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

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