Jill Konrath | Selling to Big Companies

Reeling in the Big Ones

Corporate executives who cling to the old "dialing for dollars" paradigm drive me crazy – especially if they want their reps to crack into corporate accounts. In today's business environment, it doesn't work. But for some strange reason, my repeated attempts to correct their errors in judgment falls on deaf ears. It's like they have a total blind spot in their brain about this matter.

"How can I make these people understand?" I'd ask myself. Clearly logic wasn't working. It took some serious thinking, but I finally figured out how to get through to them so they understood that new sales strategies were needed.

Can a Quitter Achieve Success?

True confessions ... I'm a quitter!  And now, everyone knows. Yesterday Seth Godin, author of a gazillion popular books on marketing, "outed" me on his new blog.

That's right. I've made his List of Quitters. Fortunately I'm in good company. My name is in the same paragraph as Tom Peters, Harrison Ford, Suze Orman and Jeff Bezos.

In his new book, The Dip: The Little Book that Teaches You When to Quit (And When to Stick), Seth challenges readers to take a serious look at themselves. According to him, "Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt - until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons."

Mmmmm. Get's you thinking doesn't it.

- How can you quit sounding like a self-serving salesperson?
- If you quit talking so much, would you have more customers?
- What do you need to quit doing to have more time for high value activities?

So tell me, what do you need to quit?  Or, what have you already quit that has changed your life?

Quitting can definitely be a good thing!

News Flash: Killer Sales Disease Strikes!

I had a big meeting with a prospective client at 8:30. I was ecstatic because it had taken me forever to get this meeting set up. My initial contact had been months before, but my persistence finally paid off.

Now, with the way things were going, it would take a miracle to get there on time. I turned on the radio and tuned into the station that gave the most frequent traffic updates. If there were more traffic problems ahead, I needed to know right away so I could switch to an alternate route.

They were just starting to give the latest congestion alert when suddenly the announcer broke in.

"Ladies and gentlemen. We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming this morning to bring you some breaking news from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia."

I didn't need to hear any health alerts. I needed to know where the traffic problems were. I quickly switched to another station. And another. And then another.

It looked like I didn't have a choice. They were all talking about the same thing. I decided I'd better pay attention.

Q&A: How to Turn a Rude Client Into a Good One & Get More Work at the Same Time

Check out what happens when you let clients very graciously know that your time is valuable too. In this post, you'll find the question sent to me, my response, and what happened when he followed my advice.

Business Professional's Question
I'm dealing a lot with bigger companies as of late, which is a good thing. However there's one issue I'm facing right now that I'm not sure how to deal with. It's the good 'ol "dropping off the face of the planet" trick that prospects AND clients seem to think is okay to inflict on freelancers and sales-folk.

Currently I'm working on a project for a firm and the VP is pretty good at getting back to me. But the rest of the staff call me at the last minute, have me quote in a big rush and then disappear without a trace for days or weeks on end. No calls, no emails, no notes. Zip, nada, nilch, nothin'!

I find this to be terribly rude and disrupting to my planning and work flow. So I've been wondering ... is it appropriate to let these folks know that I too have rules for conducting business? And that one rule is that if we're in discussion about moving forward on a project, that I expect the professional courtesy of a phone call or email within two days of our last conversation.

Am I batty thinking I can ask for this, or is it the smart thing to do?

Help! My To Do List is Overflowing

Some days I wonder if I'll ever get it all done. Like today. I got to the office early so I could get my emails done before I dove into this big project I'm working on. Several ezines I subscribe to contained interesting links, so before I knew it I was clicking through. Then, since my browser was open, I decided to take quick peek at my blog list. Of course, I indulged myself by reading the most recent posts.

After that, my coffee was getting warm so I went to refill it. When I came back to the office, my phone was ringing. I spent 45 minutes talking with a potential business partner. During our conversation, I referred him to another person. So when I hung up, I thought I better write her an email to tell her to expect a call.

That's when I noticed 8 more emails had arrived - which all needed immediate reading. One was from a non-profit I'm involved with. I ended up writing two detailed emails to the leadership team regarding next steps.

At that point, I realized that I'd failed to respond to some people who'd written me a couple days ago. So I tackled that next. One was from Dan Markovitz, a personal efficiency expert, announcing his new TimeBack Management blog. I quickly clicked through to take a look, but before I knew it was hooked.

He writes about how you can put more time back in your day. Clearly this is a universal problem and I needed to share his insights with others. So I decided to write a blog post about it.

Two hours have now flown by.  I haven't started my project yet. Nor have I checked anything off my To Do list.

But I did learn something from Dan. I'm signing off now.  No more interruptions for the next two  hours. I have work to do.