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Earn Trust, Make Sales

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So you’ve built a nice website, with good information, fresh and frequently updated content, maybe you’ve registered yourself with great

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The Operation Order (OPORD)

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The OPORD or Operation Order is the single most important piece of mission planning. A directive issued by a commander to subordinate commanders for the purpose of affecting the coordinated execution of an operation. (Joint Pub 1-02)

The format has not changed much over the years because of it’s effective nature. Every troop has experience with them and if you’re in a leadership position you better know the format by memory. To hammer the subject home, the Army Rangers have a 10′ 10′ board at the entrance to the infamous Darby Queen obstacle course outlining the OPORD and stress the importance of reading it twice.

When used effectively, it is possible to gain complete clarity of mission goals and execution. These are created by Generals for the important task of maneuvering troops on the ground and for much smaller tasks of getting some ice in downtown Nasiriya.

Having this clarity on your obstacles, goals, and plan of execution hands troops the power of the outcome. Imagine going into battle and having your commanding officer say “Here you are, now go North and do something.” What do you do? We’ll save the discussion about being set up for failure later. Lets focus on the solutions for a while.

You NEED a plan and most of us unless we have had some exposure to mission/project planning in the past have zero clue on what to do next. As my Drill Sergeant used to say. “Without clarity, there is chaos.” He left out that sometimes there is chaos anyways. But it’s always better to have a plan.

The same is true in business. Since I am a sales guy, I’ll use that as the example. I have created an OPORD for every one of my positions since I understood what they do. If you play semantics with me for a moment, I’ll explain.

1. Situation (Whats going on?)

a. Enemy. (Who are my target companies)
(1)Weather. (Is the industry hot or cold?)
(2)Terrain. (Do they have an advantage because of market share, informed sales people?)
(3)Enemy Forces. (Who’s the competition?)
b. Friendly. (Do you have partners to help with the goal?)
c. Attachments and detachments.

2. Mission.

This is an explanation of what you plan to accomplish. Not a short summary of what you want, put some thought into it and write out a couple paragraphs of ‘what’ you want and ‘why’ it NEEDS to happen.

My goal is to saturate my sales region with information about the NetSuite product learning the details of the businesses I come in contact with and understanding their needs. Working with them to solve their pain by implementing a solution that gives them business clarity and a means to create a positive cash flow.

By doing this I will gain new contacts in a growing industry by selling awesome products and gaining market share for my growing company insuring a long and profitable career in sales.

That’s just an example.

3. Execution. (this is where the rubber meets the road.)

a. Concept of the Operation (Understanding line item 1 how are you going to position yourself?)
b. Specific tasks. ( How many calls are you going to have to make? How many hours are you going to put into it? Brainstorm on everything you can think of that will bring about the result you want.)
c. Coordinating instructions. (What marketing campaigns are being executed? What features are being released? Create a starting point.)

4. Service Support. (Who’s going to help you?)

a. General. (Who’s in your chain of command, managers peers?)
b. Material and Services. (What tools do you have available? White papers, demonstrations, communication tools?)
c. Medical evacuation and treatment. (When something goes wrong in the deal, who do you turn to?)
d. Personnel. (Do you have product marketing or engineers to back you up?)
e. Miscellaneous. (Every other support platform you can use.)

5. Command and Signal (Who do you report to and how do you close the deal?)

a. Command. (Usually your boss.)
b. Signal. (Ring the bell!!)

6. POC (Point of Contact) (Sign your name.)

This seems like sales 101, but I’d venture to say that 60% of the sales professionals I know do not have a clear written plan of what needs to be done and how they plan on achieving the task. and the other 30% never follow through. The 10% of high achievers in any company will have some variation of this report handy and revise it as needed.

For sales people, having a plan and executing it, is the difference between steak, lobster and a BMW or PB&J and a Yugo. Consistently hitting your numbers or worrying how you are going to pay the bills this month. Where do you fall in the mix?

Some sales methodologies use the same principles and they call them ‘Blue Sheets’ using Miller Heiman as an example. What ever you call it. You WILL get further in your career by having a plan to get there!



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The Importance of Individual Sales Goals

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Achieving sales volume goals for your business is one of the biggest challenges any owner faces. Many factors beyond your control can affect that final number–the economy, the weather, the competition. But one manageable factor is the people in direct contact with your clients–your sales team.

Some business owners ask every person on the team to meet the same sales goals. That’s the easiest thing for a busy entrepreneur to do. But not everyone is capable of achieving at the same level. Some salespeople are better with a certain product; others work best with a certain type of client. You just can’t get away from these complicated variables.

Since your business is so powerfully impacted by these variables, you should master the art of flexibility. Smart business owners work with each person on their staff to discuss what’s expected of them to keep the business growing. Each person must be evaluated based on his or her skills, knowledge and interests.

It’s wise to set an overall company goal so you all know what you’re trying to achieve. It’s also a good practice to step back every now and then to look at the big picture of your business as it relates to that goal and look for things you can do to reach the goal. It’s also critical to let your sales personnel in on your company goal so they can understand where they fit into your plans.

Your salespeople are crucial to growing your business, and to get the results you want, you should meet with them eyeball-to-eyeball (or, at the very least, in a phone meeting) once a month. This should only take five to 10 minutes per person per month, and the results you’ll see will be worth the effort.

Begin your monthly meetings by thanking your team members for their service to the business. Review how they did with their sales last month, and ask them if they’re pleased with their numbers. Then ask what they might do differently if they had an opportunity to go back 30 days and relive that month over again. Often, both you and your salespeople will be surprised by some of the creative answers they come up with. Use that information to move forward in setting some new goals.

Let your salespeople be in control of their goals by asking what their income goal is for the next six months. Then break that figure down into monthly goals. Ask if that monthly amount seems reasonable to them. When they confirm that it does, show them how many sales they must generate to achieve that goal. Again, have them commit to their belief in that goal being achievable.

To finish up, talk about special offers or promotions that you’re implementing so your salespeople can work them into their sales plans. Always end these planning meetings by asking what you could provide your salespeople along the lines of product knowledge or selling skills education to help them continue to grow and achieve their goals with your business.

This type of personal involvement in setting achievable goals for your salespeople always works in your favor. You’ll get to know what they believe they can do. They’ll get to know what you hope they’ll achieve. And best of all, when they know you care enough to help them set individual, personalized goals, they’ll do their best to outperform your expectations.



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Battle drills for sales leaders

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The battle drill is a tool that soldiers use to practice fundamental skills for their trade. The one that comes to mind immediately is Battle Drill #6 for the Military Police. I think of this one because I had to do this a hundred times (at least) in my military career.

Battle drill 6 was the act of dismounting a MK 19 grenade launcher from a turret and placing it on a tripod away from the vehicle. Sounds easy enough but when the MK19 weighs in at 72 lbs, it can be a challenge after the 12th evolution and you are being timed to standard.

But we did this drill time and time again for the shear fact that when on the battlefield you needed to know how to do this quickly, safely, and correct to complete your mission.

Drills like these were rehearsed with most of our free time to keep us sharp and on top of our game. The same should be done in business.

Sales leaders should develop their own drills that are specific to their industries. For example I work in a hosted application space for a company called NetSuite that competes with SalesForce.com (CRM) (Who I can say is not supportive of hiring ex-soldiers turned to professionals based on their last failed recruiting attempt.) One of the drills I put together was one focused on calling on every contact I had that was either currently evaluating both our products or had indicated they were current users of SalesForce.com and looking for reasons to switch. It was simple to construct and all that was needed was for SalesForce.com to go down for a length of time long enough for me to complete the drill. Which actually isn’t very difficult either since they have gone down a couple times in the past few months for several minutes or more.

  1. Generate a list of accounts that fit the criteria and have it saved for future reference.
  2. Rank them on status
  3. Start at the top and aggressively call on all of them pointing out the fact that SalesForce.com was down and NetSuite was a solution they could count on.
  4. If their systems came up before I could complete the list it didn’t matter because the damage was done and I could just tailor the conversation on an event that just took place.
  5. After the calls were completed a skillfully crafted email explaining the downtime and NetSuites guarantee on a 99.5% uptime was better than anything in the industry would be sent to the contacts and usually hammered the point home.

That’s it, 5 steps and a Battle drill was designed that can be executed on command.

There are many situations that can be crafted into these drills for a sales group. What do you have?



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Getting the Subject Line Right

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5 tips for writing e-mail subject lines that’ll get recipients to read on

One of the most important elements of your e-mail communications is the subject line. Next to the “from” address–which should be a recognizable company name–the subject line will determine whether your e-mail gets opened.

Writing a great subject line is no small challenge. You only have a few words to make it compelling, urgent and specific–without sounding too sales-like or misleading your readers. Here are some tips for writing subject lines that’ll get great results.

1. Keep it short and sweet. Do your best to keep your subject lines under 50 characters, including spaces, as most e-mail clients display 50 characters or less. A recent study done by e-mail monitoring company Return Path showed that subject lines with 49 or fewer characters had open rates 12.5 percent higher than those with 50 or more characters. The study also found that click-through rates for subject lines with 49 or fewer characters were 75 percent higher than for those with 50 or more characters. Want to increase your open and click-through rates? Keep your subject line short and sweet.

2. Be specific. A vague subject line is a waste of prime real estate. A great example of this that I see often is monthly newsletters with subject lines like “The Green Thumb Newsletter: June 2007.” This tells the receiver nothing about what they’ll find when they open the e-mail and gives them very little reason to do so. A better approach for a newsletter like this is, “The Green Thumb: 3 Tips for Summer Gardening.”

3. Write it last. Many e-mail marketing services (including Constant Contact) prompt you to write your subject line first as you’re building your e-mail. I encourage you to come back to it when you’re done with your e-mail content. It’s important to determine all the elements of your e-mail first, then look for the most compelling topic to highlight in the subject line. When you’re done with the body of your e-mail, read it over and pick the nugget that’ll entice your readers to learn more by opening your message.

4. Take some time. Don’t just dash off your subject lines. Considering how important they are, take some time to think about them and write several–at least three or four–before choosing which one to use. Once you have a few subject lines you like, run them by a friend or colleague and see which one they think is most compelling.

5. Test it. When you have two strong yet different subject lines, test them. Split your list in half and use a different subject line for each group. After a number of tests like this, you’ll have a very good idea of what works for the people on your list. And the better you know your audience, the more effectively you can communicate with them.

The next time you’re tempted to rush through the process of writing a subject line, think about the number of e-mails you get every day. After the effort you’ve put into composing your e-mail, don’t you want to ensure people open and read it?

Getting the Subject Line Right


Gail F. Goodman is the“E-Mail Marketing” coach at Entrepreneur.com and is CEO ofConstant Contact, a web-based e-mail marketing service for small businesses. She’s also a recognized small-business expert and speaker.



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Leadership 101.1

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I was taking a moment to reflect on some earlier posts and I got stuck on one Leadership 101 and got to thinking I should expand a bit. I wrote the initial post after I had returned from my last deployment and re-entered the professional world. I saw people put in ‘management’ positions that had no idea how to manage people. They managed spreadsheets and emails but not their direct reports. Managers are responsible for many things. From adhering and implementing corporate policy all the way to measuring specific metrics on their group to show growth/revenue. But what many managers seem to forget is the human factor in all of this. That’s where being a leader comes in. If you lead the people in your group well, the other pieces fall into place fairly easily. It should NEVER be perceived a burden to manage the people that work for you. (Which is what I saw.) It should be seen as a challenge and a privileged.

I have been back for about 3 years now and have since moved around a little professionally. I’ve had the honor of experiencing great managers, true leaders to their people and experienced some not so great ones. Is this a matter of opinion? Sure, I guess, but when all of your staff can’t wait for you to get hit by a bus, is it their problem or the managers? I guess your answer to that question will place you in one of my two buckets. :)

Now I know that people hate hearing about my military experience but I find myself deeply rooted in the lessons I learned growing through the ranks. From my lowly days as a Private E-1 to my time getting my Sergeant stripes overseas I took my responsibilities seriously. Again, I was not going to be nominated for NCO of the year or anything, but I did my duty of following orders and then learning to give them to the best of my ability. The Army has a great history of producing outstanding leaders and I had the opportunity to work for some of the great ones. Being a leader for a combat unit is really not different from leading a group of professionals in an office when you boil it down.

Maybe it’s a flaw to have extremely high standards of my leaders/managers. But I have high standards for myself and think the people above me should have the same. Maybe that will be my undoing, but then again it’s probably not a place I want to work if thats the case.

Leaders should first and foremost lead from example. How can you expect your teams to give 100% when they look at you and see you playing video games, watching YouTube or doing nothing most of the day? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

It is a frame of mind that needs to adopted to insure success. Too often I saw managers that acted like dictators barking orders to get things done, or worse gave all of the staff a sense of insecurity by implying they would not have jobs soon. The fact is you will either have a mutiny on your hands or worse show up to work on Monday and get a list of emails with letters of resignations. The idea behind being a manager is to retain your stars, not let them fall to the ground.

If you have members of your staff that deserve harsh treatment, let them go. If you can’t correct their behavior without acting like Hitler, then they are doing nothing but sucking up resources and wasting the company money therefore they should just be fired. If your entire staff deserves this, then you need to take about 10 steps back and see what the real problem is. I’ve never been to keen to ‘cleaning house’ because the fact is that if this needs to be done then the managers are to blame and not the employees. But too often ‘cleaning house’ is the case because managers have too much pride to admit they failed and they blame it on everyone around them.

In a work environment your job as a leader is to coach, measure and provide feedback to your staff. The ‘work’ will get done if these steps are taken. I was at a company that was setting itself up for failure but the front line managers led their people the right way and they continued to achieve dramatic results despite the building falling apart around them and they found a way to keep a smile on their face during the process.

I guess I could go on with this topic for a while, but as I said I got stuck on the initial post and did some reflection. Look around you, are your managers really leading their people or merely standing on the sidelines waiting to point fingers when the game ends? If your in a leadership position and the chips are down, suck it up and start leading. Your people are looking up to you for the example.



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