2012 May | Sales Aerobics for Engineers ® Blog

6 Strategies for Building Customer Loyalty When Renewing

May 30, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

I loved going to renewal accounts. We all “inherit” them as part of the “base” that companies start us off with, in the hopes that we will acquire new customers and build on this account base. As a newbie salesperson, you hope that you don’t encounter an earful about the “last rep” and the “lousy service” when you make that initial appointment with renewal accounts.

I think that’s why so many salespeople hold off visiting renewals until the red light is flashing and they are down to the deadline for renewal. They don’t want to deal with the past history of the account.

Account history for renewal accounts is one of the first things I investigated when taking over a new territory. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: account renewal, customer loyalty, customers, renewing accounts, sales methods, strategic opportunities

Mike Weinberg’s Defining Moment in Business Development

May 29, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken 2 Comments

Twelve years ago I had a painful and embarrassing experience that not only provided an invaluable lesson, but also helped define the future of my career.

I had just walked away from a company where I was the top performing salesperson on a team of 15. The owners sold the business to a gigantic public company and within days, the new senior management pretty much wrecked everything I loved about the organization. I resigned to join a just-past-start-up learning management system company that sold to Fortune 500 clients through a channel partner. I was assured that this partner had a comprehensive learning offering, a professional sales organization, and entrenched relationships with many companies that were our ideal target accounts. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Professional Development & Social Selling, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: business development, customer acquisition, customer focus, defining moments, Mike Weinberg, sales methods

An Elegantly Simple Discussion – The Entrepreneur’s Customer Conversation

May 25, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken 3 Comments

This morning’s coaching session with some talented technical and business entrepreneurs focused around talking to customers. So what else is new? Well, customer conversations are new. They are not a “pitch”, they are not just a value proposition, and they are not about you and your product and your solution.

There’s an anthropology to these discussions.

Customer conversations are hardly status quo items on your business development “to do” list. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Angels, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Entrepreneurs and StartUps Tagged With: business development, cross-functional mindset, engineers, entrepreneurs, status-quo mindset, technical/non-technical collaboration

Hit-and-Run Sales – A Sales Horror Story

May 23, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

Our daughter is home from college. She just came into my office, pretty perturbed (a parent’s way of saying completely pissed off). She had been on the phone for over 25 minutes, long distance, attempting to cancel a vendor’s service agreement. They weren’t buying it.

Even when she explained that she was the one that wasn’t buying it from them. Ever again.

The Nine-Word One-Minute Interview, Andy Paul’s Defining Moment

May 22, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken 2 Comments

My first ever interview for a sales job consisted of one question and lasted less than a minute. How I answered that question, and what followed, was one of the defining moments in my sales career. It just happened to occur before that career had even begun.

I graduated from college without a plan for the future. In fact, I was about one day away from taking up permanent residence in my 1963 Mercury Monterey when I submitted my resume for a job opening listed at the campus career placement center for a position with a major computer manufacturer. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: Andy Paul, career development, core personal values, defining moments, professional development

So What?

May 18, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken 2 Comments

It’s hard to sell when your customer doesn’t get a word in edgewise. For all your lecturing, demo-ing, and just plain showing up and throwing up (ah, what a wonderful phrase), you finally come up for air. And the client is still looking at you.

No comment. No interest. No way are they going to buy whatever it was that you convinced yourself you would try to sell them.

Because they weren’t interested in buying in the first place. And now they are mentally kicking themselves for ever letting you into their office or taking your phone call.

Put yourself in their shoes. All your lofty rhetoric adds up to one question in their minds: “So what?”

If what you are discussing doesn’t answer that question, you have no business trying to win business with that customer. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: customer focus, entrepreneurs, sales funnel, sales methods

Business and Tapas

May 16, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken 2 Comments

I just returned from Barcelona. It’s one of my favorite cities. There was a scientific meeting. I spent time talking business with researchers turned entrepreneurs. I also spent a lot of time touring the city and eating tapas, one of my favorite food groups.

I always head to Ciudad Condal Cerveceria in the Eixample district. It’s like heaven, with tapas.

The bar has wood-paneled, vaulted ceilings and a bar area full of marble and brass. It’s like entering a church for tapas. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: business, collaboration, customer experience, entrepreneurs, teamwork

The Value of Wisdom and Learning – Don F. Perkins Defining Moment

May 15, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

Babette and I had a great chat about the difference between education and learning the other day. She asked for a story that has shaped my being; part of what has formed my character. This is one of the most unlikely and powerful ways someone changed who I am:

The auto plant was humming along all morning without a hitch until right after lunch. Suddenly things came to a grinding halt. Red lights flashed. Managers spilled out of their air conditioned offices and 100 workers tried to find other things to do besides build automobiles. In moments like these, there’s never enough brooms to go around. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Professional Development & Social Selling Tagged With: defining moment, Don F. Perkins, professional development, technical/non-technical collaboration, wisdom

Got Collaboration?

May 11, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

On May 5, 2012, I had the honor and privilege of sitting around the table with some of the best sales minds in the business. We came together in Chicago to collaborate.

And collaborate we did.

Leaving agendas and egos at the door, this incredible group of people had been working together online. Not all of us had ever met the rest of us. And so we did. Because we knew we had work to do.

For your benefit.

We are known for the quality of the content we generate. On our blogs, through our workshops, coaching and speaking. Through mentoring, encouraging. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Sales, Pitching & Business Development, Webinars and Special Events Tagged With: collaboration, networking, sales insight, synergy