salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

Had a thoroughly enjoyable catch-up with an old pal of mine called Anthony (wierdly Tony to his other friends!) visiting London that currently works on retail merchandising in Kuwait.  Apart from insisting we had to go for a meal featuring pork (absent from Kuwaiti shelves for the usually irrational religious reasons, and for those of you who don’t already know, I’m with Richard Dawkins on all that) and imbibed some quality wine (similarly lacking Kuwait-side, although apparently, where there’s a will….), he got to mulling over how long he should stay in his job for.

He had an entertaining insight into the optimum length of time someone judged on sales figure achievement should stay in one place.  I wonder how many sales managers out there think in these terms….?

Year One - consolidate the current position, put plans in place to grow the next year

Year Two - grow, grow & grow, whatever you do, make sure you hit growth

Year Three - get out, move on!

One consequential remisicent diversion, was of the legendary English industrialist, and first business-TV star, John Harvey-Jones.  His ‘Troubleshooter’ exploits in the early 90s were a joy to follow, and as a result I read one of his books, Making it Happen.  My memory’s a bit rough on this, but I recall he did mention that between leaving the Navy and becoming Chairman of global behemoth ICI, he’d had around 10 jobs during the intervening almost-30 years, which suggests that he followed a remarkably similar strategy to my pal Anthony!

Here’s a prediction from soothsayer salespodder; the Chinese will win big in business.  I bet you’re amazed at my foresight, right?!  You’ll probably know I’m one of the loyal Newsnight fanbase, and they regularly run items on how the Chinese will inherit the earth.  They try and cover all angles, including Will Hutton’s appraisal that the police state must surely crumble and cause momentary chaos, and the surfeit of service-orientated graduates that massively outnumber relevant job opportunities available.  If only the Kuomintang hadn’t suffered corruption and lost to those pesky commies by 49, then Taiwan-style success would have happened across the mainland decades ago.  anyway….

Their latest insight came through the back-door, with the ‘Tenner’ new business exercise for school kids funded by the bloke behind the Entrepreneurial TV channel.  At Manchester’s ‘City Academy’, one driven pupil was a girl arriving in England only three years ago.  Already sporting exemplorary English, she persuaded her team to invest their few quid in an origami business.  The output looked pretty cool, and would certainly add a distinctiveness to shop-window or retail environments.  The amazing thing was, that although only 14, she was filmed in a (Chinese) restaurant pitching a Valentine’s themed origami mobile, telling the owner (in business for 3 years and offspring of the pioneering Chinese restaurant in that town) how wonderful it would be.  It seeemed like she won the ‘deal’, hoping to expand her team’s £40 to £500.

What struck me about this, was how textbook her approach was, yet such ‘textbook’ doesn’t exist.  In this thumbnail, we saw how she’s approached a market she clearly understood (from her own community).  She even chose someone who’d be like-minded (another entrepreneur).  Then picked on a vibrant, topical ‘need’ (promoting specific event).  A lesson for any of us seeking to place a new product into the market.

More rummaging through old papers over my New Year break and I came across a reply to a complaint letter I received 12 September 2002 from PCWorld owners Dixons Stores Group.  The background is that I (at that time) bought all my firm’s computer gear from their stores.  I told them this, as it amounted to thousands of pounds a year.  One transaction went pear-shaped, and never got fully resolved.  Here’s the two killer paragraphs that a Shirley Cook - Customer Service Advisor wrote me, which meant that I’ve never bought anything from DSG or PCWorld since, amounting to even more of those thousands of pounds…

“I was concerned to read that your visit to three of our stores was not a pleasant experience and you felt you had to write to our department….

Whilst I appreciate the frustration caused, it is not possible to put a monetary value on inconvenience and I regret that I am unable to consider compensation on this occasion.”

Goodbye.

Here’s yet another tale of crm sublimation, gleaned at a large photocopier reseller in London this morning.  There are five sales teams in the region, with three managers.  The longest-serving of the managers is called Gary.  He’s a bit of a whizz with spreadsheets by the sound of it.

Frustrated that neither their established in-house developed software, nor the telemarketing-used Maximiser solution, gave him the pipeline reporting he craved, he went ahead and made his own super-sheet in Excel.

He introduced it to his team, and they all began to engage.  It then spread to the other two manager’s salespeople.  Yet after a while, usage slipped away.  In the latter teams, this was as they wanted changes and their managers appeared less interested in systems.

So now the initiative remains back within Gary’s team, and no system is in place that aligns itself to the overall sales objectives of the one big team.

Heard about some dubious practice that’d gone on in car parts wholesale that made me chuckle and gasp at the same time.  It goes without saying that if such shenanigans can go on in your place, close the loophole….

Re-Booking Tactic One:

Inside a branch, one fella was renowned for being an expert in one particular product range.  Another rep had a customer come in asking about this unusual area.  So, the lesser knowledgeable guy asked the first rep what to supply.  The advice was given and client went off with the desired parts, amounting to several hundred pounds.  Within an hour, the branch staff were surprised to see the ‘expert’ rep anxiously peeking out the window quite a bit.  Then, he sprang up, and chased to the counter.  This was highly irregular, as reps had a reputaiton for thinking counter sales beneath them.  The resultant “can I help you, sir?” was greeted with an explanation of somehow having the wrong parts for an unusual order.  “No problem,” said the ‘expert’ “I suggest these are the right ones, let me sort it out for you”.  And he preceeded to book back in and credit the first (huge) order, and issue a new order.  The first (cancelled) one was in his colleague’s name, the second, in his own…..

Re-Booking Tactic Two:

When internet ordering was in its infancy, orders placed began at a pace of less than a couple of dozen a day.  One rep cottoned on that if he got in first, he could find the orders, and in effect, attribute his personal codes to them - gaining commission for nothing.  He was rumbled when the boss came in half-six one morning, looked at the web-order tally, and noticed the number decrease on the screen before his very eyes, prompting a wander around the office…..

I was let in on the privilege that Golden Envelope Cultures do not work.  This means environments where to keep valued employees, you give them more money every time they voice ambitions to move on.

The wholesale/distribution guys I met that told me this took over two years to eradicate its destructive echoes.  I’ve only really come across this in the flesh myself once. 

A salesgirl called Nikki selling ERP software alongside me, led management a merrie little dance after, having enjoyed early success, kept saying she’d defect to competition or else.  The managers were muppets for caving in and she got ever more brazen with her piss-taking, which had the affect of alienating all us over guys so they lost more from our career choices than they ever would through her.

Met a decent chap this morning running a funky scene-setting business through lighting controls.  Turned out they’ve only really one salesguy on the road, so not really a prospect for us (I’ve given the appointment-arranger suitable lashings whilst repeating the word ‘qualification’ in latin).

He did recount one amusing tale of how they won a high-end residential deal.  The project manager asked for breakdowns of individual unit prices.  In common with most reps I guess, the quoter did not want to do this (it takes time and is usually used as a stick to beat you with by either removing items, or worse arguing about separate prices).

When this happens, it’s often the case that two separate people from the bidders are involved.  And in this particular instance, something got lost in translation.  The unit price quote added upto around £250k.  When pointed out to the prospective vendor that the original quote was £290k, the boss did a bit of quick-thinking.  “Oooops, looks like we’ve given you our cost prices here…..”  And urged the (thankfully) underling client-side to hold on for amendments.  They agreed, and the next question was ‘how much were you lookng to spend?’  The answer came back as ‘around £270k’, which prompted a splutter along the lines of “arh, that’d give us less than ten percent profit…”

‘Proper’ quote sent, the business was won.  The value equalling almost £300k!

Waiting around for the Arsenal Man U showdown this Sunday, I skimmed the Sunday Telegraph’s Business section.  Apparently, some shady cold-call operations are netting an obscene £600k a month conning unsuspecting gold-diggers.

The scams come in various guises, including:

• selling ficticious shares, even creating fake corporate websites to back-up wild stories
• selling types of shares that do not exist
• selling information purporting to give the early nod on amazing news/discoveries/breakthroughs and the like which doesn’t exist

The regulatory body, the FSA, calculate each person falling for the high-pressure tactics, which clearly leave morals at the door, loses £20k.

1 in 25 people take such calls.  Many I assume, giving in after relentless pursuit by such a con-artist.  Two quotes from the article show how success can be achieved by the scamming seller:

persistence - “often they will phone several times over a period of several weeks, without revealing any specifc details of the investment in an effort to build confidence in the scam”

culture - “the management propagate a get-rich-quick holiday culture to entice salesmen to turn a blind eye to the reality of their deeds”

The usual line trotted out in such situations, is that ‘if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is….’

Searching for an evolution of a pitch for one of my products, I surfed the web to see how people may pitch something that’s brand spanking new.  In doing so, I came across a small biz university site, and their advice on how to make a cold call.  Their personal tenet is to lead with “this is a cold call, do you wanna hang up now?”.  I’ve never used this, but I think there may be something in it.

The reason is, that I thought I’d try out my ideas for my new product’s pitch, so I grabbed a load of untouched names from our in-house database and picked up the phone.  My initial dials were (as always) to people heading up sales departments, and naturally finding someone in the office took a while.

Then I ended up speaking to a PA (it’s amazing how few sales ‘leaders’ have secretaries these days actually).  Trying to mask my ingrained gatekeeper contempt, I outlined roughly what it was about, but to be honest, my description was woeful.  Thankfully, she informed me that her boss never choose to pursue ideas from outside unless brought to her my one of her managers, so I was passed on to her 2i/c.

Quite a pause later, that very chap picked up and ask what I wanted.  By this time, I was in quite a relaxed mood, hence my gambit of “a-ha, sorry you’ve drawn the short straw, as the big boss wants you to hear my pitch!”.  Luckily he laughed and gave a comedy sigh of resignation.  A minute later, I had the first meeting booked.

I got sent to another new biz first meet on Tuesday, and to prove I get all the glamour jobs, the company was on London’s dreaded North Circular Road, near Walthamstow stadium.  And it was pouring with rain as I waited for a bus from the central station, eating my plastic white-bread ham, cheese, pickle sarnie bought for just over a quid nearby.

Anyway got to the meeting and the guy (in the copier game) claimed that although he could see why I was there, no such arrangement existed.  Well, I got to thinking these things happen, but when the fella, Paul Turner, said he didn’t need ‘lead generation services’ (which is nothing at all to do with what I do) I suggested a pitch was necessary.

His disinterest was verging on the impolite, so I asked a potentialy confrontational ‘it doesn’t seem you’re open to any new ideas to help selling then?’, to which he replied that he’d been there 14 years, his main reps all over ten apiece etc etc, so I qualified out.

I was reminded of that classic Tom Peters quote (a mainly 80s management guru) who, when advised during a spell of early-90s obsessed BPR (business process re-engineering, involving getting rid of all unnecessary middle-managers and realigning processes to how customers liked them) that he couldn’t sack someone (I think in an admin role) because “they’d been there 22 years”, Peters replied, “no, they’ve been here one year, repeated 21 times”.

How did we ever win two world wars?  Oh, I remember, didn’t some Yanks have to bail us out?

If you’re in the market for Canon copiers in and around London, I suggest a fully vigilant purchasing approach to include several prospective vendors.