salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

I sense a current trend emerging for sales teams to pay lots of money to get their sellers to focus on what keeps a customer for as long a time as possible.  I’ve come across two recent examples of this, one with a local English, the other a global, training firm.  Training 2000 and Mercuri are their names.

The Mercuri training framework is widely known.  I first came across an aspect of it in 99 called the Sales Platform.  This is where you split your funnel into 3 Platforms; Suspect, Prospect & Buying.  And you represent them on a sheet of paper, draw a line across the middle, pop the Buying Platform at the top, and split the bottom half in two.

What I discovered today, at a division of multi-national engineering supplier BSL Brammer, was an emphasis on “stability indicators”.  These are positions that expose how likely your customer is to stay with you.

The English outfit appear to have their own take on these, they call “key security indicators”.  I’ve seen this implemented around Easter-time in a subsid of industrial conglomerate IMI.  You need to understand the variables that determine customer longevity, and you can attribute figures on a scale to each one.

I must say I do like this approach.  It does I think, help focus a sales person’s mind on what they need to influence.  I’ve as yet seen no results from this, but reckon it’s a worthwhile pursuit.

This is interesting for you if you ever face pressure from cheaper competition.  I saw an interview with the awesome Seb Coe today.  He’s the winner who (not only won Olympic Gold in Moscow & LA but also) delivered a stunning presentation that, following his amazing political manoeuvering, sealed London earning the 2012 Olympics.  He was being quizzed about potential cost overruns.

The most blatant individual cost concerns the huge centrepiece stadium, and there are several recent examples of stadia being built to time, and to budget.  These include (and forgive the figures as they’re what I wrote down quickly from the interview)  the Parisien Stade de France, Sydney’s Olympic stadium (both £260m), Cardiff’s terrific Arms Park replacement, Millennium Stadium (even with a fantastic sliding roof where I saw Brummagem twice, only £126m) and the most recent, Arsenal’s new stadium at Ashburton Grove (£350m) which took only 2 years and opened July 2006.

And yet the unsightly wart on the face of stadium design remains the new Wembley.  It’s way over-due (possibly 2 years depending on who you believe) and the costs for this totally unnecessary folly have at least doubled, from £350m at first, to a conservative £757m now.

I talked this over with a few sales guys I know, I mean, how can such an obscene overrun occur?  And the answer seems obvious.  The guys I was talking with knew of sales into both Arsenal’s Emirates gig as well as the FA nonsense at Wembley.  The difference between total disaster and success to them is clear.  Emirates decided not to scrimp on anything.  They focussed on what would make money, long-term.  Wembley only gave a monkeys about the lowest bidder. 

Just think of Steve Buscemi’s smart Rockhound character in Armageddon for a reaction on that.  (when they’re about to take off in the Shuttle, he reminds us it’s all been put together by the lowest bidder, implication being, NASA are idiots and it’s bound to fall apart).

The vibe appears to be that Emirates (whether they realised or not) followed the lauded Egan doctrine.  That is, it is not about how much it costs today, think of instead about the entitre project life.  All Wembley (and Aussie firm Multiplex project managing) cared about was “Day One” costs.  Disaster.  Multiplex have apparently lost, as I write, at least £138m on the gig.

One example from Emirates features their beer dispense system.  Yes, it looked at first glance to cost more than the freebies they’d usually get from drink brand owners, yet long-term, they’d earn tonnes more drinks revenue whilst making customer’s experience so much better, meaning more revenues.

When I was a nipper, my sales team ran cold-call competitions a couple of weeks before Christmas.  It was called the Goose Fat week.  Whoever uncovered the most number of suspects won big, which meant finding people that planned to look into what we sold over the next twelve months to register a bona fide lead.  If we got a meeting for an immediate opportunity, that was worth double points.  I won in my first year, which paid for a flight I wanted to take, and I was highly motivated to win for free, being fresh out of Uni and brassick.

Yet a strange thing happened when I began to follow-up on all the people that’d said, “by all means call me in 3 months time”.  None of them were ready to meet me.  Had I just wasted all that effort and hope that’d gone before?  It was pretty disheartening.

My Boiler Roomers have encountered something similar of late.  People saying they like what they’ve got to say, and call back in ‘x’ months time.  Clearly, I’ve learned simply saying ‘thanks’ and moving on is not adequate in any way.

The approach that needs to be adopted here, is to say somehitng along the lines of:

‘that’s fine, glad you like what we can do for you, so as we don’t have to rely on my creaking memory when we next speak, what are you hoping will have happened between now and then, that would mean we can enthusiastically recommence our discussions?’

And unsurprisingly, they tend to umm and arh if they’re trying to fob you off, so it’s a lovely way of getting genuine progress, as depending on what they respond with, you can likely make a case for meeting up right away as what they think delays the process, actually has little to do with it.

There’s such a difference of opinion in how a sales person should dress.  With London experiencing crazy hot weather these past few weeks, with regular unheard of successive 30 degree days, I’ve noticed dress codes have finally become more sensible.  It’s long been apparent that there really is no common sense at all in wearing some random piece of cloth tied around and dangling from your neck.

It is, it seems, all the fault of the Croatians.  A load of their mercenaries rocked up to the French Court centuries ago with such attire, and it became known as a Cravat, as it sounded similar to the croat language word for, amazingly, Croat.

And at the beginning of the current heatwave, doctors from the government health department went on the news saying employers should loosen dress codes so as to avoid unnecessary stifling in the heat.  Consequently, the whole of London has finally ditched the tie, in favour of smart suit trousers and decent shirt.

Anyhow, one of my Boiler Roomers is a young lady who feels that when we go out visiting prospects, the more make-up, the better.  I’ve pointed out this is inappropriate and she says she sees why.  Which is good.  Yet I’m reminded of what a sales dress code should be all about.  Here’s some of my experiences that have shaped my views:

1) There’s a good scene in the movie Ocean’s Eleven, where Matt Damon is preparing for distracting casino-owner Andy Garcia.  Safe-busting ring leader George Clooney explains he must strike the optimum balance, so that he is smart, yet not too snazzy, being memorable for nothing other than what he says.  I personally subscribe to this view about how reps dress.

2) When I first started repping, we invariably sold to the top bean counter at a firm.  They were ultra-conservative dressers.  And were never ‘trendy’.  I saw this as an opportunity, being a youngster in their early 20s, to stamp a bit of my personality onto proceedings.  I was soon shown the error of my ways.  People who know they’re not the snappiest of trend-followers don’t like people that reckon they are.

3) Some of the first reps I met that I didn’t work with were all selling software and were ex-IBM.  When they walked towards you it was like a kind of mafia was approaching.  They wore a ‘uniform’, with each one having a navy suit (double-breasted no less - it was a long time ago!) with plain white shirt and sober tie.  They looked fine.

4) I went for an interview in the mid-90s, proudly sporting my ‘man-ches-taaar’ sideburns.  Well, the chicks loved ‘em(!).  The manager grilling me was happy to put me forward to the next stage, yet said my sidies had to go.  Facial hair on a rep is a no-no.  And I agree.

I’m glad dress standards have altered.  I don’t say slipped, as in the 60s, bowler hats were all the rage and everyone was monochrome.  Whereas today a well groomed dark suit, with decent crisp shirt, worn open necked, and in my opinion along with smart cufflinks, can look highly presentable.  Yet it’s amazing how often you still see dodgy, scruffy, riffy ties, button down collars and ridiculous socks.  Each to their own?

Salespodder’s Jargon guide to all that is B:

Bag-Carrying

Where a junior salesrep works as an assistant to a senior one, carrying their bags.

Bath

If you have a ‘bath’ it means you’ve sold nothing that period.

Bean Counter

This is what most salesreps call those within our potential customer organisations that control the purse strings. Whilst it does show that most of such people are the polar opposite of salesreps in terms of personality, their importance is massive, so treat them right or beware…

Benchmark

Usually refers to the process where competing offerings are tested against specific criteria to see which is most relevant or how good one individual one is. If you don’t set the criteria, don’t take part. You’ll lose the business.

Benefit

The reason why a particular aspect of your offering (from a technial/operations viewpoint) will change the life of the potential customer.

Big Three Objections

Time, Mail, Money. When you are given a barrier to progressing on the basis of any of these three.

Biscuit-Dunkers

We hate these, with a passion! Salesreps that do not actually sell.

Blob

To ‘blob’ is to not do any business that period.

Blocker

Similar to (but not exactly the same as) a Gatekeeper, someone whom prevents you from moving elsewhere, usually higher, within their organisation.

Blown Out

Rejection. You have crashed and burned.

BlueBird

I have absolutely no idea where this phrase came from! A BlueBird is simply an order that flies in out of the blue! Unforecasted and probably only using up a fraction of the work you would normally expect to have to do to win a deal, it was a ridiculously short sales cycle too.

Blue-Sheet

One of the many names given to a standard corporate sales process. More prevalent in the early nineties than nowadays. Every sales process should have something akin to this concept.

Board Meeting

A mystical get-together where decisions are made by potential customers that can change your life. All senior executives meet in such forums to make decisions regularly, predominantly monthly. You need to strive to become an agenda item at such meetings.

Bonus Scheme

The details which set out what you will be paid for your troubles.

Book Price

See List Price.

Business Value Proposition

An extremely ballsy close. You are extremely confident that your offering will make or save the potential customer more money than they thought humanly possible. You exude such confidence in fact, that you offer to provide the offering for absolutely nothing. All you ask is for a share of the gain or saving when it comes in. That’s a Business Value Proposition. It always flushes out true objections and is virtually never taken up!

Buying Process

The steps taken that enable a potential customer to evaluate and decide what to order. It ends with the actual money changing hands.

Buying Signal

Something that the potential customer does that reading between the lines tells you they want to buy from you. Can be vocal or visual, direct or indirect. Tend to be subconscious acts by potential customers, but not exclusively.

It can be bizarre who you bump into when out reppin’.  At a small packaging firm, couple of million turnover, the owner turned out to be a self-confessed ‘Life Coach’.  He was into it so much, that he’d delegated his packaging responsibilites so he was only in one day a week, and spent the rest of the time coaching elsewhere.  As with all of his ilk, he’s passionate about what he does, and gave me an impromptu 20 minutes to what he was most excited about at the moment.  His name’s Nic Rixon, and was part of a team who’d just created a programme called Think Feel Know.

I myself was fairly intrigued, as it did indeed appear to have a new slant.  To help describe what it is, first, here’s what it is not:

It’s not NLP - which is about how to use the senses, rather than how people make decisions.

It’s not traditional sales training - which tends to pigeon-hole buying decisions as either being emotionally or logically led. 

The idea is that people wil gravitate towards majoring in one of the three states when making buying decisions.   One of the three is their preferred process, yet to fully convince, you must nail all three.  So, do you ever hear people say “I’ll have to think about it”?  That means they need to see lots of detail and data.  Feeling right about something and when someone has a gut-reaction that they Know something’s right, together will enable you to proceed.  The trick that Nic Rixon seemed to like was pausing at the appropriate time to move someone from the Thinking state to the Feeling or Knowing one.

Another bonus is apparently when most sellers talk to buyers they only really uncover facts, and you need to uncover feelings to genuinely progres.  So one example runs as follows “How is it in your industry? How about in your territory?  How do you feel it’s going for you guys?  And how do you feel about all this?” Starting off with 3rd-party views, then homing in on the individual personal perspective.

Watched this Sean Connery flick last night for a bit of a wind-down.  It’s a fantastic film to watch if you’re doing business in East Asia.  I bet the original book (by Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton) is gripping.  The film lacks something somewhere in translation to screen I suspect, as it doesn’t quite live up to the cast billing, yet it has loads of techniques for negotiation that can add value to any sales armoury.

I’ve always found that most sales people really fall down when it comes to the negotiation stage.  I worked with a guy once called Colin Harris.  Highly technically proficient, and responsible for bringing in a couple of stella deals, before retreating into murky marketing waters.  He once started a negotiation by throwing a Sainsburys supermarket placcy bag across the table.  Then made a joke of it being a precursor to “giving the shop away”.

My own first forays into negotiating were disasters.  I was so excited-cum-desperate to get a signature with my first few deals, I didn’t mind the margin being eroded as long as I could write the new customer name up on the whiteboard.  One guy that stitched me up like a kipper I remember was called Julian Margolin.  He ran a toy company (why oh why did I practically give that deal away?!), mind you ten years later I heard he still used the software I sold him, so I’m glad about that.  Anyhow, then I realised this approach had to go.  In the words of my sales trainer at that time, Welsh wizard Wynn Rees, “you’re offering a product that’s going to save them thousands, and they want a discount? ….[expletive deleted] off”.

Here’s a couple of neat tricks from Rising Sun:

Knowledge Is Power - The opening scenes feature a negotiation where the Japs are eavesdropping in on the Yanks to suss out their perceived weaknesses.  Whereas this kind of thing cannot be condened, the fact is that digging to know as much as you can, and then even more, is one task that most reps fail to appreciate, falling foul of the classic ‘wing it’ mentality.

Saving Face - There are several occasions when Connery’s character realises to progress, he must allow someone to back up a little first.  Saving face routes are offered, so that stock can be taken and another avenue tried with no-one feeling hard-done by.

Call In Favours - He’s also not afraid to remind people they owe him one, particularly useful to remember when you’ve helped out a customer one time, conveniently forgotten when you really need their help.

Competition Perspective - When someone’s trying to lay traps for you, think deeply about what it is and why it’s been laid.  “Never under-estimate your opponent”, “Never take what he offers you”.

Problem Response - And probably my fave thing to learn from the whole movie, is the Japanese saying, that points out when something goes bad what you should do.  So many endeavours go pear-shaped by thinking of these two the wrong way round.  You should rather; ”fix the problem, not the blame”. 

“They Can’t Afford It” 

Had a preliminary meet earlier today with a sales manager at a packaging solutions provider.  Their issue as an industry is buyers that only want to decide on price, when all the added value services (design capability, lead time, out of hours delivery, business empathy) are jettisoned from the criteria.

He often gets pulled in to meetings with buyers who simply say ‘we can’t afford to buy from you’.  He’s got so frustrated with people buying on the wrong set of principles, that he’s started to say in reply “fair enough, you can’t afford us, we’ll walk away from your business”.

What he’s noticed, is that half the time, buyers say ‘hold on a minute, why you leaving?’ and he gets to start talking about the value added services they can’t afford, and get’s invited to stay and the conversation is turned.

I was so happy to hear about this.  Yesterday, I listened to a sales guru cd a pal gave me and blogged that when people say they can’t afford you, he suggested you respond ‘you can’t afford not use us!’, so it was great to hear someone having the balls to say, less arrogantly, ’sod you’ and get the balance shifting in his favour; ‘people pay us cos we save them extra money, speed up more time, make them more sales, or whatever’.  It’s the usual thing about price never being the true criteria.

“Selling Number Seven”

And then, the owner of the business waltzes in, enjoying the scorching hot London day in shorts and t-shirt.  He genuinely believes that price is only Number 7 on the selling list.  (an interesting aside, is that if someone says they’re leaving your employ due to salary, that’s also only number seven)  Which means there are in reality 6 proper reasons which all mean more to them.  What are those six? That’s what you need to find out.  I might even say that to someone next time it hits me between the eyes.

Well, a ridiculous 36° in London today, and tomorrow could top the 100° day we had 3 summers ago.  With a terrific breeze this evening, I thought it’d be the best time to listen to Chris Howard’s second disc.  And I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised, as it’s better than the first.

Track 14 though is a disaster.  It’s about ten minutes, to a backtrack of elevator music which is the sordid lovechild of Manilow and Travis.  I say Manilow, as (although Copacabana is surely a classic) a suburb of Sydney today started to use his greatest hits to disperse what Bazza hmself termed teenage “hoodlums”, and I say Travis cos I just don’t like them, they’re ‘aor’ rubbish and Britain’s most successful country and western band.  Drivel.  You’re told to fly around the earth, behind the sun and ‘you are the light and the light is you’…. well, I can’t go on.  It’s clearly the hypnosis nonsense I’ve already expressed my views on.

Leave that one in its box.

The preceding sales skills are actually quite neat.  Some of the things mentioned you’ll recognise as hearing under a different guise, yet I quite liked the way he put them into a new taxonomy.  The 14 “Sleight Of Mouth” techniques do make you think about things you should be saying when you hear the same old objections.  Rather than re-categorise them all here, surely the essence of a good review is to provide overall, a nice balanced contention, and secondly, a flavour of what the vibe is, rather than reproduce the entire message.  So here are the few one-liners he came out with that I thought I’d hold on to: 

• (on customer objections) “Don’t buy into their limitations”
• “Picture this, it’s 3 months from now…” (when trying to get a prospect to visualise how good their life can be with you)
• (when describing your ethos) “Not closing sales, but opening relationships - we don’t want customers, but raving fans”
• “Where you gonna be next year if you do the same as what you’re doing now?” (when someone wavers from being enthusiastic)
• (when encoutering a ditherer) “what specifically do you want from me to assist you in this decision”
• (and a cracker for when someone continues to say money’s a problem) “there ever been something you couldn’t afford to do, but was so important you had to do anyway?”

Two separate experiences of mine today converged to the same point in my mind.  They both suggested that for sales success, you’ve often got to think of extra ideas, and see them through, to stay ahead of competitors, or even generate new opportunites in the first place.

The first came from a sales person called James Hughes at one of my customers, who I spoke to as he was kicking a football around his garden before his kids arrived back from school.

He had a new product range to sell and was frustrated buyers weren’t willing to immediately try it out.  In his game, buyers are grumpy buggers, and often wait until the ’special offers’ get ever more tempting as marketing managers panic they need ever more market penetration, then go for it.  To overcome this issue, he alone has started to think of generating ’specification’ sales, by going to large, one-off end users that could buy, and introducing them to his middlemen.  The effort takes a bit, yet only one needs to come off and he’s smashed his targets.  And also, what boss doesn’t take kindly to this kind of enthusiastic creative thinking

The second involves a 20 yr old called Sarah Green, from a TV show on Teenage Tycoons, that two years before started a furniture company already turning over £400k.  She got the business bug at just 12 yrs of age, when during her paper round, she clocked that most of her papers went into the letterboxes of elderly people, who’s gardens could do with a touch of ‘tlc’.  So she put fliers she’d run up on her computer, along with their papers and within a fortnight, she got to tend 8 gardens every other Sunday, netting an impressive £40-£50 a week.  Another good example of a neat idea to open up doors.

I always maintain that it’s a common misconception it’s all about the money for successful sales people, in the same way it is for entrepreneurs.  True, this edict may be slightly less accurate for reps, but all the good one think of the buzz about ‘can I do this? can I solve this puzzle?’ and it’s best to try and not succeed rather than don’t try and forever wonder.