Beldames’ Saloon

The term whale is used for many things and it often relates to large, profitable accounts. The term for this newsletter is not about the water creatures that roam the ocean. This newsletter is about the business whales. The precious key accounts most salespeople dream about. The salespeople who handle these accounts are often the most courageous, detailed oriented and experienced in their company.

When you decide to go after a whale, you better bring a large boatload of key contacts and information. Because this is what whales expect. Know your stuff too. Knowing our stuff is important because we can embarrass ourselves and lose future deals by going for the sale too soon and not having accurate information. Whale accounts take time and require us to bring experience and knowledge with us. One thing I’ve learned is that whales like to talk with other whales. They do this because they think at a different level. It is really a decision profile we must learn and identify with. We will get into that later in this article.

Don’t go whale hunting alone

Success with whales can be achieved be anyone who simply has the courage and initiative to take on a whale. The process is often longer but the rewards are so much sweeter. You will need the time because one of the keys to success is to know their business. It is one thing to understand your own business, but it is important to understand the whale’s issues and their problems. Listening has always been a key to working with these accounts. Research into a whales business usually means that we have to listen to individuals who are not at the whale’s level. These conversations and the research at the lower levels pay huge dividends when a salesperson has confirmed what the problems are within a whales company. You will want to bring these people and their issues with you when “the meeting” actually takes place.

The meeting is when the moment of truth appears and all the time and research becomes ripe for a decision. At this point, you better know everything and how the whale thinks. Whales think differently than smaller fish. They look for the big picture. Most of the whales I have worked with, and there have been a lot of them, think the same and have the same type of conversations. They always want to know the line.

Know the right line - top or bottom line

I say line, because it is usually one of two lines. It is either the bottom line because they want to know how much it will save them. It might also be the top line so they know how much it will make them. This is the decision profile we wrote about earlier.

If you are not a whale and you want to sell to a whale, it is always a good idea to bring the largest fish in the company that you can. They will know how to talk about the top and bottom lines. It really boils down to these two lines. How much will you save them or how much will you make them and every large fish or whale wants to know these numbers?

Breakdown the numbers if you can and chart them for easy understanding.

Do your homework. If you are a whale but don’t think of yourself as a whale, fake it as best as you can but remember to toe the line. Keep thinking about why you make your business decisions and relate why they should make the decision to work with you. Just remember, it will either be the top or the bottom line. Asking good questions will lead you to the answer and the right line to use. Top or bottom!

Submitted by Steve Martinez, Founder of Selling Magic, a company focused on improving sales using technology and Automated Sales Process Management (ASPM). Get more sales tips at our website http://www.sellingmagic.com.

Comments Off

It is no secret that many small importing companies have become big importing companies by capitalizing on the opportunity to buy goods from Chinese companies and re-sell them at great profit margins. With that accelerated growth comes a very big challenge. Sooner or later, you will get an order that exceeds your available financing.

Now what? Do you turn the order away? Do you send it to the competition?

Purchase order financing can help you deliver on this order and make the sale, while using none (or little) of your own money. It can help you make big sales and grow your company - sometimes exponentially.

To qualify for purchase order financing, you must meet the following criteria.

1. Your business must invoice between $50K and $600K per month

2. You must sell finished goods (e.g. be a re-seller or distributor)

3. You must sell your products to other businesses or to the government

4. Your profit margins must be at least 15% (higher is better of course)

If you meet these criteria, purchase order financing can help you deliver on those big orders and help you take your company to the next level. PO financing is simple to use and easy to qualify for.

A transaction works as follows. Once you have an order in place, the financing company opens a letter of credit naming your Chinese supplier as the beneficiary. The letter of credit (or LC) guarantees payment to the supplier, provided they deliver the products correctly. This enables you to complete the transaction.

Once the order is delivered to your end client, an invoice is generated. The transaction is settled once your end client pays the invoice, usually 45 days after receiving it.

As opposed to other types of financing, PO financing is easy to qualify for and to set up. The set up time is usually a couple of weeks. As you can see, this type of financing can help you grow your company by enabling you to take large orders that in the past you would have turned away.

About Commercial Capital LLC

We provide business financing to companies. We can provide you with a letter of credit, purchase order financing, factoring and invoice factoring. For a free consultation and quote, please call Marco Terry at (866) 730 1922.

Comments Off

First in a series of articles, we’ll explore various issues and practices associated with modern ways of selling over the phone.

***************************************************************

Whenever we speak of telemarketing, we can’t ignore the 900-pound gorilla that is smack in the middle of the room. This critter is the sordid history of the field that resulted in restrictive legislation and formation of the Do Not Call Registry.

Why did legislators at all levels of government jump on the bandwagon to restrict calls made to residences?

I believe it had less to do with the times and places of calls, than is popularly believed.

Yes, many people were called at home at the dinner hour, but if it weren’t for the fact that conversations were inherently abusive, that they were built on a command-and-control communication style, I think we’d still be living in a relatively unregulated environment.

Telemarketers abused the conditional privilege of entering people’s homes: fundamentally they were impolite, and so they were booted out.

And the people who were most offended and disgusted were precisely the folks who you don’t want on your case, mobilized to punish you: older Americans, who were raised in a more polite era, and who have endless time on their hands to call and to write and to lobby their legislators for relief.

Moreover, technology simply exacerbated the problem, enabling countless calls to be aimed at people, efficiently. Predictive dialers would “drop calls” when phones went unanswered for a certain number of rings, and at times when no telemarketers were available to converse.

Old folks, in those days without wireless capabilities, would take pains to get up to reach the ringing line, only to have it stop before they could pick it up. Worrying about the call they missed, they would fret over or actually feel terrorized by uncertainty.

Geriatrics were also lonely and in many cases, financially secure enough to write checks, and this combination made them great targets for scams, and they were disproportionately victimized by con artists.

Add these practices up and you have a formula for reform, and that’s exactly what happened.

Everyone could see it coming, but few did anything significant to avoid the storm.

That would have entailed adopting The New Telemarketing, which wasn’t widely available at the time.

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of www.Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone®, You Can Sell Anything By Telephone! and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com

Comments Off