salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

If you’re thinking of buying Leach Lewis Plant wares, consider this carefully.  In clearing out a load of old files, I came across this amazing letter, in response to a pre-cold-call mailer.  Their then top man, a certain J P Leach, deigned to pass on the pearls of his wisdom as follows.  Many propsects sit blissfully unaware of how difficult it is to engage an opportunity, and are as hypocritical as this guy in their thinking.  Hopefully this clown looks back on his unfulfilled life with regret.  Here’s what the tosser documented, 17 August 2001:

“I was very interested in reading your letter and I have to tell you that I am shocked that, as a company involved in sales, you personally have such an ignorance of politeness and courtesy.  As far as I am aware, we have never met, we have never spoken, and we have never even corresponded until this moment and yet you presume to address me by my Christian name in your letter.  I have to tell you, along with a lot of people, there is nothing more likely to make me consign a letter to a waste paper bin or refuse to accept a telephone call, when this form of address is used in these sort of circumstances.  I do hope that this little piece of information will enable you to improve your own business by not antagonising potential customers.”

How many times in my career have I had to grapple with the lack of telephone activity from a rep?  Like just about everyone of us, the answer must be loads.  Even to the extent of having days when you yourself just can’t seem to get motivated to have a cold call blast.

I remember a winner of a fella, Richard Lowther, now amazingly successful running Oracle’s HR, summing it up beautifully for me right after trying to perk himself up by donning a bushman’s hat, complete with dangling corks, and pitching away in an Aussie accent.  His remark was that if you’re not interested, it’ll come across and you’ll be a loser; “I’m pretty sure you won’t be interested, will you, but just in case, by the way I’m not bothering am I, as I say, this probably isn’t for you, but…” and so he went on making the point juicily.

I’m reminded of this, as I fancied introducing something into my guys’ cold call sessions to add a touch of sparkle.  So I started listening to my current ipod playlist marvelling at how good the long version of The Cult’s 1985 classic ‘Rain’ actually is and that it sounds good next to Justin Timberlake’s ‘My Love’ (wierd I know) and found one of the squillions of blog search engines, thinking a fellow blogger would have an idea.

I’ve not found anything earth-shattering just yet.

Although, I did come across this one, from someone calling themselves “A&P”. The gist is that telemarketers do their thing on the phone, reps face-to-face and never the twain skills shall meet.  I just can’t agree with this.

There’s simply got to be a link between accountability and responsibility.  What rep anywhere wouldn’t feel better with an extra entry or two on their forecast?  And what’s the reward that’d be achieved?

I’m reminded of (the brilliant) Robert Carlyle’s line (to Mark Addy or Tom Wilkinson) in The Full Monty, when the other guy is wavering at the prospect of ‘performing’ for cash, something like:

“folk’ll a lot less laugh at yer when you’ve a grand in thee’s back pocket”

Heard about a fascinating-sounding lecture at London’s Institute of Directors.  Several suited industrial captains were asked if any had ever appointed a new sales manager.  Almost all put their hands up to say they had.  Next question; ‘did you promote your best sales person into the role?’ and virtually all the hands remained held high.

“Well, you were all wrong!” came the reposte from the stage, which saw all the assembled puffed-out chests get put out of kilter.

The point was, that you should categorise your salesguys into bands.  The achievers, traditionally grouped into one, should actually be split.  There are those that tend to be on target or just above, and those that have wild spikes - like unheard of 200%ers.

You should only take your sales management, from the former band.  The idea being, that the latter (the higher performers on paper) are not actually management potential.  The reasons are, to get where they are, they have more than likely pulled all sorts of stunts.  Probably including shafting both their colleagues, and their customers, leaving trails of sailing close to the wind and a string of broken promises and a flotilla of shovels trawling in their wake.

One of my prospects enjoyed an annual sales kick-off in Thailand last week.  All right for some.  Determined not to be the usual powerpoint poisoned session, one of the four global sales managers took the reins and asked if he could run one of the slots.  He announced to the CEO it would be called ’speed dating’.  The boss immediately complained about the name.

Undeterred, a plan was constructed.  The idea was for all the sales and product guys to fill-in slots on a big calendar, and for everyone to have a ’speed date’ in each slot.

The ‘date’ would then involve the two people talking about a pre-arranged topic to each other.  Conversations were primarily to include either:

1. discussing how to pitch/sell a particular product, or
2. where two people contacted the same organisation but continents apart, knowing what was gong on inside each

When the session finished, the conference was by all accounts buzzing.  And the Chief Exec even modified his view, saying what fun it was ‘to see men on dates’.  A cracking idea for sales meetings all over.

Businessmen have long sought the wisdom of successful sporting greats, yet I just came across a fella that advises sports teams through business principles called Humphrey Walters.  What grabbed my attention was his attachment to England’s glorious 2003 Rugby World Cup triumph.  Anyone that’s also seen the Lions video (’living with lions’) documenting their awesome 97 S Africa triumph should know business principles can apply to sports team building.

This aforementioned article emphasises 6 points.  Although most readers will doubtless recognise each point as it’s read, I’m sure at least one will jolt an idea for improvement, so from a sales perspective, they can benefit as follows:

1. Ruthless Simplicity - How can you make it unbelievably easy for your prospects to understand/buy/engage?
2. ‘No Idea’s Too Stupid’ - Here’s a phrase uttered by my first ever boss in a meeting convened with the software sales team in the early 90s.  He was after ideas for easier new business generation from us.  One guy (Colin Harris) suggested reducing the annual maintenance fees (known as ‘resolve’).  The exact response? ‘That’s a fucking stupid idea”! Asking prospects for any idea can help.
3. By The Inch - Essentially breaking down each element into bite sized chunks too make the target less daunting and improvements easier to visualise
4. Outside Stimuli - Admit an ideas meltdown and seek inspiration from elsewhere
5. Manage Fear - Everyone can be frightened, so work out how to work within it - a ‘miss the stone’ anacdote is given about uber-kicker Jonny only focusing on the gap, rather than the posts, to make the ball sail over
6. Think In Ink - Write your dreams down, and they have an uncanny knack of turning out.  Or perhaps, produce a buying plan doc with your prospect allies and see it happen.

Someone sent me a link to a blog from August 04 that no longer seems to exist, extolling the virtues of sales team HQs starting up a blog.  The idea is that anyone can add anything and make info flow better around the whole team.  I don’t know from where this opinion heralds, but here it is anyway…..:

(quote)  One of the toughest groups to win over when deploying technology has always been the sales force. Let’s face it, sales folks are cut from a different mold and everyone has their own “modus operandi.”  So why are salespeople a good target for Blogs?

Here’s the short list:

1. Information at your fingertips …

2. You become the de facto destination for information…

3. Better distribution of your content…

4. Instant collaboration …

5. Branding …

6. Online Proposals …

7. Cross-selling opportunities …

8. Humanizing your company …

9. So when you’re “Googled”, you’re found…

10. Because your competitor is already using Blogs…

At my last company, we used a Sales Weblog to distribute competitive intelligence, partner/vendor information, and other general updates relevant to closing new business. Blogs are an easy way to digitize the information sales reps use the most. Think about how many times reps look for the latest Powerpoint, Proposal, spec sheet, etc. With a sales blog you have a central repository for the information and anyone can comment on it. That alone is very powerful when you consider the amount of collective knowledge it takes to win a new client.
And with the RSS feed, reps know when the site is updated. How many intranets can do that?  (unquote)

Now a number of interesting things occur to me, given my daily exposure to this arena.  The main one is that it’s difficult enough as it is to get reps to input data into crm and the like, so how much success is there going to be from expecting anyone to contribute experiences and insight through a blog?  If someone central gets to administer it, then there’ll be little difference between the intranet with a weekly email update sent and info disseminated along these lines, surely?