here:

#coldcalling #salestips

Prospects or customers telling you how good your products, service or sales pitches are, deliver a sure sign you are doing some things very well.

I use a board in the office where we capture our wows. And when we have our weekly sales meetings, we tell eachother about them. It is highly motivational and fun too!

#Customerfeedback #motivate #team #wow

I love to see a full sales funnel with plenty of new sales opportunities being added frequently and a big flow of converted sales coming out at the bottom. Filling that funnel can take a little while depending on the type of business and sales you are in. Web generated opportunities can soon fill your funnel especially when your sales cycle is short. If you are in a more relationship driven sales environment, new opportunities may be less frequent yet their individual opportunity value may be a lot higher.

If you regularly add new opportunities and follow up on the ones that are in there already, conversions will take place.

Most CRM applications used today, show the funnel in all its glory. Here are my 3 tips managing the sales funnel.

Include value as well as number of opportunities. This will show how dependent you might be on just one or two big deals. This will help avoiding bigcasitus, the sales person’s disease that prevents you from adding any further deals because you focus on that BIG one only. (I first had a bout in 1986 and it was not much fun)

Work on your conversion ratios for each stage in the funnel. It is not uncommon to convert less than 20% of all sales opportunities. That would mean every 5 new opportunities going in the top of your funnel result in 1 sale. If you know how many sales (or revenue) you need to make in a year, you can work out how many new opportunities you need to put in the funnel.

Keep filling the funnel. That is what the boss gives you a nice base salary for. Make the sales and the bonuses start to flow.

Years ago, after I suggested sending introductory letters to prospects in favour of a phone call, my boss said, “People buy from people!” Yet today I mostly buy from systems, not people. The web allows me to research and pick my preferred product for the right price from a brand I trust. It’s convenient and I feel in control.

So where does this leave my boss’s wise words and the future of sales people?

Ecom is very well suited for transactional sales where no or very limited advice is needed.

In the end people buy products that help them to achieve their personal or business vision. A sales person assisting them with this process will always be important especially when the investment is significant, hurdles are high or time is at a premium.

A sales professional understands this and will work with his/her prospective customer to explore that vision and how their particular product(s) might help in achieving it.

This type of “vision selling” goes way beyond traditional needs analysis, product features and benefits.

The future of face-to face sales lies in this vision selling. Done well, it makes my old boss’ statement as valid as ever.

Here are 10 reminders that the sales business is a people business. See slide show at the following link,

Link to slideshow

#success #timely #punctuality #teamwork #salespeople #business