Heavy Hitter Sales Blog

How to Leave a Compelling Voice Mail

Telephone lead generation guru and friend of mine Travis Eakes wrote a great piece on the importance of using neurolinguistics when leaving a voice mail. Here are his thoughts:

Leaving a voicemail is one of the most common tasks salespeople perform. However, very few leave an effective message that motivates the recipient to return their call. The biggest mistake is leaving a message based on “1-way communication,” which the customer perceives to be a canned sales pitch. The reason this happens is because most salespeople use the same cold call script over and over again. They view leaving voice-mail messages as playing a numbers game. Of course, the prospect realizes their doing this too.

   

We have found that using neurolinguistics, the study of how the mind receives and transmits linguistic information, is the single-most important factor in getting a prospect to respond. Let me explain this further, a generic pitch does not resonate with the prospect because it is patterned exactly like the 15 preceding voicemails they have just deleted. When you use neuorlinguistic operators (additional words that help your message to be received correctly), your credibility builds and you are differentiating what you are saying versus others.

   

For example, rather than saying, “We provide a solution that has helped companies like yours to save money”, we use specific operators to build meaning such as, “We have worked with companies such as X,Y, and Z to lower their operating costs by 15% while increasing their product availability by 25%.” Neurolinguistic operators attach reality to your claims.

   

To further reinforce our statements, we then offer additional proof such as, “I am sending over an e-mail with a case study we conducted with company X for your review.” Remember, the ultimate goal of leaving a voice mail message is to start the process of building customer rapport. If you are successful, you will have a solid foundation with the prospect over the long-term.

How to Select a Sales Kickoff Meeting Theme

When I was a vice president of sales, one of my key responsibilities was to ensure that our sales kickoff was a complete success. Because it was the only annual gathering of the entire worldwide sales force, I wanted everyone to leave the meeting trained on our new products, well-versed about competition, and most importantly, re-energized to get back into the field and sell.

After participating in more than one-hundred sales kickoffs as a keynoter speaker, I can now attest that the first step toward conducting a successful sales kickoff starts with choosing the right theme. With this goal in mind, here are five factors to consider when selecting your sales kickoff theme.

1. Sales Force Morale

One of the most important factors to keep in mind as you chose your theme is the level of the sales force’s morale. All sales forces go through periods of high and low morale. When morale is high, you can be more creative and take bigger risks with the theme you choose. For example, one of the best sales kickoffs I ever participated in was based upon the theme of “A night at the Oscars.” In advance of the meeting, each of the sales regions created their own video about the average day in the life of a salesperson. The videos were exceptionally well-done, full of side-splitting humor, and their ingenuity was inspirational. Everyone loved watching them and a judging panel of company executives awarded Oscars to the best.

Conversely, I wouldn’t recommend such an over-the-top theme during tough times. In this situation the theme should be more commonsensical like “Better, Stronger, Faster,” which provides a platform that meeting presenters can use to talk about changes and improvements. If you are in the midst of a merger, pick a theme like “Winning Together” that promotes teamwork, or something like “The Power of Synergy” that emphasizes how the companies combined are greater than the separate parts.

2. What is the Sales Mantra?

The leader of every sales organization will typically have a clearly defined area of sales force improvement for the new year. It might be to close more seven figure deals, sell more of a certain product line, increase customer satisfaction, or to get the reps to consistently make their quarterly quotas. Obviously, it makes sense to make this mantra the underpinnings of your sales kickoff theme.

For example, one company wanted to focus their sales team on closing bigger deals. They selected a theme centered around baseball and used the tagline, “Swing for the Fences!” Throughout the meeting they showed movie clips of the greatest home run hitters of all time. At their awards dinner the vice president of sales presented inscribed baseball bats to the top sales performers.

3. Should the Theme Focus on Your Arch-Rival?

Every company has enemies, and every sales force has an arch-rival that is truly despised. If you really want to rally the troops and concentrate the meetings focus, use a competitive theme that directly targets your arch-rival. For example, instead of a nebulous theme like “In it to win it,” use the name of your competitor in the sales kickoff them like “BEAT ACME!” Remember, sometimes the most straight-forward theme is the best.

4. Can the Presenters Dove-tail to the Theme?

The theme’s tagline is critical because it provides the centerpiece idea from which the meeting presenters can embellish upon. Recently, I attended a meeting where the theme was “Reach for the Stars” with an accompanying graphic of a rocket heading into space. Although it’s not necessarily a bad theme, it proved difficult for the presenters from the marketing, engineering, and customer support departments to incorporate into their presentations. A better space theme would have been “All Systems Go!” This would have enabled the presenters to better-explain what new products and improvement programs were being launched in their area of the organization.

5. Consider the Meeting Takeaways

It’s very important that sales kickoff attendees are provided three types of meeting takeaways. First, all of the presentations and information that is presented should be available online over the internet. Don’t fall into the trap of associating the success of your meeting to the thickness of the materials you hand out. Second, you should provide some type of sales skills self-improvement takeaway (a copy of book on advance sales strategies for example). Finally, always give company-logo’d chatska (T-shirts, hats, pens, mouse pads, etc.).

Ideally, you would like your takeaways to tie into your meeting theme. For example, “Swing for the fences” meeting attendees were given different colored company baseball hats and jerseys that designated which group they were part of in their team-building games and exercises. Be sure not to skimp on the takeaways, because your annual sales kickoff is the most important sales meeting of the year.

Top Five Sales Kickoff Mistakes

Every vice president of sales knows the most important meeting of the year is the annual sales kickoff. It’s usually the only time during the entire fiscal year where the worldwide sales team gets together. Therefore, the success of this meeting is critical.

Perhaps the best way to measure the sales kickoff’s success is whether or not the salespeople leave better educated about their products, enlightened about their company’s future direction, and most importantly, energized to attack and conquer the new year’s sales quota. With these three goals in mind, here’s the “Top Five Sales Kickoff Meeting Mistakes” based upon my participation in more than one hundred sales kickoffs.

#1 It’s Too Long!
Studies have shown that the average person will hear only seven and a half minutes of a one-hour presentation and remember only half of the words he or she hears. Here’s another startling fact based upon a massive study completed by the US Air Force. Within 72 hours of a meeting, attendees forget 95% of what they hear. You should keep these studies in mind if you are planning a three, four, or five day sales meeting (because you are going beyond the point of diminishing returns).

#2 Not Enough Individual Recognition
No one has ever been fired for saying too many compliments or handing out too much recognition. Awards are extremely important to salespeople. As a vice president of sales, I experienced more motivation and a harder work ethic from my sales team by handing out a $45 trophy than would be achieved by increasing the compensation plan by one hundred times that amount. Salespeople enjoy the acclaim and the public identification as a role model within their group. Therefore, compliments to individual salespeople should be given out continuously throughout the sales kickoff and awards should always be done in full view of the entire organization.

#3 Too Many Presenters
More is not always better. I once attended a sales kickoff where there were thirty-four different presenters over the course of a two day meeting. It seemed every departmental manager within the company wanted their fifteen minutes at the podium, regardless if they had anything significant to say. By the end of the kickoff, the audience was completely anesthetized to the president’s closing comments and call to action.

#4 Not Enough Humor
A recent study found that hypertensive men who drink moderately and have one to two drinks a day had a 44 percent lower risk of dying from a heart attack than nondrinkers with high blood pressure. Of course, salespeople have known this for years… Sales is a stressful, high stakes profession. Humor helps release pent-up tensions and reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously.

One of the most impressive (and funniest) things I have ever seen at a sales kickoff was a competition between the various sales regions to create a marketing video for a soon-to-be released product. The movies were incredibly creative, totally hilarious, and so well done you would have thought they were made by Hollywood professionals. As the movies were shown, the entire sales organization bonded together through laughter. While you don’t have to stage elaborate competitions, you shouldn’t forget to insert some laughs into your agenda.

#5 Too Much “One Way” Communication
An old adage about military style communication says, “Tell it to them once, tell it to them twice, and then tell it to them again.” Unfortunately, too many sales kickoffs subscribe to this philosophy and forget to involve their salespeople in any aspect of the presentations. I strongly recommend every sales kickoff include panels where top salespeople are interviewed about their major wins and losses. At the very least, key salespeople should be asked to present summary overviews of their most important wins.

Closing Thoughts
What is your company’s greatest asset? Is it its patents, products, or brand name? Technologies will come and go as new products are continually introduced into the market. I doubt you own any record albums, a typewriter, or a Ford Pinto. And while we tend to think of a company’s brand as unique, it is only as valuable as the integrity of its people. Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco were once very respected company names.

In reality, every company’s most important assets are its customers and it is salespeople who are tasked with the vital responsibility of recruiting and keeping them. In this regards, salespeople have the most important job in the company and it’s incumbent that the annual sales kickoff be a resounding success—educating, enlightening, and energizing the team!

When Did We Lose The Deal?

You’ve may have seen the humiliating video clip of Lauren Caitlin Upton, Miss Teen South Carolina, lose the Miss Teen USA Pageant. It happened when she gave her response about why some Americans could not locate the United States on a world map…

“Personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so, because umm soma people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education such as that South Africa and the Iraq where like such as, I believe that they should our education over here in the US should help the US, I mean South Africa should help the Iraqi and Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our.”

   

Every deal has a critical moment or turning point that determines the winner and the losers. In some cases, the turning point is easy to spot. For example, a salesperson may be presenting his solution and encounters a deal-breaking objection that he is unable to overcome. Even though the customer remains cordial for the rest of the meeting, a turning point has occurred and the deal is lost.

   

Every salesperson competing for the same piece of business is trying to gain momentum. Momentum includes positive buying signs and other forms of customer favortism. While the winning salesperson is enjoying preferential treatment, the losers are unaware that they have experienced “buzz kill,” the moment during the sales cycle where the customer has eliminated them from contention.

   

Buzz kill represents the person, business reason, political issue, or technical obstacle that causes momentum to turn downward. Ninety-nine out of one hundred times you will not recover from buzz kill. Unfortunately, losers will continue to waste time and effort on the deal with the mistaken hope they can reseruct momentum. However, even though the customer may not make a public announcement about the winner for weeks or even months, the deal is lost.