salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

What happens when two cost-obsessed, investment-averse organisations embark upon the largest endeavour of its kind on the planet, where one has ownership transeferred during the project to a firm with no previous experience of that industry, and the other has repeatedly proven themselves as nothing more than an inept bus company with inflated ego?

It’s the national embrassment that is Heathrow’s £4.3bn Terminal 5.

What’s going on lately?  How did we invent democracy?  Industry? A default language?  Why is it that for every Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, there’s a Wembley-style debacle?  For every ground-breaking Eden Project, there’s a place that lies empty for over half-a-decade like the Dome.

And so the navel gazing gathers pace across the broadsheet media.  One such exchange featured bioengineering colossus Heinz Wolff.  He once came to my school, which must make him really old now.  He gave a couple of insights that are rather handy for reps that are either managing complex sales campaigns, or responsible for an after-sales delivery process.

He believes that there’s probably a “natural law of size”.  An enormity beyond which projects cannot successfully be complete.  So, if you’re involved in this kind of big job, then he offers two pointers:

Incremental Commissioning

This involves the kind of ’soft-launch’ with which you dip your toe in the water gradually until everything’s all up and running.  In my original software days, we used to recommend this coupled with a degree of “parallel running”; where you run two systems together in tandem, each backing the other up, until you know all is good.  The problem with such approaches though, is one of time and cost.  Imagine trying to get someone that thinks they’re already over-stretched to do what they perceive as double the work for a while.  Or how much extra does it costs to have one person in two places?

Component Projects

The other pointer was to breakdown the large project into lots of smaller ones.  Do you need the same team talking to your client’s shop-floor resource as their bean counters for instance?  In reality, not.  The key to any such approach working though, is to focus on the interaction between each part.  It is the effectiveness of this communication that determines success.

The London press overflowed with images of French President Sarkozy’s wife, a former Italian model yesterday.  It’s amazing how such a splash of celebrity glamour practically eliminated coverage of the real serious issue of precisely what it was he travelled to say.

I caught glimpses of selections from his hour-long speech to Parliament.  The praise he lavished upon the Brits was so gushing, I was compelled to track down the full text.

By most measures, he’s done a fantastic selling job.  The English media are smitten.  And deliciously, anyone needing to prepare a presentation or pitch to a long-time account can take indispensible hints from his approach.

Common Ground & Success

Much of the early words are all about explaining how the two countries share values.  And these are presented in such a way as to extol specific successes we Brits have enjoyed by way of example.  This strikes me as an equally great opener when having to present an account review back to a client, or hoping to start afresh after a debacle.

Current Focus

The middle of the speech described the challenges currently faced by France and all ‘true’ democracies, why they must be tackled and the dangers and rewards when doing so.

Call To Arms

Taking these themes, he then set out how such achievements would be sought.  The line picked out being, “Let’s discuss together, decide together, and act together”.

The Big Issue

And the major portion of his oratory discussed the one enormous political minefield; Europe.  He aimed to reassure his audience that we were closer in our feelings than old-style policital leanings might suggest, and that it’d be better for us to work side by side to make ‘Europe’ work.  The very word ‘Europe’ means something emotively specific to the vast majority of Britons; all the benefits of a free market being gradually and continually eroded by unnecessary and wasteful social and political integration.  So it was brave stuff to take on.  But we as reps of course, may have to be just as brave when trying to keep that account, when they range from at best ambivalence, to at worst outright hostility.

I sent a brilliant email earlier this morning.  I’m sure you know the kind.  You spend a good few minutes planning it in your head.  Then fire up the word processor.  Re-editing makes sure your killer points are to the fore.  Headings are added and emboldened, bullets introduced, italics deployed for emphasis.  Re-reading ensured the grammer was spot on and had the desired reading age beyond that of a celebrity photomag gawper or ’ur perm txtng adict’.  Cut ‘n paste then off it zoomed.

The purpose of the mail was to provide preparatory info for attendees at a Monday morning meeting, two of whom I’ve not yet met.

An hour or so later, I was struck by an error I must have made.  At regular intervals during the mail, I cite a relevant weblink (typically to a blog article as it happened).  Yet it suddenly occured to me that the order they appear in my narrative is perfectly logical.  And therein lies the problem.  The important ones, the couple I really wanted them to read before the show, are nearer the end of the email.  My eyes screwed up in the horror of the best of the links going sadly unclicked.

Next time, there’s a neat solution.  It’s so obvious I’m grumpy it didn’t smack me at the time.  Take a leaf out of proper academics and the way they quote references.  Instead of an instant link, there’ll be a bracketed/asterisked number.  All the links will be removed from the main body of the text.  I’ll create a list of links, number-bullet them, and crucially, list them in my perceived order of importance, at the foot of the email in a final, separate section.

A customer of mine had a right old rant, going off on one when speaking with me late last week.  He runs a sales effort.  In England, such people are called Sales Directors.  Elsewhere, titles may differ (VP Sales, CSOs) but the role remains the same.

He was flummoxed.  Why were people like him so low down in the organisational pecking order?  It just didn’t make sense, considering that he brings home the bacon.  He reckoned the command line ran MD (or CEO equivalent), the top bean counter second, then Ops, then IT.  And this is when his blood vessels looked like popping.  How on earth can anyone in IT out-rank the sales department?  It was a travesty from which I fear he may never recover.

Then I pointed out to him he that hadn’t mentioned Marketing yet.  His reaction encouraged me to make my excuses, grab my coat and make a sharp exit!

As I travelled away, I did ponder this exchange though.  My experience suggested he was along the right lines.  When I myself ran (storming!) sales teams, I was somehow out-gunned by both Finance & Ops fellow Directors on occasion.  All through my sales career (practically all the time selling to sales people) I do recall where I’ve got the nod from the sales chief, only for them to come crying to me sobbing that a Board peer had mysteriously scuppered their (and our) plans.

How can we extricate ourselves from this perpetual injustice?

I tried to run a client jolly once.  As my customers have always tended to be sales people, I thought they’d really appreciate the TLC.  I myself have enjoyed these treats, especially geting to play the Belfry’s Brabazon course just before wallopping the Yanks in the Ryder Cup and seeing England beat both the Sweaties & Aussies at Twickers.  In the early planning phase, I quickly abandoned plans.  There was a snag.  If sales people were to attend such events, then it could only be accepted if their customers were being wined and dined. 

This topic came up in the juicer last night with a mate of mine talking about how his suppliers (large financial institutions) were cutting back bigtime on hospitality.  Even this week an HSBC guy amazingly began a presentation to him with the words “if I start sounding too depressed tell me and I’ll move on”.  It seems the ‘credit crunch’ “crisis” will lead to more trouble soon ahead.

Anyway, with the banks drastically reducing their golf days and the like, one banker realised the key to ensuring budgetary approval for his next plans.  Every event has last  minute cry-offs.  You book and pay for 20 people to play Wentworth.  But when only 15 show, you still pay for 20 green fees, 20 meals and 20 bedrooms.  Bosses are now intolerant of that 33% overspend.  So, the key is to ensure several people are in the mix as back-up.  How you manage this is another matter, but at least you could get to keep your jolly!

Caught the back-end of a reality telly show that could have been quite promising, all about how ordinary members of the public were given the chance to pitch for putting a food product onto the shelves of gigantic Tesco.  For those unfamiliar with this supermarket brand, they’re often accused of having the morals of the kind of dictator that refers to themselves as ‘the people’s president’, and as I blog, one in every seven pounds retail spend in the UK apparently goes into their coffers.

Then Allan Leighton crops up.  In his current role as Post Office Chairman, his personal appearances are typically shambolic and hopelessly out of touch, yet he was now on home turf.  Being the man that helped shape Tesco competitor Asda (for whom I’ve always had a soft spot after doing a project on a new store opening of theirs in Nottingham at Uni), surely he would add value here.  After all, it’s the case that popstars cannot act (and vice versa) in the same vein as conquerors of one industry tend not to be able to command the waves of a totally different one, despite ‘performance’ seemingly being a related endeavour, so I eagerly awaited his pitching advice on what was necessary to get on his shelves back in the day.

I fear injudicious editing robbed us of most insight, with the producers focusing more on his abruptness rather than his messages.  Nevertheless, he did provide two relevant pitch tips:

1. If you can’t sell it in 30 seconds, it’s not worth selling, and
2. every time each combatant mentioned something he thought could be a differentiator, he got them to drill down into that point - they tended to just mention it (almost in passing) and move on, eg: the lad had a ‘hog’ pie, the lady, a ‘magic spices’ choccie cake, where both traits were much better when expanded.

A customer of mine shared some winning insight during a delightful half-hour chat late last night about how to avoid problems with seasonal downturns.  There is a month in the year during which none of his prospects ever find time to see him.  For ease of description, let’s call this particular month January.

As this month approaches, people often give the fob-off during the preceding month, “call me in January”.  Yet everyone knows that won’t happen, so his prepared response is simply with a wink and a nudge, “now now, we all know no-one will take my call in January…”

So to avoid the expected sales bath for that month, he preaches being a squirrel and gathering your nuts beforehand.  He explains to his fellow reps that you can make all kinds of excuses for January being a write-off, “everyone’s busy elsewhere”, “it’s always been the same at this time of year”, “the month’s got an ‘r’ in it” and they’re all nonsense.

Prospects could even say that they can’t do anything from a long way ahead of this supposed blanked out month, as they themselves prepare for it.  Again, it’s all rubbish, and if this is politely pointed out to prospects, extra work put in upfront can ensure the signatures keep coming in during these ‘lean time’ expectations.

Such pre-planned and regular troughs hit all sorts of industries.  In my own past I recall traumas trying to encourage buying during prospect exhibition seasons.  And the old ways still stand firm; timeline selling is a good way to have your agenda take precedence over their lock-out dates, and make time for more prospecting a couple of months before the potential drought looms.

There I was, dreaming of a glamorous sun-drenched life, having to wait around in London’s Waterloo station as a gale howled outside whilst my friend’s train was inevitably delayed by the NHS-proportioned inefficiency that is the UK’s rail network.

A touch too early to adjourn to the nearest bar, I popped into a shop with shelves upon shelves of magazines to browse away fifteen minutes.  But what to read?  Being a fella, the largest chunk of rags being ‘Women’s’ titles were of little obvious interest.  The next largest section, ‘General Lifestyle’ looked more tedious than an Oprah marathon of food-homes-gardens trash.  Then there’s ‘Men’s Lifestyle’.  Over a decade ago I lapped this then embryonic genre up, but today?  Yet more rubbish.  I was bamboozled to discover that almost as big a section existed on ‘Motoring’.  The ‘Sport’ area presented either pursuits so minor as to render them invisible, or with the majors, mags aimed at teenagers that have an inability to make their own minds up on anything and cannot spot when something is spin-ridden with the totalitarian control of a brand-owner that’s taken lessons from the Chinese.  The ‘Music’ section must surely be more promising.  But again, anyone that’s ever heard of an mp3 would be decades too young for just about everything on offer.  There must surely be a gap in this market for something other than ‘rock’ and ‘dance’.  Finally, the ‘Current Affairs’ section.  Like many buyers these days I suppose, I buy only when commencing a (plane) journey, then marvel at how truly little impression a £5 purchase makes on my life.  With these current affairs journals, they all have uninsipring covers.  It’s as if no-one actually visits the place where their mag is sold and wonders how they can distinguish their publication from the rest.  For this week/month at least, only one attempted to do this; Wired.  A mid-90s dayglo confection of themes around the word ‘free’ duly caught my eye.  I began reading the cover-story article by Chris Anderson.  Once my friend rocked-up, I made a mental note to continue reading online later.

It’s an essay which takes considerable time to digest, yet is a well worthy read.  The fella that wrote The Long Tail, now deservedly flush with a fortune no doubt, is setting about his next era-defining tome.  It’s all about how anything that enters a digital platform accelerates towards becoming ‘free’.

He delivers initial arguments with aplomb and even has a cheeky 3min video talking about his themes.  And it’s on this that I caught a sweet sales tactic.

“Let’s do a thought experiment…“  He recounts a 1954 Nostradamus that espouses the wonders of inevitably free electricity.  That state still eludes, yet Chris Anderson suggests we consider what the world would be like if electricity were indeed without charge.  He paints a pretty desirable picture of improved living.

It’s a powerful concept.  I can imagine now encouraging my prospects to “do a little thought experiment…” and get them talking about what things would be like for them if one significant change from ‘now’ was in place.  Let’s say for a simple starter example, I’m discussing with them one of my products that helps them sell more.  “Let’s do a thought experiment where by the end of the year, you’ve beaten your target… how would that have been done and what will it enable you to put in place for next year?”  I reckon that can open up all sorts of positive discussions. 

For any reps struggling with back-office or customer service issues here’s a current example not only proving that the trend to use offshore call centres is reversing apace, but more tellingly, if you’re running your own telesales campaign, you need to train in more than just the promo items.

A large engineering supplies firm I’ve met lately offer telephone directories full of products, and have a useful strapline in how they aim to help their customers, “more efficient machines, improved machine performance, increased reliability/uptime and lower cost of ownership”.

They appointed a call centre to ring round their clients in support of the people on the road, to talk to them about new offers and the latest campaigns.

When conversations took place though, they typically developed along lines not directly associated with what the call was initially about.  With thousands of products, this always meant that the poor call centre operative had no knowledge of the supplemental questions being put.

Add to that the complicating factor that the call centre was in the Czech Republic, and the initiative never took off.  It’s now been cancelled and funds diverted to other sales promotion activities.

We had an objection handling workshop over brekkie this morning.  And would you credit it, a new objection has landed!  Well, of course that’s impossible, as there are never new objections.  In fact, every single product can only ever come across a handful.  And price is not an objection either, but that’s another matter…

The new-to-us barrier today was “I’ve seen your website and I’m not interested thanks”.  We sell stuff that thankfully no-one else has cottoned on to.  When you link this fact to the knowledge that buyers are liars, the inescapable truth is that they probably haven’t looked at the website at all.  So, the challenge is to get around this fact, without the prospect losing face, ie: not exposing them as fibbers just to fob us off quick quick.

After a touch of empathy about them having to sift through loads of info I’m sure and re-affirming our uniqueness, we smoothly present our key line, “…so what specifically was it you read that made you think it wasn’t for you?”

Wriggle out of that one as you douse the frantic flames from your trousers.  Whichever way it goes, you should earn the right to re-pitch and re-close.