Shane Gibson

Date: January 27, 2015

Name: Small Business Council Success Series – Targeting Your Sales Strategy

Presenter: Shane Gibson

Many entrepreneurs believe sales is the fundamental of any business in any industry. Entrepreneurs need to target the right customers with the right behaviors and right motivations. Small Business Council is proudly to invite Shane Gibson, the international speaker and the sales trainer of BuildDirect. Shane Gibson will share his sales techniques and strategies that will help entrepreneurs to build their sales deals. Entrepreneurs will be inspired to learn the tactics from this presentation.

Most entrepreneurs fail because of a lack of strategies. In fact, most entrepreneurs use the relationship to get the deal, but in reality, relationship is the deal. Shane Gibson believes it is important to start with the right attitude, trust and principle to build the community with long term relationship.

Gibson designs a 5 steps system for entrepreneurs to bull-proof their sales process.

1. Always keep the deal and the relationship moving forward
2. Raise the barrier to exit
3. Raise the barrier to entry
4. Get rid of anything unproductive
5. Keep focused on the game all of the time

Entrepreneurs need to remember they are the decision maker. Gibson emphasizes there are two types of decisions, either positive or negative. Nevertheless, when entrepreneurs make any decisions making, they should relate the decision based on their assets.

Gibson believes entrepreneurs’ assets are made up with time, energy, ability, money and reputation. To make use of the assets, 80% of business should come from 20% of customers. Therefore, Gibson indicates entrepreneurs should spend 80% of their assets on 20% of market. Gibson considers that “proactive time”

The ABC’s of Targeting

Customers can be categorized by “Absolute”, “Beneficial”, or “Convenient”. The rank of category is based on the yield and the amount of the investment. Entrepreneurs should spend their proactive time on category A to achieve high relationship selling, and entrepreneurs should spend their passive time on category B or C for low relationship selling.

Each category can be separated by users class of either “Retain” or “Develop” and non-users class of “Regain” and “Gain”. Retain section should be for potential customers. Gibson believes sometimes entrepreneurs classify their customers in category B with C, but others might classify in category A. This happens because entrepreneurs are not using enough criteria to verify the category. Therefore, Gibson suggests entrepreneurs to use at least 5 different areas of criteria.

Regain section is for customers who might be return from new products. The strategy to move up the category is to either apologize or offer something new. Develop section is for future prospects. Gibson suggests 3 strategies. The first is to increase the knowledge of the customer, the second is to increase the knowledge of the entrepreneurs, and the third is to grow relationship.

Gain section is for prospects that might take up 5 times more effort to convert to potential customers. Therefore, it is important for entrepreneurs to schedule their proactive time on category A.

Gibson recommends entrepreneurs to complete ABC strategy on prospects, steps, corporate activities, education opportunities and personal activities. In prospects, entrepreneurs need to measure their stats using ration analysis to determine their proactive activities. As for education opportunities, entrepreneurs need to attend the right event with the right target market.

“Not just only active, you must be selective”

Gibson believes all entrepreneurs should have the “A” list. Entrepreneurs should identify 10 category A referrals and power centers they must make more time for next month. 10 category A prospects that need more attention or follow up. 5 category A vital signs that need to execute consistently. Lastly, 5 category A personal areas that need to balance and fill with momentum with business and personal lives.

The quality of follow up is equivalent to the quality of lead. Therefore, there are 7 principles entrepreneurs need to build the sales process.

• Do the ABC’s on everything
• Master value added follow up
• Quality people for proposals and quotes
• Use a schedule, not emotions
• Sell by the signals
• Use a social CRM
• Learn to scale

“Talent is cheaper than table salt; what separates the talented individual from successful is hard work”

Based on stats, 48% of all sales people stop after one rejection, 25% makes 2 calls and stop, 15% of entrepreneurs make 3 calls and stop, and 12% of entrepreneurs make 3 calls and continue. The 12% are the one who are responsible for 80% of the call.

The 5 relationship development stage

To build a strong relationship, there are 5 stages: attraction, exploration, development, commitment and unity. Gibson refers this with the dating concept. It starts with flirtation, go on few dates, steady dates, engagement, and then marriage. The last stage is when both parties need each other. However, when entrepreneurs push clients too fast to the next stage when they are no ready, they will lose the clients.

Clients will move from attraction stage to exploration stage based on these two questions Gibson suggests:

• What unique about you?
• What is it in for me?

People lose the deal from small deals because people are looking at the ability to deliver. Sometimes entrepreneurs will over promise and under deliver. Entrepreneurs need to make small promises and act them quickly to gain clients trusts. This will move from exploration stage to development stage.

People are more solution focus instead of price sensitivity. Entrepreneurs need to find personalize the relationship to reach commitment and unity stage. Furthermore, entrepreneurs should track their customers’ stages.

For A category clients, entrepreneurs should do recurring schedule every 3 months, complete frequency goal sheets, understand their activities and follow up every 3 weeks. For potential customers, entrepreneurs should send current events to interact with them. Gibson believes stay consistent all the time will beat people who only did once.

Gibson strongly recommends all entrepreneurs to use the application of “Sidekick”. It is a great way to track customers, send quotes, receive notification, identify prime customer time and test subject heading on email. The software will help entrepreneurs to learn about customers’ behavior and personalities, which makes all connections relevant and focus on the right clients.

Social selling CRM

CRM can help entrepreneurs to pull all interactions together. It will update all current events at once without hopping around to different social media platform. The social CRM will find keywords to engage clients and create social proximity.

Learn to scale

In any sales, entrepreneurs will need to talk to many customers at once. An online search website called “Just ask Iris” will help entrepreneurs to receive deep conversation to improve quality of the service.

Scales through partnership

Gibson believes instead of seeing others as competitors, working together will increase the chance of massive success. Therefore, entrepreneurs should always find win-win situation for any business.