Nine Years and Going Strong: Happy Birthday Randolph Sterling!

04.04.2012

Welcome to our April newsletter. April is my favorite month of the year, not only because spring has sprung but also because of two birthdays, mine and Randolph Sterling’s.

Randolph Sterling celebrates its nine year Anniversary on April 22nd (three days before my birthday, for those of you sending cards and presents). Please indulge me a bit, while I take a quick stroll down memory lane.

The Randolph Sterling story starts as far back as high school for me. I remember riding my bicycle around town with my friend Christopher Wolf, the two of us discussing how much fun it would be to have a business where we helped the businesses around town with their sales and marketing efforts. While Radburn Cleaners and Baskin Robins never actually became our clients, I kept the idea in the back of my mind as I worked through school as a Marketing Management major and into my career, first in market research and later in sales.

Over the years I have had a variety of different managers that I learned from…some what to do and some what not to do. My dad has been an influence on me as well given that he has been in sales for a good part of his work career and was always willing to offer advice. However, it was back at the end of 2001 when I really started to put the wheels in motion for what we all know today as Randolph Sterling (Incorporated April 22, 2003). When I started Randolph Sterling it was a small consulting company that would provide sales management services to growing companies that did not have a sales manager. During my start-up stages, I figured if one of those companies wanted to hire me as a sales manager, I would certainly consider it.

Over the years, we have added services to complement our sales management programs, some of which came along accidentally but at the right time! Our largest area of the business, our outsourced sales services, came about as a result of working with a company that asked us to put together and manage a sales program for them, although they never followed it. One day I met with them and out of frustration said, “You have us come in every week and each time we discuss getting out and finding new business. Each time you tell me you haven’t done anything. Instead of paying us to ask the question, why not pay us to do it for you?” Just like that, they said yes! Our new mission was to then go out and find great salespeople to provide the service!

It has been a fun ride for us so far. Our intention is only to continue to grow and help our clients grow along with us by adding more services to help provide stronger outsourced systems for our clients. This year alone we have expanded to in Boston and LA in addition to our successful Chicago and Raleigh locations, making it even easier to work with clients throughout the country who range across the business spectrum from funded startups building sales teams to established companies looking to give theirs a stronger competitive advantage.

Happy Birthday, Randolph Sterling, Inc.!

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Posted in Business Growth, Chicago, Client Relations, Events, Marketing, Messages, News, North Carolina, Outsourced Sales, RandolphSterling, Rich Burghgraef, Special Events |

Working Your Way Down the Sales Funnel: Some Helpful Hints

03.12.2012

Most of us know the fundamentals of a basic sales funnel. You start out with a hot lead from varying areas. This ends up as an opportunity for business. You send out a proposal for services. And, hopefully, in turn you have yourself a new customer! A sales funnel starts at the very beginning of the new business stage when you initially capture the attention and interest of your prospects via your website, social media efforts, a well stated voice mail or phone call, newsletter, or maybe even a referral. Yet, no matter which way the sales funnel begins, once it begins, making sure you stay on target is key to making sure the end result is more prospects becoming clients.

One way to ensure that the process stays on track is to maintain regular communication with your current clients, referral sources, and potential clients, while making sure they have a clear understanding of not only what you can do to help them, but also that you really do want to help them and not just sell to them. Sometimes this process is pretty quick, requiring only one or two conversations to “close the deal.” Other times those seven to thirteen calls it usually takes to get a prospect to trust you enough to talk about the issues you are looking to solve are necessary; in these cases a fair amount of nurturing needs to take place over time.

In general, there is a direct correlation between the length of the sales cycle and the overall cost of a deal. This is one of the reasons why I never understood the process used for purchasing a timeshare. The larger the cost, usually the longer it takes to make a sale.

So, how do you know that you are working your way down the sales funnel? Sure, you can pick up almost any sales book and find a description of a sales funnel in there, all just a little bit different. For me, I have six simple guidelines:

  1. First, evaluate what it is you are going to sell. What is it? Who needs it? Why would they want it?
  2. Think about the decision process of your potential customer or client. If you are selling a pack of gum, the decision process will be relatively quick and simple. If you are selling a high end business to business service, a high tech piece of software, or a large piece of industrial equipment, there will likely be several meetings and maybe a few plant tours involved.
  3. You can’t get a yes if you are not talking to the people who can give you a yes, so identify and develop relationships with all decision makers and influencers. Again, pair this with the complexity of the sale. You don’t expect the person at the store selling you a pack a gum to see if they are one of the four out of five dentists who have partially influenced your decision to purchase a particular brand.
  4. You cannot sell something to someone if I do not know what they need. This is a key point that a lot of people miss. They try to sell what they have rather than understand the prospect’s need.
  5. Prospects will not buy if they do not have the money. So, before asking for the sale or even presenting a solution, get an understanding of their budget and make sure it is in line with the solution you plan to present. I heard someone say once, “I want it fast, I want it good, and I want it inexpensive,” to which we replied, “We can most likely help you…PICK ANY TWO.”
  6. The most overlooked part of the process is time. If you present a solution, can they implement it now? Does testing need to occur prior? Is there another contract that needs to run its course before implementing your solution? When this part was skipped, deals fall through.

Hopefully this advice was helpful, and, if you need additional assistance working through this process, Randolph Sterling, Inc. is well versed in all levels of it, from qualifying prospects for the top of the sales funnel, to setting meetings for your experts with the decision maker at target company, to helping you close the deal!

 

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Posted in Business Secrets, Inside Sales, Jolene Pratt, Management Services, Outsourced Sales, RandolphSterling, Sales Funnel, Sales Management, Sales Strategies, Social Media |

Randolph Sterling: Partners NOT Telemarketers

03.05.2012

Recently I had one of those weeks of practically non-stop travel! Although I may never hear that knock on my door from a Yankees recruiter, it’s weeks like these that make me think I’ve had at least a taste of the lifestyle, or at least the schedule. With stops including Boston, Raleigh, Charlotte, and Chicago, the birth place of Randolph Sterling Inc., it was not difficult to forget what city I was waking up in the morning, but it was definitely been worth it!

At my first stop of my four city tour, Boston, I had a particularly interesting meeting that led me to realize that as much as we tell our clients and prospects that we provide an inside sales team and not telemarketers, many people still see them as the same thing.
I was spending the day with our Boston Regional Sales Manager, Wayne Sutherland, meeting some of the prospects he has been talking to about Randolph Sterling. One of them told us his company has been working with a telemarketing firm for a while now and he thought it was a complete waste of time. He mentioned that, while this firm sends them a ton of “leads” out of their call center in India, he doesn’t even follow up on the ones he specifically receives.

I know salespeople get busy and don’t always have time to follow up on leads, but to consciously throw them in the garbage when the company pays good money for them…

I didn’t understand him, but knew he was not alone.

He told us that the leads were nowhere near qualified. In fact, their “script” did not even mention their company by name, leading Wayne and I both to think that this telemarketing firm was sending these same leads to more than one company.

He further mentioned that when he questioned the firm about the leads, their response was, “They did show some interest, but you will likely have to call them 7 to 10 times to schedule an appointment with them.”

STOP THE MADNESS!

Needless to say, we were shocked. This style of “telemarketing” goes against everything we stand for and everything our inside sales teams do. I have told people for years that we are different than the stereotypical telemarketing firms that are just pushing for an appointment, any appointment…but this, well I can’t even think of a word to describe how bad this is!

Maybe it is time to spell out how we do things differently:

  1. Our inside sales teams are based right here in the U.S.A., either out of our Chicago, Raleigh, or Boston offices, or satellite offices around the country.
  2. When we make a call for you, we are making that call for you and you alone. We are an extension of your sales force. When we contact prospects for your company, we are calling as your company. There is nothing generic about it nor are we “Randolph Sterling, Inc. representing…”
  3. We are the ones making the 7 to 13 “touches” to build trust with the prospect, not passing that job onto you. We are also learning about your prospects as much as they are learning about our client so we help determine if they really are a good fit for our client.
  4. For some clients, we handle the entire sales cycle from start to finish, however for most, we are turning the lead over to our client at a point where their salesperson or engineer making that client visit or next level call is being brought in as the expert. When they walk into a meeting, the conversation is more “here’s what we are doing, show me how you help,” or the expert is being brought in for a high level discussion on how things will work; not “tell me about yourself.”
  5. As Wayne mentioned to the prospect, “Our reporting is ridiculous. You will have more information than you can imagine.” We are a partner with our clients, not a vendor. Our job is to communicate what is working and what isn’t so we can constantly adjust the message to reach the right people and have the right conversations. It is just as important for us to say, “We don’t think this is a good fit” as it is for us to say “These guys are very interested.”
  6. We work with your sales and marketing groups. There is no adversarial relationships here, no ego. Our job is to get a better return on your marketing investment and to allow your salespeople to do what they do best…sell.

The work we do isn’t easy…it is hard work and not everyone can do it. We start at the top of the sales funnel and work our way down finding the RIGHT prospects and turning them into the RIGHT clients.

If you have questions on how Randolph Sterling could make an impact being part of your sales team, please contact us at 847-305-3710

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Posted in Business Growth, Business Secrets, Chicago, Client Relations, Inside Sales, North Carolina, Outsourced Sales, RandolphSterling, Rich Burghgraef |

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