Jill Konrath | Selling to Big Companies

The One Piece of Advice You Need to Earn Your Clients’ Loyalty

What does it take to build the type of relationships with your clients that keep them loyal and coming back to your firm year after year? To find out, RainToday asked me and 8 other experts in client loyalty this question:

If you could only give one piece of advice regarding how to develop client loyalty: what would that be?

They then gathered our responses in this complimentary, 38-page special report, The One Piece of Advice You Need to Earn Your Clients’ Loyalty.

Here's why you'll find in this ebook & the authors of the articles:

• Keeping Your Clients Loyal - Nine Questions You Need Answered, by Mike Schultz, author of Professional Services Marketing

• Achieving the Highest Level of Loyalty, by Andrew Sobel, author of All for One

• How to Be Invaluable, by Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies (Yup! That's me!)

• Your Highest Priority: Building Client Loyalty by Delivering Superior Service, by Michael W. McLaughlin, author of Winning the Professional Services Sale

• Client Loyalty: How to Keep Happy Clients Who are Delighted to Pay Their Bills, by Larry Bodine, Esq., Apollo Business Development

• Taming the Search-and-Switch Client: 3 Keys to Keeping Your Client Loyal, by Jill Griffin, author of Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer

• Your Clients Need Cultivation - Now, More Than Ever! by Ardath Albee, CEO and B2B Strategist of Marketing Interactions, Inc.

• How to Retain Clients: Teach Them How to Be Loyal, by Sharon Drew Morgen, author of Selling with Integrity

• Client Loyalty as a By-Product of Firm Leadership, by Patrick J. Lamb and Nicole N. Auerbach,  Valorem Law Group, LLC.

Earn your clients' loyalty with the expert insights and advice in this special report. Download here: http://www.raintoday.com/pages/5072_client_loyalty_special_report.cfm

Complimentary Ebook: 5 Essential Strategies for Highly Effective Initial Meetings

It's not easy to secure the full attention of decision makers - even for just a few minutes. Whether you have 15 minutes for a phone conversation or 30 minutes for an online presentation, your prospect must feel like their time is well spent.

To make that happen, your initial meeting must be strategically designed for a lasting (and profitable) impact. My new eBook shows you how to do that. In it, you'll discover:

• Why most first meetings fail miserably.
• What it takes to really engage customers in the conversation.
• How to flip your focus to what's really important.
• Strategies to enhance your credibility in just one meeting.
• How to effortlessly advance to the logical next step.
• ...and much more!

Get your complimentary copy of 5 Essential Strategies for Highly Effective Initial Meetings now.

I hope you enjoy it!  And, please forward this to your colleagues who might be interested in learning more.

How to Use Social Media to Drive Sales Results

Check out this excellent white paper from InsideView. You'll learn how to use intelligence from your social network and company resources to:

• Increase your prospecting productivity, while decreasing time spent on research.
• Identify opportunities you didn't know existed
• Enhance the quality of your customer interactions.

In my opinion, InsideView has the best business intelligence tool available. I love what they're doing and recommend it every time I speak.

So get on it. Download their white paper now and learn what you're missing. I am not a techie type person, but this is simple & makes your life 100 times easier

What Sales Really Needs from Marketing

I was just reading John Jantsch's article on Those Idiots in Sales Just Don't Get It! on the Duct Tape Marketing blog.

Since he was clearly talking about me - and most likely you, if you're reading this - I felt an overwhelming need to respond quickly to set the record straight. 

The issue is with MARKETING. That's right. They don't know what sales needs. And the stuff they give us to do our job doesn't work in today's business environment.

That's why I wrote this ebook, What Sales Really Needs From Marketing: 7 Strategies to Get More & Better Prospects in Your Sales Pipeline.

Make sure the Sales & Marketing leaders in your organization read this ebook today. It will definitely get them talking!

Download What-Sales-Needs-from-Marketing.pdf

(P.S. John also wrote a post on Those Idiots in Marketing Don't Get It. Both of us are trying hard to get sales & marketing together.) 

What Sales Really Needs from Marketing

On LinkedIn today, Bob Apollo posted a question about "problem marketing." It's been a pet peeve of mine for an eternity. In fact, that's why I wrote this ebook last year.

To be successful, Marketing needs to work hand-in-hand with Sales. But this happens far less often than it should. If Marketing had its way, we'd all be talking about our unique methodologies, robust systems and one-stop shopping. With today's customers, that just doesn't cut it.

Whether you're in Sales or Marketing, you'll find ideas that can stimulate much-needed discussion. Download "What Sales Really Needs From Marketing".

What's the One Piece of Advice You Can't Generate Leads Without?

That's what RainToday asked a bunch of experts in B2B lead generation. The answers are illuminating. You're going to want to read this complimentary new report right away. It's hot off the press today!

This special, 36-page e-book includes 10 all new articles written by these experts - and yes, one of my articles is included. There's a lot of valuable information included that you'll want to know about, first hand.

The expert authors and advice includes:

1. Trash Talk And Delete Buttons: A Candid Letter From Your Prospective Client
   Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies (ME!)
2. More Is Not Better If You Don't Know How To Nurture
   Brian Carroll,  CEO of InTouch Inc and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale
3. Find Out What Your Sales Team Considers A Lead
   Stefan Tornquist, Research Director & Sean Donahue, Senior Reporter, MarketingSherpa
4. If You Can't Measure It, Don't Do It
   Suzanne Lowe, President of Expertise Marketing and author of Marketplace Masters
5. Automate Lead Nurturing To Increase Lead Generation Effectiveness
   Laura Ramos, Vice President of Forrester's Marketing Strategy and Technology Team
6. Generating Leads By Finding Buyers In Trouble
   Larry Bodine, Owner-Operator of LawMarketing Portal and Larry Bodine Marketing
7. Tales To Keep Them Talking
   Ardath Albee, B2B Marketing Strategist, Marketing Interactions
8. Promising Prospect - Or Dead End? Start By Defining A Lead
   Roy Young, President with Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs
9. All Sound And Fury, Signifying Nothing: Executing Your Lead Generation Plan
   Mike Schultz, Publisher, RainToday.com and Principal, Wellesley Hills Group
10. B2B Sales Lead Success Checklist
    M.H. (Mac) McIntosh, B2B Marketing Consultant, The B2B Sales Lead Experts

Get The One Piece Of Advice You Can’t Generate Leads Without now.

What's "The One Piece of Advice You Can't Sell Without?"

I've been struggling with this question since last December.  There are so many areas you could focus on, that it's sometimes difficult to even know where to start. To keep things simple, I wanted to narrow it down to just one piece of advice you can't sell without.

Initially my thoughts went to value propositions, something you've heard me stress over-and-over. Strong ones are absolutely critical in today's market. But after debating that for awhile, I started focusing on questions. I wouldn't be where I am today if without my excellent questioning skills.

But perhaps I asked good questions because I loved learning new things. So maybe I'd have to tell people to "be more curious."  That still wasn't quite right - lots of curious people were lousy at sales. Finally, I was sure I had it. Preparation was the answer. Everyone I knew who did well in sales has always done their homework. But immediately doubts started creeping in again. I'd seen people invest a ton of time preparing without getting results.

Clearly this was a provocative question with no easy answer. So last month I contacted the people at Rain Today with an idea to pose this question to a bunch of experts. They did - and the results are in!

In The One Piece of Advice You Can't Sell Without, you'll learn what I finally decided is most important. You'll also find advice from:

• Seth Godin, author of Small is the New Big & Purple Cow
• Sam Reese, CEO of Miller Hieman sales training company
• Alan Weiss, author of Million Dollar Consulting
• Mike McLaughlin, Deloitte Consulting, author of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants
• Paige Arnof-Fenn, CEO of Mavens & Mogels, columnist for Entrepreneur
• Mike Schultz, Publisher, RainToday.com
• Keith Ferrazi, author of Never Eat Alone
• Paul Dunay, Director of Global Field Marketing, BearingPoint
• and more ..

Download The One Piece of Advice You Can't Sell Without now. It's definitely a worthwhile read!

Cold Calling Calamities

Everyone has an occasional off day when selling. But some people are totally oblivious to how their approach is perceived by prospective customers.

My friend Ardath Albee who writes the popular Marketing Interactions blog sent me the transcript of a voicemail she received recently. Imagine yourself listening to this message:

"Hello Ardath. This is Terry ... and I'm with the X and X, which is a division of our company. We do marketing services. We also have a call center where we do surveys, market reasearch and lead generation.

I was thinking of your company as a possible lead generation client for us.  Please give me a call at (phone number).

I saw the article on your company in Minnesota Technology and I just thought, and I mentioned to our president, who is xxxx, that you'd probably be a very, very good prospect for our company. So I'd love to hear from you. Please give me a call."

Yikes! Can you believe that? It makes me shudder to think that any rational person could possibly have left a message like that. Yet I have no doubt that this seller is a decent human being who is trying to do a good job. She just isn't thinking.

To be good at selling today, you must engage your brain fully. You can't go running off at the mouth and blurt out anything that comes to mind. It's imperative to filter your words through your prospect's brain before you speak - to see how they hear from a potential buyer's perspective.

So let's have some fun! I'll tell you my own foot-in-the-mouth story shortly. Do you dare to share your own cold calling calamities?

Do You Sound Like an Idiot?

It's much easier to sound like one than you think - especially if you get caught up using business jargon. Amazingly enough, most of us don't even know when we've slipped into that trap. Recently I learned about an amazing new freeware called "Bullfighter" put out by the authors of "Why Business People Speak Like Idiots".

You can run drafts of your business letters through through Bullfighter to see just how bad they really sound.  At the end, you get a Bull Composite score that pinpoints your primary problems. Words such as leverage, customer-centric, partner and out-of-the-box are highlighted for you. Also, Bullfighter assesses overall readability, if your sentences are too long and much more.

You can get a free copy of the software at the Fight the Bull website.  Also, while you're there make sure you take a look at the Fight the Bull Films featuring such beloved corporate phrases such as "push the envelope" and "skin in the game."

Enjoy! And thanks to Cheryl Siemering from RSM McGladrey for turning me on to this wonderful resource.

Finding Decision Maker's Names

One of the biggest headaches in selling to big companies is trying to figure out who you should be talking to. The bigger the company, the tougher it is to identify the decision maker's name.

In my upcoming book I spent an entire chapter discussing this increasingly difficult and time-consuming issue.

That's why I was so excited when I discovered Jigsaw - a new online resource that gives you the direct phone numbers and email addresses for hard-to-find business executives, directors and mid-level managers.

Jigsaw is like a gigantic business card exchange where you can buy, sell or trade business contacts. Essentially you get access to the rolodexes of thousands of sellers who are joining together to build this database which currently has almost 1/2 million contacts and is adding 5000+ new ones each day.

With Jigsaw, there's no doubt in my mind you'll:
- Cut the time it takes to find new contacts.
- Break into new accounts much more quickly.
- Shorten your sales cycle.

It's not just me who's so excited about this new resource. The New York Times was so impressed with Jigsaw that they featured the company in an article last week.

To help you get started, I made a special arrangement with the CEO of Jigsaw to give you a 25 contact signup bonus.

Follow this link right now to check it out ...

           http://www.jigsaw.com?pc=FROGS

... To get your 25 gratis contacts, enter this code in the promotion code field on the signup form: FROGS

If you think your colleagues might be interested in Jigsaw, please feel free to forward this newsletter to them. They're welcome to use the FROGS code as well.

FYI, the 25 contact bonus I arranged is in addition to the ones you get when you sign up as a 'pay' or 'play' member. If you sign up for a trial first, you'll get these bonus contacts when you upgrade to an official Jigsaw membership.

Please note, this special offer is only good for 90 days.