Is Proxima Sales the right vendor for your launch phase?

At Proxima Sales, we pride ourselves on delivering high-value sales services to companies in growth. Whether you're in startup, launching a new product, or refreshed after a rebrand, if you're expanding your sales channels we want to help.

That help will take a very specific form. We've been successful for 15 years by knowing what we can do well, and doing just that. What Proxima Sales offers your company is support for revenue growth in your launch phase, by taking sales tasks off your desks and being accountable for results. We bill our work on commission, taking only a percentage of the new growth we add to your bottom line.

However, there are certain things we don't do well, so we won't do them at all. Lead generation doesn't work in today's B2B market, for lots of reasons; we don't sell lead-gen because we can't recommend that you buy it. Appointment setting for your inside sales team? That's a maybe, and there are some preconditions about how we would structure and bill that so we win when you win.

Something else we won't do: Accept 20% of the sale after the sale, with no skin in the game from your company. We've talked it over, because we get offered this type of deal at least 6 times a year: If you really believe in your skills, you should be willing to take a percentage after the fact.

We can't take that deal because we're not magicians. We're skilled, professional salespeople. We invest quite a bit in each new account, because we can't earn a commission before we understand your product, your service, and your company. It takes time, even when you use a process that has been honed by hundreds of engagements to be effective and brief (our typical on-boarding is 3 weeks). It's not possible for us to make that investment in every business that would like to use our services, but more than that, we'd be investing in your startup. And while we work to produce memorable, replicable results for businesses like yours, we don't invest in them all. We're a vendor, not part of the ownership team.

If you think we might have a match--if you're at the point where you're ready to roll up to the next level of sales results--give Kate Parker a call. In just a few minutes, we will evaluate the fit and either move to proposal or move on. The worst that can happen is you learn something about your sales processes that you can use. 

There's an affirmation app for that

Disrupt. Disruption. Disrupted. The word of this tech industry phase is virtually everywhere. TechCrunch is disrupting New York this week and having a great time building press for everyone there is part of the fun.

The Internet of Things is putting on a mega meet in California to show off the capabilities of all sorts of things and dozens of solutions to the pressing problem what you never thought of asking your thermostat or toaster to do. There is nothing you could want to know about an object at home, or at work, that someone isn’t in the process of Crowd Funding a real-time updating solution. The UI world is buzzing with the genuine thrill of having so many projects that you can actually hold in your hand.

The thing is, I’m not sure anyone at Proxima Sales has time to care. We’re a company that sells technology focused solutions aligned with the actual business needs of real, live, operational firms. We are really busy people and our clients are so busy that they make even our most workaholic team members look a bit slacker-like. Not a single CEO I deal with has ever admitted to having time to check in on his home thermostat between developer and VC meetings.

Perhaps I just have a negative attitude. Wait, wait. There’s an app for that. Actually there are dozens of apps to help me think more positively, in order to improve my sales numbers.

We human beings think between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day. Researchers indicate that a very high percentage of these thoughts are negative and a similarly high percentage are the same thoughts we had yesterday. It’s true, yesterday I was thinking negative thoughts about the buzz words of Disrupt NY, and the wasted intellectual fire power spent on thermostats, as well.

Supposedly, if left unchecked, this combination creates a pattern of habitual negative thinking. Because, the research goes, your thoughts create your reality, this process becomes an unconscious cause of your stress, unhappiness, and disempowerment.

The principle behind affirmations is simple. Affirmations are a thought replacement tool. They help you become conscious of the thoughts you’re thinking and replace habitually negative thoughts with habitually positive ones.

Sales Booster Affirmation  is one app that promises to supercharge the Proxima Sales sales team and wash that negativity right out of our heads. The company behind Sales Booster, which Proxima Sales reviewed, says that the extended affirmation app is for sales people looking to supercharge their minds for supercharged performance. Proxima Sales people and the company we keep agree, that a successful sales career does rely more on confidence and keeping your inner winner strong than many other occupations but we’re not so sure about the affirmation apps market as part of our road to success.

Used regularly, Sales Booster says it will do just that. The upbeat audio includes numerous repetitions of the phrases “sales confidence”, “sales success”, and “more sales”.

Here are the main affirmations that Sales Booster says I need:

I am a winner! I look like a winner! I act like a winner! I think

like a winner! (repeats 5 times) You are a winner! You look like a winner! You act like a winner! You think like a winner! (repeats 5times)

I plan to be the top sales person in my office and I am! (repeats 6 times) You plan to be the top sales person in your office and you are! (repeats 6 times)

I love the pressure of cold calling. The pressure sharpens my skills and gets me more sales! (repeats 6 times) You love the pressure of cold calling. The pressure sharpens your skills and gets you more sales.

I win deals because I am the best sales person. Product and price are only added benefits to doing business with me. (repeats 3 times) You win deals because you are the best sales person.

Product and price are only added benefits to doing business with you. (repeats 3 times)

My company sets my quota, but I set my goals. I see myself surpassing my quota each and every month! (repeats1 time) Your company sets your quota, but you set your goals. You see yourself surpassing your quota each and every month! (repeats 1 time)

Proxima Sales is a company that employs some of the most experienced technology and professional services people that you could ever hope to meet. Admittedly, with more than ten years of on the-road experience as a minimum, with most of us having eighteen or more road warrior years in the bag, we tend to be a bit set in our ways.

I think many of us have a somewhat bad attitude toward the whole positive thinking, affirmation, schtick because we've all survived hundreds, and hundreds of hours of carious corporate sales training conferences, retreats, and the like, over the course of our sales careers. There's nothing like spending a weekend in a room full of colleagues who wish they were home, led by someone who has no quota at all.

Proxima Sales clients benefit from the systems we have in place that everyone uses, our intake forms, our reporting formats, etc. but, we have a great deal of individual latitude to bring in sales for our clients using methods and tools that work for individual style and for the peculiarities of the vertical markets that we serve. What works for deeply analytical Dan, may not work for the probe and connect with her prospect’s feelings, Jill.

IT Security solutions and services sales tend to have a different cycle and expected conversational style than our healthcare team, marketing solutions, or legal services group, find effective.

We each know what systems work to keep our personal sales up to snuff, and we don’t usually tinker too much with anyone’s special lucky coffee cup or call introduction style. I don’t think our policy is likely to change based on the “Sales Booster Affirmation” app. Maybe some of Proxima Sales’ people secretly chant, “I am a winner” under their breath five times, twenty times daily. But I’m willing to bet my newly installed personal espresso maker that what Proxima Sales leaders and Proxima Sales company clients are chanting silently, is the sales revenue number from last quarter, that they are committed to beating by at least 12%.

Katherine Parker thinks positively most of the time. She develops new client business at Proxima Sales and actively participates in one or two sales campaigns every quarter. You can reach her at kate@proxima-sales.com

The Google Mobilegeddon A Good Thing for the Proxima Sales Company web review

There's nothing like looking up one morning and seeing the entire Proxima Sales company web presence through the eyes of a stranger.

It's good, it's bad, it's boring. It's a little um, out of date.

Thanks Google, and the Mobilegeddon deadline, for letting us, the salespeople who are too busy to read our own Proxima Sales reviews, much less the Proxima company website, see that we were just a bit behind the times.

In our defense, our clients have websites that win awards, or at least get the job done. And we don't spend a lot of time dreaming about the Webbies for our own Proxima Sales company site.

But the reviews were in and we needed a mobile upgrade so here it is, better than before and not quite where our designer wants it before I tell anyone to go to www.proxima-sales.com to look it over.

Look for changes over the coming weeks, but look. It's fresh and a lot more detailed than our previous site. You can get to our Twitter feed @proximasales and some other newsy, social places.

You can find Katherine Parker kate@proxima-sales.com and other Proxima Sales company contributors in lots of places:

@proximasales on Twitter