If you are a writer, a photographer, a videographer, a filmmaker, a video producer, a website designer, website developer, or in marketing coordinating all of the above in the best interest of the brand for your clients, I hope this information helps your business.
My PowerPoint slides are up on Slideshare. You can view them here - http://www.slideshare.net/dennispowers/b2b-sales - while reading the information that went into each slide below.
Frame 1:
B2B Sales for Designers & Developers
- Why am I here? – I want to provide you - a creative professionals (people who create - entrepreneurs, marketers, technologists, designers, developers/programmers, writers, videographers, photographers) with tips and tools to make your career of choice a little more sustainable. If any of us get out of this business and drives a bus for a living (be honest - you’ve thought of it), it’s because we couldn’t make a decent living at it.
- Why do I want to help? - because you need to know that each of you are amazing. You do what I wish I could do. I wish I had the talent to design or develop a website, produce an amazing video, write an amazing story. And those that can’t do -?- sell for those that can.
Frame 2:
Who Am I
- 20 years in technology, marketing and media production
- My roles have generally included new business development, account management and project management.
- I’ve worked music production, video and television production and post production, interactive CD/DVD authoring, media transfer/duplication/replication, print production, website and software design/development, online marketing
- So – going full circle, I now sell everything including graphic design and website design and development projects as well as integrated marketing and advertising campaigns that potentially require all of my media production experience.
Why are sales important?
- Selling is not easy. It’s a numbers game, even for those that are good at it. The harder you work at it, the more opportunities you’ll find and the greater the rewards.
- For those of us that work at it regularly it’s like an abusive relationship. When it’s bad it’s really bad and you get rejected time after time. But when it’s good and you find and win those projects you want – Each close is an amazing rush!
- There’s any number of reasons why sales are important to your business.
- If these reasons aren’t inspiration enough and if selling is uncomfortable for you, then make your reason personal - you need a why.
- If your why is strong enough, it will give you the leverage you need to overcome the fear of rejection and get on with selling.
- You’re why could be = wanting to send the kids to university, wanting to afford that big vacation, paying the mortgage, buying that new car… Powerful why’s can provide good incentive to do the things we have to do in our businesses that maybe aren’t as fun as others.
Frame 4:
What a consistent sales strategy solves
- This is what feast and famine looks like.
- Feast and famine lead generation/sales leads to feast and famine revenue generation for your business
- Most of the businesses we’re trying to attract won’t live and die by the services and solutions we provide.
- Marketing materials, Internet solutions and applications, despite what we believe, may not be perceived as necessities for the business we are trying to attract.
- The sales cycle can take up to 2 years from lead to client.
- How do we feed ourselves and bring in projects consistently?
- You need to come up with a strategy and process that allows you to consistently develop leads, opportunities and closes and turns this roller coaster into a nice solid sustainable line.
- Have enough balls in the air (juggling) to know that one could drop at anytime.
- And if a bunch drop? Well what a great problem that would be!
- Bottom line? You’ve solved the feast and famine problem for your business.
Frame 5:
What’s my sales process?
- That’s pretty much it, in a nutshell.
Frame 6:
Leads research
- Through these channels I look for news that companies are expanding, winning awards.
- I look at companies that are actively advertising or marketing their businesses.
- I assess their marketing efforts, their advertising, their websites, their social media and I look for weaknesses in their strategies or solutions. Regarding development/programming, I’m looking for ways where a solution or an enhanced solution can lower costs or increase revenue long-term.
- I’m always looking for ways I can help.
- From there, I’m trying to find who I need to contact.
Frame 7:
Making contact
- I use these tools for making initial contact.
- And yes. You do have to make the occasional cold-call.
- When you make that initial contact, there may be a tendency to tell your whole story and value statement as quickly as you can before you’re rejected. This is a mistake.
- People are busy. There’s no time to read a long email, listen to a long scripted speech on a phone call or at a networking event.
- Keep it short and sweet.
- You’re initial goal is to find out if they’re a decision maker, if they need your help and what that need might be.
- Give them a quick pitch about you and wait for buy-in. Wait for your sales lead to invest or engage into your sales process with you.
- If they buy-in – ASK QUESTIONS AND LISTEN
- Ask questions that provide the answers you need to accurately identify the opportunity.
- This is your dance and you need to gently lead the dance to its destined conclusion.
- I don’t do hard sales, soft sell only.
- The turtle wins this race.
- Remember - No doesn’t mean no, in sales. It may mean “not right now”
Frame 8:
Follow-up
- These are the tools I typically use for follow-up.
- I usually place a follow-up sales call 2 days after every email if I don’t get a response. I don’t trust email.
- I try to find reasons to stay in touch with potential customers.
- I send emails to potential clients when we’ve worked on a project or campaign that is relevant to them or their needs.
- I stay in touch through social media.
- I stay front-of-mind through enewsletters.
- I watch my cost of sales. Sometimes an opportunity doesn’t develop and at some point your investment in developing an opportunity outweighs the revenue that opportunity will bring to your business – cut it loose or cutback your follow-up. Lots of times an opportunity can simply be given the time to develop on it’s own.
Frame 9:
The opportunity
- Doing this right is key to developing a successful proposal and ultimately delivering what the client needs.
- This is a 2-way conversation with both sides listening.
- You want them to provide you with the onformation you need to accurately understand the goals and requirements of the project, especially budget (if you can).
- And you need to explain your approach and make the client understand what they’re going to get at roughly what price.
- From the back and forth of this discussion you should have the information you need to put a proposal together that will help you win the project.
Frame 10
Quotes & proposals
- My proposals have these elements and more. My proposals are roadmaps for the production or the campaign. If I fall off the face of the planet tomorrow, I want the team I work with to be able to read the proposal and have all the information they need to move on with production.
- Writing proposals, in my opinion can really hurt your cost of sales. So try to do what you can to understand the budget of the project or campaign and approach the proposal appropriately.
- Small budget = smaller, more templated proposal.
- Big budget = more custom proposal.
Frame 11
Follow-up & close
- The goal here is to get feedback and respond to objections.
- As part of my dance and setting expectations for the quoting process and production process, the client will expect my follow-up as part of the process and that I expect some back and forth and may even present a revised proposal until we come to an agreement – a win-win.
- I also expect that the client can say no, or not-now at any point through this process, but it’s ok because - No doesn’t mean no, it means “not right now”. It may even mean not this project, but it’s never - never.
- There are 3 possible outcomes from this point: yes, no, or not now.
- Not now? Follow-up again, watch cost of sales.
- Sometimes opportunities close on their own as well.
Frame 12
The sales job is never over
- Never take that sales cap off. I know a lot of us wear many different hats in our businesses, but never take the sales cap off. It’s more like a toque you wear under all of your other hats.
- I take a holistic view regarding a company or a brand in our industry. Every touchpoint you and your company have with a client before, during and after a project or campaign is an opportunity to sell your company and outshine your competitors.
- Current clients are just as important as new clients.
- Stay in touch with customers, continue to provide value.
- My personal opinion, based on personal experience. This is in regards to website design and development especially. I still talk to new leads that have NEVER heard from their website designer after the launch of their website. I think this hurts us all. We have to do better.
- Find ways to stay in touch and support your customers. I review results of the last project with them, if it was a website project we did together I review Google Analytics results with them, I pitch ideas about new campaigns they can consider. Always asking how I can continually add value to my customer’s business?
- If you are not caring for your clients, your customers will eventually become someone else’s customers.
- It isn’t personal, it’s just business, and there’s a lot of competition out there.
- I’ve built successful businesses around simply building trust, providing value, and developing strong long-term relationships with my customers.
Frame 13
Final thoughts and tips
- CRM’s are a must for me. They keep me on track, especially with follow-ups. I’ve used Salesforce, Sugar and Highrise.
- Work at leads research, making contact and follow-ups every week.
- How much sales work should you do each week?
- Find out what your opportunities to close ratio is and work back from there using your revenues projections to determine how many proposals you need to do to meet those targets. From there you should be able to break down how many sales calls you need to make a month, a week.
Thank you for the opportunity to share this information with you. I hope it helps.
I try to put resources on my website dennispowers.ca. I’ve got an article about Twitter for sales up there now, and I’m developing an article about using social media as a CRM… It should be up shortly.
- D
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