Have you defined what you want to happen at the conclusion of your 1st appointment? Only then can you actually set up a proficient sales methodology to achieve the defined objective more times than not. And with a pre-defined objective to your 1st appointment you can (1) set a realistic benchmark of success and (2) measure the outcome. It becomes part of your sales performance scorecard.

What is a 1st appointment to proposal ratio? It’s simply how many times you gain commitment with your prospect to take the next step, as outlined by your sales process.
Depending on your solutions-based product or service and your sales methodology, your ‘Next step’ may be one of the following:

An on-site demonstration
A trial period of your “widget”
A tour of your operations or manufacturing facility
A no-obligation survey
An evaluation and side-by-side comparison, apples to apples
A solution-based evaluation, apples to oranges

Whatever your ‘Gateway’ is, be sure to attach a business rule and definition to it, and then most importantly measure it.
For example, let’s look at a telecommunications company that provides voice, data and wireless services to their customer base. The objective of their first appointment is to gain commitment from their Target prospect to perform a diagnostic survey of their current services as it relates to their overall business imperatives and financial success factors for the current year and bring them back a ‘Blueprint’ of ROI based solutions.

With their 1st appointment objective ‘Gateway’ defined, they come to a decision to measure that gateway by having the target prospect sign a release form that enables them to contact their current service provider and request a specification report around line, data and feature connectivity.
The advantage of defining and measuring the first ‘Gateway’ is that it will provide you with a ‘Reality Mirror’ of how competent you are with the initial phase of your sales process. So if you have set a realistic benchmark company-wide of a 60% 1st Appointment to Proposal ratio and you have individuals below it, you can pro-actively provide them with targeted coaching and support tools to help them achieve the standard benchmark. And that drives more revenue.

If I walk into a sales division and diagnose their 1st appointment to proposal ratio is below 60%, I immediately know up to 5 specifics:

1. They are not calling on the Highest appropriate level of contact
2. They are not calling on the right type of company by industry or application
3. They have not defined a 1st appointment objective (A ‘Gain Commitment’ Gateway)
4. They have ‘no message’ or are poor at communicating the message
5. They are selling their services instead of selling the diagnostic steps in the Process and backing it up with 3rd party validations

The first two factors are directly related with whom you decide to call on.
You probably know who uses your product or service, but you might need some business acumen training to better understand the critical financial success indicators of your prospect parallel to their Front Burner business objectives.

More than often not, a low 1st appointment to proposal ratio is related to a process of not calling on the highest appropriate level of contact. By that I mean understanding the level of responsibility within a company that has the most input into a buying decision. Who has the ‘ownership’? Who is at the ‘need to know’ level? It may be more than one level or title, but it is important to resolve to a top-down selling process.

A top-down selling process will raise your 1st appointment to proposal conversion rates because you are in front of the appropriate person from the start. That person has enough clout to sign on to the next step or to legitimately dismiss the process. If you are dealing with a subordinate level, to the degree of which you are will be the degree your conversion rate will expeditiously decrease.

There was a start-up company in a recently de-regulated industry that had accumulated 300 million dollars in investor money to build a business. Their primary sales distribution channel was a direct sales team. They decided to retain a sales training firm to set up all sales strategies, appropriate processes and training to execute to their revenue goals. Interesting enough, they promoted just the opposite of a top down selling process.

They promoted a strategy and process of initiating contact with business receptionists. That’s right, the nice folks who sit in the lobby to answer and direct all the inbound calls. They felt if you promote yourself to these receptionists, flatter then with brand reference gifts, they would eventually lead you to the right person of authority to look at the sales proposition. After all, they know all the names and extensions, and who has what title.
I guess you could call it a bottom up selling process.

At the same time, I was heading up a direct sales team competing directly with their services in the same geographical area. We followed the sales strategies and processes I am outlining.
Our competitor’s sales cycle was longer and their average revenue per sale was smaller. Two years later, we had grown 509% and were acquired by a national company. That was the goal.
Our competitor filed chapter 11, let everyone go, and liquidated all assets. End of story.

The level of responsibility you decide to call on directly effects your 1st appointment to proposal ratio.
Here are (8) diagnostic tips to improve your ‘1st Appointment to Proposal’ ratio.
1. Employ an ROI-based lead generator system that contains data recognition, classification, and custom extraction specific to your business offering
2. Internally define what the objective of the 1st appointment is; a demo, a site visit, a survey or a proposal, set a benchmark of success and universally measure it.
3. Promote your Product/service offering in a way to provide a measurable soft or hard dollar ROI over time.
4. Call on the ‘Highest appropriate level of contact’ for your offering; one that that has fiscal authority if a proposal make business sense.
5. Use a diagnostic approach in your sales appointment to understand what your Prospect’s business objectives are in the short and long term.
6. Get some ‘Business Acumen’ training to become proficient in understanding how fiscal people measure their business and support your business offering with relevant terms such as ROI, IRR and Payback Period.
7. Don’t sell your product or service on the 1st appointment. Promote ‘the diagnostic steps of your process’ to evaluate the opportunity to increase performance, efficiencies or reduce costs.
8. Utilize a software proposal generator (non-Boiler-plate) that develops custom proposals specific to your Prospect’s required deliverables and how your solutions will facilitate them getting there sooner rather than later. Show examples during your 1st appointment process.
Defining a specific objective for your 1st appointment, setting a realistic benchmark of achievement and measuring the outcome will begin to get you on track to an 80%+ 1st appointment to Proposal ratio.
Then support the sales objective by developing or outsourcing quality tools tied to technology and best practices to allow more of your sales employees to achieve superior benchmark results.

Jeff Hardesty is president of JDH Group Inc., a sales performance training company based in Powell, Ohio. He can be reached at jeff@convertmoresales.com.

Calculate your sales team’s ‘Sales Performance Competencies’ here

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Submit your numbers for a complimentary 30-minute performance consultation with Jeff Hardesty

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These are the top 7 safety tips that criminals don’t want you to know. It makes their job harder. What makes a criminal pounce? Intent and Opportunity. Their intent we have no control over, however we definitely can do something about the opportunity. Start thinking like a criminal. How would someone be able to take advantage of you? What throughout your day can put you at the peak time for a criminal to “come in for the kill”?

1. When meeting a client for the first time, have them go to your office or a public establishment.

2. If meeting a potential client at their home, try to bring another colleague with you. Remember, there is always safety in numbers. If you are traveling alone, scope out as you walk towards a clients house where doors are in the house in case a quick getaway is needed.

3. Wearing expensive jewelry makes you a big target. Leave your jewelry at home or locked in your vehicle. Ladies, your spouses will understand.

4. Keep your cell phone clipped to you at all times. This allows you to call the office or a family member on a moments notice.

5. If you are driving a client in your vehicle, make them ride in the passenger seat, not the back of the vehicle. You want to keep your eye on them. Having a client sit in the backseat because your paperwork is in the front leaves you very vulnerable.

6. Keep your keys with you readily available, in a pocket of your pants or jacket or even in your hand. They can be used as a defensive weapon if necessary.

7. And remember always - ALWAYS trust your gut instincts!!! If something doesn’t seem right or you have a funny feeling about a client, Get out of there! Make another appointment. Bring someone with you next time you meet. Tell them your cell phone is vibrating and you need to take the call. ANYTHING that will deter them enough for you to get to a safer location.

And remember this… CRIMINALS LIE! They will tell you anything you want to hear. Don’t trust them. Don’t believe them. They will say anything to convince you otherwise. Be pleasant to your prospective clients, but keep your guard up.

About The Author

Michelle Annese specializes in self-defense for adults and children, in Waynesboro, Virginia, USA. She is an instructor and lecturer on the subject of self-defense and safety. Specializing in teaching realtors and professional groups as well as the issues faced by women at risk. Ms. Annese is the author of “The Realtor’s Survival Guide” and writes many articles that include tips, self-defense strategies, personal protection techniques, safety product information and much more - aimed to help build awareness and to save lives or the life of someone you know. Ms. Annese may be contacted via email at mannese@ntelos.net or visit her websites for more info at www.michelleannese.com / www.safetyquestproducts.com

So you’ve got a product and you want to sell it to people via
the internet. Join the club. Everyone wants to sell stuff via
the internet and many do, but how many of the customers are
truly happy with their purchases? The internet makes it easy for
internet users to communicate with other internet users. It also
make it easy for your customers to come back to you regardless
of they are in the world.

The key to good marketing is customer satisfaction. What happens
if you buy a product and you find out that it isn’t as good as
you thought it would be? You are one unhappy customer, you are
hardly likely to tell your friends that it was a good thing to
buy, you’re unlikely to buy again from that supplier and you may
even return the product for a refund. But what happens if the
product actually turns out to be better than you thought it
would be? You’re unlikely to go asking for a refund, you’re more
likely to buy again from that supplier and you might tell your
friends that it was a good purchase. If you market your products
via the internet, word-of-mouth recommendations are your
‘bridge’ to potential customers in the non-internet world.

Underselling is a tricky tightrope to walk. Of course you need
to tell your prospective customers about the benefits of your
product to arouse their interest in the product in the first
place. If you’re not going to tell prospective customers about
certain features of your product you need to decide carefully
what those features will be. The mere mention of the extra
supercool whatdyacallit might be enough to grab the prospects
attention, and yes, you may lose a few potential sales by not
mentioning it in the first place, but this is your ace card. Do
you really want to throw it in so soon? The unmentioned
feature(s) might be subtle like the overall design quality or an
extraordinarily good after-sales service, or it might be
something that adds a whole new functionality to the product, a
kind of secret bonus.

This method works best with a ‘try before you buy’ approach. The
customer’s discovery of the free bonus means the product will be
able to sell itself. It is the element of surprise that does the
work. ‘Try before you buy’ will work with just about any
product. It might involve producing a cut-down, free sample of
the product or allocating a series of demonstration models for
people to ‘test-drive’ or it might even involve making a
provisional sale ‘on approval’. Of course, the product should
stand-up to everything that has been said about it beforehand
but the surprise bonus is the clincher.

People rarely buy something for just one reason. The more
reasons they have to buy your product, the more likely they are
to buy it. At first, in respect of an ‘off-the-shelf’ sale, this
might sound like a contradiction. If giving more reasons to buy
is more likely to get a sale, then why keep them secret? The
answer is customer satisfaction, free word-of-mouth advertising
and repeat sales. Unfortunately, the world is not a perfect
place. Everybody has different tastes and dislikes. There is
bound to be something about your product that somebody doesn’t
like, perhaps it’s the exact shade of green or the way it goes
’snap’ when you press it in a particular way. Here, your secret
bonus can come to the rescue, restoring the balance by
cancelling out the nasty bit, and drawing your customer to focus
on the advantages of your product rather than the disadvantages.

So next time you are telling your prospective customers how good
your product is, forget to tell them about how it is guaranteed
to enhance their love life. Let them find out for themselves. If
your product doesn’t do this, then perhaps it should!

Business leads are made up of market segmentation and targeting the market. The term ‘market’, refers to the aggregate of all demand for a particular product or service, arising from the aggregate of all consumers- existing and potential for the product.

Markets vary widely from one to another, since the consumers who constitute the markets vary widely in their characteristics. Even a specific market for a given product is not totally homogeneous. When a market is split up into several smaller units, each with homogeneous characteristics, it facilitates the effective tapping of the market.

Market segmentation is the process of disaggregating the total market for a given product into a number of sub-markets. This is very important in getting business leads. The heterogeneous market is broken up in the process into a number of fairly homogeneous units.

The process is based on the recognition that any given market or consumer group is made up of a number of subgroups distinguished by varying needs and buying behaviors. In addition, it is feasible to disaggregate the consumers into suitable segments in such a manner that the characteristics of the segmented groups would vary significantly among segments, but would also be identical within segments.

Market segmentation confers several benefits on the business firms. In the first place, it helps distinguish one customer group from another within a given market, thereby enabling a business to decide which segment of the market should form the target market. It also enables the effective crystallization of the specific needs of the buyers in the target market, and facilitates an in-depth study of the characteristics of the buyers.

When the buyers are approached after careful segmentation, responses that are predictable would be forthcoming for them. This would help the business firms in developing their marketing program on a predictable and reliable base.

To maintain order of the world, our brains link objects, gestures, and symbols with our feelings, memories, and life experiences. We mentally associate ourselves with such things as endorsements, sights, sounds, colors, music, and symbols, just to name a few. This association allows us to make judgment calls when we don’t have the required time to do thorough research.

Master Persuaders take advantage of association to evoke positive feelings and thoughts that correspond with the message they are trying to convey. In this sense, you, as a persuader, can actually arouse a certain feeling in your audience by finding the right association key to unlock the door. Associations are not the same for all people–obviously, each person has their own set of triggers. However, once you understand the general rules, you can find the right associations to match any prospect. And of course, some associations are universal for an entire culture.

Another aspect of the Law of Association is the use of affiliation. Persuaders want you to affiliate their company with positive images, feelings, and attitudes. We tend to affiliate our feelings with our surroundings and environment and then transfer our feelings to those we are with. For example, one frequently used technique is to feed take the prospect to lunch. Why? Because people like the individuals and the things they experience while they are eating (if the food and company are good). The idea is to link something positive in the environment with your message.

For example, a good game of golf, a weekend at the beach, NFL tickets, or an exotic cruise would all typically build positive associations and feelings in your prospects. Do you remember ever noticing how, after a crushing victory, sweatshirts sporting the university’s logo were seen all over the place? People want to be associated with winners. In fact, a study showed that when a university football team won, more students would wear that college’s sweatshirts. The bigger the victory, the more college sweatshirts become visible. When you bring positive stimuli into the situation, you will be associated with the pleasant feeling you have created.

We are now going to discuss four different affiliations that are most often used. They are as follows: advertising, sponsorships, images, and color. Each of these techniques has a unique role in affiliation.

Advertisers and marketers use affiliation to evoke valuable associations in the minds of their prospects. They know that babies and puppy dogs automatically carry great associations of warmth and comfort in the minds of their audience. Consequently, we see tire commercials with babies and car commercials with puppies, even though cars and tires aren’t really warm and cuddly. These warm appeals grab our attention and create positive associations in our mind.

Want some other examples? Consider some of the popular slogans: “Like a good neighbor,” “The same as home-style cooking,” “Like a rock,” and “The breakfast of champions.” Using slogans in this way, marketers are able to readily create positive feelings and associations without having to create a new image. They simply create even stronger and more positive associations with what already exists.

One of the most common examples of advertising affiliation occurs in the alcohol and cigarette industries. How often do you see a lung cancer patient in a cigarette ad? Instead, advertisers in these industries use young vibrant people who are in the prime of their lives. The beer companies want you to associate drinking beer with having fun and attracting the opposite sex. Their ads portray images of men and women having fun, while surrounded by beer. Their message is, “If you aren’t drinking, you aren’t having fun.” On an intellectual level, we all know that these are just advertisements, but the associations they arouse in us stick in our minds.

When companies need to change their image, they usually find a good cause to latch on to. They will typically find a good social or environmental issue they can tap into. For example, an ice cream company advertises their support for an environmental movement, or yogurt companies start a campaign to stop breast cancer. You also see patriotic endorsements being employed to create a positive association in your mind. The simple sight of the American flag, or the phrases “Buy American” and “Made in America,” can trigger instant positive associations.

In the 1970s, the big American car still dominated the U.S. automobile scene. American carmakers had no fear of imported automobiles. There was a tradition in most families to always buy the same make of car. Imports were associated with being cheap, unreliable, and a waste of money. When the baby boomers came along, however, they became better educated and they refused to blindly follow the guidelines laid out by their parents. They viewed imports as having better gas mileage, greater reliability, and lower prices. The negative association shifted suddenly from foreign cars to American-made cars and the rest is a history. American carmakers were almost put out of business by this shift, and they, still to this day, lose big market share to imported cars. As the tide turned, American car companies had to learn to make new associations with their cars.

Closely related to advertising is the notion of sponsorship. Companies and organizations sponsor events that they believe will produce a positive association in the eyes of the public. They hope this positive association will transfer over to their company. The Olympic Games pull huge sponsorships–companies pay big money to get their name and products associated with the Olympics. What company wouldn’t want to be associated with peace, unity, perseverance, determination, success, and winning the gold? The affiliations that companies create for us are very strong and memorable.

Let’s try an experiment: Think about the following beverages and pay attention to the images that come to your mind while you do so.

Volvo — Toyota
Mercedes — Rolls Royce
Hyundai — Chevy
Ford — Porsche

The images we see create attitudes within us. It is no random accident that most U.S. presidents have pet dogs in the White House. Consciously and unconsciously, a loving, obedient, trusting dog creates a positive image of its owner. Voters would be more likely to reject a politician who preferred cats, hamsters, snakes, ferrets, or tarantulas.
It really isn’t a secret that we are abundantly influenced by imagery when making everyday decisions. We are much more likely to donate to someone wearing a Santa Claus suit than to someone in street attire. We are more trusting of a sales rep wearing a gold cross around his neck. Sports bars decorate their walls with jerseys and other sports paraphernalia.

Credit card companies are among the greatest users of imagery and association. Because credit cards give us immediate gratification without us having to face the negative consequences until weeks later, we often think of the perceived positive associations before the negative ones. Consumer researcher Richard Feinberg conducted several different studies testing the effects credit cards had on our spending habits. He came across some very interesting results. For example, he found that restaurant patrons gave higher tips when using a credit card as opposed to cash. In another case, consumers were found to show a 29 percent increase in their willingness to spend when the merchandise was examined in a room displaying MasterCard signs. More interesting still was the fact that the subjects were unaware that the MasterCard signs were an intentional and calculated part of the experiment.

Learning how to persuade and influence will make the difference between hoping for a better income and having a better income. Beware of the common mistakes presenters and persuaders commit that cause them to lose the deal. Get your free report 10 Mistakes That Continue Costing You Thousands and explode your income today.

Application Questions

What images can you use to trigger the right a emotions during your persuasive presentation?

What image are your trying to create with your product, service, or cause?

What attitudes will the images trigger?

Conclusion

Persuasion is the missing puzzle piece that will crack the code to dramatically increase your income, improve your relationships, and help you get what you want, when you want, and win friends for life. Ask yourself how much money and income you have lost because of your inability to persuade and influence. Think about it. Sure you’ve seen some success, but think of the times you couldn’t get it done. Has there ever been a time when you did not get your point across? Were you unable to convince someone to do something? Have you reached your full potential? Are you able to motivate yourself and others to achieve more and accomplish their goals? What about your relationships? Imagine being able to overcome objections before they happen, know what your prospect is thinking and feeling, feel more confident in your ability to persuade.

About the Author:

Kurt Mortensen’s trademark is Magnetic Persuasion; rather than convincing others, he teaches that you should attract them, just like a magnet attracts metal filings. He teaches that sales have changed and the consumer has become exponentially more skeptical and cynical within the last five years. Most persuaders are using only 2 or 3 persuasion techniques when there are actually 120 available!

Kurt teaches over a hundred techniques to give you the ability to effectively work with every customer that walks in your door. Professional success, personal happiness, leadership potential, and income depend on the ability to persuade, influence, and motivate others. Learning how to persuade and influence will make the difference between hoping for a better income and having a better income.

If you are ready to claim your success and learn what only the ultra-prosperous know, begin by going to http://www.PreWealth.com and getting my free report “10 Mistakes That Continue Costing You Thousands.” After reading my free report, go to http://www.PreWealth.com/IQ and take the free Persuasion IQ analysis to determine where you rank and what area of the sales cycle you need to improve in order to close every sale!