salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

One of my friends in Cape Town hails from the mysterious luvvy infested world of advertising.  A place filled with murkiness I cannot fathom, she told me of an event last week with a English speaker.  He was a copy-writer from agency Young & Rubicon in London, who’d enjoyed success on famous last century campaigns for the likes of Heineken (refreshes the parts…) and Silk Cut.  A number of interesting points emerged, which can aid a sales campaign.

Focus On One Idea - Often when pitching a solution to a prospect, you want to get as many of your juicy benefits out as possible.  He suggested going with one at a time.  More usually confuses the issue.  And he gave the example of catching a tennis ball; throw me one and I’ll catch it, throw five at once, and I’ll drop the lot.

One Sheet Of Paper - Too often he’d seen ‘briefs’ that were the size of War And Peace.  If you cannot say it one a single sheet, you won’t get any results.  A lesson for any Proposal planning meeting here I fancy.

Let’s Not Do Lunch - When is a good idea good enough?  He bemoaned the fact that when a good idea crops up in a meeting, everyone stops and says that’s it (”let’s do lunch…”).  Yet in reality, what’s needed is actually a Great idea, so you should carry on, progress away from the simply ‘good’ idea, and try to nail a Great one.

Stay In The Box - And this is a real eye-opener, stemming from his frustration that clients all too frequently utter the immortal line ‘think outside the box for us please’.  His experience shows that all the best, and most creative ideas come from when the parameters of the ‘box’ are so tight, awesome creativity is needed to come up with something brilliant - in other words, the tighter the brief, the seemingly more constraining the parameters of the ‘box’, the better the resultant creativity.

(And then he also made some joke about baby pigeons

I’ve recently got delegated a new role, that of Purchasing Manager where I’m poacher turned gamekeeper and am actually out buying some stuff.  All a bit new to me, it’s looking to get some creative and technical work done.  What’s interesting is that I’ve had initial meetings with several prospective vendors to outline my requirements, and we’re now at the numbers stage.

As this is inside ‘new media’ space, it should be no surprise each ’seller’ is fronted by a lady.  Yet it is surprising that, despite their apparent lack of formalised sales training, or indeed no need to proactively ‘chase’ uncovering new business opportunities, a couple of them have shown flashes of sales brilliance.

The biggest single thing that has separated the winners from wannabees so far is the approach to delivering their Proposals.  The ones that have clearly bought into what I’m after have all called me up, and asked whether they can run me through the costings in person.  The premise being, they know they’re offering a menu of choices, and want me to understand each one, allowing me to pick and choose the elements required.  All have also reassured me of their excitement towards the project.

There’s such a glorious message in this.  How often do I (even today) fire off a quick pdf of a mini-Prop, only to suffer the death of silence.  You absolutely must must must run through every Prop with a punter face-to-face.

Went along to a swish sports awards bash last night in Cape Town, where the guest speaker was Natalie Du Toit.  Now (somehow) I’d not heard of her before, and it turns out she’s a total hero.  A potential Olympian swimmer already aged 16ish, a woman in a car ploughed into her 5 years ago, as she was on her way to school on her scooter (I think from a swimming session).  Natalie was at a Stop sign and the other lady was taking a short-cut out of a car park.  Natalie consequently lost a leg from the knee.

She’s since been a beacon to us all, and hopes to qualify for Beijing, amazingly competing against able-bodied athletes.

Being a local girl and already such a humbling legend, the audience were captivated by her every word.  She explained her life story and detailed her motivations.  Her material was excellent of course, and without trying to, easily inspired.

The link to sales for me came from two things.  Generally, she reinforced the mantra that hard work pays off.  And you need to be aware it takes an awful lot of hard work.

And secondly, she signed off with words along these lines, which I loved, and made me vow to re-focus around my day-job in selling:

“the tragedy in life is not in missing your goals, the tragedy is in not having any goals to aim at,

the disgrace in life is not failing to reach a star, the disgrace is in not trying to shoot for a star”

You ask any CEO, and they’ll tell you the vast majority of reps are lazy.  There are all sorts of historical reasons for this.  I, for my part, know that most reps are indeed lazy.  They tend by their very nature to seek out short-cuts, follow the quickest paths and only really do something involved when they absolutely have no alternative.

One example with this is with call planning and preparation.  Now, let’s accept mitigating circumstances can exist, such as a lack of tools in place to speed up such processes, yet so few reps do a good job on this it’s scary.

Another one is with prospecting.  I just came across an instance where someone wished to target the customers of another company.  The two vendors sold different wares, yet can enjoy success in similar target markets.  One young buck rep was charged with creating a list of prospects.  Simple, you’d think.  Get on the web and away you go, untold riches to plunder.

Yet the list generated had what their boss thought was too few names.  Surely a better yield should be visible.  And it should.  For the young buck had only looked in one place for ‘leads’; the Customer section of the other firm’s website.

Unbelievable.  Apparently double the number of companies existed elsewhere around their site.  I suggest a public lashing.

Forced to talk today about a bizarre, yet surprisingly frequent, sales knock-back which I was just involved with.  A meeting with two fellas from a prospect ended in high spirits, both saying they liked what we do and would talk it over with a trio of their senior management colleagues to understand their thoughts and then discuss next steps with us.

In true selling fashion, we indentified who the 3 others were, what they did and what potential courses of action could follow.

All seemed under control.  A plan was in place, a future meeting seemed assured.  Then disaster.  An email from one of the guys we’d met saying a basic ’no thanks, but we’ll keep your details on record’. 

Now, two things under immediate analysis struck me.  Firstly, on what basis had the decision criteria been introduced allowing a ‘no’ to result at such a ludicrous stage?  Many actions on our part could have headed that off in hindsight.  The most telling to report on here, is that you should always prepare the prospect for a colleague’s ‘no’ and introduce a fall-back plan in case.  I normally always do this, so am annoyed I clearly didn’t spot it on this occasion.

The second is that the ‘Dear John’ gave no reason whatsoever as to why the proposal would not be pursued.  I have a sales girl on this case, and suggested to her an approach that calls up outwardly showing acceptance (’that’s life, although not usually for us’) yet makes sure she find proper reasons for this snub.

And I suggested the line ‘it’s like if a boyfriend finishes with you and doesn’t tell you why, you’re racked with all sorts of worries about the future and need to know why…’ type thing.

So there I was in Cape Town and my local mobile number from the MTN network decided not to work.  Having been in this position before, I went into one of their kiosks and asked for it to be re-activated.  Unlike on the previous occasion, I was given flannel about ’systems changed two months ago’ and such like meaning the old number was dead.  I vowed to give them one last chance and visited a third store, deliberately choosing the touristy area of the Waterfront as at least they’d be used to dodgy foreigners demands!

At no point did anyone show at least the slightest bit of interest in me as a customer, even when I pointed out I’d been a loyal customer for 3 years and given them thousands in revenues.

As I wandered into their pad, there were two young guys, dressed in normal casual clothes, chatting and a girl on a stool the other side.  I explained to one of the guys my predicament.  Half-way through talking to me, he pulled out his mobile from his pocket and checked a text or something and put it away again.  Then, the girl, who all this time had been chatting away on what seemed like a call to a friend, started contributing to our transaction, whilst still on the blower with her pal.  Then the guy took my sim card wanting to check it in his phone, rather than mine.  Yet his phone was a trusty old Nokia last seen in the 90s and he couldn’t get it to fire up.  So here was a fella, working in a mobile phone store, with a phone over 5 years old and not charged/working.  All three events combined saw me walk out flabbergasted.

Goodbye MTN.  Losers.

So off I popped next door.  A Vodacom reseller called CelluCity, also recommended to me by my mate PJ, as his pal Sean owns them.    As I walked in, a server just got back from a break by the looks of it, and was singing the Eminem line ’guess who’s back’ to himself, then he high-fived the bloke I was headed towards to be served myself.  They both wore corporate polo shirts and clearly enjoyed being at their desks.  At the counter, my first question related to whether a superior network provider than MTN existed.  The guy responded with ‘I only sell Vodacom, so let me tell you today, that Vodacom is absolutely the best’ and then he giggled, realsing what he’d said.  And so did I.

My service experience continued to be nothing but positive.  The guy serving me (Marc Davids according to the receipt) backed up his healthy attitude with several excellent and genuine needs-pinpointing questions.  And off I went, having spent 500 bucks.

Hello Vodacom.  All promising stuff.

You don’t need to be a slave to American early-evening 80s sitcoms to guess the moral of this little tale.

Salesforce.com have hauled their ‘roadshows’ around England featuring an “inspirational keynote” (their words) speech by their founder.  In the mid-90s, I witnessed a similar event, with a multimedia presentation from Tom Siebel at a Chicago crm show, so I was expecting an experience a bit like reading a how-to book from a well-known chief exec, or megabucks entrepreneur - the kind of thing where they spend every moment telling you how great they are with little true substance.

Siebel’s pitch was at the dawn of internet connection for the masses, and his big idea was that anything you wanted in life would be carried out by your own personal ‘web agents’, which in turn ‘talked’ to other people’s agents, and he showed several amusing videos playing out such scenarios.  Ten years on, reality unfortunately crushes this vision.  So would Benioff’s opinions similarly suffer?

He gained instant credibility with and empathy from his audience with a few ‘hands-up’ questions (’who’s heard of mash-ups’, ‘who’s used AppExchange services’, ‘who’s realised they’re in the wrong room?’) and when the hotel-supplied laptop decided to kick-in it’s annoying screensaver, he deftly spiked it much to everyone’s mirth.

What about the sausage?  Amazingly, he did not spend a single moment talking about any feature of his crm at all.  It was all about how the future of the web (yes, he did I’m afraid make fleeting reference to web 2.0 firms) would be the combination of different products simultaneously, seamlessly working together, and the further march of SaaS (Software as a Service).  And of the many exmaples, he particularly enjoyed the Google maps shadow appearing inside his kit (’that’s not my shadow!’).

So, nothing especially new, nothing earth-shattering we didn’t know already, so what was the point?  For me, their message was ‘we’ve picked a winning strategy, and we’re going to hammer home its advantages for the forseeable future’, so expect plenty of ISVs porting their wares alongside salesforce.com and the like, and more of companies offering collaboration tools for the same.

The latest pop-current affairs book ripe for plucking from duty free book shelves seems to be from American political analyst Ian Bremmer.  It plots the position of almost 70 nations on a J-Curve against scales of Stability v Openness.  One tenet of which, shows how a totalitarian regime may once be highly stable, yet as democracy takes hold, it inevitably feels turbulence, with things getting worse before they get better on the road to ‘freedoms’.

This theory strikes me as useful for anyone selling a change agent service/product, or selling to someone that is trying to change how their business does something.  What you can do is quote this concept, and select two variables (one for each axis of the graph) and plot how that change will impact operations.  And whatever you choose shall show how you can either minimise or shorten the inevitable ‘getting worse’ stage.

In terms of business change, you can link this theory to the much-vaunted Fosbury Effect touted by Total Quality Management gurus at the start of the 90s.  This was an example of how the world renowned high-jump athlete altered his approach from the traditional ’scissors’ leap to new ‘flop’.  To start with his heights-cleared dipped, yet he perservered and eventually performance broke barriers.

Market/competitive pressure is a given requiring some form of reaction, so the key to distinguishing yourself from competition using this technique is in choosing relevant variables.  Anything eluding to commitment, time or money criteria is a decent start.  For instance, with companies I sell to, many want to alter the mindset of the reps from account managers to new business tigers, whilst changing their customer behaviour from once-off purchasers to frequent buying long-term retained clients.  You can plot against both these variables and show how to make the desired journey as smooth as possible.

One final point is that Geography scholars use J Curves to depict population changes.  At the top-right of it, change continues.  This can be useful to mention when your service/product can be used for a long-time, re-sold or added to at a later date.  Two outcomes can be discussed, again further differentiating yourself, namely at the top of the curve you plateau (making an S Curve) or you hit a brick wall and collapse. 

Way back in the early 90s, a fella who’d given me my first ever formal sales training session, Welsh wonder Wynn Rees, called me up once I’d started a new job searching for a lead.  At the end of the conversation he made sure I didn’t lose fact of one thing; “don’t forget to write business” he said.

His point was there are several distractions, it’s easy to take your eye of the sales ball.

I was reminded of this today by two experiences.  The first was a juicy comment I really liked from a guy that founded a search engine marketing company ten years ago (pre-dating Googling by over 2 years) called David White.  An engaging marketeer, he said he’d grown differently compared to his competitors, as he’d put his “focus on winning clients, not funding”.  He’d avoided the distractions.

Then another company I know of I heard went into administration this week; business intelligence software provider Vecta.  When I knew them well, they had about 15 people selling around 2.5 million.  Nowadays apparently they do a touch more (3m ish) yet with 54 employees.  That doesn’t make sense obviously.  They seem to have spent the past few years constantly sorting out funding.

The message of these stories is stark, and one I often remind my guys of, that a sales person should focus on selling.

Suffered a disappointing experience with one of my own customers this morning, especially galling as I’d given them a bit of reciprocal trading.  I arrived at one of their facilities (where they were unaware I was both supplier and customer) and all started well.  Then during my transaction I was dealt with in a matter-of-fact manner, and at the end, their guy was clearly more interested in his agenda than mine, and left me with the memory of his final shockingly disrespectful actions - he charged me more than he should and hadn’t bothered to explain the difference, expecting me to simply sign a form and trot off none the wiser.

This spectacularly unimpressive episode reminded me of a time when I worked as a cub rep for an erp software house way back in the days of green on black screens.  One of the big bosses was called Howard.  He was perhaps a touch distanct from the rest of the salesteam, being teetotal, possibly as a consequence of his practising mormon faith.  I never felt either of this facts mattered a jot (he never talked about either of them at work) but many of the guys would question his sales ability behind his back and bemoan the inability he had to make a decision when it came to change, always exhibiting strong preferances for the status quo. 

Anyway, one time he’d been on holiday and upon his return we had a sales meeting where at the end he (out of character) expressed his anger that some empty cardboard boxes for deliveries before he’d gone where still cluttering up our reception area when he returned.

He reckoned that it showed no-one really gave a toss about the workplace and the company in general.  For a few of the cases there, he was probably right.

The message is though, that there are tell-tale signs that cannot be faked that give a true indication of whether a sales (or any customer-facing) person genuinely care.  And I will think twice before offering a sale to someone who is at best aloof, at worst contemptuous, again.