In the era of the web searching educated prospect...how can you gain an edge and get the sale?

In this era of the educated prospect that the web facilitates via everyone’s ability to search online, The prospect’s awareness of product, services and competitive offerings is often there before you are. So, how do you, as a sales type, approach making a sale in this era of the educated prospect?

You know, its not a matter of “lack of skills”. Our skills are still there. Its just learning how to adapt them to the "web as the new word of mouth and search" realities of our potential customers.

Their reviews of your businesses and competitors can tell us a lot re how our target audience likes to shop and what’s important to our target audiences. We should Google to find reviews of us and our competitors and really learn from them. In our newsletters we send if we ask about the issues we find, ask what’s important and look for comments, we can surely come to see patterns of what’s important to our prospects. Then, we can use what we learn an now know to have a discussion with a prospect from a basis of understanding them and their needs, not guessing at it.

Its not just price that makes a sale, its perception by the prospect of the value a seller brings into the evaluation as an “expert”.

In our prospecting and selling approach, I think we have to accept that we are starting with a much better prepared "prospect" that has researched online and already has a good feel for what they want.

Asking what research they have done, what they found out as we begin the face to face sales process and hearing it will actually help us hone in on a prospects actual likes and wants. We will look exceeding great then compared to our competition, be perceived as genuinely trying to make a good match for our prospects and the trust that creates should lead to a lot more sales.

What we hear must be shared with "Marketing", our internet sales people and our product development people. They then have real world derived "needs" to focus on and appeal to if we do that for them and our reach outs, ads, messaging will work in a powerful targeted way to help us acquire paying customers.

Regards, Neil Licht, privacy internet investigator, Repuration911 and Hereweare. callhereweare@verizon.net , ndlicht@reputation911.com

How to Remove online Negative Feedback you’ve received

How and when can you remove negative feedback you’ve received online.

This is the big questions that many small business are struggling with today.

In order to remove negative feedback from online reviews you must first identify the source of the feedback.

 

Neil Licht, Privacy Internet Investigator, offers this approach as the most reliable approach.  “Online reputation management firms need investigative teams with experienced forensic investigators that will not only detect negative feedback but track it back to the source”  says Licht. “Most firms only burry them way down the search results order and do not get the comments permanently removed.  If only buried, Inevitably, these negative comments do surface again to influence folks.”

The removal process must be done as follows:.

Once identified it’s grouped into one of the following classifications: competitor, disgruntled employee, misleading or out of date information, fake or spam.

Now that you have identified the source and classification of the negative feedback, you can start tracking the complaint links and remove them from from coming up in search results on the Internet.

A complaint link can appear on a number of websites and usually ranks very well on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Many of the complaint websites like RipOffReport.com , ComplaintsBoard.com and Yelp also rank very well due to the volume of users and feedback links attached to the complaint.

When someone searches for you and you have a complaint on one of these sites, the complaint link will most likely rank in the top Search results on leading search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

The complaint links must be removed from these sites, not just suppress which is only a temporary fix resulting in the negative feedback returning.

Honest and Reliable Online Reputation Management Companies utilize innovative products and technology to remove negative feedback from attacks  for clients but only when it is determined to be competitor driven, disgruntled employees, fake or spam.

Says Licht “A trustworthy one will not remove truthful feedback and or reviews that are the actual current representation of the client and or there business.”

• Their Investigative Team will work to remove not just suppress negative online content.
• They specialize in uncovering the source of the negative feedback.
• They will  contest the review at the source.
• Their experienced forensic investigators can detect and identify the source and remove negative articles and blogs that are determined to be misleading, fake or spam.
• Their legal advisor will send ‘cease and desist’ orders to the perpetrators of out-of- date, false, misleading and fake information. They will demand that the individuals who are responsible for these negative posts to immediately remove this information.

There’s more to it however since keeping your reputation solid is a full time job. “After they finish restoring your online image, as a trustworthy company they will protect it with 24/7 monitoring using automatic tools for alerts of what is being said about your firm from every review site, blog post, news article, forum & social media outlet on the Internet.” says Licht

To learn more about how to remove negative feedback and protect your online business reputation ask for a free consultation or call today for a confidential consultation at 1- 508-481-8567. Neil Licht

Technorati Tags: online reputation,reputation management

How Not To Hear “Sorry - No Sale”

In the globally syndicated BNET blog Sales Machine,  Geoffrey James, the author, featured  an article called A Roadmap to Winning That "Yes!” 

He said it “contains a very clear step-by-step roadmap for developing an initial B2B contact”

Here’s the post By Geoffrey James | July 15, 2011

“My friend (and frequent Sales Machine commentor) Neil Licht recently posted a comment that I think contains a very clear step-by-step roadmap for developing an initial B2B contact.  I’ve minimally edited and reformatted his content, which appears below:”

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Here’s a way to create a path to “Yes!”, based upon my experience in sales and with many clients:

• STEP #1. Do some research and understand the target company, especially how and why your product or solution can help.

• STEP #2. Next, make a short 30 second commercial based on your findings that can quickly and succinctly say what you do, create a reason for listening, relate pertinent issues, benefits and problems solved and let you ask if its something that the prospect needs or would adopt.

 

• STEP #3. Next find and define who would be right to hear that commercial at the highest level of responsibility and authority, relate to it and give you a true assessment of need/value on the spot.  Note: that’s usually not the CEO because the CEO is not focused on running their divisions or departments. Other folks are and can relate to what you have because of that fact.

• STEP #4. Make the phone call to that person and use the 30 second commercial. After the commercial, ask for and qualify the possibility of need or value for what you have explained from the person you are speaking with.  Ask it this way “Is this an idea that can benefit you and your company.” (While this is a “yes or no” question, its what you must know at this stage.)

• STEP #5. If the answer is “no” skip to Step 6.  If the answer is “yes,” start a brief discussion about how, why, reason, problems solved, impact, etc.  This creates a link between you and the person that you have called for the sales process to begin that, if pursued properly, you have the basis of selling value/ROI and not cost and you know it has possibilities to yield a sale based on those criterion.  Skip to step 7.

 

• STEP #6. If no, or you get a weak maybe, stop selling, say thanks and move on to the next prospect. Don’t waste sales time on this one. Say: “Thanks for your time and your honesty. I can see that our solution isn’t applicable to you.”  Then ask “Do you know of a colleague that could use my solution.” You might get a great prospect to call or even an introduction.  If so, go back to Step 1 and start over.

• STEP #7. Ask about the process for moving forward. Find out who else needs to be involved.  Ask: “If we do have a worthwhile solution for you, who along with you would need to be involved in evaluating, adopting and purchasing.”  Since your idea or solution has already been acknowledged as worthwhile by the prospect. using this question also lets you ask them for help in moving forward.  IMPORTANT: Don’t ask: “Who is the decision maker?” That’s an insulting question because it says to your suspect that you consider him or her a peon.

• STEP #8. After you have found out that they may want to buy your offering, state a rough cost right then to your suspect for the solution and ask if there is a budget for implementing the concept if it’s a worthwhile idea.  Don’t even think of continuing the sales process without knowing the answer to this question.  It tells you if you can proceed with your idea and also lets you ask and understand the company’s usual process for evaluating and ultimately purchasing your idea is.

• STEP 9: Set up the next step, which will probably involve meeting (in person or on the phone) with other individuals involved in the decision or purchasing process.

Neil Licht CEO HereWeAre, Chief adviser, Acquiring Paying Customers Consultancy Group
callhereweare@verizon.net
http://www.wix.com/ndlicht/hereweare

Youtube video tutorial http://www.youtube.com/user/ndlicht

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READERS: Huge vote of thanks to Neil for sharing this.  (Note: his original comment is in the post “The Fallacy of Calling High.“) 

Phrases A Sales Rep Should NEVER Use

You might get a kick out of some of these. Feel free to leave your own suggestions as a comment (see "below").

- "My product is the cheapest."

- "You need this." (Let them make their own decision)

- "We can't do that"

- "That gives me a problem"

- "The competitor's products don't work"

- "How much are you willing to pay?"

- "If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it." - even as a joke

- "That's less than out cost"

- "I doubt our competitor can meet this price/package ...."

- "What's it going to take to get the deal done?"

- "When do you think your husband would be available to go over this?"

- "Trust me." ; "In all honesty, ..." ; "To be honest with you, ..." ; etc.
All of these, or any variation of them, implies to me that there's a good chance you haven't been up to that point.

- "You'll never regret this."

- "So-and-so's (our competitor's) products can't hold a candle to ours"

- "You really shouldn't delay on this."

- "Tell you what I'm going to do... just for you... because I like you."

- "Let me just take a second of your time ..."

- "This is the best deal you are going to find ..."

- "Let me go talk to my manager and see if I can talk him into a ..."

- "But wait, there's more!"

Now, all kidding aside ........ Its not really about the phrases a sales person uses (other than telling them they're wrong), but rather about the theme of the conversation. A good sales person will partner with the client to find a solution that fits the client's needs. If a sales person can't measurably close the gap between where the client is and wants to be, they need to pass on the sale. Anything outside of this theme may get business in the short term, but long term business will not be as strong.