A returned call is one of the hardest things to get today in 2012.
Why? Our recent polling of clients and friends shows that only 1 person in 10 likes or wants to receive a voicemail! Does that extend to getting calls too? YES. People just don’t like phone calls. Telemarketers and overzealous sales people as well as automated calls ruined the phone.

So what do people want? 90% of them want an email, or if they know you, a text.

What can you do? Spend your time getting to know e-mail addresses instead of phone numbers. Stop calling and stop leaving voicemails until you know how people want to be reached.

How do you do it? Getting an e-mail these days is very easy. If you call a prospect and get a receptionist, ask her how to spell the name of the person you are trying to reach. Then ask if the e-mail is first initial.last name@theircompany.com If the receptionist will not tell you, google! Look up @theircompany.com and see what comes up, as most companies standardize their email address format.

We all used to use the phone and in person to do business. Now I cringe when the phone rings. Silly? Yes, but it happened. We need to adapt fast and ask people how they like to communicate to avoid leaving voicemails that are never returned.

-Written by Erik Darmstetter, Business Growth Expert at Salesby5

The post The Death of Voicemail appeared first on Sales By 5.

After weeks of toiling away at codes and photoshopping our team into perfection, we’re proud to reveal a new SalesBy5.com! We scrubbed the parts of our site that make it hard to understand what we do and created new bits to highlight our strengths as sales consultants. Our expert marketing and sales consultants empower your sales team. Our proven sales workshops give our clients the best tools for growth. We attend top growth conferences annually to learn the most successful sales and marketing techniques in the world. Don’t believe us? Read local San Antonio and national Fortune 500 testimonials.

Selling is the transfer of trust. CEO Erik Darmstetter and CIO Nan Palmero coach our clients’ staff on what behaviors and communications build trust (aka. “sell, cause happiness, meet people’s needs”), and how to stop the behaviors that lose trust (aka. “un-sell, cause anger, frustrate others”). One of Erik’s most popular sales workshops is Sales and Dating: The Same Rules Apply (because sales doesn’t end at the office).

To find out more about us, or to receive 10 minutes of brainstorming as our gift to you, call us at 210-403-3916, or email at info@salesby5.com info@salesby5.com.

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During my first week as an intern at Sales by 5, the largest task assigned to me was secret shopping for a client. What is secret shopping? It’s when someone is hired to pose as a customer in order to evaluate the quality of the goods or services provided.

When some hear about this way of gathering information they see it as “tricking” their employees. However, it is a tool to measure the quality of service that is truly being provided to its customers. From past and recent experiences secret shopping, I can tell you that the level of honesty on the services provided from a company increases when they do not know you are representing a firm, and believe you are an everyday customer.

Secret shopping is also a useful marketing tool when trying to gather information about a company’s competitors and the consistency of customer service that’s being provided by a company. Now with Sales by 5, I saw it used to measure the effectiveness of sales training. This strategy helped the employees understand where they were, and where they needed to be. So is secret shopping useful? We can say it is increasing positive experiences with company’s customer base.

Kendall DeWall
PR Producer

The post The Benefits of Secret Shopping appeared first on Sales By 5.

Brad Hams talks about incentive plans, identifying the right metrics and reporting more from the bottom up.

Taped by Nan Palmero, CIO Salesby5.

The post Fortune Leadership – Brad Hams Part 2 appeared first on Sales By 5.

Dr. Peter Diamandis, Founder, The X Prize Foundation
The genius of solving problems unconventionally.

Taped by Nan Palmero, CIO Salesby5.

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Daniel Pink’s teachings: What really motivates people to do great work? When you reward behavior you get more of it…SOMETIMES!  If a task involves only mechanical skill, bonuses work: Higher pay=better performance. But once the task calls for “even rudimentary cognitive skill”: Higher pay=poorer performance.

Once you pay people enough to keep them motivated, there are 3 enduring motivators:

1) AUTONOMY | Human beings engage when there’s self-direction, management will never get you engagement. If you want to motivate people, give autonomy on 4 areas:

A) Time             B) Technique          C) Team          D) Task

Once a new category is created, the path to commoditization is swift and brutal without continually engaged innovators. At Facebook, the company hires the talent, the talent picks the team. FedEx has certain days that exist to only generate ideas, not to implement them.

2) MASTERY | Have a to-do list… and a TO-DON’T list. Don’t do things that suck energy and kill motivation. The biggest single motivator in a person’s work: Making progress in one’s work (and being able to measure it). http://iDoneThis.com is a mechanism for feedback. It sends you an email, you respond on what you did that day. It’s free.

3) PURPOSE | “Increase the metabolism of employee feedback.” More often, more quickly, real-time. People are yearning for a sense of context of WHY they’re doing what they’re doing. Have 2 fewer conversations about “how,” give 2 more conversations about “why.”

The post Motivating People to do Great Work appeared first on Sales By 5.

Daniel Pink’s teachings: What really motivates people to do great work? When you reward behavior you get more of it…SOMETIMES!  If a task involves only mechanical skill, bonuses work: Higher pay=better performance. But once the task calls for “even rudimentary cognitive skill”: Higher pay=poorer performance.

Once you pay people enough to keep them motivated, there are 3 enduring motivators:

1) AUTONOMY | Human beings engage when there’s self-direction, management will never get you engagement. If you want to motivate people, give autonomy on 4 areas:

A) Time             B) Technique          C) Team          D) Task

Once a new category is created, the path to commoditization is swift and brutal without continually engaged innovators. At Facebook, the company hires the talent, the talent picks the team. FedEx has certain days that exist to only generate ideas, not to implement them.

2) MASTERY | Have a to-do list… and a TO-DON’T list. Don’t do things that suck energy and kill motivation. The biggest single motivator in a person’s work: Making progress in one’s work (and being able to measure it). http://iDoneThis.com is a mechanism for feedback. It sends you an email, you respond on what you did that day. It’s free.

3) PURPOSE | “Increase the metabolism of employee feedback.” More often, more quickly, real-time. People are yearning for a sense of context of WHY they’re doing what they’re doing. Have 2 fewer conversations about “how,” give 2 more conversations about “why.”

The post Motivating People to do Great Work appeared first on Sales By 5.

False:

Image is everything
Social media is a fad
Water and cold air cause colds
Marketing is a noun
Our only focus should be on how to sell
We need to know what to do

True:

Benefit to the customer is everything
Social media will grow and change
Germs cause colds
Marketing is a verb
We also need to focus on not un-selling
We need to know what not to do: the rest is a white canvas and we are the artist

Erik Darmstetter

The post Sales: True or False appeared first on Sales By 5.