In my town, there is a billboard that says -

“Our tellers are actually better listeners”

and then shows the logo of the bank in the lower right hand corner of the ad.

Since when has banking become therapy? My bank has now replaced my best friend, co-worker, spouse and dog? I don’t need better listening tellers for about a hundred reasons, including:

• I don’t bank with tellers- I bank with bankers or ATMs and tellers are neither
• Only the lowest common transaction is given to the teller and I will favor speed and accuracy 5:1 over listening
• There is no brand equity to be garnered by the bank nor financial value to me for this elusive to describe quality

I bring this up because I spend a great deal of time with companies working on their messaging to their largest prospects.  All sorts of characteristics are thrown out as potentially the silver bullet differentiator – language like “market leader,” “proven experience,” “greatest value” and so on. It is so much fluff and hype, and yet it is offered up as the best way for a company to differentiate itself from its competitor.

Differentiation comes from the unique way in which your company understands and solves your prospect’s business problems. For big accounts, there are only three real business problems:

• Time
• Money
• Risk

The shift is in focusing on the way the prospect counts their money, their time and their risk. A word of caution- when we are talking about very big sales, money is not about price, time is not about service and risk is not about guarantees. Those are not answers to business problems, they are answers to commodity questions from your competition.

The second shift is that if we are not talking numbers, we are not talking to them. When we put in platitudes like, “Lowest cost of total ownership.” What does that mean? When we offer banalities such as “Highest commitment to service,” how is a prospect to get excited about that? We need to make claims that are valuable in a business issue sense to our prospects,  and to do that, our answers have to be measurable. Some examples:

“Companies hire our firm when they need to solve one or more of these business problems:

• Increase a division’s revenue by 8% or more in less than one quarter
• Reduce new customer defections by more than 10% in less than a year
• Accelerate new customer purchase persistence to 80%+ in their first month”

These answers are a formula that creates your business claim for the business solution you provide. This formula for creating these business claims is straight-forward:

FORMULA:

Prospect’s Business Issue + defined amount of improvement + timeframe

Simple.

A couple of guidelines -

1. Use claims based upon your past best clients. Indicate that these are the possible results, but that every account is unique. Your goal is to engage a dialogue that provides the information necessary to add precision to your claim.
2. Use language that is very specific to your industry so that your prospect understands that your value and your claim is designed for them.
3. Create a conversation, not a debate. Your goal is to reach a quick and shared understanding of whether the prospect has the problem that you solve and whether you provide a credible and significant solution. If you are challenged on the claim, ask the informing questions that allow you to tailor the claim to that particular prospect.

As a general rule, I avoid free-consulting. It sets a bad precedent. However, this bank is so clearly in need of help that I will offer some advice as a favor to all who pass their silly billboard. Here are my alternatives to what they are offering.

• 100% of those who qualify get loans in less than a week
• We make over half of the motorcyle loans in the area, want one?
• Give us your money, we’ll give you more back each month

Take your own shot at this last one.  I would love to hear some other alternatives.

I do magic tricks.

Sleight-of-hand-card-trick-illusionist-escape-artist magic tricks. For the purposes of commerce and being able to submit a client invoice that survives audit, we call it “Deal Coaching,” “Strategic Seat at the Table” and “Program Support,” but trust me, it’s magic.

This part of the job requires all of the creativity, risk-taking, strategy, experience and play-maker talent that I have, and I love it. I’m not alone- most of the sales leaders, regardless of title, love this part of the job the most.

As you might imagine, magic can be a bit elusive in description and challenging in implementation. It’s the right-brain counterpart to the left-brain management process. One of these is an Excel™ spreadsheet, and the other is finger painting on vodka.

As to description, there are three major categories for thinking about sales leaders magic and they include:

• Strategy – The big pieces- market, product, big-account sales, budget, key account management. These are all areas where experience, insight, instincts and that last piece of je ne c’est quoi come together.
• Coaching – Shaping the “how” and the “what” that will be executed in the strategy created. It shows up as tactics, however, which tactic to use when is where the value is.
• Troubleshooting – The ability to decide what to do when you are out of tricks in the bag and have to conjure answers from thin air.

They all require a deep understanding of people, what is possible with your own company and your prospect’s company. Of course there is also the sales leader’s own broad background from a hundred plus other sales experiences, winning and losing, to frame the ideas and answers in relevant examples.

Guidelines for Great Sales Leadership Magicians

1. Battles are won before they’re begun. The best sales leaders do their work in the planning phase of each step in a managed process. This means that the important sales calls and meetings are road-mapped and role-played well in advance. It means that the reactions are anticipated and a guideline has been established. What people, what information, what challenges and objections are all considered and determined before the meeting ever takes place. Great strategy is not done on the fly- and even though it may be methodical, it is no less magic.
2. Coaches are on the sidelines. I have worked with many Sales Leaders who have only one trick in their trick bag- “Take Me.” They themselves are the magic, which means that they can only see themselves as the solution to any particular challenge. Many times they are right, the best solution is for them to go. If they do, they’ll be amazing and the prospect will close. However, it develops nothing in the organization. Besides, the role of sales leadership is to develop others, not just do. The best Sales Leaders stay on the sidelines most of the time. For one Sales Leader I worked with, we set up a simple set of rules:
   • If an opportunity was <$100,000 in revenue, he could only provide insight when asked. He could not talk to the client by phone nor participate in meetings.
   • If an opportunity was between $100,000 and $250,000 in revenue, he could participate in client calls by phone, but not in sales calls.
   • If an opportunity was over $250,000 in revenue, he could participate in meetings.

   The point of this example is not prescriptive. It is, however, illustrative that if the organization’s sales people are going to develop and the company is going to grow, magic has to be sparingly used.

3. Show your work. No matter what magic it is that a Sales Leader has performed, a sales rep will try to imitate the same trick at another time in another place. For this reason, you need to explain your magic, why you did what you did this time and why it was the right thing to do this time but not every time.  If you don’t, they have a high potential of messing it up. You’re your lesson stick? Who knows- but you have a better chance of passing on the limitations of what you are doing by explaining it than you do by hoping that they guess correctly.
4. Do the same trick twice. Magicians will tell you to never do the same trick twice because it becomes easier to figure out with repetition. For that reason alone, do the same trick twice and more so that people figure out why you are picking the strategies, coaching their behaviors, and troubleshooting according to a model. You want them to get better because it makes them better and increases the quality of problems you get to do your magic on.
5. Cluster your best tricks. When I am working with sales teams and we develop a strategy or troubleshoot a problem, my immediate question is, “Who else has a client or prospect for whom this approach would be a fit right now?” Through leveraging up my efforts with other sales people’s issues, we get more impact and greater long-term traction.
6. When to do magic. In my past blog, “Great Sales Management Isn’t Pretty”, I wrote about following a sales meeting process. The process tells you what accounts require magic. It is my strong recommendation that you do not try to do magic in that meeting. Rather, schedule another time when you can bring the right people, information and mindset to the discussion. If you try to do magic in the moment during that meeting, you will muck it up. You will not have all of the information that you need, you may not have all of the people that you need and you will not have the right-brain mindset. This is a recipe that will produce less than magical results.

Sales management is about process, sales leadership is about application. As my dad taught me, if you do your process correctly you earn the right to do your magic.

I was flying with a senior engineer from one of the top 5 aerospace companies in the world this week as he was on a trip to meet with a number of his suppliers around the country. He’s been an engineer on the supply chain management side for years in several different very large companies. I asked him his thoughts on smaller suppliers- how can they get into a big company, how can they grow their business and what are some of the common mistakes. A couple things I got from our conversation include:

Getting In
The traditional answers came up, but some nuggets came out. Industry networking – figure out a way to connect to the senior people at trade shows. Read the papers and articles in the industry and contact those authors who are active engineers in the companies with whom you would like to do business. LinkedIn is an emerging way to reach out to senior people and he is seeing more social media connection going on, especially in the specialty groups that are formed inside of LinkedIn and other SM platforms.

Procurement
He saw my eyes roll and he laughed, but he tried to reassure me that this is still a good way to get in. His point was that starting at the top and working on getting an executive sponsor in Procurement/Purchasing/SCM is still the right move. Most small companies look at these areas as processes to follow or areas to avoid. However, his point is that the executives in these areas get big points for bringing in good suppliers who solve problems. If there is a mix of smaller suppliers who make the grade, they get every bit as much credit as working with a big supplier. In addition, smaller suppliers are easier to move into the “Top Supplier of the Year” winner’s circle at the end of the year because they are easier to develop, which is another way those executives keep score. His point was that the executives in this area of the business are getting their heat from the company for failing suppliers of any size. If they can get a quick resolution to a real problem by bringing in a smaller but successful supplier, it is a big win.

Main Suppliers
Being a second to a prime supplier is a successful route and often leads to the second becoming a prime over time. His emphasis was the “over time.” The route is second, co-developed parts, prime, and this cycle moves slowly.

Here’s what he said about growing your business:
Small companies are often looking for the fast win and fast growth, so they push too early. By being painstakingly perfect on initial orders, the follow-on orders and projects will come more quickly. Go slow to move fast.

Also, he said that smaller companies who ask for help, collaborate and are transparent rocket to the top of the list. The ones who hide their issues, close down or try to solve everything themselves do not look like good partners- they look suspicious.

Visibility Is Big
Bring more people to the meetings when the big company comes to your site. Use the visits not only as quality control and education sessions but do in-services, brainstorming, and problem-solving sessions. When you visit the big company, take more people. Take senior people, take the president, when the big company is in the offices regardless of the level of person who comes, the executives of the smaller company need to show up and spend time.

Also, who is directly working the account is a HUGE issue. Don’t use younger, inexperienced people in any way on the account. Senior people need to handle the account management, the regular touch point work, any engineering, production or logistics areas.  If the bigger company makes a comment about a person they like or dislike, take it very seriously. Those relationships are very impacting to the overall companies’ relationships in many ways behind the scenes.

I think for many of us who work in the small business to big business arena, these thoughts echo our own impressions and experience of how this works: a good reminder and all of that.

However, I found the conversation interesting because of some general tones that were worth noting:

1. Smaller is better: The general sense was that his experience was that he preferred smaller vendors because of responsiveness, leverage and quality. His big issues were resources and that he felt that as those companies grew they sometimes “forgot who brought them to the dance.”
2. Playing favorites: Once a smaller company became a “go to guy for me,” he would maneuver the system to favor that company very aggressively. However, that company had to be able to respond with the same energy, quality and success on the next project or they became pigeonholed and would not get many new opportunities.
3. Whining v. collaborating: His point was that he and his people would work tirelessly with a company that they liked, who demonstrated that they were working just as hard and who collaborated. They cut off the whiners – those companies who had no ideas, who waited for his group to make all of the revisions and who seemed to sit on the other end of the rope waiting to be pulled up instead of at least grabbing onto the rope and to start climbing.

For most everyone reading this I think you will feel as I did about this conversation, invigorated. It clarifies from behind the curtain what the market thinks about your efforts and how it will respond to your approach.

My street cred is just shot… A sampling of recent emails and Facebook posts to me include the following Farmville related comments….

• “Say it isn’t so…You’ve gone down the Farmville path?
• “King of Compost? I will remember that title! Congrats!”
• “You have just been awarded the white ribbon ‘Lord of the Plow’
• “Tom found a Lonely Bull on their farm, Oh no!”

How can I hold my head up as a true professional consultant with a busy schedule that neither clients nor prospects can get an appointment on for weeks if not months, and yet I apparently have this absolutely frivolous time-suck of a hobby?

If you have missed the Facebook driven craze of Farmville, let’s just say that it is Second Life™ for the next generation. In this digital second world, you own an imaginary farm that you work for the purpose of earning imaginary coins to buy imaginary things to put on your imaginary farm. You work with real friends and acquaintances on Facebook to help each other to build your farms. Most of the exchanges are imaginary exchanges of imaginary items to build your imaginary farm and do not require any real conversational exchanges at all. From what I can tell, this imaginary life consumes between 1/5th and ½ of your real life’s waking moments.

Why Farmville is Brilliant

• Hyper-viral – Every step you take in your progress is posted for your community and friends. They are very incentivized to watch because every step you take also means that you have free gifts you can digitally bestow on them and they can even request. Just by being friends, not even being Farmville junkies, you can be helpful. On top of this, your real friends BEG you to start a farm, “…not to get involved, but just so you can be my neighbor and send me things every once and awhile… PLEEEEEASE….I only need 3 more neighbors and I can get a compost heap!” This is how this phenomenon went from nowhere to 22,000,000 players in less than 18 months.
• Treatment resistant – The darn notices just keep rolling up. The emails and requests from lifetime friends and family members keep showing up. The comments at the beginning of this blog came from people who have never posted up a comment to me on Facebook ever- but they obviously read my Farmville posts and had to say something, (I think in the treatment world they call this an ‘intervention.’). My point is that simple friendly requests and even stonewalling the barrage of notices on your Facebook account will not stop the onslaught.
• Digital pellets – The immediate gratification and sense of community cannot be denied. When the farms in our house are growing, prospering and friends are sending materials so my family can build their next barn, everyone is happy. These digital pellets are free, but they bring much good karma with them.
• Addiction means money – Because of the popularity of Farmville, 7-11™ stores ran a promotion that would give customers digital codes to pick up unique “Farmville items” when they purchased particular items. The 7,000 7-11™ stores were unprepared- every item sold out and sold out about as fast as the iPad release. The heavily accented storeowner I spoke with told me, “We can’t keep this Farmville stuff in stock- I don’t know when the next shipment is coming. Do you want to buy a Slurpee?”

What’s to learn?
The first answer is simple- 22 million people are crazy. Who would believe that this second world would be so obsessive? I can’t calculate the amount of lost productivity to the American economy, but it has to be in the billions. Is real life that uninteresting that we are drawn to plow, plant and harvest a digital farm for the purpose of gaining imaginary wealth and position in an imaginary farming community? Obviously yes.

Maybe the other lessons are more subtle. There are things to learn about community building, social media, frequency, rewarding behavior, and possibly something much larger about the current state of what we are as a culture. I don’t have those figured out, but I am open to anyone’s thoughts.

Full-Disclosure
I am not a Farmville farmer, although I have a farm. My daughter Cate is the tenant-farmer of my farmer, and I am just the land owner. I outsourced management and farming responsibilities to her, recognizing that my time was better spent in other pursuits- Like running a real company, in a real world, helping to solve real problems for real money. So, if you get a notice from me that I have “Just discovered some fuel in my Farmville field” or have achieved a “Blue ribbon in goat milking,” know that those are the notices of success for my little girl Cate, and as a father, I just couldn’t be prouder than if she had milked the goat in the real world.

Recently I was interviewed by Paul Diamond from the Vistage organization. We discussed the vast array of social media sites for salespeople and the fact that there are a lot of these sites out there, but not all of them are good. I think that Paul’s take on the topic and what he uncovered in his research is helpful. Check out his blog post on the topic on Bizmore.com.

“We’re getting commitments, but we’re not getting orders…”

“Some of the biggest companies out there are our customers, we just aren’t getting the volume…”

“The decision-maker is saying we’re going to get the business, but then her people order from their old suppliers…”

One of the most common problems I hear from clients is the problem of traction. They can get into the big companies, but they can’t get that “yes” to turn into dollars. I have touched upon this in the past in “Unsticking Stuck Deals (parts one & two) and “The Executive Sponsorship Agreement.”

I believe that sales people are pathologically optimistic, and it’s a good thing that they are. If they weren’t, how could they get out and face the rejection and frustration that accompanies the sales process? But that optimism carries with it some inherent dangers for their companies.

False positives, missed signals and ‘hope’ acting like ‘commitment’

Sales people are given a variety of “yes” answers over the course of a sales process that create the sense that a deal has occurred. In reality, though, there is at least one unseen step in the decision spectrum where the ‘maybe’ masquerades as ‘yes.’ You can probably spot it.
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“If we get Microsoft, (replace Microsoft with your favorite iconic brand name), then it is going to be a lot easier to get other big guys. So what if you take a little bit of a haircut on that deal? It’s what we are going to have to do to get our name out there.”

When I work with small and mid-size companies, I often hear the siren song of the logo deal.

This is not a discussion I hear on occasion. In one flavor or another I hear this conversation in almost every company I meet. The promise of affiliated greatness for your brand because of someone else’s strong brand is very hard to pass-up, I know.

I’ve written and spoken against this practice at length. For the sake of context, I’ll just give a quick summary of why this is a dangerous temptation. Then I will outline the Trigger-Map Strategy we teach for companies that want to boost their brand through key brand affiliation.
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Yes, it’s January, but the PowerPoints I’ve been going through in the last eight weeks have me flashing back to the Christmas letters I was reading just a few weeks ago. You know the ones. Each letter is filled with an update from the family that sent it. The letters typically fall into three categories: the good, the bad and the ugly.

Let’s take a look:

• The Good. Lots of photos, little text, only high points. Leave you feeling like you miss the people and you want to re-connect. The feeling reminds you why you like them.
• The Bad. One photo. No text. Standard “Happy Holidays” with ink-jetted signature. Gives you the feeling of a bad stand-up brochure for plumbing or painting services.
• The Ugly. Two pages of 6 pt font text, outlining every event of the year including the dog’s de-worming. Possibly a photo thrown in for good measure, but it is posed in front of the obligatory fireplace with the Mr. Potatohead smiles in place.

The parallel to PowerPoint presentations is hard to miss. The best ones have the following characteristics:

• Short and sweet. I mean less than 15 slides total. Trust your audience and trust your presenter. Your audience will fill in with questions and its own understanding some of the gaps. Your presenter is there to tell a story that brings your slides to life.
• Low text. Why did you send a presenter if people are supposed to read the text? If you don’t trust your presenter to get it right, I suggest you train him or her better or send in a different presenter. A dense and long presentation will not make up for a bad presenter.
• Focus on the audience. When you read the Christmas letters, what is interesting to you? The key events, the photos that show those events, possibly an insider comment that connects us with those events. That’s it.

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I spoke to Newpreneurs™ at Inc. Magazine/Alibaba.com conferences in New York and Chicago this week about the 5 key things it takes to be successful in growing their businesses explosively through large account selling.

Here’s what I told them:

• Focus. Pick your 4% marketplace to attack and weed out “toxic clients and black hole prospects” as quickly as possible
• Solve your prospect’s real issue. Companies are not focusing on pain, features or benefits. They are buying on time, money and risk.
• Get a bigger buyer’s table. The people who will kill your deal are often times not in the room. Invite your detractors into the process. They will work against you anyway so you might as well face them head-on and work through their issues with them.
• Think like a big prospect. Interest is generated by your compelling advantage, but the decision to buy from you comes from how much fear your big prospect has of your ability to deliver.
• Hunt heavy. Take a big team and all of the resources. If you have to err on how many resources to expend, err on the heavy side.

Here’s what I didn’t tell them:

• It’s not about the product. Many of the contestants in this national Newpreneur™ of the Year contest sponsored by Alibaba.com are product companies. As I listen and judge their presentations, the recurring theme of their 90-second elevator pitch is “my product is best.” Their distribution channels are not necessarily looking for the “best” product. Whether they will take their products to market through dealers, distributors or retailers, these Newpreneurs have challenges that have nothing to do with the quality of the product. Quality and value of product to the end buyer is an issue of returns.
• Distribution channels want to know about:
  • Velocity. How quickly will the product move in and out of my DC?
  • Margin. How much will be made per unit and palette in total dollars and in percentages in comparison to same or similar product in the warehouse?
  • Risk. How long will it take for the sales to be the same or better than whatever it was    that filled that space in the DC and on the end sale point shelf?

  When they focus on the quality of the product, companies are focusing on one-off sales, not on the big deals that go through 2-step distribution.

• It’s about the supply chain. As my brother Tim likes to say, “In this marketplace, companies don’t buy from other companies, they buy from supply chains. You are not just you any more, you are you plus all the partners you bring with you including your bank, your landlord, your business partners, and everything that makes up the composite picture which is what you offer.” To be successful in going to market, companies have to bring the full solution and the complete team to the table to land their biggest deals.
• Passion will only get you so far. Every contestant has a dream. Their passion inspires to the point of making you want to weep. I’m serious. It is energizing just to be in their presence and if you can get to one of these events coming up, you should. You will leave fired up and confident in the future of our economy. That having been said, very few of the contestants would have survived the TV show “Shark Tank.” Push in on their business plans, poke at their go-to-market-strategies and everything is a little squishier than you would like to see. A couple of glaring gaps:
  • Money? For the most part, these new business people are looking at their businesses in a hand-to-mouth fashion. A big order, an investor, even an inheritance would probably not be used well based upon the answers to the questions we heard. There has to be a plan for what the next level of money would do for the business.
  • Team? You can’t do it alone. Each of these businesses needed a MasterMind group of advisers to guide them.
  • Scalability? One of the first things a big company is going to ask a product company is “Can you keep up with demand?” This is a question that was not well answered by most of the contestants. A strategy that says “We’ll figure that out when we get there” will run out of runway the moment the business is “there.”

The Newpreneuer™ series of events has been great and I am looking forward to the remainder of the tour. Even with these small critiques, I understand why almost two-thirds of Americans surveyed believe that the economic turnaround will be fueled by new entrepreneurs, not the large, old-line companies of the past.

I’m working with a team of sales people right now—good sales people—who have one teensy-weensy problem: follow up.

The sales process for all of us includes a large number of transactional communications. They may include coordinating a meeting, securing a key piece of information, getting approval from Procurement or Purchasing, sign-off from a superior, the review of the proposal, signing the contract and so on. Every one of these communications must be completed in order to land the deal. If you participate in the sales process, you understand that rarely have you suffered more indignity or unprofessionalism than in this cycle of unanswered, unreturned or ignored emails, voicemail messages and sent and unsigned documents.  And it’s done WILLINGLY.

I’ve watched frothy-mouthed-screaming-at-officials-soccer-moms, who when faced with following up with a prospect who agreed to an action and hasn’t done it, say “Well, I’ll just give it another week.  I don’t want to be too pushy.”

I’ve seen bar-pounding-get-me-my-beer-now-guys wait for weeks for a response on a proposal. Weeks!

What is the right amount of time to wait before following up with a prospect? Not just any prospect, but a big prospect.  I know that you don’t want to be pushy or desperate.  I get that.  But you also need to keep moving the process along. We are looking for the Goldilocks “just right” level. Here are some pointers before I give you the timing guidelines:

• Ask. My favorite approach came from a guy in Ireland pitching me some commercial real-estate. He said, “Thomas, the line between persistence and annoyance is a fine one, and I wouldn’t want to be crossing it. When should I be getting back to you so I’ll know you’ll be picking up the phone.” In every direct communication, ask when they want to have you get back to them and be specific. “Early next week” is not specific. “Tuesday at 10am” is specific.
• Set expectations. It starts with setting expectations. In voicemails, emails, face to face or by phone, never end the conversation without setting the next time. Tell them when you will be calling or sending an email, specifically.
• Be impeccable. Never miss a time or date. Not by a minute. If you are going to set the time for follow up with precision in your email or voicemail, then you have to hit it. You are creating a perception of attention detail and reliability. Just because they are not impeccable does not give you a pass not to be.
• Allow some leeway. Sometimes, my calls for appointments and follow ups are missed by the person whom I am calling. I leave this message, “I have us scheduled for a meeting today at 9am. I probably just missed you or one of your other meetings is running over. I will call back in 15 minutes to connect. I look forward to our conversation. Thanks.” Then I call back. If I don’t reach the person, my message sounds like this, “I’m sorry we didn’t get connected today, I was looking forward to our conversation. Your day may have just gotten away from you, I know that happens to me sometimes. I’ll call you back at end of day today, say 5:00pm, to reschedule this call. Thanks.”  Don’t wait for a call back or an email.  Keep pressing forward.
• Drive, don’t ride. I don’t expect that people will be calling me back. I’m driving the process, so it’s my job to drive the communication. I am always willing to be surprised in a good way with a responsive person, but my control needs dictate that I can’t be waiting.  I have to drive. How about you?
• Walk away. Like the movie title says, maybe “He’s Just Not That Into You.” At some point, continued follow up is groveling. Don’t grovel. (see Brando Don’t Audition)

If they are not responding, it means that they have moved on. I send an email or leave a voice message that sounds like this:  “I’ve been in this business a long time, and when I stop being able to connect with someone it usually means that the timing for us to work together is not good. This is my last call to you for 6 months. I’ll circle back around then to see if timing is better for us to work together. If something changes for you between now and then, please feel free to call me. “

Having said all of this, here are some guidelines for proper Hunt Big Sales Prospect Follow Up Etiquette:

Prospecting Calls

• 1st Prospecting Call- You can call or email an unresponsive person within 48 hours.
• 2nd Prospecting Call– Within 48 hours of last call
• 3rd Prospecting Call– Within 48 hours of last call
• 4th Prospecting Call– Within 72 hours of last call
• Final Prospecting Call– Within 72 hours of last call

Trade Show Follow-Up – This gets trickier depending upon the volume of contacts.

• Pre-Set Personal meeting – Within 48 hours of trade show closing.
• Good conversation on floor – Within 48 hours of trade show closing
• Passing conversation on floor – Within 72 hours of trade show closing
• Fish bowl business card – Within 7 calendar days of trade show closing
• Prospect listed in program – Do you really have time to chase someone who you never met at the show? Don’t be a psycho stalker. Let it go.

Proposals. Assuming that you are sending a requested proposal, rather than an unsolicited one, your follow-up cycle should be declared in the cover letter. It should be within 24 hours to confirm receipt and distribution if appropriate. The time should be set at that time for a full review of the proposal within 72 hours. The house goes on fire outside of 8 calendar days—you must get connection and confirmation of interest and progress within 8 calendar days or you are dead.

Contracts. Who is driving? You are. Contract cycles within clients are a misty and dark area of the sales process. Lawyers think of themselves in this process as the stewards of their company’s risk, which they probably are. Because of this, they are slow, methodical and indifferent to you. First, get an understanding from your champion how long the cycle usually takes. Cut this time by two-thirds and follow up at the one-third mark in the cycle. Work both the attorney and the champion. Your approach should always be helpful: “What areas are of the most concern in the agreement? Which parts of the agreement are we going to be able to leave the same? How can we help to work through this agreement?”

Getting the prospect’s team to move. Stuck. I hate being stuck. Usually it’s IT, but not always. The process gets tends to get bogged down while your champion of your new client is waiting for someone in his or her organization to do something. Now everybody is waiting. Your follow up here has to be vigorous and consistent but friendly. You are working within 4 hour cycles of commitments. Any time that a time or date has been missed on a commitment, you follow up within 4 hours. If they are not missing commitments, then your follow up is within 1 hour of commitment completion to thank them for completing the commitment. 20 commitments? 20 thank you’s.

Information requests. Use the same guidelines as “Getting the prospect’s team to move.”

Guidelines are not laws.  When in doubt, use your own judgment. Always remember though, YOU ARE DRIVING.