"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy
HEADLINES: (Theme - Driving Revenues) Print-Friendly Version Where to Find the Best Sales People to Drive Revenues -- Neil Rackham, the father of sales research and author of four of the most important books on sales (SPIN Selling, Rethinking the Sales Force,
etc.), has a half dozen concrete ideas for helping growth firms find
and select top sales people - hint: hire top sales people from 3rd tier
firms. In addition, he summarizes succinctly what growth firms must do
to add value to the sales process -- hint: product differentiation is
not enough...sales people must add value themselves! Half the Number of Customers to Drive Revenues --
and Rackham's overall advice is to go after half the number of
customers and shower them with twice the attention. Take five minutes
and watch his insightful interview on Gazelles.tv
(right hand column) - and then watch it again with your sales team
(these interviews were conducted at the Sales and Marketing Summit a
few weeks ago). BTW, Rackham shares an interesting stat -- the top 10%
of a sales force typically outperforms the bottom 10% by a 3:1 margin!
This is where opportunity exists. A Simple Metric That Measures Referrals and Drives Revenue -- coming off last year's Growth Summit, FORTUNE Small Business magazine wrote a comprehensive June cover story on how growth firms are using Fred Reichheld's (The Ultimate Question-guy)
Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure customer advocacy and create focus
and alignment within their companies around this simple metric. Results
-- sales are up!! And congrats to Tony Hartl, CEO of Planet Tan (Mark
Cuban does commercials for him!) and long standing client of Gazelles,
for making the cover of the June issue for his use of NPS -- and
congrats to Ron Hollis, CEO of Quickparts (I think Ron has one of the best websites I've seen) and John Ratliff, Appletree Answering Services, Gazelles clients also featured in the article. Take five minutes to scan this article and then implement this very simple metric Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive -- and Drive Revenues
-- in the fields of influence and persuasion, Dr. Robert Cialdini is
the most cited living social psychologist in the world. His classic
book Influence has sold over a million copies and is backed
by 30 years of research into how to get someone to say "yes." So I was
obviously excited to hear that he was co-authoring a new book -- really
the first new book from Cialdini in over 20 years. And I love the
structure of the new book entitled Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive
-- fifty short and concise chapters that take one idea, provide the
science behind why it works, and gives you an idea how to apply to your
business. I've been pushing the importance of marketing and this book
will give you plenty of ideas to discuss at your weekly marketing
meetings (you are holding weekly marketing meetings? Here's my article on the subject). Your Video Golf Lesson is Ready to Help Drive Revenues -- OK, maybe I'm pushing it a little with this one, but a lot of business is done on the golf course -- and here's a link
to some online golf lessons from Targeted Golf -- just click on the
Targeted Golf video in the upper right hand column. And if you took
some swings in their golf simulator at the Sales and Marketing Summit,
your personal golf lessons and swing video are now available as well --
just click on the same link. For the personal golf lesson from the
Sales Summit your username is your full email address: (Example: bdixon@targetedgroup.com) and your password is: Password. Entrex Company Book -- Exposure that Drives Revenues
-- 25 companies are premiered in the Entrex Private Company Index's
first "Alternative Monthly." As I've said before, this is a free and
anonymous index of private company performance, now check out the
exposure and credibility your sales, finance and corporate leaders can
get by association. Join today! Request your free copy. The Employee Spirit That Will Definitely Drive Revenues -- and this from Tiffany Luby, Medical Solutions Supplier who noted in an email to me "Increased Sales = Job Security!!!" Now that's an associate who gets it!!