Years ago I once read that a sale doesn’t happen until there is a transfer of energy from one party to another party. I believe this to be 100 percent true.  Your customer won’t buy from you unless they believe they or their company is going to benefit in some way. The prospect of that happening is exciting to them. The enthusiasm you feel about your solution is transferred to your customer and the deal is closed.

Now, this transfer of positive energy is almost never going to happen if you don’t believe in what you are selling. You can go present your solution to the customer, talk about how wonderful it is and what value it will bring, but if you don’t truly believe what you are saying, your customers will always pick up on that unspoken message. No matter how hard you try, you cannot fake it. It’s human nature that our hidden feelings about our ideas on something will ultimately betray our spoken word.

Imagine this scenario. You are in a presentation with a new prospect. This is a huge opportunity for you. You team has spent hours designing the optimal solution for your customer. It’s a full room. Your boss is there. The CEO of your customer is there, but you are feeling conflicted. The company you work for has had serious quality issues during the past year and the resolution experience has not been good for customers. You’ve had multiple complaints and some recent project experiences have gone horribly bad. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, karin surber, partner, Partner Plus, sales

Each week, we’ll highlight the most important Cisco Partner Ecosystem news and stories, as well as point you to important, Cisco-related partner content you may have missed along the way. Here’s what you might have missed this week:

Off the Top

Since we have a short week in the United States due to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, I won’t take up too much of your time today, but you should definitely check out Karin Surber’s blog from this week. Karin always has great insights into the sales force and this week is no different.

Karin was here this week to talk about “thermalizing” and “dollarizing” in order to build your protective sales bubble. Want to know what that means? Well, in short it boils down to expanding your reach within a customer account once you’ve landed a preliminary deal, but for the details that make for a top notch read, be sure to read Karin’s blog and let us know what you think! Read More »

Tags: Cisco, karin surber, partner, sales, Weekly Rewind

Landing the first deal is just the beginning of the customer journey. Many sales professionals make the mistake of closing and immediately moving on to the next opportunity.  But once you’ve got your foot in the door of a new account, why abandon your newly found customer credibility when it can be leveraged to uncover additional business there?

Expanding your reach within an account by asking to be introduced to managers of additional lines of business is an excellent way to cultivate new opportunities and build a protective barrier against the competition, in effect “thermalizing yourself.”  Thermalizing entails asking your new customer to sponsor your introduction to other lines of business, fostering relationships with those contacts and developing opportunities for additional sales. The more entrenched you are in the customer account, the more credibility you build and less likely the competition will get their foot in the door.

Thermalizing is much more effective than cold calling net new accounts. With new accounts, you are always starting at “Square One” from a credibility perspective. In contrast, referrals from existing customers have much higher close rates, shorter sales cycles and tend to be more profitable. You add significant value to a customer when you have successful experience working with them and understand the way they do business. Customers know there will be a learning curve if they work with another vendor. So you automatically have an advantage. Learning to perfect the art of Thermalizing is key to maximizing your effectiveness as a Sales Professional. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, dollarizing, karin surber, partner, sales, thermalizing

Each week, we’ll highlight the most important Cisco Partner Ecosystem news and stories, as well as point you to important, Cisco-related partner content you may have missed along the way. Here’s what you might have missed this week:

Off the Top

Happy Halloween! No tricks this week, but we definitely have a few treats for you.

Pat Sampson was here on the Partner Blog this week to provide a great rundown of what’s available to partners that are part of the Cisco Solution Partner Program. With the Solution Partner Program representing such a vital part of the Cisco Partner Ecosystem you’ll definitely want to check out Pat’s blog post.

Be sure to let us know what you think of Pat’s latest update.

Overcoming Challenges for Today’s Sales Professionals

We also saw an interesting new post this week from Karin Surber about overcoming the challenges faced by today’s sales professionals. With a separate look at the pace of change, busy customers, increased competition, technology mastery and integrity, Karin does a fantastic job illustrating how sales pros can leverage all the resources available to them in 2014.

As always, let us know if we are covering the information you need via our comments section. It’s how we constantly refine what is included in the weekly rewind. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, Cisco Partner Ecosystem, Cisco Solution Partner Program, karin surber, partner, sales, Weekly Rewind

Working in sales has always been tough. No one will argue with that. However, today’s sales professionals face more challenges than ever before. Understanding the impact of these new challenges and developing the skills and resources to overcome them helps ensure long term success.

The pace of change is accelerating exponentially. Never before has the business landscape churned as quickly as it does now. Much of this acceleration is driven by the “access to anyone, anytime, anywhere” phenomena. Customers expect instant response times and information at their fingertips on demand. But constantly changing regulations pose additional challenges that require ongoing education and ever evolving business requirements. Customers are looking for experts who can help them steer through the myriad of challenges they are facing. This requires a concerted effort on behalf of the sales professional to invest the time to keep up with changing business conditions and offer solutions that meet the challenges faced by customers. Subscribe to online industry periodicals, blogs and feeds and plan time in your calendar to review them. Attend industry and solution based events. Not only do these offer great education but they are also excellent opportunities to network and identify prospects.

Customers are busy…often too busy to take the time to solve their own problems. With many companies operating with fewer resources amidst more complex working conditions, employers will more likely find short-term fixes to their issues because they simply don’t have the time to explore better options for longer term solutions. Master your approach so you address the specific challenges your customer may be facing and reel them in. Be persistent and assure your customer of the potential dollar and time savings they’ll experience with your proposed solution.  Make it easy for them to work with you by doing as much of the leg work as possible on their behalf. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, cisco partner plus, partner, sales