4th Quarter Selling Strategies That Do Not Involve Discounting

It’s the 4th quarter and that means the race is on to make the yearly number. What it also means is we’re only a few weeks away from the time of year when stupid ideas start to become reality. Sad comment is there is no reason for anyone to do anything stupid, and when I say “stupid,” I’m referring to offering discounts to gain a sale before the end of the year. Eliminate right now the idea that making the number requires price cuts. Price cuts make it onto the list of year-end strategies only because nobody took the time and effort to develop other strategies early enough in the year to avoid year-end price discounting.

First, examine where each salesperson is spending their time.
The focus is on gaining business this year, not next year. Too many salespeople get themselves into trouble because they’ve spent too much time dealing with prospects who have zero ability to become customers this year. From October on – and even earlier for some industries – the focus must be on customers who will generate business this year. Some people will take this to mean I’m implying sales shouldn’t be focused long-term. No, that is not the case. As much as the 4th quarter is geared toward closing immediate sales, the 1st quarter should be geared toward long-term business. The objective is to optimize how you use your time.

Second, look for ways you can secure more business from existing customers.

This is often overlooked, and even if it isn’t overlooked, it is rarely capitalized on fully. Reason it makes sense to focus on existing customers is because they are already set up in your company’s system and you’re set up in their system as a supplier. Last thing anyone wants to hassle with at the end of the year is suddenly facing problems with accounting and credit in getting new accounts set up in a timely manner.

Third, develop packages that make it easy for both existing and new customers to buy from you.

Look at your product offering and find areas where you can strip away anything but the basics. Idea is to make it incredibly simple for the customer to buy. Beauty with this tactic is for many companies it means also having the ability to service orders quickly. That allows for new customers to experience your superior level of service even faster.

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SMBs Poised to Fuel the Cloud Services Market

SMBs Poised to Fuel the Cloud Services Market
by Cameron Bell

If there’s a need for more proof that the cloud services market is here to stay for the foreseeable future, research from Compass Intelligence on small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) demonstrates it. The cloud services market as a whole is growing, and the SMB sector is one of the fastest-growing areas. Currently, there are more than 12 million SMBs in the U.S.–and 22 million worldwide–and they’re already spending more than $150 billion on telecom services. This sector is growing rapidly and has been for the last decade. As a result, the SMB cloud market currently has a 40 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), and it’s projected to remain so for at least the next five years. What’s driving the high CAGR?

1 – Lower Barriers to Entry One of the biggest factors driving SMB cloud adoption is that the Internet is making it far easier for small and medium-sized businesses to get started. When all someone needs is a website to have a business, that means a lot of hungry SMBs looking to grab customers any way they can.

2 – Reduced Need for Expertise On-Staff Currently, 70 percent of SMB cloud spending comes from companies with five to 99 employees. Companies on the low end of that scale simply might not have the budget for an extensive list of contracted experts. Being able to outsource matters like IT management or CMS (content management system) platforms means companies can focus on their core business without spending their budget on in-house experts.

3 – Increased Data-Handling Regulations In most of the high-tech countries around the world, more regulations are being implemented concerning the proper handling of data, especially confidential customer information. Regulations on storage, access, and length-of-retention can change rapidly, but the responsibility is on businesses to be informed of the regulations and to comply with them. SMBs lacking on-site expertise increasingly need industry partners who can ensure their regulatory compliance. Otherwise, the financial penalties from even a single data breach can be ruinous.

4 – Simplified Contact Pathways One area experiencing large booms, even within the cloud industry, is that of telecoms offering direct hosting for computer systems. Besides allowing SMBs to remain relevant to existing customers, this allows SMBs to pare down the list of contacts handling their services. Being able to consolidate all telecom-related tech support to a single partner is a major selling point for SMBs who are currently juggling too many vendors.

5 – Predictable Billing Most SMBs are running on tight month-to-month or even week-to-week budgets, and they cannot afford to have significant spikes in service fees. Since most cloud vendors offer guaranteed contracted rates and sometimes even include hardware upgrades with their fees, it makes both IT and telecom expenses far more predictable from a budgeting perspective.

If a SMB has had one or two “near misses” with an unexpected service bill that nearly breaks the budget, that SMB will be listening when a cloud provider says it can eliminate that uncertainty. How to Grow the Cloud Business The cloud industry is booming among SMBs, who are ready and willing to pay for services that bring convenience and cost savings. Cloud providers that can illustrate these benefits to SMBs will grow their client portfolio, and the SMB clients will be better poised to focus on their core business without unnecessary distractions.

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Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla And Others Partner To Create Next-Gen Video Format

Here We Go!

Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix today announced that they have formed a new open source alliance — the Alliance for Open Media — with the goal of developing the next generation of royalty-free video formats, codecs and other related technologies.

It’s not often we see these rival companies come together to build a new technology together, but the members argue that this kind of alliance is necessary to create a new interoperable video standard that will work across vendors and platforms.

While it goes unmentioned in the announcement, it’s also clear that none of the members involved in this alliance want to have to pay royalties to the likes of MPEG LA. logo4As Mozilla notes, part of the reason for forming this alliance is not just to share technology, but also to “run the kind of patent analysis necessary to build a next-generation royalty-free video codec.”

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Contact me at tduggan(@)Cogentco.com at Cogent for more Info or to Network. Cogent delivers customers with Highly Reliable, Secure and Scalable IP Networks with over 190 markets throughout 38 countries in North America, Europe and Asia, with over 57,900 route miles of long-haul fiber and over 27,400 miles of metropolitan fiber.

Adtran Delivers Faster Gigabit

Welcome to the New IP, where service orchestration speeds time to market and gigabit broadband deployments happen ten times faster than ever before.

Adtran Inc. (Nasdaq: ADTN) has announced that a combination of its new service automation portal, network programmability and wireless video solutions are slashing time to market for gigabit service implementations tenfold. That speed is important because it brings new revenue in faster, while automated provisioning means reduced labor costs.

As evidence of its success, Adtran points to the fact that it has already powered gigabit service in more than 200 communities. Senior product marketing executive Kurt Raaflaub also notes a specific example with a customer (to be named soon), that has ramped up its gigabit rollout plans because of faster-than-expected deployments in the service provider's initial gigabit cities. (See Gigabites: 200 Gig Communities & Counting.)


Contact me at tduggan(@)Cogentco.com at Cogent for more Info or to Network. Cogent delivers customers with Highly Reliable, Secure and Scalable IP Networks with over 190 markets throughout 38 countries in North America, Europe and Asia, with over 57,900 route miles of long-haul fiber and over 27,400 miles of metropolitan fiber.

What Is the Difference Between Sales Goals & Quotas.. Technology & Telecom Tips for Sales

Sales is one of the driving functions behind organizations. Sales representatives and regional managers present products and services to customers and help close deals to generate company revenue. To create a successful sales strategy, management sets annual, quarterly and monthly goals and quotas to effectively monitor sales activities and achieve results. Establishing goals and quotas also helps senior management diagnose challenges facing certain regions and assist sales managers during the sales cycle.

Sales Goals
Sales goals differ from sales quotas because goals relate to overall company objectives and long-term growth. Quotas point specifically to revenue achieved by a certain date. Sales goals can include expanding into new geographic regions, acquiring a certain amount of customers or building and implementing referral programs to retain and recruit clients. Moreover, reps can develop individual goals that deal with their territory or customer accounts. For example, sales teams may create a sales campaign to improve performance or set tactical goals including number of cold calls and prospects generated within a specific period of time.

Sales Quotas
By setting sales quotas, executives and directors communicate to salespeople the amount of products or services they expect to sell by a certain date or within a certain time frame. Some salespeople set their own sales quotas based on what they believe they can do, but usually managers and business owners set quotas. Typically, sales quotas are based on factors such as customer purchases, hiring, advertising revenue or company expansion. Sales executives and managers also look at past sales performance, the cumulative skills and experience of sales reps and as the state of marketplace. For example, sales reps may be assigned different quotas based on their seniority or individual performance in previous fiscal quarters. Related Reading: What Problem Does the Setting of Quotas Present to Both the Company & to the Sales Representative?

Benefits
A benefit of setting sales quotas is that sales reps have a clear idea of the amount of revenue they need to achieve. It also provides them with a time frame on when they meet their quotas. This not only motivates sales teams, but also provides organizations with more control over sales activities. It also establishes performance standards and helps management rate and evaluate employee performance. Goals provide overall direction for sales employees and define individual tasks that contribute to larger company objectives. Setting goals also helps management plan and coordinate activities with other departments, such as marketing, when executing and measuring sales campaigns.

Considerations
One of the primary goals for management is to set quotas that are achievable and are based on a combination of a variety of factors. SurePayroll president Michael Alter told Inc. magazine that “Since you can never win setting quotas, your first goal should be to try to minimize your downside, and set rules that drive the behavior of your sales reps to align with your larger goals.”


By Bridget Austin
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Top 10 Sales Book's To Read This Summer, Best Selling Tips To Improve Your Performance

The Top Ten Sales Books You Need To Read Right Now from LiveHive, Inc.

 

Contact me at tduggan(@)Cogentco.com at Cogent for more Info or to Network. Cogent delivers customers with Highly Reliable, Secure and Scalable IP Networks with over 190 markets throughout 38 countries in North America, Europe and Asia, with over 57,900 route miles of long-haul fiber and over 27,400 miles of metropolitan fiber.

5 Tips For A Successful Salesforce Implementation, How To Use Salesforce Correctly!

Top Salesforce Tips

So you’ve implemented Salesforce and have begun your Salesforce journey! So now what? In brief here’s 5 steps to Salesforce Success…

1. Unclutter Salesforce is a huge platform and it is easy to fill it up with information without having a regular clean up. It is often the case that Salesforce page layouts become cluttered and users see too much irrelevant information. Solution 1: Field Tripp App Field Trip 5 Tips For A Successful Salesforce Implementation Don’t run around asking users what fields they do and don’t use. Field trips allows you to run usage reports on all standard and custom fields, so you can see exactly which fields are and aren’t adding value. Solution

2: Profiles ext 5 Tips For A Successful Salesforce Implementation The next step is to make sure that your profiles are correctly assigned and that page layouts are changing based on the logged in user. This will make sure that people only see the information relevant to them on any given page, saving a whole lot of confusion and page scrolling in their day to day routine. 2. Data Data quality is a huge part of the CRM success story and is easier than people think to stay on top of. Solution 1: DupeCatcher App dupecatcher 5 Tips For A Successful Salesforce Implementation DupeCatcher allows you to set rules up for catching data duplication on the front end (as users or systems add records into Salesforce). You can set up warnings and merge options based on users so they are aware when they are entering duplicate data. Solution 2: Address Tools App provenworks adress tools 5 Tips For A Successful Salesforce Implementation Address Tools ensures consistent country & state entry with validation and an auto-complete pick-list.

3. Automate Wherever possible use Salesforce to automate tasks and communication for both customers and employees. Solution 1: Workflows Talk to the different departments and figure out what processes are long and manual. Then use workflow rules to automate these steps. Solution 2: Pardot pardot logo 5 Tips For A Successful Salesforce Implementation As a Pardot user it would be rude not to mention marketing automation.Ok so Pardot is the only one that does come at a cost – but it is worth it! Use Pardot or similar to create drip campaigns and gain insight on where prosecpts are in the buying cycle. This is highly valuable as Sales reps will know not to waste their time calling leads which aren’t ready yet. Integrating data between Pardot and Salesforce also allows you to automate the lead assignment process so only marketing qualified leads are passed to Sales, determined by the prospects grade and score.

4. Explore Salesforce is huge. It’s a full time job staying on top of features from new releases, Apps on the AppExchange and the product eco system that revolves around your Salesforce.com system. Solution 1: Salesforce Administrator An internal administrator should be attending webinars and events, learning new skills and attending training and certification sessions as often as possible. The AppExchange is a great hunting ground for solutions and a good place to start. Solution 2: CloudSocius CloudSocius Logo Hi Res 5 Tips For A Successful Salesforce Implementation If you don’t have either budget or need to hire a Salesforce resource internally, then you need to talk to us and about our Salesforce Managed Service. This service provides you with your own Salesforce champion who will take care of your Salesforce org – unlimited support at a fixed cost. Better still it will cost you approximately a third of the cost for an internal hire. Get in touch with us today to find out more.

Step 5 – Monitor Reporting is at the very heart of Salesforce and CRM as a whole. What good is all this information if you can’t then accurately use it to make good business decisions? 1. Start at the top – find out what your executives need to know to keep the business running. What are their key metrics? 2. Capture the right data - Your reports and dashboards are only as good as the data behind them so planning is the key to capturing and displaying the correct metrics. 3. Build your reports – Start with out of the box Salesforce reports and learn the different reports types from there. 4. Build your Dashboards - The key to building dashboards your colleagues can’t live without is to match the dashboard metrics to a compelling business metric.

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Contact me at tduggan(@)Cogentco.com at Cogent for more Info or to Network. Cogent delivers customers with Highly Reliable, Secure and Scalable IP Networks with over 190 markets throughout 38 countries in North America, Europe and Asia, with over 57,900 route miles of long-haul fiber and over 27,400 miles of metropolitan fiber.