Sales People: Sit up and Take Notice!

I attended a great teleclass yesterday by Jill Konrath of www.sellingtobigcompanies.com. I really thought she nailed the state of the corporate world these days. Executives are:

-Stressed out, burned out, overwhelmed - working long days
-Operating quarter to quarter
-Have 59 hours of work every day that they have to take care of
-About 200 emails per day
-No free slots in their day - meetings all the time
-will only get worse - putting out fires.

Where does that leave those of us who want to get the attention of these people and offer them our products and services? Well, thankfully, not out in the cold. Jill stressed that the most important thing is to clearly state your company's value proposition:

-think SMALL - think of how you recently solved a problem for a big customer
-what kind of problems are these companies having that you can solve?
-get a slice of business your competitor isn't paying attention to - it doesn't have to be the whole pie.

Just be specific and using business terminlogy, tell them the bottom line results of what you can do. Use industry stats, case studies, etc. Don't waste their time!

-use a minimum of 7-10 contact efforts
-always have something new to say - it's okay to leave voicemail.

I got a lot out of the teleclass. I encourage you to check Jill's site out when you have a moment. Outstanding Women Speakers Inc. will be taking her advice.