About Craig Lowder: Craig Lowder is a Founder and President of the Main Spring Sales Group, a specialized client acquisition consultancy focused on creating significant, predictable, and sustainable sales growth for successful Financial Advisors, Consultants, and Business Leaders, making a 6-7 Figure Income seeking a strategic senior-level sales executive on a part-time, contract basis to develop and execute sales strategy, including sales process development, performance management systems, and ensure sales execution. With a unique blend of foundational sales science & real-world experience, Craig partners with businesses and advisors to transform their sales trajectory, ensuring consistent, measurable growth in every endeavor. Craig has worked with over 50 companies in various industries, from retail to manufacturing, financial services to business services. He has increased first-year annual sales by 22 to 142 percent for every client. Craig is the author of two highly-rated books, Smooth Selling Forever and Trusted Advisor Confidential℠. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Craig.
In this episode, Nancy and Craig discuss the following:
- The secret of growing a company to 142%
- Shift to virtual Selling and digital self-serve
- Challenges in virtual Selling: Adapting to new technology, maximizing efficiency, and reducing the cost of sales
- From cold calls to warm introductions: Increasing touchpoints with prospects
- Overcoming challenges such as wrong people in wrong seats, lack of clearly defined sales metrics, and absence of sales processes
- Keys to building an effective sales team
- Importance of ongoing learning, open communication, mentoring, and recognition and reward systems
Key Takeaways:
- We are in a virtual selling and a digital self-serve world; the old days of in-person meetings have gone.
- The virtual meetings that are being held are shorter and more on point.
- The definition of cold calling nowadays is getting a list of names and numbers and just banging the phone and calling people.
- Too many salespeople give up after two or three times, and studies show it may take six or seven outreaches.
“There are a lot of opportunities for enhancement or growth in the company. A lot of it gets down to having a detailed sales growth plan that everyone is following, making sure that there are defined sales processes that everyone follows, which shorten sales cycles, improve conversion rates, making sure that there are sales success standards present, that are activity as well as results-based, and that there are targets which generally increases the level of activity that’s taking place, making sure that organizations have an ideal client profile, understanding the difference between a crow and a pheasant. So, they invest their time in marketing, lead generation, and lead conversion on those opportunities that are the best fit for them. And then finally, and most importantly, ensuring that they have the right people in their sales organization in the right seats.” – CRAIG
“The reality is, and I believe I said it in the article, there is absolutely no justification for a cold call. With all the technology available today, whether it’s LinkedIn, the focus of prospecting should be on getting introduced to the individual in the organization we’re targeting to warm up the call. So, there’s a likelihood that an individual will either return your call or respond to an email. I would say it continues because of the amount of, and I hate to say it, noise that’s out there digitally. If you remember back when you and I were doing this several decades ago, the studies were showing it took, you know, six to seven interactions for you to begin to develop a level of trust. Today, because of all that noise out there, it’s taking twice that number of touches before somebody’s willing to trust you. So, I think that the trend is that we need to be in more frequent touch with our prospects. The conversations, the emails need to be shorter with a very defined agenda and take a waypoint for the listener, the reader.” – CRAIG
“In my book, Smooth Selling Forever, I outline 12 reasons why significant predictable and sustainable sales growth will not happen unless you overcome 12 challenges. The top four include the wrong people in the wrong seats. We know that in a virtual selling environment, the role definitions, the makeup of the sales team’s skill sets, and experience have changed. Third was not having clearly defined sales metrics, activities, and results. The focus is typically on the results, but we must understand that results are lagging success indicators. We really need to determine the leading indicators of success, which are activities, their calls, their opportunities discovered, proposals or quotes that go out the door, and how healthy our sales funnel is, just at a very basic level. The second of the top four are no defined sales processes. I’m a firm advocate that you need to have clearly defined sales processes, which are technically the documentation of best practices of those responsible for the Selling. And there are at least three, if not more. One, new customer, new project. Two, existing customers, new project. And it could be upsold, cross-sell. The third is renewals or, re-business or reorder business. And they all have different paths that require different steps and may involve different people. But the bottom line in building sales processes is that the sales process needs to be congruent with your target audience’s buying process.” – CRAIG
Connect with Craig Lowder:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craiglowder/
- Smooth Selling Forever: https://www.smoothsellingforever.com/
- Personal: https://www.craiglowder.com/
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
- Twitter:https://twitter.com/oneofakindsales
- Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/One-Of-A-Kind-Sales-304978633264832/
- Website:https://oneofakindsales.com
- Phone: 908-879-2911
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ncalabrese/
- Email: leads@oneofakindsales.com
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today, and it always starts with a human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Craig Lowder, author of Smooth Selling Forever, a sales effectiveness expert with a 40-year track record of helping owners of small and mid-sized businesses achieve their sales goals. He’s also the founder and president of MainSpring Sales Group, which assists companies in need of a strategic sales leader on a part-time contract or project basis to develop and execute a sales strategy, develop sales process and performance management teams, and ensure sales execution. Craig has worked with over 60 companies and increased first year annual sales from 21 to 142%. Welcome to the show, Craig.
Craig Lowder: Well, thank you, Nancy. It’s an honor to be online with you here and have the opportunity to speak to your audience. [1:27]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Okay. So how do you grow a company to 142%? I mean, that number is just, you know, unheard of.
Craig Lowder: Well, there are a lot of opportunities for enhancement or growth in the company. And a lot of it gets down to having a detailed sales growth plan that everyone is following, making sure that they are defined sales processes that everyone follows, which shorten sales cycles, improves conversion rates making sure that there are sales success standards present, that are activity as well as results based, and that there are targets which generally increases the level of activity that’s taking place, making sure that organizations have an ideal client profile, understanding the difference between a crow and a pheasant. So, they invest their time in both marketing, lead generation, lead conversion on those opportunities that are the best fit for them. And then finally, and most importantly, ensuring that they have the right people in their sales organization in the right seats. And since COVID, that has changed dramatically. [2:53]
Nancy Calabrese: How so?
Craig Lowder: We are in a virtual selling and a digital self-serve world. The old days of in-person meetings has gone by the wayside, not entirely, but on-site meetings are less frequent than they used to be. Those meetings have been converted to virtual meetings. [3:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep.
Craig Lowder: like we’re doing right now, Zoom, Google Meets, Teams, etc. And many of the past telephone conversations are being converted into virtual meetings. And the interesting dynamic here, Nancy, is the buyers are driving this, not the sellers. I was privileged to be interviewed by Forbes a couple of years ago. And it was right before a McKinsey report came out and what was happening in the world. And the contributing editor of Forbes goes, oh, you’re pretty good. Forbes said the same thing that you are. Excuse me. Yes, Forbes said the same thing that you did. And I said, no, I said the same thing they did. I’m happy that I’m in line with them. And what they were saying, Nancy, is buyers do not want to meet with their sellers in person, they would prefer to meet virtually. You say, well, why is that? The net of it is they’re able to make better informed decisions. How so? Well, they’re now able to engage more individuals, more stakeholders in the qualification process. The meetings that are being held are shorter. and more on point. And in fact, a McKinsey study showed that in today’s world, a good portion of the buyers are willing to make million dollars plus decisions without ever having met in person with their seller. [5:06]
Nancy Calabrese: You know, it’s funny you bring that up because when COVID hit, all I heard, well, not all, but for many people, they complained they couldn’t sell over the phone, or they couldn’t sell virtually. And I, you know, I’ve been doing this virtually for decades. So, I know a sale can be done, you know, the way in which we’re speaking right now. And I think it was a cop out for many sales reps. You know, you have to kind of go with the flow. What do you think about that?
Craig Lowder: I agree with you 100% Nancy. You know, we all get comfortable in the status quo in what we’ve been doing for years. And you combine that with new technology that people haven’t been trained on how to use. They don’t have the right camera. They don’t have the right lighting. They don’t have the right audio. They’re not sure how to use virtual backgrounders. They’re not sure how to share screens etc. So yes, it becomes a cop-out. And the reality is, and I found in my own business, I was able to have more sales meetings in a day, basically back-to-back to back-to-back, with five to ten minutes in between meetings. And my cost of business, my cost of sales, went down dramatically. [6:29]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, the bottom line is you can achieve more doing virtual selling than if you had to hit a car and go, you know, to a site. And even, you know, virtual networking becomes more and more efficient that way. So, I’m in your corner for sure. So, years ago, I was on your website, you wrote a blog that caught my attention, the science and art of prospecting, and that’s music to my ears, because it’s all we do. You wrote that in 21. Has anything changed since then?
Craig Lowder: I don’t think dramatically, Nancy. The reality is, and I believe I said it in the article, there is absolutely no justification for a cold call. With all the technology that’s available today, whether it’s LinkedIn, the focus of prospecting should be on getting introduced to the individual in the organization that we’re targeting to warm up the call. So, there’s a likelihood that individual will either return your call or respond to an email. I would say it continues because of the amount of, and I hate to say it, noise that’s out there digitally. If you remember back when you and I were doing this several decades ago, the studies were showing it took, you know, six to seven interactions for you to begin to develop a level of trust. Today, because all that noise out there, it’s taking twice that number of touches before somebody’s willing to trust you. So, I think that what the trend is, we need to be in more frequent touch with our prospects. The conversations, the emails need to be shorter with a very defined agenda and take a waypoint for the listener, the reader. [8:40]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Well, I mean, I want to be mindful. Cold calling still works. It’s just another marketing channel that should be mixed in with every other channel that you’re doing to reach out. Because if you’re not picking up the phone, somebody else is, and you’re probably leaving money on the table. What are your thoughts on that?
Craig Lowder: I Yeah, when you talk about cold calling, and I think it gets down to definition, cold calling, I get a list of names and numbers and I just start banging the phone and calling people. The reality is it’s no longer a cold call if you’ve done your research on that organization or that individual and can specifically state some observations that you’ve had by reading the publicly available information. I don’t consider that to be a cold call or a blind call. And the old studies are showing cold calling is two to 3% conversion rate. I’m finding in the business that I do, if I do my research, I’m getting probably close to three out of four people that are responding to a call and or an email. And we do have to be more persistent. Too many salespeople give up after two or three times of someone not. [10:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. That is true.
Craig Lowder: not responding and studies show it to may take six or seven outreaches to them with different value propositions before that individual will finally return your call respond to your email. [10:16]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep, I agree with you completely. So why do business owners struggle in creating significant, predictable, and sustainable sales growth in the business?
Craig Lowder: That’s a great question, Nancy. I’ll give you a little detail around, but the high level is, because we are comfortable in our status quo, in building our future growth, we’re always looking in the rear-view mirror, in trying to leverage what has worked in the past. And when it’s not working, we kind of scratch our heads and say, geez, what’s going on here? This has worked for decades. So, in my book, Smooth Selling Forever, I outline 12 reasons why significant predictable and sustainable sales growth is not going to happen unless you overcome 12 challenges. The top four include wrong people, wrong seats. We know in a virtual selling environment the role definitions the makeup of the sales team skillsets, experience have changed. Third was not having clearly defined sales metrics, activities as well as results. The focus typically is on the results but must understand results are lagging indicators of success. We really need to determine what are the leading indicators of success, which are activities their calls, their opportunities discovered, there’s proposals or quotes that go out the door, and how healthy is our sales funnel, just at a very basic level. The second of the top four are no defined sales processes. I’m a firm advocate that you need to have clearly defined sales processes, which are technically the documentation of best practices of those individuals that are responsible for doing the selling. And there are at least three, if not more. One, new customer, new project. Two, existing customer, new project. And it could be upsold, cross-sell. And third is renewals or re-business or reorder business. And they all have different paths that require different steps and may involve different people. But the bottom line in building sales processes is that the sales process needs to be congruent with your target audience’s buying process. So, you need to start by putting your buyer’s cap on and understand how they go about making an informed buying decision and then build your sales process to how they buy. And first and foremost, most companies, in fact, I haven’t run into one in five years now that have had a detailed, documented sales plan for growth because they’re viewing their business highly transactionally. [13:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well, how long does it take to develop a plan like that?
Craig Lowder: Well, by putting all the elements together, because if you’re looking, Nancy, at what we need to do, is number one, we need to develop the plan. We need to surround that plan with the sales enablement systems that support the plan, and we need to make sure that we’ve got the right people in the right seats. And when I talk to small and mid-size business owners, I say, this will typically take 60 to 90 days envision that there’s probably going to be another two to three months break in period before you see the proverbial hockey stick in terms of increased sales. And typically, I get the question back, well can you do it faster than that? And my response is, I can, but you can’t because this is interactive, and you’ve got a business to run and time and time again it takes 60 to 90 days although they say we want to get this done in four weeks. [14:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. So, what are the keys to building an effective sales team? What’s important?
Craig Lowder: Well, I have my top 10. Number one is you have to start by organizing correctly. Right people, right seats. You need to, two, is define the roles for each position in the sales department. What are the responsibilities of that role? What are they going to be held accountable for? What authority are you going to give them? And once you define what an A player looks like, you can then say, okay, what experience, what skills, and what personality traits am I looking for? So, it’s really building a roadmap to vet sales prospects as they come into the door. Third is creating a hiring system. Most companies do not have a sales hiring system. The larger companies who have an HR department may have a hiring system or process in place, but sales are different. And I’m working with two clients right now where that’s the case. The steps are different, the people involved that are different, etc. Fourth is having a documented onboarding plan. No company that I know of has a documented onboarding plan more than, let me pat you on the rump. We’ve hired you because of your experience. Go kill them tiger or they have a one-day, two-day, three-day orientation period. And having a documented onboarding plan, there’s typically a 30, 60, 90-day objectives to ensure that is done effectively. Bottom line, why do we do this? We want to find out right away if we’ve hired the right people, and we want to bring them up to competency as quickly as they can. Five is establish sales processes and sales success standards, which I just mentioned a while ago. [16:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Craig Lowder: Most companies don’t have that. I always, six, as I ask the question, does your sales incentive compensation plan drive the desired behavior? And the answer is one of two. Gee, that’s a great question. I’ve never thought about that. I think so, I hope so, but the reality, it’s not, because compensation plans need to be reviewed annually based on the sales growth objectives of the organization Seven, you need to have ongoing open communication up and down the line. We need to function as a team. Regular mentoring and monitoring are very important to ensuring that each member of the sales team meets their stated objectives. 10th, and I’ve alluded, or 9th, I’ve alluded to this, you need to create a team environment focused on winning. Too many companies are totally focused on the individual, and you find that individuals are in competition with other individuals. The best practices that are being developed are coming from ongoing learning in the marketplace, because as we know, the marketplace is dynamic. And 10th is to have a recognition and reward system. As much as we like to think that sales are always the primary driver, in many cases, it’s not. It’s about being recognized. It’s about being promoted. It’s about being given the opportunity to train some of our peers. It’s about giving a presentation outside the company, et cetera, et cetera. [18:15]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Wow. You know, Craig, you clearly love selling, so do I. I’m afraid our time is up. We could go on forever. How come my people find you?
Craig Lowder: Well, thank you for asking, Nancy. The best way to reach me is via my email, which is Craig, C-R-A-I-G, at smooth, S-M-O-O-T-H, selling, S-E-L-L-I-N-G, forever. Smoothsellingforever.com. Or you can call me directly at 630-649-4943.
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. I love the phone call. Pick up the phone people. Craig, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. And you know, we could have spent a heck of a lot more time. I hope you’ll come back in the future. We can kind of dive into some other sales topics. And for everyone out there, take advantage of Craig’s expertise. Don’t be afraid to pick up that phone folks and make it a great sales day. [19:28]
