Friday, December 30, 2011

Never Underestimate The Power of Stupid People or Things I Actually Heard Customers Say to Me This Year

Lets  take a look back at 2011 and some of the outrageous comments customers made to me this year.

First one up. A client in North Baltimore was deciding between my service and a competitor that is notorious for service issues. When I brought that topic up she responded "well if the phones don't work we can always use our cell phones and if the internet is down fora day or two, we just wont check email, really it's not a big deal." I wished that customer and hung up the phone

Second: a Potential client on Main Street told me that she believes in working with local companies and keeping money in the local economy. 1 month later she decided to stay with her large national provider when I asked her why she stated "well they employ people here in Maryland so that money is staying local." Think I may have called her an idiot before hanging up, don't remember exactly.

Next, A potential client in Just South east of town was using a competitor of mine that I knew had a faster internet product. They were getting ready to move across the street. I told her that as long as they could provide service at their new office that it was a good idea to keep them. 4 weeks later I get a call that the other provider dropped the ball and was having trouble delivering service. They asked me for a revised proposal. I gave  them one. Did not hear anything for another 4 weeks. I called them again and the service still was not up. I asked why they had not signed my paperwork and they told me " well, we are a small business and we just cant afford to increase our phone bill so much." The increase would have been $100 a month and I would have had the service up and running 6 weeks ago. How much business did they lose in those six weeks? I am willing to bet is was more than $1200 worth.

It just goes to show you that no matter how good you are, no matter how good your products are, there is always going to be a potential client that buys into fear or buys into the brand that the other company is selling.

Truth matters little, what people perceive to be true is the real key. Understand what your customer perceives to be true and you can sell them anything that aligns with that perceived truth.

Thanks for reading today

Here is to a great 2012

Mike

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Peace on Earth & Good Will to Man ( and Woman)

I have not blogged in quite some time. I was in a car accident in early November and have been dealing with a concussion and the terrible headaches that come with. But I thought it important to wish you all the best of times with friends and family in this Holidays Season.

Not Sales Tactics

No Sales Pitch

No Agenda, no ax to grind

Just some gratitude and appreciation to all the people that have read my blog this year, supported me this year, been my friend this year and have become customers and business partners this year.

Regardless of what religion you follow, this is the time of year when people reflect on the good in life, are grateful for the things they have and try to help others.

I wish you all the best now and in 2012

Mike S.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

What America Needs is an Increase in Mediocrity

Now just hear me out on this one folks. If you look at everything going on in the Country right now it appears that there is a small minority at the top controlling things and there is a substantial pool at the bottom that is dragging many of us down, So who really gets things done around here? That's right, the Middle Class. The suburbia people with 2.4 children, 1.7 pets and an average annual house hold income of less than 80k. This really applies to sales as well. Consider this, every sales team has those one or two people that really knock it out of the park every month or every quarter and they also have those couple people that cant even get out of their own way and it's a miracle when they sell anything. You know who the sales managers are quite fond of? The "Tweeners," they never blow their number out and they never really crap the bed either.

The Star salesperson typically has one of 3 things happen to them. They burn out on that performance level after 6-12 months and start looking for a new job to refresh. They get noticed by upper management, get a promotion, figure out they are much better at being sales people than managers and either get demoted back to sales or look for a job with a competitor. If they are demoted, they don't deal with it very well for very long. Many of the privileges they enjoyed being a manager are stripped away and they now feel like they are being excluded. The worst scenario is that the rock-star salesperson starts to push for things to make the company better or to make them happier in their work place, they are summarily dismissed or ignored and eventually they move on to find a new job, probably with your competitor.
Think that's a load of crap? Take a look around your sales force. How many people have been there 3 years plus? How many have hit or exceeded quota every month, quarter or year? How many of them don't complain or don't push for things? Y'see this is the problem with the sales hiring model. All these companies say they want to hire the "best of the best." they want the people that "meet or exceed quota annually." Here's a hint, you are better off hunting Moby Dick. Truthfully, if you find one of these people, the likelihood that they will still work for you in 24 months is slim to none. Again, don't believe me? Take a hard look at the salespeople that have come through your door in the last 20 years. How many of  them truly lived up to all that hype you saw in the interview? How many of them sustained that high level of performance for more than 18 months? It is truly a rare occurence.

The biggest reason those people performed as long as they did is probably because they had a great relationship with their sales manager. If you poll sales people about why they left a company you will hear a great many of them cite that they just couldn't get along with their sales manager any more. They will surely cite company policy and earning potential as other reasons too. But if you think about it, the right sales manager can overcome the company policy issue and the earning potential issue, So when you interview potential candidates you need to evaluate them based on the sales manager and how they will fit together.  Consider Pro-football. Often times a Quarterback is a result of the system they are in and their coaches. If everyone is one the same page, like the situation you have with the San Francisco 49ers you take a washed up Quarterback Like Alex Smith and turn him in to a team leader and a division leader, because he and his new coach Jim Harbaugh are on the same page. The opposite is true as well. Donovan McNabb performed very well under Andy Reid with the Philadelphia Eagles but fell apart in Washington and Minnesota because it just wasn't the right system.
To this point, so many business owners think they can manage a sales team. or A big box sales company will simply "plug and play" sales managers with their teams with little regard to the interaction between the reps and the managers.  If you want a solid sales team, hire a qualified sales manager and let them pick their team. Guide them, make recommendations, but let them build the team. To that point, if you lose a sales manager but have good sales people left on their team. Talk to them very candidly about who they want to work for and why. Perhaps you can transfer them to another team. Perhaps they can provide invaluable input to selecting the right candidate going forward.

As for the bad Sales people on every team, chalk it up to experience. You hired the wrong person, they aren't a good fit, either with your company or the sales manager. If you think they can sell but don't perform under their sales manager then consider moving them to another team, or perhaps it is the sales manager that is the problem and not the salespeople.

Now the "tweeners." every sales team wants them and needs them and here's why. Generally they don't complain. They show up for work on time they work a full day and they leave when they are supposed to. Sure they don't blow their number out but you know you can count on them to contribute month after month. They usually aren't trouble makers. They don't make demands and instead they generally offer useful and productive opinions when you take the time to ask them. They generally know what's going on and understand their competitive landscape. They usually know where their product fits and they don't try to oversell when their product isn't a great fit for the client.

So, if you want a burst of sales, a tumultuous sales office and high turn over keep searching for and hiring the  "Top-Elite Quota Crushers." But if you would like to build a solid team of people willing to work together and provide a consistent stream of revenue for your company then hire the right sales manager and build a team of "tweeners."

Thanks for reading today.

Mike


BTW: I hope you will come out to my networking event this Friday night in Baltimore. I am raising money for Autism. click this link to register, thanks!

Baltimore Networking Friday November 11th 7-10pm

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

I Should Be Happy to Have a Job in Such a Bad Economy

I often write my blogs as a cathartic expression of the daily grind that is, being a salesperson. Identifying candidates is 100 times harder than it was even 5 years ago and once you get the appointment, the decision process that used to take 30 days is now 6-12 months. I hear people say all the time " this economy is terrible" and I don't argue that point, to the contrary, as sales people we are told to sell through objections. But nobody tells the customer that. There is no one standing behind the small business owner saying "stop making excuses and go make some damn money!" I have a good friend who has been in business for himself for over decade and this poor economy has hit his industry very hard. He has a fantastic product that I truly believe in and I often suggest ideas or options to hopefully help him think outside the box and get things moving in the right direction. He politely listens to what I say but I don't think he really hears me. I think the biggest reason he doesn't hear me is because he is so focused on "fixing" the problem that he does not evaluate the problem and create a plan to fix it. I truly hope that business owners will read my blog too, but I know that for the most part they don't. Because there are several key factors they could implement to make the sales process easier on them.
Topic one, be a good listener. They teach you this in sales training all the time. It is important, not only to listen when people speak, but to truly "hear" what they are saying. The subtle word choice can indicate frustration that may lead to you asking more questions to find the right solution for their problem and make them a customer. This is the same for customers. I recently blogged about a customer that thanked me for being so persistent and then told me he would sign up with my company. During our evaluation process, one of the concerns he had was a new business venture that he was starting within his office  space. I told him VERY SPECIFICALLY that his decision to start this venture would have little to no impact on our solution and that he would need a second vendor to complete the task regardless of choosing my company or staying with his current company. A few days after our installation the customer called me yelling quite loudly that I dropped the ball. I asked him what he was referring to and cited the scenario I just explained to you. My response was " Mr. Customer not only did I not drop the ball, but I told you that a second vendor would be needed to complete the work you desire." He yelled some more. I then told him I have business partner I often work with that does that work and would be glad to introduce him. I told the customer he worked fast and was fairly priced. His response was "just get him to my office and send me the bill." I had to explain to him that he would need to visit the site, quote the project and then the customer would sign an agreement to engage him for services. The customer responded " I'm gonna remember this Mike, you didn't help me when you could have." The post script to this story is my vendor friend took care of everything for my customer in less that 5 business days and did so at a VERY fair price. Customer has yet to call back and thank me for helping him when he was in a self induced bad spot. Doubt he will.

Topic two, be honest. This is paramount to any good sales process. If it takes your company 90 days to deliver then you damn well better tell the customer that. If there is ANY chance it will take 120 days, then tell them that too. Don't sugar coat it, don't put a positive spin on it. Address the issue and move on. The flip side of this is that customers lie to sales people all the time. If you are any good at sales then you can probably catch about 70% of the lies a customer tells you. I hate these situations because the customer is lying to me A: because they want to spare my feelings because they like me or B: they have absolutely no respect for me and have already decided to go with my competitor but want to use me to leverage the price they are getting. As for the first reason, please don't. Eventually we will come to learn that you lied to us and it will only make us angrier. Plus we wasted a bunch of time  listening to your lies because we thought we really had a chance. Here is a big sales secret. It is not our job in sales to trick you into buying from us. We don't get paid to meet with you or send you emails or chat on the phone. We get paid for signed contracts, EVERYTHING else is window dressing. The more time we waste on your lies, the less time we have to pursue real customers who want to work with us.

Talk to the other side. Nothing is more frustrating than when a customer ignores our emails and voice-mails. I have many customers who have said to me "wow I just left you that message a few minutes ago!" That's right, if you thought it important enough to contact me the least I can do is respond in a timely manner. Even if my response is " I don't know the answer, give me two days to research that and find out for you." This gets back to my "don't lie" concept and it creates a tangible timeline. Here is another hint for you customers out there. If you are not ready to buy or what we are proposing isn't really  a high priority for you then you can simply say " Mike this isn't high on my priorities right now, lets pick this up again in 30/60/90 days." you wanna know what we will do? We will get back to you in 30/60/90 days? Y'know why? Because no amount of selling or persuading is going to convince you to sign on the dotted line this month & that is all we care about. You don't wanna do business this month? Fine, thank you for being up front with me. I will get back to you in the requested time frame, in the mean time I will work on my other opportunities that still can make a decision this month.

If I wanna be paid in November then I need to sell in October, period.

The customer that goes dark on us after meeting and "oh yes this all looks and sounds great" is a real time waster and no one gets what they want. As sales people we need to keep calling because you haven't told us ANYTHING! you didn't say yes, you didn't say no, you didn't even say maybe! we have no idea where this project stands. Our intuition will tell us many things but really YOU the customer need to tell us. And to you sales people that get emails or voice mails  from you customer, get back to them in 24 hours. Better yet, call them back today. If they want to yell at you that isn't going to change tomorrow, in fact it will be worse. If they have a simple question, then give them a simple answer. Think about this, your simple answer to their question may free them up to answer another sales person and in turn, free them up to buy from you.

So that's the blog this week. Nothing terribly controversial this week but hopefully this provokes some thought and is a call to action for you. One more thing, show this to a customer you have a real good relationship with. It may just lead to your next great sale.


Thanks for reading today

Mike S.


PS

My Baltimore networking event is coming up Friday night 11-11-11 please use the link below to register, I would love to meet you in person. Beside you will be doing something good by raising money for children and a local charity. Did I mention it's a tax deduction?

Networking for a Cause in Baltimore Maryland 11-11-11

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Cold Calling Sucks and Frankly, it's Really Stupid

I have alluded to this concept in previous posts, but today I felt it high time to really discuss this topic in greater detail. So let's set the table first. I started in telecom sales in 1999. It was my first real B2B sales position and I knew nothing about the Baltimore business landscape. My company preached "go out and collect 20 cards and make 20 phone calls every day and you will be successful." I hated collecting cards. I did so only when absolutely forced to. Usually this meant there was a national contest that participation was mandatory and their were prizes for certain categories. I always won the "most cards collected" one for my office. It was easy & I don't mean that I went a grabbed a fish bowl from a local tavern. What I would normally do is hit a medical building with 50-100 Doctors offices and collect those cards. Now, most of the names on those cards were the wrong person for me to talk to, but that isn't what the contest was about, it was about collecting cards, it made the bosses happy.
So you will notice that the OVERWHELMING number of people who advocate cold calling are either sales managers or people trying to sell "cold calling" techniques to sales managers. When I first started I only cold called. I would get contact lists from Dunn and Bradstreet and that would give me a targeted location, company name and contact person to speak with. In a given day I would make 100 calls, I would talk to 10 people and set 3 or 4 appointments. I usually did that twice a week and that gave me enough activity  to keep my manager happy. So here is a question for you good readers today. How many of you can genuinely tell me that the last time you made 100 cold calls that your spoke to 10 decision makers and set 4 appointments? So what changed? Do I just suck at cold calling now ( sure, maybe the answer to that is yes, but lets put that aside for a moment). If you make those 100 calls, how many decision makers do you get to speak to, 2 maybe 3? So right there the contact percentile has been cut by 70%. Now I don't know about any of you but I can't live on 70% less money than I did ten years ago. And there is one truth about sales that I agree with, it's a numbers game. You still need three times your quota in your funnel every month to hit your target. But that has become increasingly difficult, so back to my original question, what changed? I can't speak for every industry but I know telecom was wide open in 1999 and you could openly call people and get through to the right person. Depending on your market sector, that right person would often answer the phone. In 2011, that has changed incredibly. Thanks to the Snake Oil sales people out there that give legitimate sales people a bad name, the actual DM that will take the time to answer the phone is almost completely gone.

So how do you get people to take your call? There are lots of theories on this one. Here is what I have found success with. First, you connect with people through networking, the chamber of commerce and philanthropy. Find something you are passionate about and then volunteer. You build up a list of people that may or may not be good customers for you but most certainly can make introductions for you.

Step two, research. Use your local business journal, use the Internet, I am very fond of Linkedin and I research people on there all the time. Most specifically, I am looking for people with specific business titles that have mutual contacts with me. I will then ask that person for an introduction. If I have done right by this person in the past and introduced them to good people then the introduction shouldn't be a problem. If I don't have a mutual contact then I look for other common ground. Did we go to same college? Are we part of the same fraternity? Do we like the same sports teams? Do we advocate for the same or similar causes?You are looking for things that make you stand out as a person so that you are no longer just "another salesperson." Once I find that common ground I will call and ask to speak with them. Undoubtedly I will get transferred to voice-mail and that is my chance to introduce our common ground and see if they are willing to speak with me. If they have a receptionist/screener that says they don't have voice-mail  (here's a hint, that's a lie) I decline leaving a message and instead I look up their email through more Internet research (jigsaw is very useful for this, but that is another topic for another day) and when I send the email I mention the connection in the subject line. For example if it is my college then I say "hello fellow Retriever." for those that don't know, UMBC's mascot is a Retriever, so it has meaning to the alumni.  If none of this works, then go back your network and just start asking around. Eventually, if you bring a name up enough times to enough people, you will eventually get the right contact and the right introduction.
I actually just had this very experience. I saw a company article in the Baltimore Business Journal ( another favorite) about a new space opening. I did some research and found the right person. I called and asked about the new space. They said "not interested" and hung up. Very odd, because I knew that their new office would need my services. Even if they don't buy from me. So I went back to my network and found that the person I need to meet with has a mutual contact. I asked for an introduction. She told me that they are very tough to deal with but she would make an introduction for me "no promises." So a month or so went by and I sent an email back to the customer and mentioned that our mutual friend had indicated they are very hard to meet with and that they don't really like sales people. Told them I completely understand, that I don't much like sales people either. That little bit of humor seemed to be enough to open the opportunity. Now, it took me another 6 months from that email to actually get the meeting, but I did get the meeting and it looks like there is a great opportunity for me to do business with them and they will be a tremendous "named account for me in Baltimore.

So to all you sales managers and business owners that preach to your sales people the "Value" of the cold call, take a hard look at the success rate and instead, teach your people to build long lasting relationships that can create powerful referrals.  

And to all the "cold call Gurus" out there peddling your wares to corporate America here is a request " go sell crazy somewhere else, we're all stocked up here."

Thanks for reading today!

Mike S.


BTW, I really hope you can come out to my one of my networking for a cause events. Click the links below and I hope to meet you in person very soon.

Networking and FUNdraising in Baltimore 11-11-11

Networking and FUNdraising Ram's Head Savage Mill 10-17-11

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Sales People Continue to Sell Despite their Lack of Professionalism

The general consensus in the sales arena is "Wow, it's tough out there!" I don't disagree with this statement, but I think we have to consider a counterpoint that says "Wow, there really are a lot of sales people that suck at their job." In this instance I am not referring to performance. I am talking about that sales person (and we all know a few of them) that actually manages to sell despite the fact that they are completely devoid of the sales fundamentals. Thought I would share some of my observations and see just how close to home this hits for people.
Punctuality: sales 101, schedule your time to show up 10 minutes early. Better 10 early than 10 late. I cannot tell you how many times I have shown up for a sales meeting or networking event and THE SAME person is 10-15 minutes late every time. I had a co-worker  about 10 years ago who lived in the city about 10 miles form the office. At the time I lived in the suburbs about 25 miles away. I made a point of leaving my house to get to the office 1/2 an hour early because I knew the traffic to the office could be very tricky. When I asked this person why they didn't leave earlier their response was "it shouldn't take me longer than 20 minutes to get to the office, I cannot control the traffic." But they certainly could control the time they leave for the office. This attitude almost always transfers over to all other aspects of life. The message is "it's really not that important." Whether someone consciously or subconsciously acknowledges this, it does resonate with the customer. It says "I really cannot trust this person to be reliable." No trust, means no customer. Hopefully lesson learned.

Your mobile device. If you go into a meeting, no one is more important than the person sitting across the table from you. I don't care if they are a CEO or your best friend from high school. There are times when you are expecting an important call and that is a reasonable excuse. When my wife was pregnant with our first child I would attend meetings and tell the customer "if my phone rings I will check to see if it is my wife, she is _ months pregnant, I hope you don't mind." This does two things, it shows respect to the customer and clarifies why this potential call is important. It also gives you common ground. I am no longer just a sales person, I am a husband and a soon-to-be father.
And this leads into my next topic, honesty. So many sales people are afraid to tell the truth, so they dance around uncomfortable topics or avoid them completely or they lie to the customer to make them feel better. It's is my experience that being brutally honest with the customer gains you a ton of credibility. If you're willing to tell them something they don't want to hear then they know they can depend on you to conduct yourself in their best interest, Trust equals customers.
You have got to know your company story. I am sure  this happens in many other sales arenas but particularly in telecom the sale often becomes a commodity sales based on price. If you don't know your company story and you cannot articulate your competitive advantage to the customer they will look at you as "just another bid." knowing your company story also allows you to know when you are meeting with a client that you have little or no chance of doing business with. Know your strengths, know your competition's strength and know what is important to the customer. Focus on the deals you can win, not the deals you cant.
Listen twice as much as you talk. Zig Ziglar is one of my favorites and he said many years ago " you have two ears and one mouth, so listen twice as much as you speak." The reason for this is simple, as good as you may think you are at selling someone you have to know what they want before you can "sell" them what they need.
Your attire and grammar need to be appropriate. In sales there are many degrees of appropriate clothing and women seem to have even greater leeway. I tell you that your attire should be professional and should match your client environment. In addition, every region has little nuances to vernacular, when you are dealing  with a customer it's not okay to say "Mondy" when you meant " Monday." it's not okay to say "anythink" when you really meant "anything," even if the customer speaks that way. Your attire and grammar will show a level of professionalism and they help you convey reliability and trust.
The last one to mention is preparation. Nothing infuriates me more then when I have a networking event and someone shows up without business cards or folio for writing, or a pen. That's like showing up to a meeting without pants. It's just inconceivable. I know if they do it at my meetings that they also show up to a customer appointment or a sales meeting without these items or worse, they didn't research the customer and the point of contact. You are showing a complete lack of interest in winning the business. No interest means, no customer.

I hope you read this and got a good laugh at the horror show that is many people in the sales community. If you read this and thought "hey that sound"s like Bob" please forward this on to them. There's only a couple of reactions that can come from this. They will read it, learn and change ( good for you for helping). They will read it and say "hey! what's this about?" you tell them you enjoyed it and thought they would too or they read it don't get it and don't mention it. No harm, no foul.

Thanks for reading today.

Mike Shelah

BTW I have two networking events coming up, raising money for Autism. If you are in the Mid-Atlantic area I hope you stop by to say hello.

Networking for a Cause in Savage Mill Maryland 10-17-11

Networking for a Cause at MaGerks Pub 11-11-11

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

PAY ATTENTION!!!! INITIATIVE, SHOW IT!!! and why am I yelling?

I am sure we have all had that experience where someone asked us to do them a favor and being one prone to be kind we comply and then we get some follow up message that makes you go "really? Did you open the damn attachment? Did you read the damn email?" Did you bother to look at the screen before asking me for further assistance?" For example, if I make an introduction for you to one of my contacts and they don't respond, it seems appropriate ( to me anyway) to send a follow up e-mail yourself. After all, we are in sales and good sales people often have to have some persistence and initiative. So then  a few days or a week or more go by and they don't respond to your e-mail. Let me ask you, what would you do next? If you answered "call them" you would be correct. But wait Mike, you never gave me their phone number? I'm sorry my mistake. However there is this wonderful device called "the Internet" that contains just about every piece of information you could possibly need to contact somebody.  So then people will say " well, I didn't want to seem pushy." I can't speak for the rest of the sales world but If I take the time to introduce you to someone, I entirely expect you to make at least one phone call and send at least one email regarding the introduction. Very rarely will a customer take the initiative to call you after such an introduction, so take this opportunity and make the best of it.
And this leads to my bigger problem with the sales community, initiative or a gross lack there of. I recently sent a VERY good lead to a couple of contacts in my industry regarding a potential client in need of their services. Not only did they not thank me, but neither of them have contacted the customer. I don't want lunch or an award or something but a "hey thanks Mike" would be greatly appreciated. Oh yeah, a quick email or phone call to the customer is probably a pretty good idea too.
I admit, as a salesperson I make mistakes all the time. I forget to do stuff that I said I would. But when it comes to a new sale or a new opportunity and you don't EVEN send a quick note acknowledging the interaction, WTH?! If you are soooo busy that you don't need more customers, just tell me, I wont bother you any more. I don't know about all of you loyal readers, but I seem to have the exact opposite problem. I don't have enough customers.
I am often told by people that I follow up very quickly. My opinion on this matter has always been that answering an email or phone call only takes a couple minutes and if it is for a customer, why not? I am sure someone will blast me for making that statement and tell me that it is an "inefficient use" of my "selling hours." These are often the same people that like to tell me how effective cold calling still is. We will agree to disagree (at least I will, they will probably keep yelling into their megaphone that they're right). This is an important point to make across the board. If your treat everybody as equally important then they will also begin to treat you the same way. If you answer some calls right away but ignore others for days and weeks at a time and then respond "I'm sorry I've just been so busy" what you are really saying is "my relationship with you is largely less important than just about everything else going on in my life. Think about it, either you didn't read my email which means " oh it's just Mike, no way this is important, I'll read it later" or even worse you did read it and your lack of response says " Mike went out of his way to try and do something nice for me and I just don't give a crap." I am sure several people will blast me with responses like "well what about a death in a family or some other emergency?"
Every concept has very real exceptions. I find it "highly unlikely" that the overwhelming majority of people that ignore me are in the middle of a personal crisis. they just think very little of me and what I may be able to do for them. It's okay, I'm in sales, I am VERY used to people ignoring me, at least until they really need something, then I am "Mister Popular." I have a LinkedIn contact that is a very successful business owner in Baltimore. When I first reached out to him he quickly accepted my connect request and has subsequently ignored almost every single message I sent him. Every year I make a point to wish him a "Happy New Year" to which he always replies "thanks Mike, I hope you have a great one too!" but he ignores every single other message I send him. So I know he reads them. He just doesn't care enough to be a considerate human being and respond to them
In summary, Please share today's entry with your office mates and when they laugh and tell you "that's a good one" don't be afraid to say, "uh yeah, it's also how you act, so straighten up and fly right!"

Thanks for reading today

Mike S.

If you are in the Baltimore area, I hope you will come out to my next great Networking event. We are raising money for a very good cause.

Networking and FUNdraising 11-11-11 in Baltimore!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

the email you previously sent was creepy and due to that I do will not do business with you

The title to this weeks blog is an actual quote from a "no longer" potential customer(typos and all). I thought telling this story and analyzing it would be entertaining and useful. Several months ago my company joined an organization with one of the purposes being to network with and sell to membership. My first contact with one of the companies was polite and honest. "Mike, I have just hired a new office manager and I am in the middle of training her. If you give me a couple months we can re-visit the opportunity." That seemed perfectly reasonable so I put a note on my calendar to follow up in 60 days. When I called back, I spoke to the new office manager, explained my conversation with her boss and asked to schedule a meeting to meet. She was very polite, said yes and we picked a day and time to meet. Two days before the meeting I received an email from her that said "Now is not a good time, I will reach out to you when we are ready to look at other options." This is the same woman who told me 5 days earlier that she would be glad to meet with me. So I sent her a follow up email and I added a "read request" to make sure that she did not ignore me. My message was simply "thank you for following up, we can certainly look a couple weeks out, let me know what works best for you." A couple days after sending that I got an auto response that said she deleted my email without reading it. Still determined I sent her a follow up email and cc'd her manager who I originally spoke to. In my follow up email I wrote "we had a meeting scheduled for Wednesday that you said we needed to reschedule for a later time. I followed up with you via e-mail yesterday and got a message that my email was deleted without being read. I hope I have not done anything wrong, I still would like the opportunity to meet with you and assess your companies needs." She responded "I did read your email; I just did not open it. This is not a good time for us. I will reach out to you when things are slower." Ok, no big deal, this is not a prime opportunity so I put it into my 90 day follow up. Then things got very interesting. The next day she sent me the follow up email that you see as the title to this weeks blog. So here is what I think happened. She scheduled a meeting with me on the telephone because she has trouble telling people no. Once she got my email confirming our meeting she thought that would be a convenient time to back out and then ignore future messages from me. When I follow up with her and her boss who told me to contact her, she became embarrassed and told me never to contact her again. I left that part out of the title because I just thought it would be too long of a title.
When your a salesperson you learn when people aren't being upfront with you (read that as "lying"). You also recognize that no matter how much you didn't do something wrong you are always (at least in part) to blame. Last weeks blog I spoke about when to "push" a customer. In this case, I pushed at the wrong time and in the short term, I lost the ability to win this business. But I have always been a big believer that if customers were just a little more open and honest with sales people the world would be a much better place. Movies likes "Boiler room" and "Tin Men" give sales people a bad name. And there are many unethical people in the sales world today. But that doesn't give customers the right to just flat out lie and be deceptive. and more often than not it works against them. If this customer had just said to me" Mike now is not good, we have too many projects of higher priority to deal with right now. If you will touch base with me in 90 days we can discuss the opportunity then." Now that's not a whole lot different than what she originally told me, but the tone is significantly different. Her email to me said "go away." The response I just wrote says "give me this period of time and we can talk then."
Now, if her true feelings are "go away" then she needs to say that at the beginning, that's her problem not mine. I suspect that her boss did want her to meet with me but she was so overwhelmed that she did not feel like she could. I have a hunch that when I call back to speak with her boss in 90 days I will discover that the office manager resigned or was fired.


So, hopefully you got a good laugh out of this one. If you have a similar story, please share, I would love to read it.


Thanks for reading today


Mike S.




BTW I have put together a great networking and fundraising event for November 11th in Baltimore. Use the link below to register, thank you!


November 11th at MaGerks in Baltimore, great networking for a great cause

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

A New Customer Reminded Me About a Key to Sales & Why We Need to Fire Customers Sometimes

September started slowly for me. Normally I pick up one or two new customers the first week as a result of accounts that just did not wrap up the previous month. This time around it took me until the 12th for my first new customer. I had been working on him for several months, we made several changes to his proposal, a couple other more important projects came up for the customer and he put me on hold for 3 weeks. His signature yesterday came a full week ahead of when I was supposed to follow up with him. I didn't call him, this time he called me. He asked me to come to his office and go over the paperwork so he could understand it. As I walked out the door, we shook hands and I thanked him for his business. His final comment to me "Mike, you are very persistent." In sales, that statement can be a real compliment. It can also work against you. I felt it was a good idea to use this sale and talk about where things went right and where they can go wrong.
Being persistent ultimately means following through. until a customer tells you "no" you have every reason to believe the answer should be "yes." Like anything else in sales, there is a right way and a wrong way to be persistent. To further complicate things, your style of persistence with one customer will often be very different from the style you have with another. This particular customer is an American immigrant who came from nothing and started a very successful distributorship. He is used to doing most of the work himself and he cares about little else other than cost and reliability. Now you may be saying "Mike, all customers care about cost and reliability" and to a certain extent that is true, but in this case he cared about little else. Company history, references etc. did not come up and when I tried to discuss other matters the topic quickly came back to what he needed. He is a very shrewd business man and used very little in the way of pleasantries. If you mentioned something to him 3 weeks ago, he would bring that detail up again and ask you to explain it. If something seemed inconsistent he would repeat back to you what you said and ask you why it was different from what you told him 3 weeks ago. This man is direct. So being direct with him was a key to the sale. If he brought something up and it was not relevant to my product, I told him that. He would look for reasons not sign today and I would address them simply and move on. He told me his time line and agenda and I agreed to keep pace and follow up at those intervals.When he would not respond at the appropriate times I would remind him (via voicemail or email) that during our last conversation we had agreed to speak again on this specific day and it had passed. Once we reconnected and set a new time to discuss again, I would notate the account to not follow up with him before then unless he contacted me first.

This customer valued direct, honest information within a specific time frame. I not only obliged but I held him to the same standard, he respected that and we consummated the contract.

I am sure many of you are saying "Mike, don't all customers value doing business this way?" The answer is "Nope." in fact many customer will be turned off and run the other direction if you try to deal with them this way. If your don't have a strong relationship with the customer and the customer is also not used to the negotiation process they can easily be turned off by you following up, even if the time interval is appropriate. When you first meet with a customer it is crucial to understand what their timeline is. Are they moving? Did they open a new office? Have they had tremendous growth in a short period of time? Did they hire new staff? What is causing them to meet with you today? If the answer is because you made a cold call and they agreed to meet with you then get ready for a long sales cycle. If there is no specific need and you don't find something within the first meeting to create need or urgency then you are on the lowest rung of the priority ladder. If that is the case it is essential to ask the customer what their decision time line will look like? Will this coincide with an annual budget review? Will it be addressed in a weekly or monthly management meeting? Who else is involved in the decision process? Are those other people equal decision makers in the process or are they senior partners and have veto power over the person you are dealing with. All of this information helps you set the decision timeline and also helps you know when to follow up or "push."

Another element to touch on briefly is "the push." There comes a time when you have done all that you can, you have answered the customers questions your product solves a problem, saves the customer money or fills another need they have but they just are not responding to you. That is when you must decide to "fire" the customer. Very simply you send them an email ( and cc it to all other contacts you are aware of that are involved with the process) and you simply tell them " I have addressed your needs and presented a solution that helps your company but you have not responded to accept or decline my offer. I must assume at this time you chose to work with one of my competitors. Please let me know who you chose and where you felt their product held a competitive advantage for your company." You then leave the customer alone, because 1 of 3 things will happen. They will ignore you. Fine, you already resigned yourself to that when you sent the email, at least now it is done on your end and you can move on. They will respond and tell you who they chose and why. Great! Now you have additional information to better prepare for you next customer. And the third option is my favorite & it probably happens about 30% of the time. The customer gets back to you and says "no no wait! were not done! We still need you we just had FILL IN THE EXCUSE come up and had to table this, so sorry."

In summary, persistence is a key to sales success but knowing how and when to apply it is equally important.

Thanks for reading today

Mike S.

BTW, if you are in the Baltimore area and would like to meet up with me and talk more sales, I am hosting a fundraising event and would love to meet you. Click here for more details

A Great Place to Meet for a Great Cause


Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Sales People are Just a bunch of Job Hoppers

I have been in Telecom since 1999. The first Telecom company, I was with them for 3 1/2 years and the next one I was with 2 1/2 years, and then I had a string of companies where I was there for 1-2 years.  Many would (and probably will) tell me that I must have an attitude problem or I am a quitter or "you fill in the blank" problem. I am the first one to say that anytime a person resigns or is fired there is blame on both sides. Today I thought it might be valuable to evaluate some of my personal experiences and also talk about some unfortunate truths out there today.
Unfortunate truth #1, there is no loyalty in the business world. I am referring to employers and employees. The days of someone taking  a job and keeping it 30+ years and then retiring are LONG gone ( for one thing, most of us need to work 40-50 years now, depressing but true). I received an email from a friend of mine asking me about my competition and if it was true that they would not hire sales people who "appeared" over the age of 40. WHAT?! A company would discriminate against someone simply because of their age, or gender or "you fill in the blank?" In a word.... Yup. I also think it is the only way some HR managers keep their jobs. They put you the candidate through an extensive screening process and then once you are hired, they look for any and all reasons to replace you. After all, if they don't need to hire someone, then what good are they? I actually had a job offer held up a few years ago because I reported that I worked at a company for 12 months but the company reported that I worked there for 24 months. To which I responded " so they have their dates wrong" and the HR person responded " If I cant get someone from that company to corroborate your dates of employment then we can't hire you?" Really, so the job before and the job after all checked out? And it is perfectly reasonable that the dates I gave you match the dates between job 1 and job 3 but this unknown person from a previous employer that has little or no vested  interest in getting my information correct is going to be the reason I don't get hired? I called up one of the owners, explained what happened and they agreed to contact the prospective employers and give them accurate information. It seems that the business world at a large is SO PARANOID about hiring the wrong person that they go out of their way to exclude the right people at the same time.
Unfortunate truth #2 the salesperson honeymoon. With every sales job, the first 6 months go very well. I am producing,the boss seems happy, lets me do what I need to do and all is right with the world. Then somewhere between month 6-9 something changes. All of the sudden the boss wants to know why I go to all these networking events. "Are you really getting ROI from all this time you invest?" and " where have you been for the last 4 hours?" and "why did you com into the office today at 10 am? where were you?" Now I want to be fair, these are all perfectly legitimate questions to ask. But if you think they are reasonable and valid then they should have been asked from day one, not after I have been on board (producing at a high level I might add) for 6 months. My job is to sell, let me sell. Unless you got a complaint from a customer or a senior manager about me, then leave me alone. On that note, if you did get a complaint, sit me down and discuss it with me? Maybe it is legitimate, I screw things up all the time, I'm not perfect and I would like to learn from my mistakes. Maybe the complaint is unfounded and based on erroneous information. Maybe, the complaint is just crap and someone trying to stir the pot because they have nothing better to do with their time. It seems to me that every company has one of these people on staff. Their sole reason for existence is to find out what you are doing and why you are doing it. Even though it has little to no bearing on their "legitimate" daily activities. Now let me be clear. As a sales person if I am not performing up to standards then that is a legitimate conversation and we should sit down and figure out why it is happening. Am I lazy? does the competition have a perceived advantage that we can or should work on with our products? Do I need sales training to better the number of customers I bring on board? Does the company need to evaluate how they go about  finding new potential clients for me to pursue? Has the company brand taken a PR hit that has negatively impacted sales? Is the company missing a brand identity in a target market that negatively impacts sales? Has something happened in my personal life that (on the short term) has effected my ability to sell?

It is my experience that very few people in sales are missing quota because of an inability to sell. It is often a combination of factors that end up frustrating the salesperson and their sales begin  to fall off. A friend of mine changed her position in the company we worked at and went from an indirect manager to a direct sales rep. I asked her why she did it and she listed a number of factors that were relevant to her at the time.  She told me about all the things she was going to do to support the other sales people on her new sales team and I responded "that sounds like a sales manager to me, what is he doing with all his time?" Her response was very revealing, she said "Mike the sales managers are so busy with meetings and running things that they don't have the time to work with the sales people." Yup! You read that correctly the "Sales Manager" is so busy that they cannot work with their sales team..... I must be from different planet, where I come from, the sales manager's job was to work with their team and do everything they could to support them and help close and manage sales and the sales process.

And maybe that is the problem. Maybe that is why I become so disenchanted with companies so quickly. I have never taken a job thinking "Well, in 12 months I'll be outta here." But that happens, and not just to me. I have looked over the profile of many of my friends in sales and I have seen a definite trend. Many of them (like me) had early track records of 3 or more years with the same company and then a string of 1-2 years with several other companies. Maybe it is an age thing, I have been at this so long, I know what works and what doesn't and when I see something being done in an inefficient manner I try to change it. And when they can't or wont change I realize that long term employment probably isn't a real option.

I really am open to feedback on this topic and I am sure many people will just tell me I'm an idiot. It's okay, I'm used to it. After all, I am a salesperson, you wont be the first person to tell me I am Lazy, or I am doing it wrong or I am a troublemaker.


Thanks for reading today

Mike S.

BTW, please read and share my fundraising blog www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Sales is Like "Government Intelligence" an Oxymoron

It occurred to me today that there are a lot of paradoxes in the world of sales. I don't know if they have always been there but I sure have seen them in bunches recently.
"The customer is always right."  Uh, actually the customer is usually wrong. In the business world any given company has an "expertise" and that is the product or service they deliver. Outside of that, they are trying to muddle along and make all the other aspects of their business "survive" so that their moneymaker, can make money. I have been in the telecom industry since 1999 and as a general rule of thumb, my customers don't have a clue about their services, what they pay for them, what they have, how long a of a contract they signed, you get the idea. What I find truly perplexing is how many of them will try to tell me what they have and when I inspect to make sure I get it right for them, they become guarded and paranoid. Now, I realize there are plenty of evil manipulative salespeople out there but I am not one of them. Frankly, if you don't think you can trust me then why on earth would you consider doing business with me? Do your research, you will find out in quick order that  I don't have a criminal record and I am very active in my community. I'm a good guy.
"If you take good care of the customer they will be loyal to you." Yup, again, not true. A good friend of mine was telling me a story about how he's had a rash of clients that he took fantastic care of and 6 months after signing up with him, have called to inform him they were switching to a competitor because they "found a better deal." If they found a better deal, that means they were looking for a better deal or at the very least someone called them and offered to save them more money. Now that is loyalty for you!
"Having a great product goes a long way to winning the business." Sorry, this one is wrong too. Value and worth have little bearing on the customers decision to buy. Perceived value and worth is where it's at. I know my industry fairly well and I know my competition. I know where I am comparable to them, where they are better than me and where I am better than them. Despite that, I have one competitor that will almost always win when I compete with them. Do they have a more reliable product? Nope, it actually under performs compared to industry standards. Do they have better sales people? Nope, most of their reps haven't been there more than 6 months and most of them wont be there in another 6 months. Their sum total of telecom experience goes right along with that, in other words, they don't know what they don't know because they have not been through the grind of this industry. So why do companies choose them? RAW HORSEPOWER! Boy is their Internet fast, really fast! Especially for downloading stuff (not so much the other way). I actually had a customer tell me that they were moving all of their services to this other provider because it was about $100 month less than me and it was a lot faster and they really wanted that speed. When I asked them about concerns for reliability ( they told me in one of our meetings that they currently use this other company as a back up connection and it has gone down a few times in recent months) they said to me AND I QUOTE "well, if the phones go down we still have our cell phones and if we couldn't check email for a day or two it's not really a big deal." So let me ask a couple questions of my wonderful readers today. First, could you as a business decision maker, make that statement with a straight face? Could you truly tell me that sincerely and not bust out laughing? Second, would you want to do business with a company that puts so little importance on their company communications? That statement says if we could not service our customers for a day or two or we had limited ability to service them, that would be okay. We could get by.

"A great salesperson takes great care of their customers." Again, not true. Sales and customer service have little or nothing to do with one another. Many salespeople will tell you they provide outstanding customer service and many of them really want to, but customer service is all about the process's the company puts in place to support the customer. Often times your sales rep has little or no ability to influence such things.
Again, some of the really good ones really do try to take care of the customer after the sale. But there are plenty of award winning top shelf sales people out there that blow out their quota every month and win all kinds of awards and trips and bonuses and commissions, but when it comes to the customer they could care less. They purely view their job as sales. They sell it and the company must figure out how to support it.

So, I am sure some people will argue with me, disagree with me and even tell me I'm an idiot. It's okay, I'm used to it. As a sales person with deep convictions, I am used to people arguing with me, disagreeing with me and even telling me I'm an idiot (or worse). But I believe in what I do and I genuinely try to help my customers even when it doesn't directly benefit me or my quota.

What I take comfort in, is that many of you are reading this right now thinking, "Y'know what, he's right."

Thanks for reading today

Mike Shelah

BTW, thanks again to the 450+ people that read my blog last week, that was truly exceptional. Be sure to check out my other blog www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com

Thursday, August 25, 2011

On Wednesday August 24th a Good Man Died and He Shouldn't Have

If you are not a baseball fan and you aren't in the Mid-Atlantic area then you probably did not see the story that former Oriole and former Cy Young award winner Michael Flanagan was found dead at his Maryland home. Multiple reports cite suicide. I often use this blog as a cathartic process for working through the daily events of my life as a salesperson. I hope that through this process others will learn and benefit from my experience. I have sympathy for the Flanagan family. Several years ago, someone very close to me attempted suicide and it was a moment in my life that truly changed my perspective on many things.
I won't pretend that  I understand what Mr. Flanagan was going through in his personal life. I know the man I saw on television doing play by play for the Baltimore Orioles, was intelligent, funny and he seemed to truly love his work. Whatever his demons in life were, I hope is at peace with them now.
We all have challenges in our lives. A friend of mine was recently telling me about a 2 year  divorce process he is going through. I lost both of my parents at a fairly young age and I deal with the daily struggle of a child with Autism. The economy is terrible and we all know someone who has had the rug pulled out from under them when they least expected it.
So to all this negativity I offer a counterpoint. I have a wife and two children that I absolutely love and I know they love me. I have many friends that when they walk in the room I am greeted with a hug and a broad genuine smile. I have a roof over my head and I don't worry about where my next meal will come from. I have family that loves me and I know that if I called them today for help they would give it.

We all have our unique place in the world. Some of you have a better position in life than mine, some of you are in a tougher spot, but we all have a life to live. In the world of sales it is easy to get wrapped up in quota's, sales targets, forecasts, commissions, bonuses and all the collateral pressure that comes with being in sales.

I want you all to take away one thing from my blog today.

We work to live, we don't live to work.

Remember that, the next time something happens at work and you think that you cannot overcome it. You can and you will.

If you need someone to talk to, you have the person in your life, find them and talk to them. They will help you. For all the negativity and pain in the world, people have the capacity to do good and they want to.

Thanks for reading today

Mike S.

R.I.P. Michael Flanagan, you will be missed

Monday, August 15, 2011

Don't Waste Your Money Or My Time

I spend a lot of time networking, it's my thing. I enjoy it and I'm good at it. I try to help others, so hopefully this will help some of you. If you think paying the entrance fee to join a networking group will automatically grant you customers, please, don't waste your money or my time. Now, as a counterpoint to that, if you are going to spend ANY money to join a group then do something to make the group better. I've had this conversation with hundreds of people, " well Mike, were just so busy that we can't make the time to attend the meetings/events." That's crap. I can't speak for everybody that joins a networking group or a chamber of commerce, but I do know that many of us are salespeople and our #1 job is to find new customers. So, if you're not at an event meeting people and creating relationships then where do you find your business? You buy lists? You mail letters? You cold call on the phone or "door to door?" Do you have ANY idea  how unsuccessful those mediums are for the VAST majority of sales? Now, here is my favorite part, I'm going to get response from "Guru's" that tell me "actually Mike, with my proven program you can guarantee X in appointments and closed sales." You know my response to that? You guessed it, more crap. Now, I want to be perfectly clear. I do realize that there are rare individuals out there that can cold call their way through anything and I do realize that there are teams dedicated to this sole purpose. If your throw enough crap against the wall, something is bound to stick. It's a terrible way to live.
 I am here to tell you, if you want to sell in the business world today, you build relationships, one at a time with people. You show these people that they can trust you and that you have their success at the root of your proposal and that is how you win business. You offer to help people even though there is a real good chance they will NEVER be able to help you in return and may never be able to buy from you. And you do these things because you will end up helping many of these people and they will show gratitude and when you need them to introduce you to someone  they will do so without hesitation.

I recently joined a new online networking group. I found the concept intriguing because they actively encourage members to send referrals to the people in their network. To jump start my group I sent out a mass email to about 1200 people, inviting them to join in. Admittedly this group is not for everyone. It really is built for sales people. What did intrigue me was the number of people that took the time to respond to my invitation via email, but did not bother to read the email. Several people made very bland generic responses indicating they had not read what I said them. What's worse is several people had responses that indicated they read it but didn't understand it. One person went so far as to ask me what joining my network had to do with gaining new customers.

So what can we learn from all this
Get out there and network.
Don't spend your money if your not going to commit to being successful
View an invitation as just that, it's an opportunity to better yourself
If you're not willing to commit, don't waste your money, or my time

Thanks for reading today

Mike

BTW, be sure to check out my fundraising blog www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com

Monday, August 8, 2011

There's No Question, This Blog is About uhm Effective Speaking and Stuff

 We all have natural talent. Some have more useful talents than others, but we all have them. Mine happens to be my ability to speak in public and my ability to write. I am very comfortable with both and I know that both scare a lot of other people, so I am grateful for my talents. That being said, it drives me crazy to hear people speak publicly that just cannot do it, or worse they probably can but they don't spend anytime honing their craft.
Let's use the last 2 American president's as clear examples of what I am saying. Put your political bias aside while reading this and consider the following. President Obama is one of the GREATEST speech givers our country has ever had. He speaks with authority and with a calm and presence that palpable. By comparison, George W. Bush was obviously uncomfortable giving a scripted speech. He would often mispronounce words and often stammered. Interestingly enough, his candid interviews were dramatically better. He seemed more at ease and was actually quite good at being funny. There is a lesson to be learned here, First that  President Obama has a natural ability to speak and he is on the same page with his speech writers (SPOILER, most presidential speeches are written by others). Second, George W Bush was good at thinking on his feet but not so good at following a script & that is a HUGE differentiation. When preparing to speak in front of an audience, it is helpful to recognize which format works best for you. Can you commit to memory a 1000 word presentation or are you better with an outline and letting the terms and phrases come from the moment? Learning this aspect of your abilities will make a huge positive swing in your presentation.

Now let's talk about  nervous phrases and "filler" words. I am a huge fan of sports talk radio. Nothing irritates me more than when someone asks a radio personality a question and they begin the response with "There's no question." Uh, well actually there is, they just asked you one. Another favorite of mine would go into every commercial break by saying "we'll continue...." It's a nervous response, sorta like people that say "the bottom line." it's filler because your brain wants time to prepare for what it will say next. You can work through this with practice. better yet, hire a qualified speaking coach. I know a few if you want a reference. In sales it is crucial to avoid theses "mental crutches." If you speak with a client once or  twice they may not notice, but multiple conversations( typical for a long sales cycle opportunity) will show the customer that your are uncomfortable in key situations and subliminally can cause them to lose faith in your ability to deliver. Remember, this all happens outside of the quality of your product and your relationship with the customer. Frankly, it can be the nail in the coffin of a lost sale. So record your presentation and see if you have any nervous habits, repetitive phrases or stammer words (like uhm...) then work to reduce those from your presentation.

Here's the summary
Know what presentation style best suits your abilities.

Examine your presentation

Practice & or hire a coach, it will pay off.

Thanks for reading today

Mike Shelah

BTW, be sure to check out my fundraising blog www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

"But I'm not Selling Anything Sir!"

Sitting at home last night there came a knock upon my door. A young man who looked to be in his early 20's and dressed in polo shirt with company logo, a pair of khaki shorts, work boots and some "official" looking ID badge and a tool belt with some electronic device was waiting on the other side. "Hello Sir, you wouldn't be the home owner would you?" Okay, stop right there, you NEVER ask a negative question to start a conversation, instead you say "Hello, I am speaking with all of the homeowners in your community tonight, are you one of the homeowners?" A little tweak but an important one. Now back to the story... I told him I am indeed one of the home owners and he goes right into his pitch. It's hard and it's fast and it's aggressive. And it is very familiar because I used the same pitch when I sold security systems back in 1997. So I know what's coming and (unfortunately) I know what kind of company he works for, a boiler room. A Turn and burn straight commission company that works their reps to the bone and only gives them a week of "sales" training, which mostly involves memorizing a "pitch" and then a list of rebuttals for when the customer says no. The likelihood that he will still be working there in 6 months is less than 25%. So I said "I understand that you need to get 7 no's to get to yes but I'm not interested." before I could finish he started to say "not trying to get through 7 No's sir we did some work for your neighbor (probably a lie) and we are setting appointments." So  I told him "look I'm trying to be nice. There are people in this neighborhood that would call the cops on you for soliciting."  To which he quickly replied "But I'm not selling anything sir." So here is the problem with these companies. They teach these kids that this methodology is not only effective, but it is acceptable. I told him he was soliciting and very indignantly he said "No, I'm not." To which I replied, "if you like I can call the cops you can tell THEM you're not soliciting."  A look of fear washed over his face and he said "Okay man, okay." and walked on to my neighbors house. I really hated doing that but he has yet to learn one of the Key factors to sales, "know when to back off."

The Security sales job I mentioned earlier had a mantra "porched or paperwork." Which meant that you walked out of their home with a signed order or they threw you out for being a jackass. Great business model right? Not surprisingly, this company has been out of business for several years. and You don't see ADT and companies like that selling franchises to just anyone to go sell their products anymore. For more examples of this process and what not to do please watch the movie "Boiler Room" and the Baltimore Classic "Pushing Tin."

I think what is truly sad about this methodology is that a significant sector of the home improvement industry still really enjoys using it. They think bullying customers into working with them is a smart practice because they know there is very little chance they will still be in business in 5 years and they have even less chance of getting repeat business.

So what can we learn from this story.

Train your salespeople to care about the customer and what they need

Build your business on trust and a quality product at a fair price.

If you know someone getting ready to graduate from High school or working their way through college tell them "don't take this job." Believe me, they will thank you later.

Thanks for reading today

Mike S.

BTW, be sure to read my fundraising blog www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Networking "Notworking?" Here are Some Reason's Why

I meet a lot of people. Whether they are clients, business partners, or people with common interests and goals. I am in the business of meeting people. Actually, I am in the Telecom business, but 80% of what I do is meet people & build relationships. So when I talk to people that tell me that "networking doesn't work" or it's " a big waste of time" I say they aren't doing it right. What I find more surprising are the number of people that take weeks at a time to respond to a message I send them through social media & when they do finally get back to me, they tell me "sorry Mike, I rarely log in to that."

I'm sorry? You don't log in? You don't check messages? "Well yeah Mike, I get so much spam from people trying to sell me stuff that I just ignore it." Okay, we are all adults here. I understand wanting to ignore message from people you aren't interested in talking too but SERIOUSLY? You just ignore all of it? First off, most social media gives you the option to receive email alerts when someone makes a post relevant to you. When people send you a message, it can also be sent to the email box of your choice. I have people tell me "I'm just too busy to check in multiple times a day." This objection I can understand (somewhat). If Sales isn't your only role in the company I can understand that being logged in all day long to to see what updates come across may not be the best use of your time. I will say, that EVERYONE has time either at lunch or after normal business hours to check in and see what's going on.

My personal opinion is that Social Media is like your own personal newspaper, with all of the articles directed right at you. Whatever your industry or interests, you surround yourself with people that have similar interest and may even be in the same industry. It is one of THE best ways to keep up to date with what is going on. In addition to that, building a network isn't simply connecting to people to claim that you have the  biggest network, you must engage these people. Drop a note to say hello. Compliment them on a new profile pic or a new promotion or job change. Maybe they just finished earning a new degree. By staying in contact with your network you keep yourself relevant and it helps keep you and your company on the mind of your customers and contacts, so that they can refer you to others.

So here is the summary, You're not too busy. You need customers just like the rest of us. Keep relevant by reviewing your social media streams once a day. Be proactive in contacting people. You will stand out and differentiate yourself

Thanks for reading today

Mike Shelah

BTW please check out my fundraising blog

www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com

Monday, July 11, 2011

"Not as Advertised"

I think we all can identify with this situation. You see an add in the paper for a "great deal" and when you rush to the store you find out there are a bunch "qualifications" that go along with getting the product for that price or you find out that the product for sale really doesn't match what you thought it would be. This is really a common occurrence and MOST of the time it is because we didn't read the fine print or we didn't ask the right questions. This scenario is all too common in sales and it usually is poor communication from the customer, poor communication from the salesperson, or both. The really bad part is this poor lack of communication can help your competition.
So you go to meet with a client you ask a bunch of questions, they answer, you build a proposal, they seem to like it and then you get that phone call that they went with your competitor and YOU KNOW that their product/solution is inferior to yours or just does not do what the customer told you they need it to do. So what happened? Quite a few things could have gone wrong here.
First, it is very possible that the customer had an agenda that they did not share with you. Meaning they already picked out their vendor of choice but "the boss" or some other "3rd party" (that you will never be allowed to speak with or meet) told them to get 2 other quotes just to be sure. Or this same "boss" has a friend in the industry and they came along after you did all of your work. This scenario is very annoying, but also very real. If you are blindsided like this, a good way to verify is simply say to the customer "Thank you for getting back to me, I understand you chose my competition, which one did you chose and where did you feel their product was a better fit than ours?" Now, here is where being a good listener is very important. If indeed they went with your competition, this is your only chance left to win the business. If they give solid well thought reasons for why, then wish them luck and tell them you will gladly assist them in the future, should they need help again. If they tell you that your competition was less money it is in your best interest to see that quote. Many times if your competition beat you on price they changed the design and it no longer matches what you originally discussed with the customer. If you built a good relationship with them then this should be an easy objection to overcome. If they are close-minded to the idea, either you didn't do a good enough job of connecting with the customer or they feel they are past the point of no return and no longer want to be bothered. Now here is the worst scenario. You get to speak with the customer and they told you they went with the competition and when you ask why, their answer is VERY vague. They won't really say why. They WILL go so far as to say it's really none of your business or that information isn't pertinent, AH HA! We have a hidden agenda! Move on, no more good can be done here.
So, if we put our conspiracy theories aside for a moment we can get back to relevant sales items. If you ever played the "telephone game"  as a kid you know how quickly a statement can be interpreted and then misinterpreted and distorted in such a way that the original message is almost completely lost. So when  you meet with a potential customer a great question to ask is "who started this initiative?" Are you meeting with the person heading up the the project? Are you meeting with someone who solely is gathering information? What other vendors have they spoken to? What is their relationship to them? Who are the people involved in making the decision & can you present to these people and answer their individual questions? Now, it is very common that you wont get these questions answered. If that is the case you haven't built enough trust with the client or they have no intent of doing business with you. Either way you have more work to do.
When it comes to communication, you must be sure that you understand what the customer is saying. whenever possible, paraphrase what the customer just told you and ask for agreement. Not only are you verifying that you understand the customers needs, but often times you are getting the customer to answer "yes" and any old school sales trainer will tell you that getting the customer into the habit of saying "yes" is a good thing." The flip side is, that when you explain something from your industry to a customer you need to verify engagement. Did the customer understand what you said, not just the actual words but the concept behind those words? If they say yes but the look on their face says otherwise it's important to go at the topics with another question or another direction so you don't make the customer feel uncomfortable or that you think they are stupid. What else does their body language tell you? Are their arms crossed, meaning they are defensive? Are their hands balled into fists meaning they really don't like this? Are they looking around the room because they are disinterested? Diffuse the situation. If it's obvious that they don't want to be there, you really aren't talking to the right person, get them to introduce you to the person that will handle the process, let them off the hook.

So Here is the summary: make sure you have the right person, make sure you and the customer are "on the same page" regarding needs and goals. Understand that sometimes your won't get the final person, so just make do. And lastly, understand that customers will flatly refuse to let you in because they have no intention of doing business with you. Once you figure this out, GET OUT! Find a good customer to talk to.

Thanks for reading today

Mike Shelah

BTW please check out my fundraising blog www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The Gatekeeper isn't Evil, You're Just Doing a Terrible Job Explaining Yourself

I wrote a piece last week and had several people bring up the topic of the gatekeeper and how to "get by" them or how to "make them your best friend." I am here to tell you that the answer is quite simple. If you don't get by the person who answers the phone then you are doing a poor job of presenting who you are and why you are calling. It's ALL YOUR FAULT! So lets go over some of the things you need to do for effective calling. I want to be very clear that these are not magic bullets and no concept works 100% of the time but these concepts will get you a 1000 times farther than what you currently do.

First: be honest. Simple, I know, but often overlooked. When the receptionist asks who you are, tell them. I am "name" with " company name" and then be quiet. Listen to their next question. "What is the purpose of your call?" Here is where most people fail. They try to bully the receptionist or they come up with some crazy story. All bad ideas. Now I know many of you are saying "but Mike, if I tell them that I am a salesperson, they will hang up on me." Then don't tell them that. I said be honest not stupid. "But Mike what do I tell them when they ask why I'm calling?" That depends on why you called them and leads to my next step.
Second: target your calls. Opening the yellow pages or buying a calling list does you almost no good if you don't research who you are calling to determine how you are connected. If you look long enough you can find some common ground. I use LinkedIn for this research all the time. Do we have a mutual contact? Did we go to the same school? Are we from the same town? Are we members of the same social or professional groups? If you can't find some common ground with this person, then find out if they have a pending event. They are moving. They just opened a new office. They are planning to hire 10 new employee's.  They just let go of 25% of their work force. All of these actions are cause for doing business.
If you cant target your calls because you can't find any common ground at least identify that you have the right contact name for your product or service. So when the receptionist asks "what is the nature of your call" your response should be " Actually I need your help. I was given "name" as the person to speak with regarding "your product or service" is that correct?" they will either say yes and transfer you or they will ask you "is this a sales call?" You should respond by saying " I actually wanted to introduce myself and see what projects are coming up in the next 6 months that we could help with." you'd be amazed how effective this can be.

Here's the summary: Be honest, know who your calling, ask for help.

Thanks for reading today


BTW, please check out my fundraising blog www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Don't Be a Sales Idiot

My friend Ryan Brooks (Prinicipal at Valley IT Services) posted on Facebook the other day that a sales person called him and when he told them "I am not interested" the person hung up. So lets talk about how many things are fundamentally wrong with this concept.
First: customer or salesperson, hanging up on someone is rude and unprofessional. There are certainly instances when this could be appropriate but very rarely is this the case. The #1 reason people will often hang up is because the other person made a valid point and they cannot articulate an answer for now. When cold calling was a big part of my prospecting I would hear from people all the time "I'm not interested." Many sales people will often respond "what is it you are not interested in?" To which the potential customer says "whatever it is you are selling." So this is a classic example of the customer not wanting to deal with the person on the other end of the phone. A more effective response would be "I don't have time to give you my complete attention right now but if you call me back on THIS DAY at THIS TIME, I will take 5 minutes to listen and understand." There are 3 possible outcomes from this: the smart salesperson agrees and sets up the follow up call. The stupid sales person continues to pitch and the customer hangs up or the soft sales person agrees and never makes that call.
Second: I alluded to this in my first point and will go into greater detail here. If you as the salesperson have someone on the telephone and they seem to be listening but not agreeing, you need to ask intelligent questions. When the customer say's they are not interested, don't just ask why. Ask some pointed questions, here's a short list:
1 " I'm sorry: I was told that you are the correct person to discuss this solution with. If I have the wrong person would you please point me in the right direction."
If they tell you they are the correct person then proceed with:
2. "Is it fair to say that you are happy with your current vendor and that is why you don't want to meet?" If the answer is yes then follow up with:
3. "I appreciate your honesty, If you don't mind me asking who is your current vendor and how long have you been with them?"
This is your opportunity to become an excellent listener and it also becomes key to understand your competition. Do you know this vendor? Is there anything relevant going on with this vendor (merger acquisition, etc) that can have relevance to your opportunity to help them.
After this you should have a real conversation going with the customer. Keep it above board and keep the conversation in the interest of the client. If now is not the time to meet, then ask the client when to follow up and then mark it in your calendar

I want to be real clear, this is not a bullet proof solution. Largely because for every idiot salesperson, there is also at least one idiot potential customer. It is also important to recognize a couple key factors:

First: you may have called this person on a bad day. Try again in a couple weeks and act like you never had the conversation. If they are still a Jerk, you need to do 1 of 2 things, drop them from your prospect list or find another company contact (preferably a referral).

So in summary: if you are a salesperson or a client, being professional is always the proper way to go. Even if the person on the other end is being an idiot.

Thanks for reading today

Mike Shelah

BTW, please check out my fundraising blog www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

I Don't Think of Myself as a Salesperson

"I don't think of myself as a salesperson." I hear salespeople say this all of the time. They think that if they position themselves as a "consultant" or even better a "small business owner" or "entrepreneur" that it somehow better validates their role in business more than being "just a salesperson." I have a truly heartbreaking announcement to make to those people:

"YOU ARE ALL SALESPEOPLE!!!!!!!!"

If your primary or one of your primary roles in your company is to "meet with potential and/or existing clients, develop & propose solutions and then reach an agreement for a contract" you are a salesperson. The fact that you may also then implement those solutions and continue to manage the project until it is completed does not invalidate your sales role at the beginning.

I am writing this today because: first I know lots of sales people (myself included) and second I know lots of people that hate salespeople.

Even in a bad economy there are always sales jobs to be had, and the better you are at sales the more opportunities you have. There is a lot of risk and, as a result, a lot of reward in sales. Many of the truly successful people you know are either in sales now or started in sales and moved up the chain of command from there.

Good sales require:
Leadership
Industry Knowledge
The ability to listen and comprehend a customer's needs.
The ability to admit mistakes when you makes them.
The ability to fix mistakes, regardless of who made them.

The problem with sales (and the main reason so many people hate us) is that there are a lot of untrained idiots out there who really have no idea how to sell but were hired as a "warm body" to keep headcount at the proper level and "who knows maybe this one can sell." Very few people are born with the ability to sell. The rest of us have to start out and learn from training, reading and our mistakes. So you get sales people who sell by lying. You get salespeople who sell by omitting information. You get salespeople who sell by flat out cheating. Sound familiar? That is why people hate us so much.

Frankly, it's a big part of the reason that I really don't cold call anymore. If I call on 100 people who dont know me. Maybe 1 or 2 of them will give me an opportunity to do business with them. The other 98 told me to get out, used profanity or called security because "there's no soliciting in this building sir." People like to say that as a convenient way to avoid talking to you but according to www.dictionary.com  to "solicit" means " to make a request, application, or entreaty to (a person for business, support, etc)."  Now I could be wrong but I think the simple act of having a storefront or an office where you meet with clients/customers is the same thing? I really get a good laugh when I see an office with a "no soliciting" sign on the front door but I also know that they have multiple salespeople as direct employee's. "Don't bother me, I am too busy teaching my sales people how to overcome no soliciting signs." it's laughable
Then I have people say to me "well if we need you we will call you."  Really? And how will you go about calling me? You didn't take my business card and you certainly didn't bother to write down my name and number? Look, I get it, stupid sales people are annoying. They generally don't know their product and they really don't know where to get answers, they are trying to swoop in and make a quick buck. They tend to be completely unprofessional or you get the opposite where they "overdo it:" and show up in a fancy suit and go out of their way to impress you when they should instead listen to you and build a relationship.
I actually know two people who I used to consider friends that both own marketing companies and don't consider themselves salespeople. In both cases they didn't like the fact that I called someone they knew and when I spoke to that person mentioned I was friends with them. Not they were customers, not we have worked together, FRIENDS. They thought this inappropriate and that if I wanted to contact theses people I should have asked them first......
I'm gonna let that sink in for a minute. The very notion that a "salesman" told someone they know that he is friends with them was so repulsive to them that both of them decided to no longer be friends with me. 
My advice to you people: take a long hard look in the mirror, know what your looking at? A salesperson, get over it.

Thanks for reading today,

Mike Shelah

BTW, be sure to read my fundraising blog www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com 

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

What is Your Perspective on Perspective?

People that know me personally, know that I am a strong advocate for Autism because of my son. Being the parent of an autistic child is a struggle that cannot be quantified for people that don't have one. We have made some good friends with other autistic parents  as a result. Today, I saw that one of those families not only has an autistic son, but also lost a son to cancer several years ago, he would have been 11 years old today..... Wow! You hear something like that and suddenly you think that maybe your life isn't quite as bad as you were just griping about. Perspective has an unusual way of sobering a person. I bring up this topic because perspective in the sales process is so crucial yet, so few sales reps really go for attaining it with the potential client.
Just about every sales authority has touted "the customer doesn't care how much you know until they know you care."
You can attain this by coming to grips with the customers perspective. You as a sales person have the arduous task of finding new customers and getting existing customers to buy more. If you have a soul, hopefully you do so with fulfilling their needs as your intention. So you meet the client, you listen to their needs, you answer questions, you paraphrase what they just said and ask for agreement, you summarize, you analyze and you tell them you will be back with a proposal in "x" number of days. You stand up, shake their hand and walk out feeling good about the opportunity, because you know that you have a product that fills their need/fixes their problem and it is within their budget. On the return appointment day, you return with your fancy proposal, maybe you have a PowerPoint to show them, maybe you bring a sales engineer or sales manager to reinforce and corroborate what you are saying. At the end on the meeting they even tell you they like your proposal and they will be in touch in a week. A week goes by, maybe two weeks. you don't hear from them. You try to call, your try to email, you even try stopping by and they are just not available. Finally it has been two months since your last meeting. After numerous attempts to contact the customer, they finally answer the phone and in a very irritated voice say "look we went with another company." If they haven't hung up on you at this point you ask "Who did you go with and what was the deciding factor?" they respond "that's not important," or "that's none of your business," and then, they hang up. Hey! What the hell just happened there?
You conducted yourself professionally? check
Your solution was a legitimate fit? check
You followed up when they told you? check

So what went wrong? There is a very real possibility that you didn't have the whole picture. Now, that may seem like an obvious statement, but consider these factors:
The person you met with, are they the only decision maker or were others involved in the decision?
If others were involved, did you meet them to understand their role in the  project?
Did you ask up front what other vendors they are considering and is one of them the incumbent?
If the incumbent is involved, why are they considering change and what would it take to leave the incumbent?
What is the role of the person you met with? Have they met resistance to their decisions before?
Do they currently like their job, or are they just hanging in there until the next one comes along?
Have they made decisions before that have backfired on the company?
Have they been with the company 10 weeks or 10 years?
Do they have a friend in the industry that does what you do?

As you can see, there are a lot of tough questions that are often not asked. These question help you determine the customers perception. I can tell you sight unseen, if you meet with a company and the CEO's nephew is a sales rep for your competition, he is probably getting the business, unless you do an ABSOLUTELY PHENOMENAL job AND the nephew is a complete idiot. Even then you can still lose. Don't waste valuable sales time on opportunities you have no chance winning.

That's my perspective, I welcome yours

Thanks for reading today,

Mike S.

BTW, please read my fundraising blog www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com