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“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

–Bill Gates (1955 – )
American businessman
Co-founder and chairman of Microsoft

http://www.justsell.com/gates-on-loving-the-unhappy/

Wow! Have we become an isolated society, hiding behind emails and voice mails.

Attention Sales Professionals and Business Leaders!

Pick up the phone and return peoples calls, sales is that simple.

I was recently looking for a hotel to book a banquet room for a seminar I am holding.

Horrible Horrible one more time Horrible.

Out of 7 emails sent to hotels asking for information.

1 returned the call, 2 returned emails and 4 are pending lost in space.

Here is one email back:

The set up fee for the space (2 sections of the ballroom) would be $700.00 plus food and beverage.

Shameful, going into price and no phone call.

Is it the economy or a poor sales process?

What are your thoughts…………

Become a Master in Social Media.

Invest a day or a session with your laptop and professional instruction on how to setup and develop a social media strategy for your business.

Have you heard about recent Lead Gen success stories in social media? Do you know the smart tactics companies are applying to increase sales and find qualified leads? Do you want to know how you can do this for your brand? Discover the social media strategies of companies like Dell, Jetblue, and American Express that can improve your own lead generation activities.

Attend this seminar to increase leads for your sales team by listening to the social web, identifying brand champions and potential leads, and employing social savvy when you engage with potential customers.

• Listen: A review of platforms to monitor social media
• Benchmark: Determine what is being said, and who is saying it
• Identify: Find your fans, brand advocates and champions
• Engage: Using social media to respond and interact
• Measure: How to best seed your content to track it via your listening platform

Secure your spot today!
Register Here http://rochestesocialmediabeginnertoadvanced.eventbrite.com/

End of the day Results:

· Your step-by-step guide to Social Networking

· How to use Sales 2:0 to increase Revenue for Your business

· Find out Insider Secrets of Twitter Power!

· Results-driven strategies you can use in your marketing plan

· The top resources that will automate your efforts and save hours of time.

· Capture your readers with snappy tweets and status updates

Seminar is Designed to Help Businesses, Brands, Marketers, Entrepreneurs and Professionals Leverage the Power That is Inherent With Twitter , Facebook , LinkedIn by Exposing Best Practices, Practical Guidance and Examples So That Savvy Businesses Can Quickly Create Value.

Register Here http://rochestesocialmediabeginnertoadvanced.eventbrite.com/

Schedule for the day:

1. Beginner Social Media Success Session: A High Level Overview of Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn 7:30 AM-9:00AM $49.00 Walk away with the tools to set up your social media accounts. (no social media account necessary to be set up in advance a power point will be provided at end of session to set up all of your social media on your own)

2. Intermediate Social Media Success Session: High impact hands on all about Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter how to create, develop and market your business. 9:00-12:00 $49.00 Walk away with how to use social media and navigate through the maze. (social media accounts need to be set up in advance to maximize results, please bring logo, photo, resume and unique selling proposition)

Lunch provided by Lovin’ Cup 12:00-1:00 PM

3. Advanced Social Media Success Session: High impact hands on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter & Four Square. Take the morning advice and now develop a strategy to obtain new business 1:00-5:00 PM $49.00 Walk away with a clear/concise strategy to maximize your exposure and increase sales! (social media accounts need to be set up in advance and completed to 100%)

Best deal entire day for $119.00 attend all three sessions and become a master of social media.

What previous attendess are saying:

Mike,

Thank you very much for the presentation. Your class was very helpful
and we walked away with some great ideas. JE

Overall, very well done. Started and stopped on time. Full day’s worth
of content. Excellent value for time and money. HK

Invite your friends and colleagues, thank you!

Article social-media-5-reasons-why-it-will-increase-your-sales

As scene on Channel 8

Your instructor Michael Krause from Sales Sense Solutions, Inc.

Please call 585-704-6453 with any questions.
Register Here http://rochestesocialmediabeginnertoadvanced.eventbrite.com/

Last one sold out! Only 30 tickets will be sold. Register Early.

See you on June 29th.

Our Best,

Mike & Amy

Connecting the best businesses with the best people. Get on the list!

http://www.rochesteralist.com/

From The Street: 11 Must Knows to Win an Interview in Sales

By Mike Krause “Giving You 110%”

The other day I received a call from a Sales Professional I admire and she asked me for some help preparing for an interview. I was honored that she thought of me and was happy to help her prepare.

I have interviewed/screened over 1,000 Sales Professionals in my time and wanted to share with you my top 11 tips:

1. Prompt! It still amazes me how many do not show up on time. Let’s think! Do you think the hiring Manager wants to put up with you already? DELETE!

2. Dress for success. My Grand Mother has always told me “you can tell a lot about a man from his shoes” Shine your shoes, dry clean your clothes, hair cut, manicure etc…

3. Three copies of your resume.  Dah! When a job ad is posted there are hundreds or even 1000’s of resumes that come in. Most of the time the first time a hiring Manager sees your resume is when they meet with you. Do not assume they have read or even seen your resume. Here is why three resumes; if they like you they will send you up the ladder that day and you will meet more Executives.

4. Bring your brag book, if you do not know what this is maybe sales is not for you. My brag book is 150 pages with accolades, color copies of awards, rankings and a copy of my W-2’s. I always ask for a copy of a W-2 if the candidate states they made $150,000 a year, so I ask for a copy. In 15 years I have NEVER seen a copy from a candidate that made up a number. If you have made the income be proud and show it!

5.  Prepare, Google the company and find out as much as you can about them the good and the bad. Do NOT be afraid to ask about pending lawsuits etc… As a Sales Professional you will be the spokes person for the company and you will have to defend the company’s reputation. Bring printed copies of the web pages in a separate manila folder. Bring 10 great questions to ask have them written down and interview the person back, remember you are ‘selling them on you”

6. Competition, as a Sales Professional you will need to know your competition, research and bring questions to discuss with the Manager.

7. Professional, act professional at all times, remain calm, cool and collected. Never talk bad about your previous employer (yes some people do in an interview)

8. Consistent, be yourself throughout the process, be friendly to ALL employees. The Gate Keeper sometimes has the final approval. Treat everyone with respect and you will be respected.

9. Communication, critical to keep ALL parties in the loop. If you are using a recruiter keep them informed of each step, they have the ear of the employer and can help you or hurt you. Follow up is key, send a hand written thank you notes after each meeting. I usually brought one with me to the interview filled it out and left it at the front desk, show excitement and demonstrate by operating in the now!

10. CLOSE, they are hiring you to sell for them. If you do not close the interviewer, how are you going to close a sale? Ask do you see any reason that I cannot move on in the process? Handle the objections in person. Ask what is the next step? Close them on a date and time to follow up and follow it up.

11. Mike’s AH HAH. When writing this article I have remembered all of the sales reps I have hired and it has always been the one that hunts me down and is hungry for the job.

To Your Sales Success,

Mike

“Giving You 110%”

Mike Krause is the Chief Sales Architect and owner of Sales Sense Solutions where he gives CEO’s VP of Sales and Sales Professionals  stellar sales results  they want by implementing the tactics, tools and high performance strategies they need.

Looking for a quick do-it-yourself sales assessment? Here are the
Top 10 Sales Questions to Ask Yourself:

• What is a value proposition?
• If you went out of business today, what would people miss?
• Do you have a repeatable way of connecting with customers?
• Do you review your metrics regularly and use them to improve your process?
• Do you know the average sales cycle, number of contacts to close, percent drop-out in each stage of your funnel?
• Do you have a way to remove suspects quickly from your funnel? Decision
Maker, Budget, Time Line & Pain.
• Are you absolutely sure your product is more valuable than your price?
• Do you know your direct and indirect competitors’ pricing?
• Do you have an effective hiring process that gets A-players on board every
time?
• If you had to go on a sales call could you sell your own product?

Companies that efficiently pull in sustainable profits know these answers.
If you struggled with any of them go here: www.SalesSenseSolutions.com or call Mike Krause at 585-704-6453 today.

What do you use?

What are sales strategies?

For businesses to fully understand what growth strategies are it essential to understand both external and internal strategies. It is easy to focus on the external strategies while losing focus on your internal strategies; this can result in a loss of potential growth and profit. Many managers and business owners are often unfamiliar how optimize their core strengths and revenues opportunities.

Here at Sales Sense, our consultants strive towards utilizing businesses core competencies. While strengthening the organization with new skills and innovative mind sets; we target growth by long term profitability, customer satisfaction, and added value within the organization.

For Sales Sense to fully implement Growth Strategies, it is essential that we first better understand you business needs. To take full advantage of what Sales Sense has to offer, kindly contact us so we can start planning and implementing future growth strategies for your business.

Smart Sales Strategies in a Down Economy

We are all in the same boat when it comes to the economy. We as Sales Professionals & Business Owners need to ask more powerful questions when in our meetings.

* What would happen if you lost your largest client
* What safety measures have you put in place
* What are your marketing strategies?
* What are your 6 month and 12 month growth strategies?

This is the time to invest more in advertising or training, if everyone is cutting expenses, then the opposite would be true, would it not? Plus, you will get better rates in your ads or your training. Make the best out of a negative situation and push forward.

What are some strategies that are working for you and your business?

1. Patience. This is not a silver bullet. Social networking is a long term strategy. It’s about relationship building. The more people see you adding information and content to online networking sites, the more people will get to know you and want to do business with you.

2. Minimize. Choose 3-4 to keep on top of and work on these, I prefer LinkedIn, Blog, Twitter & Facebook.

3) Consistent. Be consistent in your profiles have them all be the same so your branding .

4) Link your social networking sites as much as possible. By that I mean, use sites like http://www.ping.fm to help you manage all of your sites. That way, you can post on one site i.e. Twitter and have the content automatically sent to all of the other social networking sites you’re using.

5) Write as much content as you can. Put your articles on there, give your opinion or views on topics and write down tips. You can write absolutely anything on social networking sites, so get creative.

6) Write as often as you can. It’s no good setting everything up and then ignoring it. For social networking to work for you people have to get to know you and that means you need to write as often as you can i.e. at least once a day.

7) Use tools like http://www.tweetlater.com to set up posts in advance. That way, even if you can’t physically post something, packages like this will do it for you.
Remember to find out about other people. It’s not just all about you. Contact some of the people that request you add them as friends and find out about them. The more you build that relationship, the more likely it is that people will want to do business with you.

9) Very often on social networking sites, groups of like-minded individuals and businesses have been set up. That means it’s easy to find all the people interested in what you do. Join these groups and start participating. You never know what could happen.

10) Finally, please be careful out there. Remember that anyone can write anything on the web, so although you may be genuine, the person you’re communicating with may not be. Take extra care when doing business on the internet.

Update Check out how Ford is using Twitter:
• FordCustService;
• FordDriveOne;
• FordDriveGreen;
• FordTrucks;
• FordMustang;
• FordRacing;
• FordRacingNWide.

How do you use Twitter?
Check out our next Webinar at www.SalesSenseSolutions.com

· Clear the clutter from your desk enabling you to focus on the task in front of you

· Create a “to do” list every morning when you come in, tasks that you must get done

· Prioritize your “to do” list and stick to it

· When confronted with time wasting visitors in your area/office, stand up, this discourages them from sitting & getting comfy

· Avoid telephone tag, leave details and ask them to do the same back for you

· If you’re scheduling appointments or meetings, set a beginning and an end time

From Cindy Bostley

What are your suggestions?

I recently went to get my car washed at Delta Sonic. They always seem to be taking it to the next level in service and sales.

I was amazed to see now when they hand wipe your car off, they use an air compressor to blow air into your side mirrors to get all the water out behind the mirrors.

The water behind the mirrors would always come out after you pulled away, this always did always bother me. The water would drip and run all over the car even after they wiped it and leave water marks behind.

Now no water marks on the side of the car and to the customer it is viewed as they are paying attention to the details….

They solved a problem and increased customer excellence!

Do you look for ways to make a difference and add value and go above and beyond? If so tell me.