salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

Spent an engaging session with a newly appointed sales manager called Mark at a London prospect, who amongst many things, bemoaned why at his last place they mysteriously ripped out a bespoke system (despite it having universal rep approval) and replaced it with a Siebel one (which all the reps proceeded to completely ignore).  He had some delicious insights, including:

• reps won’t use any crm if they don’t think they need one
• the secret to successful crm deployment is in making the rep unable to operate without one - and that does not mean a “no click no commission” approach
• a successful crm is truly supportive, rather than obstructive, to the daily routines/tasks conducted

Been reading quite a few mags now that I’ve a bit of R&R downtime on my hands during Cape Town’s Spring evenings.  Reluctantly I was drawn to Men’s Health.  Lazily thumbing through, realising what I was invited to read could have been taken from any edition over the 10 Year span this particular one was celebrating, an article by an Ian Kerner appeared.  After one of his seemingly numerous pieces on how to make one’s self irresistible to women, there was a table claiming to show the results of asking 500 ladies what mid-day emails really turn them on from a newish beau.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the lowest scorers (’groan guarantees’) were the obvious crude statements; “What’s your record for orgasms? I want to break it”, “Let’s skip dinner and go to bed, I have something to show you” & “What was it like when you were on top? Immediate reply requested”.

And then the two highest marks (on their ‘moanometer’) were in fact pretty cool:

• “I can still taste you.  And I’m hungry again”, along with
• “Can’t work.  Keep thinking about how great you look when you laugh”

And that got me thinking.  Like when I talk with my mates about how brilliant women are at texting, as we take ages to craft an apparently perfect SMS in the early stages of a relationship, yet they reply instantly with something knocking us off our axis :-~

Inevitably, my thoughts turned to selling.  Surely there’s an analogy here.  How many of my prospect emails veer too near to the groaning end of the scale, not close enough to induce a satisfied moan at the desired end?

Lamentably perhaps too many.  I can see that when penning my mails in future, it could pay to endeavour to talk less of instant ‘crude’ gratification (’making you a quick gazillion and spanking your competition, mister customer’) and be more emotional (’supporting your exciting project and helping turn your passion into success’).  Just a thought….

Watching Sky News Sunday afternoon I was alarmed to watch a piece explaining that the average worker wastes 49 minutes every day on email management.  In addition, a recent anaylst reckoned that interrupting your current task in response to a new email alert creates 4 minutes of disruption.

Fascinated by this, and in recognition of how long it can take me to craft a response to a mail from one of my customers/prospects, I hit the web and searched for email management advice.  And the best I found is from Mike Davidson.  Click through for his full analysis, where he gives a terrific example of how to respond to all mails.  It looks like a tricky discipline to embed, but the fruits are clear to see.  In essence he advocates replies of just 5 sentences.

There’s a ton of excellent stuff in blogland on this, including how you can structure such a mail (”explain who you are, what you want, why you should get it, and when you need it by”) and what “Emailarrhea” means.  I’m keen to try this out and I reckon it would benefit my customer comms a great deal….

Here’s a wonderful phrase my Cape Town pal Paul passed on to me over the weekend.  Ever bemoaned the lack of progress from a pre-sales helper-cum-techie, supposedly helping you with vital prospect prep?  In my case, I was trying to work out how to rush-up a local supplier, who’s idea of timescales and promises didn’t match mine.  (Not uncommon for S Africa unfortunately).

Paul uses this phrase to let the message sink in that a deadline is a deadline.  He reckons it isn’t seen as a rude thing to say, and will see your point of view hit home in a firm, yet polite way: “it’s the deadline, not a guideline….”

Rocked up at a place a few Monday morning’s ago and almost immediately qualified out.  Not only was it little more than a trade counter selling tools, so not my target market at all, but the fella in charge, Frank, said that no appointment was in fact arranged, and he was too busy etc etc.

Trying to rescue something, if only pride, we got chatting about the punter he’d just served as I waited beforehand.  Having already taken £500 from him, Frank then tried to sell a socket set from a stand on the counter for “£8.50 plus vat - a tenner for cash”.  (£10 being the amount anyway).  The customer laughed and ridiculed him for even trying to push something so gimmicky.

I asked Frank if he’d sold any before.  His response was that he would get the guy to take one, as although it was indeed a bit of a gimmick product, it offered £15 worth of product for £10.  When I asked how he’d sell it, he laughed and said “put it on his invoice!” and then said, “it’s what selling is all about isn’t it, you encounter initial resistance and then overcome it” which is a great attitude.

Most of the sales teams I meet cite one specific competitor with whom they enjoy (or endure!) locking horns, where intense battles often focus on their opponent’s inferior product at cheaper cost stealing away business.

Then travelling to Heathrow to catch a flight I picked up a deshevelled paper to read a delightful article by Bill Taylor.  If you’re suffering at the hands of one particular competitor, to the extent that you could be seen as obsessing about them, this article is a must read to help yourself soon get back on track.

One of many examples comes from the founders of Netscape.  Despite a cracking early start, they got trounced by Microsoft’s IE.  A lesson one of them learned after thinking too much about beating Microsoft:

“you can never, ever take your eye off the customer; even in the face of massive competition, just think about the customer“.

“At Netscape, the competition with Microsoft was so severe, we’d wake up thinking about how we were going to deal with them, instead of how we would build something great for customers.  Basically, we ‘mooned’ Microsoft. And man, did we pay.” 

A terrific quote, and to ‘moon’ by the way, (I had to look up what it meant on urban dictionary!) is a wonderful expression: “To spend time lusting over a person or an object. To be seriously and obsessively addicted to something or someone.”  Which is an interesting new slant on a word that, when I was a nipper, meant to drop your pants and show someone inferior your bare arse

Anyway, I was reminded of a quality fella called Mark Kelly, now Euro-Chief of a $200m division of IMI.  When selling plumbing kit in a previous life, before he finished his day, he’d drive ’round to his biggest competitor’s branch and park outside.  With Def Leppard’s ‘Run Riot’ blaring from full volume out of his car stereo, he checked to see if lights were still on in the sales office.  His aim was to ensure that every night, he’d be working later (harder) than his competition.  It’s a great example.

Then on the flight out of London, I was struggling to choose a movie to watch over dinner.  Reluctantly, I plumped for Blades Of Glory, the Will Ferrell two-fellas-ice-staking-pair comedy.  Surprisingly enjoyable, spookily there was another such message on not focussing inappropriately on competition.  When the established sibling team got their younger sister to secretly video our heroes’ training sessions, it meant they took their eye off what they should have focused on; doing their own good job.

We all know closing should be a smooth process, one where we preferably ask for the order without there being any discernible change in conversation flow, and so that the prospect wasn’t even aware we closed them.

Yet on Wednesday, I found myself in the middle of a couple of awkward silences before spluttering out something like “shall we do this now then?” (which thankfully worked!)  As this was only a deal worth £209 a month I beat myself up later over why it’d been so unnatural.  Despite the argument that any closing phrase that works is a good one, I vowed to remind myself to be more polished so that such a ‘blip’ didn’t re-occur.

And I instantly recalled two wonderful closing phrases that I’ve heard I find myself using in the normal flow of chat:

Penketh’s were then a £5m Liverpool office products-plus company I came across in the late 90s.  I always enjoyed meeting the sales-y one of the three brothers, Simon, that ran it, even though I only met him a few times.  His close sounded so natural when he said “shall we box this off now then?”

And John Sime is a fella that I’ve throroughly enjoyed speaking to as he explains how he sells his information service (which he does very well, having a bumper £18k July he told me this week).  Another phrase that trips silkily from his tongue is “can we put a lid on this now?”

One of my customers sells to accountants.  A rep there frustratingly recounted to me how a paradox causes him much irritation.  Bean counters tend to espouse diligent processes and talk of returns to their clients when assessing investment, yet when it came to his wares, they rarely applied such vigilence to their own decision making.

I repeated the tale to a pal of mine that is CFO of a £100m group of businesses in the transport sector.  I explained it using two well-known adages that as a cub rep I got to know that remind you to be aware buyers don’t always practice what they preach:

the cobbler’s children have no shoes

the butcher’s children eat no meat

And to my astonishment, he confirmed this from his own experience.  When his subsidiary finance guys come to him for spend approval, he ensures they’ve calculated a thorough assessment, including a full sensitivity analysis with pessimistic and optimistic cases outlined.  Yet in many instances, when he weighs up a decision, he finds himself avoiding the application of the same rigours to his personal task and, would you credit it, he considered he made up his mind more influenced by his emotional and gut feel.  Can it really be that Accountants are human too?!

Met a chap that’d been at their firm for twenty years, joining just three-months after establishment.  In that time they’d experienced solid, steady performance, with the last three years seeing a new level of growth.

Recent expansion was enjoyed in part due to two new reps ripping up tree-trunks in The City.  They seem to walk down either side of a road each day and see how many customers they can pick up.  The results are that they secure new clients at present at a rate of four times greater than before.

Yet they could be doing even more…. There’s one particular salesrep in place that’s previously been Head of Sales for a couple of decent sized firms during his career.  He does alright, yet it’s thought there’s so much more opportunity on his patch.  He feels that he’s maxed out there.  Yet his call-stats show his activity is a fraction of the rest of the team.  What can Management do to encourage higher performance?

Well, one idea is what the Americans like to call an “Expansion Territory”.  Take a patch on which someone is under-performing.  Cut it in half.  Give one half to someone else.  If the rep pulls their socks up, then they’ll get their quota from the new patch, and you’ll double the total sales number.