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
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
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
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
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!
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
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
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
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
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