This week, I want to share with you the third part in this series and a link to the interview I did covering the three important factors that determine where you go after Covid-19.
Don’t keep your team in the dark
Your team hate being kept in the dark.
It is also, when you think about it, the same with customers.
Keep communicating with them and make sure that they know what is happening.
This leads on to good leadership.
Good leadership
What makes up good sales leadership in these challenging times?
Be calm and logical; do not panic the troops. No one likes the leader to stand up and start wailing “Oh my goodness, I do not know what to do, help!”. They are looking for calm.
Look forward, not back; what’s gone is gone. The only time you have control over is now. Make sure you communicate that to your team.
Demonstrate some perspective. There are always things out of your control. In my business, overnight, I had a café and a retail store close the doors, and a planned trip to India to buy products for my importing business was postponed indefinitely. However, I am here in New Zealand – safe, healthy, and with my family.
Turn to your team even more. Keep them in the loop, ask for ideas and suggestions. If you do not, they may sooner or later turn it against you, and that’s not good right now.
Please check out the interview I did covering three factors that will determine where you go after Covid-19 below.
Have fun, stay safe.
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
My question now is – if you have established which bucket you sell to, how do you make sure they will buy off you eventually when things get back to normal post COVID-19?
Your clients are open for business, and many salespeople and clients that I talk to think so too.
The market is not closed, it’s just a little different.
The truth is that people will buy and are buying now.
People do have money, it just shifts around.
It’s no good hiding under the blanket, tempting I know.
Here are what some of my clients are doing now while in lockdown.
1. Requalifying their clients – asking themselves:
Do I still want to do business with this person? Are they worth the effort? Do they give the return?
2. 80/20 rule – You can do #1 by using #2.
Go through your client list and evaluate where 80% of the revenue for your business is coming from. “Go hard, go early”
3. Communicate – Communicate with those, I suspect 20%. Every day, and in every way, I am getting better and better at this.
4. Can they pay? Finally, it’s the 21st of April, have they paid? Can they pay, will they pay? Find out if they haven’t and ask how you can help. If they have paid, call them and thank them.
As we plot our way through this, keep the faith, hone your sales skills.
Believe in yourself.
AND – If you want to build a new capability then get my 7 Day Sales Challenge FREE – Go on it will keep you out of the fridge I promise!
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
Every day, all over the world salespeople love one thing.
Their product.
The challenge is most new clients you talk to are not really interested in your product just yet.
What they’re interested in deep down is, can they trust you?
Right now as we move into a new normal that’s the one thing that clients want from salespeople.
Whenever I work with clients I try and help them understand that when they sell their product or service, they have to build trust first.
They do that through storytelling and diving deep to find out what problems the client wants to solve.
Having a predictable system to do that is difficult because you don’t want to come across as pushy.
Here are two tips that you can use right now:
1. Listen to hear, not to respond – in other words, listen, don’t jump in and try and sell your product or service as soon as you hear something your solution could fix.
2. What is the potential clients ideal outcome in the future? If you can’t find it out then you haven’t found out the problem.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
As a young sales rep my manager used to say this to me all the time.
“If you do not have a plan, stay in the car.”
As we reach week three in our country’s lockdown, it’s time to understand what that means in this crazy world we live in right now.
Next piece of advice I can give you…
Stay out of the fridge and stick to a plan
Three questions to ask yourself now and what to do about it that may just help you in the long term:
Am I selling an essential?
Am I selling to the rich?
Or am I selling to the non-essential business owners?
Essential selling – If you are selling to essentials then you should be okay. Talk to them every day, using soft communication. What they are after is for you to look after them. Be there if they need your help.
Sales and the doing takes many forms, relationship building to your essential clients helps continuity of business. Marketing to them is even more important. Keep your brand top-of-mind.
Selling to the rich – Whatever comes their way, nothing affects them. They make up less than 5% of the population and just keep doing what they are doing. As with essential clients, love them and build deeper relationships.
Selling to non-essential buyers – This is going to be harder, let’s not sugar coat this. However, it’s not the end of the world, as in my previous blog.
Making sure you tell people who you are, where you are and what you have to offer, will help keep your business or service top-of-mind, I promise you.
Next week we look at the three critical things you need to do to keep your business running.
Until then.
Mike (top-of-mind) Brunel
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
Let’s face it, what I think about changes daily, even hourly.
The only subject at school that I loved was History.
I still do. Most of the books I read are about the past, because I believe that is sometimes where the best learning can be found.
Lifetime of experiences.
In my lifetime (old guy), I have seen three events that stopped us dead in our tracks and caused us to pause:
1987 Stock Market Crash – I was selling radio advertising to small businesses.
9/11 – 40 odd staff in my Atlanta office were shut down and we were selling broadcast to media companies like CBS Sinclair, ABC Fox etc. Advertisers again!
2020 Coronavirus – I’m providing sales consultancy services to the manufacturing sector, plus own retail, hospitality and importing businesses.
Every generation will experience and learn.
I have learnt that every generation has such an event, one that hits us at the core.
This is just another one, and I honestly think that the winners in this one will be the ones that learn and grow.
If we have the courage, and us Kiwis are good at that, we must be more creative and innovative than we have ever been before.
If you are like me – someone that has never taken a salary for too many years to remember, just the profits and rewards of my company’s success – then you have already had some practice in creating new things and taking risks.
If you have not, then maybe, just maybe, it’s time you did.
Over and out, Lockdown Mike
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
