As proponents of technology, salespeople will always gravitate to the tools that enable us to communicate more effectively.  This is true of virtually every modern communication system such as telephones, facsimile, email, web, or text messaging.  In many respects, sales have driven adoption of these tools across a broader spectrum of business.  In the document output industry however, where the core product is the printed word, we often neglect a basic form of communication - the personal touch of a handwritten note.

To be clear, there is no way or reason to replace new methods of communication.  They are often much more functional and effective than handwritten letters would ever be, and their use is essential to many business operations.  Instead, the reason to consider a handwritten note to a prospect or customers is that it entails a sincere interest in the recipient.  This interest can’t be denied because, regardless of the content, you actually spent the time to write it, stuff it in an envelope, and then mail it.  Most people will appreciate this and remember that you took the time to write it.

The obvious times to send a card are when a customer has made a purchase, or someone referred you to another company.  A thank you card is a great way to show your appreciation.  Less obvious are the times such as after an impromptu meeting with a key decision maker while cold calling.  For example, you are cold calling an office building and you happen to meet a business owner who takes a few minutes to talk with you about their business.  What better way to cement the new relationship than with a card expressing your thanks for their time?

Still, there are other ways in which you can utilize a personal card besides saying thanks.  Like duct tape, a handwritten note has many uses and applications, particularly for the salesperson seeking to build long term relationships with their customers.  One use is to write a card after a service call (or series of service calls) to ask the customer if they are satisfied with the result, and to let them know you are concerned about their business.  A letter beginning with, “I was reviewing your account and saw that you had a service call yesterday…” would have a profound effect on any customer.

A handwritten note is an excellent prospecting tool as well, especially for warming a new potential customer.  It sounds a bit cliché, but the number of salespeople writing cards to prospects is so few today that it will definitely garner the attention of your prospects.  The key in this type of note is to make it relevant to their company.  Send a card that references an article that you read about their company, and how it could relate to your business.  You could also consider a card of congratulations.  For example, many business newspapers display employee promotions for local companies, or if a company has recently been awarded a big contract.  Heartfelt congratulations for their success will always be reciprocated.

One underutilized way to use cards is to ask for your prospects help after you lose a sale.  A card like this asks the customer to give advice on what you could have done differently to win their business.  A card that reads something like, “So that I can improve my sales skills, is there anything I could have done differently to win your business?”  The effects of this type of card are so strong that they can change the course of the lost sale, and cause the customer to re-evaluate their decision.  If this happens once in your career, it will be worth every card you had sent.

In summary, technology is always improving the speed and manner in which we communicate.  Professional salespeople must adapt to these new technologies in order to remain competitive and in sync with their customers.  However, don’t neglect the obvious - people buy from people, and that writing a basic, handwritten note of appreciation will put you above all other competitors and be a foundation upon which you can build a relationship with your clients.

Need more help writing a personal note?  Read Business Notes by Florence Isaacs.

Jeff Pitney is a long time veteran of the document imaging industry and has worked in both sales and sales management capacities for manufacturers and independent dealers alike. Jeff also runs Pitney Application Design, building websites and custom integrations for web-based solutions.

Ask any owner or manager in the typical document imaging company and they will tell you that they spend enormous amount of time and money developing the concept of ‘solution selling’ within their sales teams.  From hired consultants to expensive courseware, they look for ways to change the make up of their sales staff from the stereotypical used-car salesperson (like Herb Tarlek on WKRP in Cincinnati), to a consultative sales professional.  This is the second in a 2-part series about how you can develop solution selling prospecting skills within your organization.

In the first part of this series, we developed a list of targeted accounts by reducing the total population of businesses in our area down to a select few.  We did this by looking for companies that have the need for a solution sale and receptive to the concept.  It is also essential that during this process you are willing to say no to companies that do not see value in you as a sales person, and are only interested in competing on price.  Finally, the process of reducing the total number of prospects we targeted did change the type of prospects we were working to win.

Part 2 - Create Trust Relationships

In part 2, we are going to go beyond the selection of the prospect to the actual prospecting of the account.  As you distill your list of targeted accounts you should be working to develop relationships within these organizations.  The operative word in this area of prospecting is relationship, because the level of relationship within your accounts is a determining factor in how successful you are in completing a solution sale.  Approach prospects as if, without warning, you were selected by NASA to fly the space shuttle after a 1-hour training course.  If this happened, you would listen intently and then ask a lot of questions, and take detailed notes.  You would also spend every moment of your time with that person thinking up new questions to ask so as to cover all possible outcomes.  When you do this in a customer meeting, you will create what is known as a Trust Relationship with your contacts.

Trust Relationships are nothing more than a connection with your contact that is based on mutual trust.  While personal relationships with contacts can come in all forms, Trust Relationships are much more clearly defined.  For instance, maybe you have a personal connection with your customer in that you both play golf or both like the same sports team.  These types of connections are good if they happen naturally.  However, a Trust Relationship is completely independent of this personal connection.  Some argue that you can’t have a Trust Relationship without the personal connection.  In other words, if the customer doesn’t like you they won’t buy from you.  While it is true that people will sometimes buy from people they like, more often they will buy from someone they trust, and you don’t have to be friends in order for them to trust that you are the best person to advise them about their document output strategy.

A Trust Relationship requires four ingredients: time, honesty, attention to detail, and follow through.  All of these ingredients are controlled by the sales person, and all are the foundation for the consultative process moving forward.  If any one of these items is missing you are almost assured that the sales process will break down.  Alternatively, if you develop these aspects within your customer relationships, they will come to see you as the subject-matter expert, and rely on your expertise to make decisions about how they should handle their document imaging systems.  In effect, you become their go-to person for all questions relating to document management - they trust you.

Another aspect of the Trust Relationship is that you will discover problems the customer has in managing their document output devices, as well as their entire document workflow.  From simple billing or service issues to larger systemic dysfunction you will see or hear much of the internal workings of the organization from your primary contact.  This is your opportunity to learn about the pains the customer has, and over time, how to heal them.  Your efforts will eventually lead you to act as a consultant within the customer’s organization, rewarding you with sales and profit and providing the customer with a resource upon which they can depend.

Summary

Prospecting is the most important aspect to the solution sale.  Why?  As detailed in this series, who you are prospecting will determine what the sales cycle, revenue, and gross profit you will achieve.  So begin the process by eliminating the ‘Shady Hills Rest Home’ from your list of targeted accounts.  Instead, focus your efforts on accounts that will value you for your knowledge and expertise.  Then begin to create Trust Relationships with these accounts.  Over time, you can display to them your honesty, attention to detail, and follow through in managing the customer-vendor relationship.  Finally, when the opportunity comes to compete for their business, they will call on you to act as a consultant to their business.  They will view you as a solution to their problems.

Jeff Pitney is a long time veteran of the document imaging industry and has worked in both sales and sales management capacities for manufacturers and independent dealers alike. Jeff also runs Pitney Application Design, building websites and custom integrations for web-based solutions.

In a recent article in ImageSource titled Top 10 Industry Trends, authored by John Mancini, the President of AIIM, outlines what he believes to be the top 10 drivers within the DMS space… Being in the business of documents, I found the article compelling. Tonight we discuss the number 3 influencer in the DMS space this year:

3. Document and content management supplier consolidation driven by the movement of ECM to the infrastructure stack.  Enough said.

Wow, short and sweet. This is fairly cut and dry… While this references consolidation of vendors, however, I wanted to focus on the movement of DMS into the “infrastructure stack”.

Corporate IT departments build budgets around their expected costs for the year related to various business metrics, namely expected maintenance costs, on-going projects, etc. Infrastructure is a term used to refer to those pieces and parts of the IT landscape it will take to keep the day-to-day business operational.

Infrastructure can encompass various line items depending upon how a company wants to classify it, but for our purposes we will consider infrastructure to be an expected and budgetted cost each year. By moving the DMS solution to the “infrastructure stack” it now gets ranked right up there with the Exchange server or Line of Business (LOB)  system. That’s pretty important, let me tell you.

As a cost related to infrastructure you increase your importance to day-to-day operations and decrease the likelihood of being killed like a special project might during cost-cutting initiatives. Additionally, you might even consider that infrastructure issues are now assigned a place and priority within the corporate helpdesk ladder, so there is a technical person watching to ensure the solution stays operational (I could write a whole book on failed projects due to lack of ownership by IT).

With DMS moving to the infrastructure, it is getting more scrutiny with IT and business professionals; they are becoming more sophisticated. Your solutions can’t be second rate and must play with the rest of the infrastructure! Most CIO’s and Directors won’t even review a solution that isn’t blessed by their LOB vendor’s approved list, that is a HUGE strike against you already… unless you have strategies to work around this, like image-enablement without custom code (for instance).

Be prepared for a tougher sales process. The realignment is helping to drive some sales, but competition is stiff since every dealer out there wants a piece of the action… so if you aren’t careful and practice those solutional sales techniques you could become just another dog in the dogpile.

From personal experience, I can tell you that we are still seeing resistance to this realignment, but thankfully the education process is occurring and more executives see DMS as a need rather than a want. 

The key is to understand DMS is becoming more important, your customers are becoming more sophisticated, and (now more than ever) you need to show how your solution brings value to their business problem.