Making an Annual Plan

Planning ahead is very important in sales. I suggest making an annual plan—one that is centered around activities with your Target, Must Have, and Priority accounts since those are important enough to justify spending a lot of time on. To ensure that these long-term campaigns with the greatest revenue potential don’t get pushed aside in the hustle to complete short-term tasks, you need to set blocks of time aside for them and schedule all less important activities around those blocks.

I like to use one of those great big wall calendars that I can write on with a dry-erase marker and where I can see all 365 days at once. You may prefer a computerized system or a day-timer. At the beginning of each year, I note the times I expect to make presentations to my Must Have, Priority, and Target Accounts. There may be one such presentation each month for each account. If so, I’m going to mark that twelve times for each one on the calendar.

I then note the predictable sales events and sales support activities that I know will happen during the year. These include trade shows and conventions, promotion campaigns, special seasonal offers, sales meetings, report due dates, and anything else of that nature that I have even approximate dates for.

After that, I plug in my vacation (yes—it’s important, too) and important personal dates like the kids’ school programs, wedding anniversaries, and others that I don’t want to forget in the rush of business. These may be non-sales activities, but they’re valuable, too, so they deserve a place in the plan. If you have laid out the first two categories of activities ahead of these, you won’t have to worry about accidentally being on a fishing trip in Manitoba when your top account’s contract comes up for renewal.

Here’s what goes on your annual plan:

1. Must Have Account Presentations

2. Target Account Presentations

3. Priority Account Presentations

4. Predictable Sales Events

5. Trade Shows

6. Seasonal Offers and Promotions

7. Report Due Dates

8.Vacation

9. Personal Dates



Advantages of Long-Term Planning

Having a long-term plan like this allows me to further schedule the time to prepare for each event. If I’m planning on making a presentation to a Target Account during the first week of May, I know I need to do the research the first week of April, write the proposal the second week, call the prospect for an appointment the third week, and rehearse the presentation the fourth week of April. And if there are other people in the company who will play a part in this pitch, they have a timetable to refer to as well.

Long-term plans get changed. That’s to be expected. In fact, I suggest that you informally review your annual plan every month to see just what adjustments need to be made. A year is a long time and lots of things can happen which may change some of your priorities. So change the plan to reflect those changes.

One of the often overlooked advantages of long-term planning (and even short-term) is that planning reduces stress. Few things cause your blood pressure to shoot up worse than “discovering” that a report is due tomorrow—and you need some information from a co-worker who left on vacation yesterday. I don’t know about you, but my life is full of surprises. Some of them are pleasant, but many of them aren’t. The bad thing about all of them, though, is that every surprise reminds me that I’m not in full control of my life—a major cause of stress. Planning at least gives me the illusion that I am somewhat the captain of my own ship. This lowers my general stress level and enables me to more calmly cope with the surprises of each day.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Negotiation Preparation

When it comes to negotiation, knowledge is power. That goes for all types of negotiation, win/win included. When both parties have information about each other, the entire negotiation process runs much more smoothly. The research you need to conduct for negotiation is much like the research you need to develop a proposal for a prospect—and it is just as important.

Remember that they will want to know the same kinds of things about you and your position, so be prepared to offer some of that information under the right circumstances. Conventional wisdom says that you should play your cards close to the vest but conventional wisdom is often wrong. Sometimes the exchange of information can be a transaction within a transaction that takes the edge off the larger negotiation.

Here’s a partial list of common types of information you should have before you enter your negotiations:
-What are the prospect’s apparent needs?
-Do any underlying needs exist?
-What are the alternatives to your proposal?
-What are the advantages/disadvantages of the alternatives?
-How do your competitors fit into the alternatives?
-What is the prospect’s financial position?
-How big a factor is the price?
-How strongly are they committed to the proposed idea?
-Are there other decision-influencers?
-What deadlines are they facing?
-Are they negotiating to win/win or win/lose?

You have many sources of information at your disposal. The prospect himself is the best one, of course, and if you’ve been listening to him as well as talking to him, you’ll have picked up the answers to many of these questions already. Don’t overlook your company’s files, either. A given prospect may be new to you but not to your company, since the salesperson who preceded you in the territory may well have had some contact with the prospect.

I’ve also always found it useful to get to know as many of my customers’ employees as I could. You certainly want to know Mr. Big’s secretary or assistant as well as the receptionist and telephone operator (if there is one). But don’t overlook his salespeople, clerks, shipping manager, buyers, purchasing manager, bookkeeper, etc. You never know when they’re going to reveal an interesting tidbit of information that you’ll find useful during negotiation.

Mr. Big’s competitors and other vendors are also important sources of information. A caution in this area, though: Always consider the source when judging the truthfulness of any bit of information. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, especially when it’s exaggerated by a partially-informed employee or a competitor with their own agenda. Just as information can be helpful in negotiation, disinformation can be disastrous. Anyone who has tried to make money in the stock market by trading based on “tips” can attest to that danger. Another word of caution: You don’t want to become known as a carrier of tales or rumors. Such a reputation can have very unpleasant far-reaching consequences. Your strict policy should be to have open ears and a closed mouth at all times.

Honesty in negotiation is important in another sense. Be honest with yourself about your own position. You tend to underestimate your own strengths and weaknesses because you are more aware of them than you are of the buyer’s. Remember, the buyer probably doesn’t know that you’re just one sale away from winning that trip to the Bahamas. If you reveal that little fact, you’ll probably pay for it by suffering through a more demanding negotiation.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Selling with an Open Mind

Everyone makes assumptions—whether they admit it or not—and salespeople are no different. Many times you’ll brush off a prospect based on suppositions without actually doing any research on them. And if a prospect doesn’t already use products like those that you and your competitors sell, you assume that there is a reason for it and you don’t try to sell them. Sometimes they do have a reason, but too often the situation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: since no one tries to sell them, they don’t buy. And since they don’t buy, you don’t make an effort to sell them. Oftentimes you make assumptions based on wrong information. You might judge the prospect based on their building or neighborhood and think that they don’t have much potential. But you never know what’s inside of that building’s walls until you walk through the door.

I used to travel a two-lane highway every Tuesday, driving between two good customers of mine who were located in towns about thirty miles apart. I sold television advertising at the time. Located about midway between my two customers on the side of that highway was a small farm house with a good-sized metal machine shed behind it. It looked like a dozen other farm houses with sheds just like it on that highway except that this house had a little sign out front that said “Energy Savers” on it. I probably drove by that house and its sign for six months.

Finally, my curiosity got the best of me and I was ahead of schedule, so I stopped to see just what “Energy Savers” was all about. I knocked on the front door of the house and got no answer. I walked around to the back and heard somebody whistling in the machine shed. When I went inside, I found a big beefy guy in overalls laying under a trailer working to get a piece of baling wire unwound from one of the axles. He didn’t look much like the “normal” television advertiser.

But it turned out he not only became a television advertiser, he became one of my largest accounts! Like many farmers, he had another business on the side. “Energy Savers” turned out to be an early provider of blown insulation, which offered an inexpensive, non-intrusive way to insulate the side walls and ceilings of existing homes. It was a perfect product to advertise on television and, because it carried such a high profit margin, this guy in the overalls and seed corn cap could afford to buy a lot of TV advertising from me.

If I had continued to judge the potential by the appearance of the prospect, I never would have made that first call on him. Remember, you can’t deposit assumptions in your bank account—only commissions.

Prospecting and qualifying shouldn’t be a chore to be avoided. It should be the beginning of the creative selling process where you open your mind to the possibilities and then try to make them happen. It’s one more adventure in selling.



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Made To Stick Is Made For Business

As a writer and speaker, I love stories. I love to tell them, to write them, and I love to read them. I also like to read about stories, what makes them work, how they excite our imagination, how we use them to enrich our communications. Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die is about all that and more.

Good salespeople, advertisers, marketers, PR professionals, even managers wanting to motivate their employees and entrepreneurs needing to excite their investors can make good use of the techniques described in this book. The authors achieved their goal, "...to help you make your ideas...understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact...." In other words, they help you make your ideas "stick."

As the author of several books about persuasion in business, I took away several great points:

"Belief counts for a lot, but belief isn't enough. For people to take action, they have to care."

"We appeal to their self-interest, but we also appeal to their identities--not only to the people they are right now but also to the people they would like to be."

"One of the worst things about knowing a lot, or having access to a lot of information, is that we're tempted to share it all."

Chip and Dan Heath dissect everything from urban legends to ad campaigns to explain what makes a message resonate in the audience's mind. In the process, they not only show the reader how to use successful strategies, they do it in an entertaining fashion that makes the book a pleasure to read.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Where's The Public In Public Relations?

Putting The Public Back In Public Relations

There is a lot of "why" but very little "how" in this book that bills itself as being about the transformation of the public relations industry brought about by Web 2.0. Page after page describes how social media are supposedly dictating new priorities and practices for PR professionals and their clients. While there is certainly much validity to the author's claims for the growing influence of social media, there is a distinct shortage of practical advice on how the reader is supposed to use it.

Unfortunately, the few recommendations the authors do make sound like they were written by PR practitioners (which, of course, they were). "Engage the bloggers" and "have conversations" are about as specific as the advice gets, with few examples of exactly what those bromides mean. Much is made of the need for one-on-one communication rather than scatter-shot distribution of press releases, but there is absolutely no explanation of how this is supposed to be done in a time-efficient manner.

What's really missing is a hint of how PR campaigns built on social media platforms are supposed to reach the great unwashed--the non-techie consumer (millions and millions of them) who never blog, tweet, or even look at the Facebook page their kids set up for them. Publicizing the latest chipset for tablets via Gizmodo may well be the way to go, but how do you sell Buicks online?


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Handbooks For Management Success

Sometimes you need to brush up on a single issue you're facing in your business. For just ninety-nine cents, you can turn to the Dynamic Manager's Handbooks for a quick refresher on sales, marketing, advertising, or several other disciplines that affect your company's bottom line.

I'm planning an even dozen for release this year. Here are the first seven:

Customer Relations: The Dynamic Manager's Handbook of Customer Satisfaction
Five Rules Of Advertising: The Dynamic Manager’s Handbook Of Small Business Advertising
Marketing In Cyberspace: The Dynamic Manager’s Handbook Of Social Media Marketing
Beat The Big Box: The Dynamic Manager’s Handbook Of Winning The Retail Battle
Promotion and Public Relations: The Dynamic Manager’s Handbook Of Alternative Ways To Build Your Business
First Call Selling: The Dynamic Manager’s Handbook On How To Make Sales On The First Call
Sales Promotions: The Dynamic Manager's Handbook Of 23 Ad Campaigns and Sales Promotions You Can Use

You can find the Dynamic Manager Handbooks for Kindle at Amazon.com or your Nook at BN.com.

Best of all, they're only ninety-nine cents!

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Keeping Your Prospect Listening

Anyone who has experience in public speaking can tell you that holding the audience’s interest throughout an entire presentation can be very difficult. Salespeople have an especially challenging public speaking job—they have to keep the prospect’s interest throughout their entire presentation, ensuring that the sales communication loop is completed, or it’s their sale that’s on the line. What makes keeping a prospect’s attention so difficult?

For one thing, the human brain is programmed to check for distractions—to actually seek them out—while it’s listening to you. This involuntary reflex probably dates back to the early days of prehistory when our ancestral prospect’s knuckles dragged the ground. As our proto-prospect walked across the savanna he was in constant danger from predators. He had to check out every sound, movement, or scent that came along, just like the deer that raises its head between every bite of grass.

When you’re making your pitch, your prospects are constantly tuning in and out of your sales presentation to check for other “dangers” lurking about the room. Unlike the deer, though, your prospects have a lot of other things on their minds. These subjects pop into their consciousness every time they momentarily stop listening to you. They may be staring right at your face, apparently hanging on your every word. In their heads though, there’s a monologue going on about what their spouse said last night at the dinner table, what they’re going to have for dinner tonight, how much traffic they can expect to encounter on the commute home, whether their car needs a tune-up, how large the balance on their credit card has become, and on and on. They tune in and out of your presentation while they’re also tuning in and out of that monologue in their head.

Your task is to constantly bring their attention back to your pitch. You have to continually recapture and hold their interest. Your presentation skills can help you do that.

Change is the key to holding interest. The mind attends to stimuli that change. The deer perks its ears up when a twig snaps in the background or the wind sweeps from another direction. Your prospect will tune back into your presentation when something—anything—in your delivery changes.

Work on varying the volume, pitch, and tone of your voice. We’ve all sat through presentations delivered in a monotone and know how deadly boring even the most interesting subject can be if it’s delivered in a consistent, constant drone. To avoid a monotone delivery, vary your volume, pitch, and tone.

Speak louder and softer, emphasizing different points in your presentation with different vocal volumes.

Practice speaking in higher and lower pitches—which convey excitement and intimacy among other emotions.

Work on different tones for different places in your presentation—authoritative, humorous, decisive, inquisitive.

Every time you change one of these factors, you get the prospect’s attention back on your pitch.

You can also vary the rate, intensity, and spacing of your speech. Some people seem to speak at machine-gun rate all the time. They wear their listeners out from trying to keep up. Believe it or not, it’s almost impossible to speak too slowly. The sentence that sounds to you like it’s never going to end will probably sound just fine to the listener.

Remember that the adrenaline pumping through your veins while you’re making a pitch will speed you up unless you make a strong conscious effort to control it. The intensity of your presentation can range from conversational to table-pounding, as long as it’s appropriate to the points you’re trying to emphasize.

And don’t forget to pause. An intentional silence will bring a listener back to you every time. It will also heavily underscore the point that precedes it.

Use your body appropriately. It’s almost impossible to stay enthusiastic and keep a high energy level while you’re slouched in a chair. If you can, stand for some or all of your presentation. Moving about the room, even if it’s just a few feet, will help keep the prospect focused on you and what you’re saying. If you have to sit down while you’re making your pitch (and you do, most of the time), sit on the middle of the seat and don’t let your body touch the back of the chair. Keep your arms away from the armrests so you don’t slouch to one side. The very act of sitting erect will make you more energetic and interesting.

Good posture, whether sitting or standing, gives you better breath control, too. This puts more energy into your voice and helps you speak more clearly.

You should make lots of gestures whether you’re sitting, pacing, or standing still. Gestures re-capture interest and provide strong non-verbal emphasis to important points. To help free your hands for use during the pitch, don’t fold them in your lap or on the desk. And don’t put a pen or other object in your fingers automatically. You’ll have a tendency to “fidget” with it if you’re not using it, so put it back in your pocket when you’re done with it.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Closing Clearly

When it comes time to close your sale, you have many different options that will make the close a positive experience for both you and your prospects. It just so happens that the closing technique I prefer is also the simplest. It’s the direct question. It’s my favorite because it is clear and direct, and that is always my goal when making a presentation. Most prospects appreciate this type of close because it’s the most honest. The direct question doesn’t try to confuse them and gives them credit for being informed, capable business people who can reach a quick, firm decision. Due to the simplicity of the direct question close, I don’t find myself worrying about my next line while presenting and I can truly concentrate on what the prospect is saying.

My favorite direct question is, “Would you like to make this investment today?” Since I’m usually selling a fairly expensive consulting service proposal that will pay off in the long run for my clients, the term “investment” suits the offering very well.

I also use the imperative “today” because I’m trying to get a commitment from the prospect now—not later. That word serves as a signal to them that it’s “yes or no” time. If you want to use the direct question method, find words of your own that fit your product or service line.
Some other direct questions you might try are
-Would you like to do business today?
-Can I order this for you now?
-Do you want this plan?
-Are we in agreement on the deal?


The direct question needs to be short, sweet, and to the point. It should not have any “wiggle room” in it for the prospect to use to back out of the commitment. It should be strictly a “yes or no” proposition. If the prospect wants to say “maybe” to a “yes or no” question, they have to work at it.

It’s important that the words you choose for the direct question close be your words. They have to seem natural to you when you say them and natural to the prospect when they’re coming out of your mouth. If you seldom use twenty-dollar words in normal conversation, don’t stick any into your closing question. If you’re a distinguished-looking professional man or woman, stay away from an MTV vocabulary.

You should write down your closing question (and a few variations) and read them out loud to see how they sound. You’ll probably be able to tell pretty quickly if those words belong in your mouth.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

You May Hear Your Prospect, But Are You Listening?

Communication is a two-way street. It is a two-action process between two parties. Just like other types of inter-personal communication, sales communication involves taking turns speaking and listening. Person A listens to what Person B has to say, and then Person B listens to person A’s response. A loop of communication is completed. And both parts of the loop are equally important! In my consulting practice, for example, it is never just a salesperson’s speaking ability that I discuss, but their communication skills.

Unfortunately, perfect communication doesn't come easy much of the time. In fact, I’m sure you can probably identify plenty of instances where the communications loop isn’t completed. Your spouse is talking to you about the necessity of squeezing the toothpaste tube strictly from the bottom, but your mind is on what your best customer was complaining about today, so you don’t “hear” a word that’s being said. The sound physically strikes your ear drums. Your neural system transmits it to your brain, but it doesn’t register because your brain is busy with something else. And so you have the same “conversation” the next morning.

Or your sales manager is going over (for at least the tenth time) the pricing strategies for your fall line but you’re busy mentally calculating the effects of the new pricing on the sales incentive payouts and, besides, you’ve heard this spiel nine times already. He’s talking and you’re hearing, but you are not listening. There’s a big difference.

It happens all the time. One of my favorite examples occurs when you use that automatic conversation opener, “How are you?” Most of the time, you’ll get an automatic answer like, “I’m fine. How are you?”

Every once in a while, though, the answer is far from automatic: “I’m terrible, my dog died yesterday and I’m just heartbroken about it.” But you’re still in auto-answer mode, so you come back with, “I’m just great, too. I know you’re busy, so let’s get right into the presentation.” I’ve done it and I bet you’ve heard it happen, too. You think you’re paying strict attention—but you’re not listening to the other person.

Most people think that a salesperson’s job is to talk. Even worse, many salespeople think that. And salespeople who believe that their job is to talk the prospect into submission then fail to complete the feedback loop by listening to what their prospect is saying. And they wonder why their closing ratio is so low.

I won’t belabor the point. Just remember that more sales are made with your ears (and what’s between them) than your mouth.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.