“Improve sales win-rates through better deal management and paying attention to those that you know.”
~ Miller Heiman

There are only 9 more Selling Days remaining in September and in the Quarter!!!

It is in a salesperson’s nature to get excited about closing new business. Winning a new client is a reason to celebrate. But, when looking for revenue opportunities, sticking close to home can have its advantages. Your current accounts would be a good place to start. You know their business issues, you know why they decided to do business with you in the first place, and you have established relationships. When new leads – and resources – are scarce, the ability to drive new revenue from existing clients can be a great way to help ensure success. Are you confident that you’ve already uncovered the full potential from your existing client base? There are likely current needs your client has that you could be pursuing. You should approach helping an existing client with the same enthusiasm as you approach new clients.

Maintaining strong relationships with current accounts provides two key benefits:

• You retain the existing business
• You uncover new opportunities

This is not accomplished through just periodic check-ins or great customer service after the sale; it requires an ongoing commitment from you, me all of us and as my Pappy use to say, “don’t you forget it.” As opportunities become scarce, competition increases, so are you doing enough to protect that account? In this marketplace you can’t differentiate by product offering, you must differentiate yourself by the way you sell and the unique value you can provide. A salesperson who can understand a client’s business issues and help craft solutions that help the client succeed are valued and rewarded. Differentiate yourself through your ability to be a well-informed, trusted business resource. When you help your clients achieve their objective you both will win and I will never forget that.

 Go out and have a Great Selling Day and make a difference in at least one person’s life today.

“Get back to real selling for that is what we do.”
~ Miller Heiman

There are only 12 more Selling Days in August and 33 remaining in the Quarter!!!

Getting leads should always feel like a luxury rather than an entitlement. Marketing’s job is to accelerate the sales cycle. Developing highly qualified leads is absolutely the best way to deliver on this commitment. But business development success ultimately rests on the salesperson and delivering real results should be the number one focus instead of figuring out who to blame. Professional salespeople need to take control of their own destiny and be proactive.

Sure it is a lot easier when you simply respond to a lead and try to build on the momentum that marketing has already created. But often times, clients have done some of their own diagnosis and you may find yourself pigeonholed into answering product-specific questions rather than having a discussion about their business issues. Beginning this dialogue is not a situation where you just wing it. Take the time to develop a Valid Business Reason that will resonate with the client. And no, saying something like, “Mr. Customer, would you like to talk to us about how you can increase productivity and reduce expenses?” will not work. It needs to be specific to the client and it needs to feel a little risky for you to bring up. After all, you are taking a chance that your ideas may not be compelling to the client. If you are not able to get them interested in a discussion then maybe you really don’t have a fit at this time. Getting a dialogue going with the client is not something that happens with a catchy phrase or a smooth answer. It happens when you can quickly demonstrate that you are an expert who understands some of their key issues and you have some ideas to help. This is the risky part. You may not bat a thousand but the conversations that do get traction will certainly be ones where there is some clear common ground.

As salespeople, we are ultimately responsible for our own success. Pointing fingers and worrying about things outside of our control are not strategies that will enable us to hit the objectives we agreed to. So let’s get back to real selling, stay passionate about what we do each and every day and never cheat the company for our customers are counting us. 

Go out and have a Great Selling Day and make a difference in at least one person’s life today.

According to a recent survey, American businesses are looking for affordable and flexible options when it comes to recycling.

Many Recycling destruction firms have contracted with Coral Gables, Fla.-based AJR & Partners to conduct research into the recycling habits of U.S. businesses. The results will help determine how companies such as The File Room headquartered in Saint Louis, MO can help to improve business recycling rates in the country.

According to the Survey, 90 percent of American businesses practice some form of recycling and 10 percent do not. Fifteen industries, including manufacturing, electronics, software, medical services, finance, insurance, real estate, education, retail and public administration, were represented by survey participants from all over the country. More than two-thirds of the survey respondents reported that their annual revenue was less than $25 million, while 20 percent said their annual revenue was less than $1 million.

According to the survey: 

• Ninety percent of respondents either don’t know how their data is destroyed or have insufficient data destruction practices for protecting their organizations from data leaks or hackers retrieving sensitive information.
• The top three waste streams with recycling rates greater than 80 percent are batteries, electronics and lamps.
• Slightly more than half (51 percent) of firms that do not recycle say their customers, vendors and employees want them to recycle; however, 72 percent of these companies say the primary reasons for not having a recycling program in place is the lack of options or the cost.
• Forty-five percent of respondents that do recycle said their cost of doing business has decreased by having a recycling program in light of lower insurance premiums or reduced liability for the company.
• About 40 percent of all companies responding reported a need for more access to recycling options. 

“The 2010 Survey was important for us to learn how to improve customer service and better communicate the benefits of recycling,” says Rita Grant the General Manager of The File Room. “Since options and flexibility are important to most companies, we are able to provide those solutions while helping to reduce operational liability and regulatory costs.” 

More than two-thirds (72 percent) of the companies that do not recycle say it is either too costly to do so or they do not have available options in their geographic region. One-third of the companies that responded say they do not recycle because there is no law mandating it.  

Slightly more that half say their customers, vendors and employees want them to recycle, but the options are not there for them to meet those demands. Ten percent of respondents that do not recycle say they have no interest in it. 

The top three obstacles to increasing recycling among those respondents that do so are space limitations for recycling containers, the inconvenience of separating materials and the cost.  

Thirty-five percent of respondents say more training is needed to implement recycling programs for different types of waste streams.  

Close to two-thirds (63 percent) of respondents that recycle say they do not know how data on their electronic devices are destroyed. More than a quarter (27 percent) of respondents say they delete files off of their computers.  

“Just deleting files does not completely destroy the information, but simply moves the files to an area of the hard drive that is not visible to the average person,” Rita says. “The File Room specializes in electronic waste by completely destroying all data contained on data storage devices collected from clients and ensuring that disposal adheres to our zero-waste-to-landfill policy.”  

AERC Recycling Solutions operates five electronics processing facilities, also known as Com-Cycle, in five separate geographic locations. More information is available at http://www.aercrecycling.com/

Communication is the lifeline of every small business as we all know.

Gone are the days when you would have to fly down to another city if you had a client meeting. Modern technology makes it possible to communicate using email, fax, video conferencing, instant messaging and other such electronic media, besides the phone. However, a majority of the communication still takes place in writing, and has to be captured and stored in the form of documents. As documents carry crucial business related information, keeping them safe should be your top priority. This article gives you some small business advice on how to keep business records and store documents safely.

In spite of technological advances, most businesses still depend on paper to record, store and manage information. As a small business grows, it tends to accumulate tens of thousands of documents of various kinds over the years; e.g. books of accounts, invoices, copies of checks, statements, agreements, letters etc. For many of the documents, multiple copies are made and filed away only to be forgotten about. The documents are stored in a document archive or at an off site location like The File Room in Saint Louis, MO. In fact, storing documents in paper form could be dangerous in certain situations, some of which are discussed below. So then, how to keep business records secure? Switch to electronic document management – there are compelling reasons to do so. 

• Immune from wear and tear: Paper is vulnerable to adverse climate conditions as well as wear and tear caused by frequent handling. It can get moist, soiled and even get destroyed in case of exposure to rain or snow. When you stored documents offsite, you have even lesser control, as the conditions might not be as favorable as in your own office. As digitally stored documents are not vulnerable to wear and tear, it is far better to store documents like customer data, contracts, and accounts etc. in electronic form.
• Easy backup and retrieval: You may ask,”In the event of a natural disaster, even computers can malfunction or be destroyed completely. How would my documents stay secure in such a situation?” It is very easy to back up documents online. Most Windows-based document management software allows you to do this. In case of a disaster, as soon as your computers are back up, you can retrieve your documents in just a few clicks. There are several online backup services with inexpensive plans you can choose from. It works out far cheaper – and more secure – than having to build your document archive all over again. In fact, you can easily create multiple copies/backups of all your electronic documents – something which would be very expensive or almost impossible to do with paper documents.
• Maintaining business continuity: As it is very easy to back up documents stored electronically and retrieve them quickly, in the event of a disaster your small office can get back to work with hardly any time lag. This creates a favorable impression of your business in the eyes of customers, vendors and other parties you deal with. They feel confident doing business with you because they know that even if a disaster strikes, their records are safe with you.

In fact, if you store documents in electronic form it almost makes them permanent and indestructible (unless you choose to destroy them or have not backed them up). Switching to an electronic Document Management System (DMS) is possibly the best small business advice you could ever receive on how to keep business records safe other than storing the items in an off site record management facility.