Change is Inevitable, Growth is Optional

How Women Can Get Ahead: Advice From Female CEOs

// May 22nd, 2012 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Sometimes the differences between men and woman are slight and sometimes they are quite obvious. Women now make up approximately 50% of the workforce and believe it or not some of the same issues that women faced decades ago are still challenges for women today.

Women are looking for certain things that will make a difference in their workplace. This includes mentoring programs, building relationships, understanding the differences in the genders and work life balance. Can women have it all? Maybe or maybe not but it’s all about choices.

I stumbled across an article by the Wall Street Journal titled “How Women Can Get Ahead: Advice From Female CEOs”. I think it gives a great perspective from very powerful women. You can see the full article by clicking here or on the image below.

From Prospect To Appointment In 8 Easy Steps

// December 14th, 2011 // No Comments » // building relationships

Ready, Set…

Step 1. Set a specific number of contacts or appointments as a goal for each calling session. Keep going down your list of prospects until you reach that goal number. Do not give yourself any breaks until your target is reached!

Step 2. Block off time on your schedule for these calls and do not postpone this task.

You need to create structure so you can have the discipline to complete this task.
When starting out, use your planner to keep you on schedule.
For the first few weeks, keep track of time of a day you were calling and your success rate so you can determine which calling times generate the most leads.

Step 3. Organize your prospect list starting with the best ones on top, based on our lessons from Step 2: Prospecting – Finding The Golden Clients.

• Referrals
• Your own local marketing
• Previous prospects that asked you to contact them again later
• Leads generated by your company
• Cold calls or purchased lists

Step 4. Call during the most productive times. Generally, this is Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings for business contacts, and weekday evenings and Saturday mornings for home contacts.

Many industries have their own sales rhythms. So it is best to understand how your industry works by keeping your own records. You will find what time your prospecting calls are most likely to turn into appointments.

Step 5. Place your script or talking points in front of you for easy reference.

Step 6. Make phone calls every single day!

Step 7. Call every name on your list. Do not skip names, especially if you are calling from a list you acquired from referrals or your own local marketing.

Step 8. Attitude is important – be enthusiastic! The next call will be a “yes.”

…Call!

To Do or Not To Do – 5 Steps to Staying Productive

// February 18th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // building relationships, busness, Challenges, Communicating, networking, Sales Tips, Training, women in business

Being productive has never been an issue for me.  I have been told I am very productive and as my last post showed, I’m also very focused.  Of course everyone tells me that I make it look so easy.  Here’s the secret, I need to make it look easy to me in order for me to be productive.  Does that make any sense?

When I first began working in the self-employed arena, a lifetime ago,  I had no choice but to make things happen.  I had children to support and had to make the most of the hours in the day…and night.  I would make sure that before I went to sleep every night, the house was in order, clothes were picked out and my To Do list was ready.  Once morning came, there would be very little time to try and organize my thoughts about what I needed to do to be productive that day.

Everyone that knew me, laughed at my To Do list. It was a pink pad and was always full.  However, they also knew that if you made it onto my pink pad, whatever was listed would be completed before the night was over because I never carried anything over to the next day.  How could she possibly do that you are thinking? I was VERY strict with myself and that allowed me to be productive.

So how did I do it? I will share with you what I started to do many years ago and still continue to do.

1. Get a pad…ok that’s easy but make it different from all the other pads you use-mine was pink
2. Write EVERYTHING you need to do on it and I mean EVERYTHING.  My list begins with wake up… if you get my drift.
3. Check off the tasks as you complete them-you have no idea how great that feels.
4. Review the list often-when you see those check marks, you will have a different mind set.
5. See what “chores” are left before lunch-by putting everything on your list, you should be able to check 90% of your tasks off by lunch time.  Do you know what is left? The 3-5 tasks that are the most important.

Why does this work? If you look at your list and 20 items are completed and there are only 3-5 left, your mind will play a trick on you.  It will register as having only a few left but look how many I completed.  It works every time.

Try it, what is the worst that can happen?

Qualifying on the Phone: Part 2- A Better System

// January 25th, 2011 // No Comments » // building relationships, busness, Challenges, new business

This post is part two of a series on “Qualifying over the Phone”.  If you missed part one, click here now to catch up!

Once I moved up into management,  I implemented a very different system for calling.  Unlike how my supervisor handled business (as I discussed in part 1), we did not have everyone in the office on the phones for hours and hours at a time. Instead, I encouraged brief phone calls to set appointments and urged everyone to go on every appointment.

The worst-case scenario was that the prospective client didn’t qualify for some products, but may be interested in other components. I used egg timers to remind everyone that the purpose of the phone call was not to sell the product—but instead to get the appointment. If a representative was still on the phone when the sand ran through the egg timer, his or her three minutes on the phone were up. It was a great system, and we had happy sales people.

Further Incentive

We also did a monthly phone blitz where everyone came in and worked the phones for three hours maximum. The veterans helped the newer agents. While we had our short phone blitzes, we also worked on direct mail pieces, which helped representatives sound fresh when they’d return to the phones. This translated into many phone calls, lots of appointments, and 5,000-10,000 direct mail pieces at the end of the day. Our entire team built relationships with each other and with their clients.

Scheduling Appointments- Conclusion

Whether or not to qualify the sales when making a phone call is an arguable point. In too many instances, salespeople use qualifying questions to talk themselves out of scheduling appointments. They may look for that one “deal breaker” qualifier so they can let their managers know this would not have been a sale. It gives them an excuse not to sell. Some people are simply afraid to pick up the phone to make calls. These people either never get going at all or only make a few calls, and unfortunately never generate enough positive activity to succeed.

Picking up the phone can be a scary thing. This is true whether you are male or female, but the way you deal with it might be different. Since men like to get the job done on the phone, they tend to be on the phone longer. I know and have talked to many female salespeople who will go on any appointment with the hope of building a relationship that may help them in the future, if it doesn’t happen at that initial visit.

How do you use your time on the phone?  Do you use more time than you should?  Are you looking for ‘deal breakers’? Share your perspective! Leave a comment below, and start a discussion.

‘Qualifying on the Phone’: Scheduling Appointments

// January 18th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // building relationships

I wanted to kick off the “Qualifying on the Phone” Series by sharing a one of my earliest experiences working the phones. The post below should illustrate common misconceptions, and the result of scheduling appointments properly.  Whether or not you been successful scheduling appointments over the phone, this post should provide some useful information.

When I was going through my initial sales training in the insurance field, I was given the telephone schedule that was used by all the top producers. Our success was dependent on the appointments that we set for ourselves. On my first day of training, I was handed a script and given a spot to sit in. I decided to listen for a bit so I could get the juices flowing. But I noticed that everyone was loud and no one was given the “right of way” to make a call. I could already tell this style was not for me. I heard what other sellers were saying to their prospects:

“Let me explain the plan.”

“You will need to give me a check.”

“If everything looks good we will be writing an application.”

“When was the last time you were hospitalized and for what?”

“What medications do you take?”

I certainly wouldn’t give that kind of personal information to someone I didn’t know; yet, I was told that we needed to acquire this information on the phone before the appointment. I was also told that I shouldn’t go on an appointment unless I was going to be picking up a check—plain and simple.

“Why waste your time? What if the person doesn’t qualify?” my trainer asked me. And my favorite statement from the trainer: “Don’t be such a girl by trying to make friends with everyone.”

Something Doesn’t Add Up…

My schedule went something like this:

Morning meeting- 8:00am-10:00am

Phones- 10:30am to 9:00pm.

If I scheduled enough appointments on Monday, I didn’t come back to make calls on Tuesday. If I didn’t reach my quota, Tuesday was a shorter day of calls. I was (and am) a woman who thrives on building relationships—and sitting in a call center for days, making call after call, hardly qualifies as building a relationship. Being face-to-face with someone and listening to them is what I do best. I was determined to figure out a way to make that happen. I lasted on Monday until about 1:00pm.

The idea of being on the phone for so many hours just didn’t make sense to me. So, I told my sales leader that I needed a quieter environment and that I would have the 20 appointments per week that were required—just not from the office. I was excused, but told that if I didn’t have the 20 appointments I would either be back in the office calling or I would be out of the job. After that, I never showed up at the office with less than 20 appointments.

I also didn’t qualify anyone over the phone, yet was in front of more people and wrote more business by building relationships and receiving referrals from clients I went to see in person. I had discovered that my system worked—but my sales leader didn’t think the system could be duplicated by others. I was fighting an uphill battle with no support.

As a sales professional, how would you handle this situation?  In the next post in the ““Qualifying on the Phone” series I will share how I decided to handle this battle, and what the results of  my decision were.