Have you ever spent two wasted hours in a sales meeting? Mondays or Fridays are usually the day. Sales management sends the invite, 20 minutes before the meeting, and all hands get on the phone. Each sales person takes a turn going over the 3 top deals, or something to that effect.

Sales Fire Drills >> read more

Sales people come in all shapes, sizes, and skill level. The very best fire up every day and go. The others not so much. The best ones improve skills, product knowledge and industry knowledge. The not so good, work hard to appear busy. How can sales management know, with certainty, what sales guys are doing?

Read more on how to verify salespeople process >>

Sales managers risk their job and their reputation when operating blind. Sales people drive around, talking to prospects, and all looks OK, till the quarter ends with short sales. This happens over and over from company to company and needs not to be so. Consider a few simple steps to clear up sales invisibility.

Sales management >> Read more.

Cold Call Cowboy Rides Again

Set a Daily Call Goal and Stick It

Cold calling cowards eat dust every day. Painful motions, time eaters, like appearance of activity, surfing the web, calling the automated weather number, all but dialing a person that might say no and ding fragile egos. Sales pros have big egos powered up by commission checks and deals, and laugh at prospects that could not see a good deal if it was banging his wife.

Big deal and I am not Tom Hopkins, the real estate sales “guru” that tells us we are paid by the no’s. Silly idea gathering up no’s and then saying ” honey I am home and boy did I get paid by no’s today.” Sales guys get paid by saying yes. Yes, send me your stuff. Yes, lets schedule a presentation, and OK I will buy your stuff. Makes sense to me.

Now for my simple tip on cold calling. Set a goal and stick it everyday. Don’t come close, don’t push to tomorrow. Just set aggressive call goals for each day and do it.

Our inside staff goal is 100 dials. Our team records their results. Sales management is not big brother but as sure as I am typing and you are reading, the end of month sales commission checks go to the dialers not the chicken hearts.

Sales Funnel: Lead Vacuum Cleaner

My lovely wife displays world class vacuuming skills. Often the show starts when the whistle blows starting my favorite TV game. Yet her vacuum can do tricks. When achieving best form, the vacuum dances room to room, sucking up all within reach and all is within reach of my wife’s vacuum.

This image of the never miss a dust bunny vacuum, is like a sales funnel. The sales funnel must suck up all leads from all sources, including partners, dealers, reps and sub reps. Leads flow into the sales funnel to squeeze green stuff out the narrow end.

The funnel is an upside down pyramid. Top is wide and broad with much ground to cover by nurturing and qualification. Then leads, passing assessment muster, mature to business opportunity, and grow up to cash paying new customer.

How is your sales funnel? Is it a never miss a lead, sucking machine? Or does your funnel leak leads through holes, cash splashing on the floor?

Fingers brushed across the dial pad. An electronic voice answered and welcomed the caller. “press 1 for sales, press 2 for support…” The man banged zero looking for a live person, and found success. “Hi” he said, “May I speak to your director of marketing please?”

“I am sorry without a name I can not connect you.” And so it goes to the next number on the list.

Lead generation has changed. And while some sales teams get a daily banquet of new leads still other sales teams are starved with skinny lead offerings. This
guide, loaded with lead generation ideas, can be had by all that request it here:

http://www.salessoftware.info/?q=saleslead_system

OnlineSalesSoftware, a sales technology company, has released a new Lead Generation How to Guide, “How to Turn your Company into a Lead Generating Machine.” The art of successful lead generation can be learned, and in time, mastered. Now, using this system, incoming sales leads can feed your salespeople, bolstering success. Just follow the simple steps:

> How to design Prospect enticing informational messages.
> Learn about the best, cheapest ways to get your message to the right audience.
> How to test message results to boost incoming lead counts.
> And how to warm leads to sales ready status.

Please get your guide right here: http://www.salesoftware.info/?q=saleslead_system

PackExpo, the largest packaging show in the US is kicking off the first week of October. All manufacturers of packaging

Close Sales Leads w/ Lead Management

machinery and materials will display products in the Las Vegas convention center. The cost for this show is a budget breaker unless the lead count is very high, and the leads are managed. The slow down that US manufacturing is going through paints each lead gold. Leads are valuable yet many packaging manufacturing companies use old, stuffy, lead management methods which waste leads.

Lead management methods range from loading a list into the show provided tool or a spreadsheet. Now back at the office, the leads are entered into a contact management tool. And then, finally after several time wasting touches, the lead is distributed to the right sales person. Often there is no follow up process except calls and emails. The leads might as well be tossed into a hole in the ground. A deep black hole that makes lead tracking very hard. Important information like the lead quality and sales lead closing efforts linger out there in the fog. This problem is doubled or tripled if leads are routed, like many are, to distribution or to manufacturer’s representatives.

The highest payback solution, which should be on all sales and marketing radar, is lead management. OnlineSalesSoftware makes a lead management tool that will route leads and track leads each day. Case studies, with OSS customers, describe a exponential return on the low hosted sales software user fees. Exponential return may sound high. But consider this. If the average sale is just $10,000, and just one lead scores a touchdown with a sale, and based on $40-$65 per user per month fees, the payback amount is justified.

To maximize the return on the all sales leads, call 1-888-605-3173 and press 4 at the prompt, or visit this link: http://www.onlinesalessoftware.net to learn more about this lead management solution. The website provides videos of this sales solution.

Technology balances on a narrow beam. World class gymnasts have perfect balance, complex movements center on the balance beam. Developers fall off the beam by stretching applications too far. CRM, bloated wtih do-all function, has left balance behind. CRM does alot, perhaps too much for hard working and busy sales people. And this fact pours sludge into sales engines, de-automates sales processes with needless features.



"Just can not use it," is a common line used by frustated sales people that have found the simplest task click heavy and not intuitive. Yet sales management needs accurate data to steer sales people. As sales managers push sales people to use, the CRM weighs down production and slows sales poeple.



CRM evaluation shows broad function; marketing to sales and support. Our CRM, provides full order management and inventory management for companies that desire thist. Yet, for sales, getting a lead, working the lead to a sale, most CRM is too much, like driving a finishing nail with a sledge. CRM burdens sales people that seek sales.



OnlineSalesSoftware, with balance in mind, automates the sales process. Getting leads to the right sales men and tracking to close. The sales software, with easy power, is the answer to sales organizations that fight hard to use CRM. Leads are routed, worked to closure, boosting new business and cash flow.  The sales tool is built for selling, not for support or marketing or other functions which CRM does well.



And CRM costs too much; user fees, support and training, cuts makes roll out to usage by sales partners like distributors and manufacturers representatives, impossible. CRM being hard to use and hard to pay for forces directs to pull sales data from partner salesmen. Spreadsheets and email,  leading carriers of sales data, cost time and are inaccurate. Sales pay back better when selling. Administrating sales data cuts sales time.



A recent alternative to hard to use CRM is our sales power bench. Affordable and easy to use sales, people are freed up. All salespeople now have a way to share data with those that need it. Sales management operates with a full view of sales activity. Forecasts, sales pipelines are up to date and usable.



Yet CRM is still valuable. Maybe even more valuable when used for tasks like support and order management.

Free-CRM.info, a leading opensource CRM provider has rolled out support and training options for Vtigercrm users. Now, all Vtigercrm opensource CRM users can get US based support, configuration assistance and training to gain maximum payback from the Vtigercrm software.

Matt Zimmerman, Direct of Business Solutions, states, ” Our staff has a deep understanding of CRM and how CRM can be deployed for effective use and payback. Vtigercrm has been supported for several years and now we are offering support packages for all opensource Vtigercrm users. “

Free-CRM.info knows that all CRM is complex. Several barriers prevent small and medium businesses from getting the expected CRM return. The barriers of using CRM can be varied and here are few that companies may hit:

>CRM is too broad, “How do we trim down the CRM application to just what we need.”
>Which business processes are modeled first? “Where do we start?
>Poor user adoption. “How do we get our users up and running full speed?”

Free-CRM.info uses a full call center and customer portal to support Vtigercrm users. The customer portal is loaded with Frequently Asked Questions and leading “Suggestion” technology to answer all tickets and support queries. This support system offers proven advantages for companies seeking affordability and availability for all Vtigercrm users.

Please send send Support pricing and feature queries to:
info@free-crm.info

To download Free Opensource CRM go to: http:www.free-crm.info/?q=crm_download

A sales man that can bring in big deals from big enterprises will never lack for work. The downs are good and the ups are better. Nothing stops the top pro from killing deals. Losers whisper bad economy talk and point fingers at all but themselves, while the sales pro works to kill deals, like the dark eyed, sniper crawls to frame the kill shot.

The sales pro takes his own counsel. All selling team members, his bench strength, enter the game when told; present, talk, demo, to precise scripts molded by the sales pro. Beware the tech guys, all sales guys without the balls to work on quota, all sales experts that know about what the sales pro has left behind. Tech guys are deal killers or monster revenue magnets, killers if not checked, revenue makers is managed.

Joe Paterno, for whom I busted my butt for, and became the first 4 year letterman at Penn State, took care of little items and the big jobs took care on their own. Learning from this, managing the small details in the sales process is smart. The little things are like who on the selling team will anwer which questions from the prospect? How will presentations be run, what slides are in the deck? Which selling team member can be matched to the prospect team member. Like tech to tech, executive hair to executive hair and so on.What is the competitor saying, who is the competor sales guy? take Hand written thank you notes, small gifts, like a sleeve of golf balls, sent to prospects; little things that win.

The sales pro. like a lone wolf, is often not well liked. But he wears his professionalism like a tailored suit.