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

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

What is Business Attire?

I have been in Telecom sales since 1999 and my first Telecom Job required me to wear a suit or at the very least dress slacks and a tie, every day. Khaki pants were not allowed, except on the rare "casual day" which we would get once or twice a year. Following that, I worked for a small local company and one of the owners was a VERY accomplished sales professional who decided to strike out on his own. In my 2+ years working for him I noticed that he NEVER wore a tie. He would put a jacket on at times, but never a tie, and he presented to some very significant clients. I asked him about it one day and his answer was very simple & powerful. "Mike, wearing a tie just isn't me. If I were to put one on just for appearance it wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be sincere. My customers buy from me because of my sincerity, because of my sincere desire to help them. If I can't be comfortable with who I am, how can I expect my customers to be comfortable with me?" That, is what is commonly referred to as an epiphany. This is an absolute breakthrough concept to grab with both hands and hold on to with every last bit of energy you have, so I am going to repeat it.

"If I can't be comfortable with who I am, how can I expect my customers to be comfortable with me?"

Now the flip side of this is I see people all the time that want to conduct business with other companies and they look like they just rolled out of bed or they are off to a summer BBQ. So it is important to strike a balance and go through a mental checklist.

Who is your target Audience?
If you regularly engage law firms and doctors offices, it makes sense to wear a crisp white or blue pressed shirt and dress slacks.

If you own a landscaping company, it is perfectly acceptable to have on a polo shirt with your company logo and clean pair of jeans that aren't used for field work.

If you have employee's that engage your customers it is always a good idea to wear clothing with the company logo and to have some form of ID badge that can be worn around the neck.


Here's a hint, flip flops are NEVER acceptable business attire. Same thing goes for men in shorts.


I am not going to even try to tell women how to dress. I will say there is an important distinction between dressing to impress and dressing to seduce. So I am just going to leave it there. I will give you one hint ladies, if you have to ask "is this appropriate? " The answer is probably "No."


So in summary, you must be comfortable with the way your present yourself so you can present an air of confidence. You must also be cognizant of your target customer and what they expect.

Thanks for reading today




Mike S.


BTW, please check out my new blog for a very worthy cause


www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Good Customer Service is Simple, Yet Rare... Why is That?

I don't normally blog on back to back days, but I had such a terrible customer service experience yesterday that I thought it would be a good idea to talk about what good customer services is and how simple it can be to achieve.

Your first line of defense: auto response email and what to do with it. I am sure we have all gotten an email from customer service saying "We have received your email and someone will contact you regarding your concern within 24 hours." Fine, it's a good start. Here is where the trouble begins. The "real" response needs to have empathy and a legitimate call to action to assist the customer. I received about 8 emails last night from this company and the first email received was the auto generated one. The second (supposedly) was someone who had read my email and was responding to it. In all 4 "real" email responses it seemed as if someone had just "cut & paste" some canned responses. It really didn't seem like they understood my concerns at all.

Your second line of defense: a customer care team that is educated in your products and has the autonomy to make decisions. We've all had this experience, you call customer care and it is very obvious that you know more about the product than the person on the other end. I am sure the first argument people will raise is "Well Mike, those customer care people are minimum wage earners that don't last very long so it is very expensive and time consuming to keep them trained and educated." My response to that? How truly important are your customers? Every company tells you that top notch customer service really matters to them but they view those employees as overhead and more of a problem than an asset. Here's a crazy idea, keep the good ones and give them a raise, and hire their friends. Create a positive work environment and support them to support the customer. But that's just a silly pipe dream, it would never work. Just keep managing call volume, abandon rate and the percent of closed trouble tickets, because those are the only metrics that really matter ( I hope you can read the sarcasm in that last line).

Your third line of defense: a sales team IN CONJUNCTION with sales management that realizes a happy customer is one that gives referrals. I cannot tell you how many times I would approach my old boss with a customer issue and he would ask me if I sold them or if somebody on our team sold them. If my answer was no, he would completely ignore the issue and tell me to tell them to call customer care and let them deal with it.  Even if it was one of my customers, he was convinced that 80% of customer issues were self inflicted and felt they would often work themselves out. Here's a hint, this is a TERRIBLE way to manage a business. But since his ability to earn money was based on finding new customers and not keeping old customers happy, he ignored them. If you don't care about the customer, who will?

So here's the summary: effective email response, a solid well trained and well compensated customer care team, sales & management working together to keep customers happy. Simple, right?


Thanks for reading today


Mike S.

BTW please check out my new fundraising blog

www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

The DNA of the Business Card

I collect business cards...... A lot of them. I have this great big binder filled with hundreds of them. I've seen some really good ones, I 've seen some really bad ones and I've seen some mediocre ones. So lets talk about the different elements to make an effective business card.

First things first, you need the basics:
Company Name
Your name
Your email
Your website
Your phone number
Company tag line

Really good optional items:
Direct line and or cell number
Fax number
Custom QR code
Promotional tag on back of card

When it comes to the  basics I am AMAZED at how many cards I collect in my travels that are missing one of theses items. The purpose of your business card is to provide someone who doesn't really know you that well with all of your key contact information and a little summary of what you do. I actually got a card from someone promoting a marketing company and his name and his email were not on the card. Yeah, sounds like a great marketing company right? I saw another  card with the email on it twice but no website. Which leads me to my next comment....

If you go into business for yourself, get a real email acct. Don't use yahoo or gmail or anything like that. For a VERY small fee you can set up an email address to match your website. This will go a long way to not only show your professionalism but give your potential clients and business partners a sense of staying power.

In addition to the email comment, there are some real "no no's" to avoid on a business card. For one, check for typos. So many people produce their own cards now, it's fairly simple and you can create a real professional card right from home. So double, even triple check the font size, grammar, etc. to make sure it is correct. NOTHING is more embarrassing than a typo on your card and yes, people will notice. They will think you are an idiot, and they wont want to do business with you.

Don't put religious quotes on your card, unless you only want to deal with people who espouse your specific religious beliefs. Your religion is connected to your spirit and is very personal. You will turn off a great many people this way, because there is an implied bias behind a quote like that. You don't ever see "card carrying Democrat" or "Republican and proud of it" on a business card, because like religion. politics are a very polarizing topics. In the world of business keep those opinions to your inner circle and not on your business card.

For those who recognize the value of a traditional business transaction & want to take advantage of technology, QR codes can be very useful. There are thousands of QR code creators on the Internet and a quick key word search will allow you to pick the right one for your company. A QR code can simply create a link to your blog or website. It can also link the reader to a vcard with allow of your contact info available for Download to a smart phone. For those that are not sure what a QR code is, it looks like this 



So in summary, make sure your business card info is complete, accurate and devoid of polarizing statements that could offend potential customers.

Thanks for reading today

Mike S.

BTW follow me on twitter @mistertelecom

Please be sure to check out my new blog (if you tried  my QR code,then you already have), I am heading a fundraiser for Autism

www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com

double thank you