Here is a thank you note I just received from an intern candidate who didn’t get the job. I thought you’d like to see what a real thank you note sounds like. Remember, this kid is 19.

_______________________________________

I just want to write to you and give you my formal thanks. Your recommendation of my name to xxxx is extremely flattering. You were very professional and respectful with our interview and phone and email conversations. I mainly appreciate that you took me seriously and that, despite my age, you gave me a legitimate chance to potentially work for you.

To update you on the internship xxxx referred to: I did not land the internship unfortunately. It is disappointing, to be sure, but my head is still up! I will surely find something this summer. Once again, I cannot express the degree of my gratitude toward you and your willingness to help me. I sincerely hope the project this summer excels and that your summer is fantastic. Have a great day, Mr. Caskey.

Sincerely,

AW

_______________________________________ 

• What do you do when the deal is going south?
• What happens when you’ve done everything you’re supposed to do and they STILL aren’t calling you back?
• What do you do when you’re in a rut and need motivation?

Bill and Bryan each have specific clients who’ve had these three very things occur. Listen as they play off of each other when solving them.

Also mentioned in this podcast:

• Join our LinkedIn Group
• A past podcast episode on How To Find Your Motivation
• Have a burning question for Bill and Bryan that you’d like them to answer on an upcoming podcast? Email them at listener@advancedsellingpodcast.com
• Email It! This eBook includes 20 pre-written, ready-to-use emails that address the most frustrating email scenarios salespeople face.

Our guest expert today is Srinivas Rao, author of The Small Tribe Strategy. In this podcast, we ask him how he would go about building the tribe of prospects if he were in sales today.

Also mentioned in this podcast:

• Srinivas Rao’s podcast called Blogcast FM
• Srinivas Rao’s blog
• Listen to last week’s podcast on Biggest Reasons Salespeople Fail

Last week, I was coaching a salesperson who was getting ready to give a talk in front of 20 VPs of Marketing, his target audience. I asked the question, “What are you going to present to them?” His answer was, “I’m just going to give them a little thumbnail of our company.”

As he told me more about his presentation, I could see this was a recipe for failure. I was afraid that he was going to discount the company value by merely giving a “thumbnail” of it. His was in danger of diluting his company’s value.

And I was afraid it was going to sound like every other presentation that audience will hear over their lifetime.

What Is Your Showtime?

Recently I had a chance to attend The Story Warrior Workshop in San Diego presented by Bo Eason.

If you’re not familiar with Bo, he is a former NFL player and producer of a one-man stage play in New York called Runt of the Litter. His philosophy on speaking and presenting is really quite simple: when it’s showtime you had better be ready.

For my client, showtime was coming and he just wasn’t ready. He had not rehearsed. He had not broken apart the talk. He had not created any kind of emotional bonding mechanism for his customers. His PowerPoint slides were all way too wordy. He had not worked on the physical presentation of his talk. He was ill prepared.

What about you? What is “showtime” for you?

Is it when you meet somebody at a networking event and they say, “So, what you do?” Is it a speech that you give in front of 1,000 people who will be hanging on your every word? Or is it somewhere in between?

I find in sales, we have a lot of “showtimes”. And if you have any hope of being ready when the curtain goes up, you’d better figure out what those events are and rehearse them appropriately.

Bryan and Bill tear into the ten reasons and come up with solutions to three of them:

1. What happens when you can’t get to the decision maker?
2. What if you have a “nice to have” product that isn’t compelling for the prospect?
3. How do you penetrate new accounts?

Also, send us any thoughts you have about these three or the other seven at listener@advancedsellingpodcast.com

Also mentioned in this podcast:

• Steve Martin’s article called the Ten Reasons Sales People Lose Deals
• Join the Advanced Selling Podcast LinkedIn Group
• Send us an email at listener@advancedsellingpodcast.com

1) Call Reluctance. A listener seems to have a little bit of it and we have some thoughts (all good, of course) on what to do about it.

2) How Can I Demonstrate Value BEFORE the Sale? A listener struggles with this especially since his product is a premium product.

Two great topics that affect virtually every sales and account manager.

If you have a question to submit to the mailbag, write us at listener@advancedsellingpodcast.com

Drew Dudley, Founder & Chief Catalyst at Nuance Leadership Development Services, Inc., was our guest this week. He’s had some great TED Talks (The List) and deals with this very issue – how we are perceived. It’s a must-listen for sales managers and company leaders in addition to top performing salespeople.

Make sure you also consume his content on his blog at http://nuanceleadership.ca/

Watch other TED Talks by Drew:

• Everyday Leadership
• Leading With Lollipops
• The List

If your product is one which you can ‘manufacture’ the need for, then you might be able to cold call from a phone book and say the right things that brings awareness to the customer’s problem.

But if you’re in a business like most of us where the prospect actually must have some kind of a presenting need or pain, then you calling from the phone book will be a colossal waste of time.

I’m not like some of my colleagues who say that cold calling is a total waste of effort and energy, however I do think there are some things we can get out of a cold call that might be slightly different.

No Longer a Seller. Forever A Sorter.

I prefer to look at this whole process of prospecting as a sorting mechanism.

I am sorting the people who will never do anything with me – from the people who don’t have a need right now but might soon – from the people who I just happened to call it the right time and they have an immediate issue.

So the first order of business is to change your mindset from one of a seller to one of a sorter. Once you do that, then you will need to determine what the categories are into which you will sort suspects and prospects. I like to look at this as a bucket scenario.

Bucket One: They need it now.

These are the people who you happen to call at just the time that they’re in the process of considering your products or your product segment. Maybe it was pure coincidence or maybe there was a karmic attraction that you had for them. Regardless, you rolled the dice and hit them at the right time. These are people that should go directly into your sales process.

Bucket Two: Not now, but soon.

These are people who you will want to develop a campaign specifically for. These are actually the most critical prospects in your funnel because these are people that you can get out of ahead of their need. Even in Bucket One, they may have a current vendor that these people have.

So what do I need mean by a campaign?

A campaign is a series of tactical events that you will send or present to them that can keep them engaged and educated during this off-season prior to them needing what you have.

My suggestion is that you assemble a checklist of possible tactics that might go into this campaign.

For some companies that are ahead of the game, you might already have this baked into your CRM. So the once a salesperson makes a call on a suspect and realizes they are a Bucket Two person, they will insert them directly into the campaign category.

But most salespeople are on their own as they follow-up with people in this bucket. So what you need to do is, with those assembled ideas, decide how you will follow up with them and what you’re going to do on a continuous basis to keep them engaged with you. Because you know the saying: “Out of sight, out of mind.”

Bucket Three: Not now, maybe never.

All I would do with this group, after asking a few questions about whether they ever consider purchasing what you do, is put them into an email list so they can get updates from you automatically.

Unless there is a specific reason you should call these people back, I wouldn’t spend any time with them. By putting them on your email list, and maybe a video list, you can keep emotionally connected with them so that if and when they do have something that pops up, you might be the first one they call.

Drew Dudley has a unique perspective on leadership. He doesn’t believe only a select few people are born to be leaders, but that we are all capable of being a leader.

In this funny TED talk, Drew discusses the idea of how we can be leaders everyday (sometimes without even knowing it).

“But it is so scary to think of ourselves as that powerful. It can be frightening to think that we can matter that much to other people, because as long as we make leadership something bigger than us, as long as we keep leadership something beyond us, as long as we make it about changing the world, we give ourselves an excuse not to expect it every day from ourselves and from each other.” -Drew Dudley

In this week’s episode, Bill and Bryan share six tips on how to give an effective capabilities presentation.

Afterwords, Brooke Green answers a question from an Advanced Selling Podcast LinkedIn Group member: What is the best strategy to sell recruitment services (for IT companies) in social networks? What is your opinion?