<< Tips for Maximizing Business Performance from ExecuTrain of Kentucky

Today’s economy is tough, with buyers holding onto cash and taking more time to make purchasing decisions. This naturally creates anxiety in businesses that are trying to sell products and services. Most often, their response is to populate the pipeline with more leads in the hope that some will turn into sales. After all, this approach seems logical, since more leads equal more opportunities, right?

Unfortunately, the opposite often turns out to be true. Flooding sales reps with more leads — especially low-quality ones — can actually make the problem worse.

The Problem with Too Many LeadsToday’s leaner-looking sales numbers are fueling a growing interest in high-volume lead generation practices. But this most often just results in a lot of marketing dollars being wasted. In the end, what you get is simply a large pile of poor-quality leads that fail to provide ROI.

To this end, a 2009 CSO Insights survey reported that senior sales executives rate just 35 percent of leads as “good” or “excellent,”

and 65 percent as “average” or “poor.” And only 26 percent of sales executives surveyed were satisfi ed with the quality of leads received.

It might be disconcerting to know that today sales organizations do not follow up on 79 percent of leads. The reason? Perceived poor quality.

Here are a few ways to increase the quality of your leads:

Practice Lead NurturingBusinesses naturally want short-term leads, because they feel a need for immediate results. In the search for the quick close, however, some of the most promising leads can get lost.

By nurturing quality leads over time, companies can forge deeper relationships that ultimately translate to business. Nurturing longer-term leads is especially important now, as prospects are stretching the buy cycle and making purchasing decisions more slowly.

Segment to Find Higher-Value ProspectsIf you’re going to capitalize on leads with the most sales potential while reducing the time spent on weak leads, properly identifying them through segmentation is key. Because some market segments respond better than others, it makes sense to identify those segments and market to them specifi cally.

Initial segmentation requires basic research to weed out the prospects that really aren’t a match for your off ering, and to group others into related categories you’ll want to target in similar ways. Most companies fi nd it helpful to group leads by industry, annual revenue, employee headcount or similar characteristics. You can then test these groups to determine the highest responders.

Additional segmentation into short- and long-term prospects should come as you begin making contact. As part of this, it is important to interpret “I’m not interested” to mean “I’m not interested at this time.”

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Email is both a blessing and a curse. Email, if managed properly, can help boost productivity. Sometimes, however, the volume of emails can become quickly frustrating and can create a giant time vortex you feel you might never escape. Try these three strategies for quickly responding to common time-sucking emails:

1: I’m not the right person for thisDo you fi nd yourself getting questions and requests from people who don’t realize you’re not the proper one for the job? If you truly aren’t the person who should be responding to the message, don’t try to be the hero and fi x the problem for someone. Instead, direct the requestor to the appropriate person from the get-go. There’s nothing wrong with saying “Sorry I’m not directly involved in that. You should check with Fred and Rebecca on this instead,” and copy them on the message.

2: Do you still need this?With the volume of emails some of us get on a daily basis, many times we skim or skip over emails and then forget to go back to them until a couple of weeks later. Before having a freak-out, follow up with the sender to see if action is still needed. Apologize for overlooking it or being tied up with another, more pressing issue. Many times, you’ll fi nd that no one needs you to act on the email by this point. Verify this and then delete and move on.

3: Here’s a linkDo you often get a lot of the same questions via email? Perhaps you’re the subject matter expert on a particular topic and you fi nd people often emailing you for help. While it’s great to be needed, responding to each of these similar requests separately can be a giant time suck. One solution is to write up documentation on these frequently asked questions and post it on a shared network drive or intranet. This way, instead of dropping what you’re doing to respond, send them the document link and ask them to follow up with any additional questions.

(continued from front)

Any lead that fi ts your criteria for a high-value prospect, even those who claim not to be interested, should be kept in the prospecting loop. You never know when changing circumstances may transform “I’m not interested” to “let’s talk.”

Use Multiple Touches and Multiple MediaJust as you don’t want to abandon leads that claim not to be interested, you shouldn’t abandon leads that don’t respond to initial contact attempts.

In an age of communications overload, it can take 10 to 12 touches to identify whether a prospect is sales-ready. To further increase your chances of reaching promising leads, employ some mixture of media — quality outbound calls, voice mail messages, email and direct mail — to touch prospects repeatedly over time.

Multitouch, multimedia campaigns work because they build familiarity with busy decision-makers and increase the potential

of impacting them at a time when their need for a solution is high. They also increase the chance of dovetailing into a prospect’s communications preferences, as some are more email oriented, others more voice mail oriented and still others more receptive to traditional direct mail or live conversation.

ExecuTrain of Kentucky off ers a comprehensive, research-based sales training program, Solution Selling®.

For more information on this powerful program, call us: 859.271.0296

(Lexington) or 502.429.6444 (Louisville).

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<< Business Skills Lex Lou Lex Lou Lex Lou

Adv. Interpersonal Comm. 14 23 21 4 10 17

Business Problem Solving 16 14 14 11 24 19

Change Management 17 20 8 15 11 12

Confl ict Management 23 15 12 26 9 24

Customer Relationship Mgmt. 15 13 20 5 22 15

Business Writing 21 29 4 19 8 18

Effective Presentation Skills 13 21 6 13 17 19

Frontline Leadership 20 22 15 22 19 16

Motivation: Identifying, Planning & Implementing

22 16 27 7 18 11

Organizational Skills 24 7 11 14 23 10

Project Teams 10 30 7 18 16 23

Strategic Decision Making 7 24 18 6 29 5

Stress Management 27 17 22 12 12 29

Time Management 30 27 26 21 15 22

September October November

<< Graphics cont... Lex Lou Lex Lou Lex Lou

Photoshop CS3 Advanced 23 17 19 14 24 29

Photoshop CS3 Web Design 30 24 26 25 3 30

PowerPoint 2007: Basic 20 3 7 5 10 15

PowerPoint 2007: Advanced 27 10 14 18 19 22

PowerPoint 2003: Basic 7 8 20 8 4 9

PowerPoint 2003: Advanced 17 20 28 21 16 18

Publisher 2007 9 2 8 19 11 2

Publisher 2003 22 15 27 7 2 10

Visio 2007 Pro.: Basic 8 21 6 11 15 24

Visio 2007 Pro.: Advanced 9 22 13 12 22 30

Visio 2003 Pro.: Basic 29 13 21 26 29 15

Visio 2003 Pro.: Advanced 30 14 29 27 30 29

<< DatabasesAccess 2007: Basic 10 7 6 11 11 17

Access 2007: Intermediate 17 15 13 19 18 22

Access 2007: Advanced 23 22 22 25 23 29

Access 2007: Application Dev. 30 28 29 28 24 30

Access 2003: Basic 7 13 4 8 3 1

Access 2003: Intermediate 14 21 14 15 10 8

Access 2003: Advanced 21 29 21 26 17 15

Access 2003: Application Dev. 28 30 25 29 29 23

InfoPath 2007: Creating Forms 9 23 13 18 5 9

SQL: Fund. of Querying 13 22 7 21 18 29

SQL: Advanced Querying 14 23 8 22 19 30

<< SpreadsheetsExcel 2007: Basic 3 8 5 12 2 9

Excel 2007: Intermediate 8 16 12 20 9 16

Excel 2007: Advanced 13 23 19 27 16 23

Excel 2003: Basic 9 2 11 4 17 12

Excel 2003: Intermediate 20 14 18 13 24 19

Excel 2003: Advanced 28 22 25 22 30 29

<< GraphicsAcrobat 9 Professional: Basic 15 28 14 5 2 4

Acrobat 9 Professional: Adv. 16 29 20 18 12 17

Acrobat 8 Professional: Basic 21 9 4 14 10 1

Acrobat 8 Professional: Adv. 22 10 26 28 24 22

Illustrator CS4: Basic 7 15 13 6 3 5

Illustrator CS4: Advanced 14 23 21 15 9 16

Illustrator CS3: Basic 17 8 5 11 15 10

Illustrator CS3: Advanced 23 16 27 21 24 29

InDesign CS4: Basic 2 14 11 7 11 2

InDesign CS4: Advanced 13 22 22 19 22 24

InDesign CS3: Basic 8 7 7 12 16 4

InDesign CS3: Advanced 24 27 15 14 30 23

Photoshop CS4: Basic 3 13 18 6 8 1

Photoshop CS4: Advanced 9 20 28 13 9 2

Photoshop CS4: Web Design 10 21 29 20 29 3

Photoshop CS3: Basic 16 9 12 4 23 24

<< Word ProcessingWord 2007: Basic 10 15 8 13 3 8

Word 2007: Intermediate 16 20 14 21 10 15

Word 2007: Advanced 24 27 22 29 18 22

Word 2003: Basic 9 3 18 7 12 1

Word 2003: Intermediate 22 24 20 18 19 24

Word 2003: Advanced 29 30 27 25 29 30

<< GroupWare / MailOneNote 2007 16 21 11 13 11 5

Outlook 2007: Basic 8 3 19 8 8 2

Outlook 2007: Intermediate 15 9 21 14 16 11

Outlook 2007: Advanced 29 21 25 26 23 24

Outlook 2003: Basic 13 7 4 20 11 12

Outlook 2003: Intermediate 24 30 12 28 19 28

<< Project ManagementProject 2007: Basic 14 9 5 12 4 29

Project 2007: Advanced 15 10 11 22 5 30

Project 2003: Basic 23 29 15 27 17 15

Project 2003: Advanced 24 30 26 28 18 16

IT Project+ 13-17 20-24 11-15 4-8 15-19 8-12

Project Mgmt. Fundamentals 21 10 20 12 12 22

Project Management Workshop 22-24 14-16 20-22 12-14 1-3 17-19

PMP Certifi cation Prep 13-17 20-24 18-22 25-29 8-12 15-19

<< InternetInternet Explorer 7.0 13 24 13 6 10 17

<< Microsoft WindowsWindows 7 Basic 8 21 21 11 16 11

Windows Vista: New Features 17 24 26 28 12 15

Windows XP: Introduction 7 10 28 7 22 18

<< FinancialQuickBooks 2008 8 16 6 21 23 29

<< SharePointMicrosoft SharePoint Server 2007 Introduction

13 22 13 4 17 9

SharePoint Designer 2007 Basic 14 23 14 5 11 15

SharePoint Designer 2007 Adv. 15 24 15 6 12 16

SharePoint Services 3.0 Basic 29 20 25 18 29 22

SharePoint Services 3.0 Adv. 30 21 27 20 30 23

September October November<< Web Design Lex Lou Lex Lou Lex Lou

ColdFusion 8: Level 1 22 9 5 13 4 2

ColdFusion 8: Level 2 23 10 6 14 5 3

HTML 4.01: Level 1 15 22 13 4 8 10

HTML 4.01: Level 2 16 23 14 5 9 11

HTML 4.01: Level 3 17 24 15 6 10 12

Dreamweaver CS4: Basic 2 9 13 8 2 8

Dreamweaver CS4: Advanced 14 30 20 15 17 18

Dreamweaver CS3: Basic 9 13 25 5 16 10

Dreamweaver CS3: Advanced 29 20 29 19 30 24

Flash CS4: Basic 16-17 7-8 4-5 14-15 2-3 11-12

Flash CS4: Advanced 23-24 29-30 18-19 28-29 10-11 18-19

Flash CS3: Basic 2-3 13-14 13-14 19-20 8-9 23-24

Flash CS3: Advanced 9-10 21-22 20-21 25-26 15-16 29-30

FrontPage 2003: Level 1 14 28 6 8 2 17

FrontPage 2003: Level 2 15 29 13 15 10 24

<< To fi nd out more or to register for a class, go to www.executrainky.com.

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EXCEL: 10 GREAT SHORTCUTSInsert a new line within a cell [Alt] [Enter]

Enable editi ng within a cell [F2]

Add a comment to a cell [Shift ] [F2]

Open Print Preview [Ctrl] [F2]

Fill selected cells with an entry you typed in one cell [Ctrl] [Enter]

Fill data down or to the right through selected cells [Ctrl] D or [Ctrl] R

Create a name [Ctrl] [F3]

Insert the current date or ti me [Ctrl] and ; or [Ctrl] and :

Create a chart from a range of data [F11]

Toggle the display of formulas [Ctrl] ~

<< Technical (cont.) Lex Lou Lex Lou Lex Lou

Security+ 20-24 27-1 1822 25-29 15-19 1-5

MOC 5060: Implementing Win. SharePoint Services 3.0 7-8 2-3 6-7 13-14 1-2 22-23

MOC 5061: Implementing MS Offi ce SharePoint Server 2007 1-3 8-10 12-17 5-7 10-12 3-5

MOC 10135: Confi g., Managing & Troubleshooting MS Exchange Server 2007

27-1 13-17 25-29 4-8 1-5 8-12

MOC 6292: Installing & Confi g. Windows 7 Client 28-30 7-9 26-28 12-14 22-24 10-12

MOC 6236: Implementing & Maintaining MS SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

8-10 28-30 19-24 26-28 16-18 22-24

MOC 6425: Confi g. & Troubleshooting Win. Server 2008 Active Directory Domain Services

27-1 27-1 4-8 11-17 8-12 15-19

MOC 6231: Maintaining a MS SQL Server 2008 Database 13-17 20-24 11-15 18-22 15-19 1-5

MOC 6451: Planning, Deploying & Managing System Ctr. Confi g. Manager

20-24 13-17 18-22 25-29 1-5 8-12

MOC 10233: Designing & Deploying Messaging Solutions with MS Exchange Server 2010

27-1 20-24 25-29 4-8 8-12 15-19

September October November

<< TechnicalCompTIA A+ Certifi cation (2009) 20-21 13-17 4-8 11-15 1-5 8-12

CompTIA Network + Cert. (2009) 13-17 20-24 11-15 18-22 8-12 15-19