The AA-ISP Inside Sales 2015 conference series will be held in Denver on June 10th. Topics will include Selling Best Practices, Trends & Technologies, Leadership and Prospecting & Social Selling.
Speakers will include Trish Bertuzzi, The Bridge Group, Steve Richard, VorsightBP, Ken Krogue, InsideSales.com, Bridget Gleason, Yesware, and Josh Evans, Velocify.
Below is the website link for more information – http://www.aa-isp.org/inside-sales-2015-denver.php
Selling subscriptions isn’t hard. However, you still have to apply the same sales and marketing rules if you want to be successful. And these days, subscriptions just don’t apply to magazines or newspapers. Thanks to the internet, we have seen an explosion of subscriptions other markets, including entertainment, technology, communication, and healthcare.
I’ve sold subscriptions to software and niche publications.
You would think that selling software subscriptions would be easy. You just do a demo, set up a trial, and the customer is impressed with what you have to offer, and then pays for your product. However, like any sale, you still run into objections. And the higher the price point, the more objections you need to overcome and the longer the sales cycle you need to manage.
When I sold password security software, my sales cycle would run from one month to two years. This was because I was usually dealing with a lot of decision-makers in different divisions within the company that I had to convince.
With niche publications, the biggest challenge you face is all the free content available online. So it’s important to offer unique information that your average customer would have difficulty finding online or doesn’t have time to find through Google searches.
This is why I always laugh when telemarketers try to sell me print subscriptions to the Washington Post. I mean, really?!? With all the free news information online, I have no problem keeping up with international, national and local news. Sure, I may occasionally buy the print Sunday edition to read the comics, or get coupons, but beyond that, I just don’t need a print newspaper anymore.
Niche it down. The more unique your publication, software or service, the better chance you have of increasing and retaining your paid subscriptions.
When selling subscriptions, here are some good rules to follow –
1). Offer good marketing content on your website that attracts prospects. That would include blogs, white papers, case studies and interesting articles.
2). Create a good prospect list to contact by cold calling, emails and direct marketing. Obviously, target those that you feel will have the greatest interest in what you are selling. Also, it goes without saying, start with your potentially highest paid prospects and work your way down the list to the lowest ones.
3). Contact expired subscribers and try to bring them back on board. Maybe you could offer them a free trial, a special one-time discount or some other incentive.
4). Offer free trials for x-number of days.
5). Provide testimonials on your website. Or better yet, have a video collection of testimonials to send to your prospects.
6). Ask for referrals. Maybe offer a discount per referral.
7). If you are offering an online subscription with network licenses, make sure everyone subscribing to the license is using your service. Also, if someone leaves, immediately contact the key decision maker to find a replacement. Nothing hurts more than having a 20 user license and seeing it reduced in half because employees left, and you never bothered to quickly find their replacements.
8). Keep track of subscribers moving from one company to another. If an old subscriber lands a new job with a company that’s not currently subscribing to your publication or software, contact them and bring them onboard. Use LinkedIn to keep, Google Alerts and industry newsletters to keep track of your current subscribers.
9). Engagement. Create a discussion board to allow your subscribers to offer ideas and exchange information. This is also a good way to moderator what your subscribers are thinking that could help you make improvements. It also helps you to build a community. Customers today are not just interested in buying and using your products or services – they want to feel like they are part of your company, and they want to interact not just with you, but other clients too.
As mentioned in Zuora, Inc’s SlideShare presentation “Driving Success in the Subscription Economy”, there are 6 steps for a successful subscription campaign – Acquire, Nurture, Collect & Automate, Measure, Iterate, and Scale.
By Acquire, use the personal touch, offer value, and make it easy to access your information or services.
By Nurture, keep clients engaged and make it easy for them to renew and move through different subscription plans. In short, reduce the friction.
By Collect & Automate, make it easy for clients to pay and provide them with accurate billing information.
By Measure, use tools like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to gain insights from your subscribers, and help you make smarter decisions about cross-selling and up-selling.
By Iterate, test to find out which pricing and feature strategies work best to enhance customer relationships.
By Scale, ensure your system is secure and scalable as you expand your client base and offerings.
And finally, below, I have compiled a series of articles I found on how to sell subscriptions. Please let me know what you think.
Alix Stuart, in her article “How to Sell Subscriptions – for Everything”, makes a good point of making sure your clients are committed to paid subscription model before you pursue that option.
Offering good content is obviously a key to your success, as pointed out by 3dcart in “How to Sell Magazine Subscriptions Online”.
Steve Burge from OSTraining, offers good advice in his article “Lessons Learned from 5 years of Selling Subscriptions.” For example, he warns against using most payment processors and not to use PayPal directly.
Is there still a market for print magazine subscriptions? Rebecca Sterner in her article “How to sell Magazine Subscriptions” seems to think so. She outlines a series of strategies for selling both print and digital subscriptions.
MarketingSherpa makes a strong point in its article “Five Rules for Selling Subscriptions to Web Sites and Email Newsletters” about the need to survey your clients. How else are you going to sell and increase subscriptions unless you know what your readers want from you?
Please let me know if you have any comments.
If you have been in sales for a while, you know that sales leads are usually distributed to sales teams in three ways. Each way has its advantages and disadvantages.
1). Geographic territory: States and/or countries are assigned to salespeople. You are responsible for prospecting any leads in your assigned area. In addition, any incoming leads from your location are handed over to you. Sometimes lead transfer can be a little sticky, especially if you are dealing with large corporations with several global locations. In most cases, where the corporation is headquartered is usually the determining factor in whether that lead is assigned to you or another salesperson. In addition, I once worked for a small publishing company that actually assigned “fenced off” accounts, i.e., large national accounts would be assigned to other salespeople even if some of those accounts fell into your territory.
2). Market segmentation territory: Rather than assigned leads based on geography, you are assigned leads based on specific market segmentation. This type of distribution is common if you work for a large corporation. Examples would include law firms, academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, federal and state governmental agencies, etc. Sometimes market segmentation may be broken down further by employee size or estimated revenue. For example, one group of salespeople may be responsible for Fortune 500 companies, while others may be responsible for Fortune 100 companies, and so on.
3). Round Robin: This process appears to be most common in start-ups or small companies. Under Round Robin, leads are assigned to the sales team on a first-come, first-serve basis regardless of size or geographic territory. Usually, the sales manager oversees the process to ensure fairness. Sometimes the sales manager may use his discretion to fall out of the Round Robin process and assign specific leads to salespeople he feels will have a better chance of closing the sale. For example, you may have someone who has experience working with financial institutions, or someone else who has experience working with automobile companies.
During the Round Robin process, if your lead bucket is too full, a sales manager may temporarily suspend you receiving more leads until you close more sales, or put leads on a back burner to contact them later.
Lead distribution is always a touchy subject. While there is never a full-proof way of handing out leads, salespeople need to be reassured that leads are being distributed fairly.
Please let me know if you have any comments or know of other ways leads are distributed.
There are literary hundreds of books offering sales advice these days. Some books are good, some are bad and some are mediocre.
But to paraphrase Will Rogers, “I never read a sales book that I didn’t like.”
That’s true. No matter how bad a sales book is, I always receive some good nuggets of information.
But there is one book that offers you a ton of nuggets. So many in fact, that I’m surprised that the book is actually free. I’m referring to “The Big Book of Sales,” by Alan Gordon.
Mr. Gordon, a sales coach, has written a 151-page book offering “nuts and bolts” advice on how to sell. Written in plain English, he covers such topics like how to find the right decision-maker, needs development questions, how to get appointments, cold calling, and closing techniques.
Why is his book so important? From Mr. Gordon’s website, he makes the following points –
“Half of all salespeople struggle to make a living.”
“Three out of four salespeople are not following a framework or sales process.”
“7 out of 10 small businesses express concern about finding and retaining good quality salespeople.”
I would also add that many companies offer little or no sales training or coaching. In fact, many new salespeople are constantly complaining on LinkedIn sales discussion group boards about the lack of sales training or coaching from their employers. Sure, new salespeople can learn about the products and services they are selling, but they receive little training on how to sell. As a result, new salespeople become frustrated. They quit. Employers are faced with high turnover and the cycle continues until someone finally suggests that training and coaching could stop the bleeding, as well as boost the bottom line.
Along with his book, Mr. Gordon has more than 50 videos on YouTube. His presentations are clear, concise and extremely instructive. Unlike some sales training videos, Mr. Gordon gets to the point quickly. While he plugs his book at the beginning of each video, he quickly jumps into the topic of the day. He doesn’t waste time telling you about his life’s story, or how he got into sales. He wants to help you become a better salesperson, and he demonstrates that in each video presentation that he offers. Mr. Gordon is a true sales professional.
Now, why is his book free? Simple. He wants you to download the book and share it with others. You see, Mr. Gordon realizes that he’s not going to earn a lot of money selling his book. Instead, his goal is for you to hire him as a coach.
While I’ve never used him as a coach, if Mr. Gordon’s book and videos are any indication of how he can help you, I would strongly recommend that you use his services.
Below is Mr. Gordon’s first video from YouTube –
(Special Note: I have not received any payment to endorse “The Big Book of Sales”. In fact, I was so impressed by Mr. Gordon’s YouTube videos, that I actually paid $10.00 for his publication. I felt so guilty about downloading his book for free, I decided to pay him).
Salespeople, along with many office workers, have a bad habit of being pack rats. You know when I mean. Your desk or files are jammed with old compensation reports, sales literature, marketing brochures, and an array of other documents that you have never gotten around to properly file or read.
We are so busy making sales calls, trying to hit or exceed our quotas, and traveling to trade shows, and we just let our documents pile up.
Computers were supposed to eliminate paper – you know, “paperless” offices. However, I suspect the opposite is true. We are now dealing with more paper than ever because some of us just don’t trust our computers to safely secure our documents.
In celebration of you and all pack rats, today is official “Pack Rat Day.” Yes, it’s an official holiday. No one has any idea of the origin of the day. I’ve done some research online and I couldn’t find anything.
To all you packrats out there, here is some advice – it’s time to let go. Believe me, the less clutter you have in your office, the better off and more productive you will be.
Would you send out 400 emails daily to your prospects?
That’s exactly what an IT consulting firm in India has been doing. However, results have been mixed. First, the firm has been receiving a 40% bounce back rate. And second, the sales team has been complaining that the prospects who have responded to their emails have been weak. As a result of these problems, the firm posted an inquiry on a LinkedIn sales discussion board seeking advice.
Here is my advice –
Stop sending out 400 emails daily:
It’s one thing to send out emails if you are offering trial subscriptions to niche publications, or selling design services to marketing directors – provided that you include an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of your email. But when you are dealing with prospects who need complex services and products, such as IT or telecommunications employees, you are only hurting your company’s reputation by sending so many unsolicited emails.
The more complex the sale, the more consultative you have to be with your clients. Prospects in the IT, telecommunications or similar industries are turned off by salespeople – they are seeking peers and consultants, not someone who is only interested in doing product dumps.
Personalize and Customize:
If you must feel the need to send out so many emails, try to personalize and customize each one. Sending out an email with a salutation of “Dear Sir or Madam:” isn’t going to cut it. And sending out an email with the person’s first name highlighted in a different color than the rest of your text screams “merge spam” – i.e., you are so concerned about sending out tons of emails that you don’t take the time to ensure a person’s name is the same color and font as the rest of your text.
Don’t just send out emails:
Sending out a bunch of emails isn’t like throwing mud to the wall and hoping that some of it will stick. You have to be more creative. That means making cold calls, leaving voice mail messages and maybe direct marketing pieces to larger prospects. In advertising, there is an old saying that goes like this “advertise multiple ways on multiple days.” When it comes to generating new business, you should be “contacting prospects in multiple ways on different days.”
For example, I know of one Northern Virginia software company that sends out at least 6 emails to the same prospects over a period of time. That’s ridiculous. You need to mix up your attempts. While studies have shown that you need to make at least 6 to 8 attempts per prospect, that doesn’t mean spamming them to death. As I mentioned above, use a different variety of contact methods. For example, some prospects may not respond well to emails but may respond better to a phone call, or a direct marketing piece. Test. See what works and doesn’t work.
Selling isn’t sending out a bunch of emails. Selling is engagement. You have to be more proactive if you want to be successful.