salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

In my role as humble rep, I’m often left pondering what more I can do to create a sense of urgency.  Something that compels my prospects to act immediately.  The traditional route is to give the shop away.  Discount is usually seen as the key decision-making inducement.  Yet most long-in-the-tooth sellers realise this to be mistaken practice.  Then I got to hear about two South African examples were people had transformed their businesses with a cunning loss leader approach.  This is the kind of thing marketeers love, where you offer something for nothing, hoping to ensnare the margin-rich allied sales.  Supermarkets have been doing it for years giving bread and milk away for next to nothing so that we also fill our basket with premium goods once gripped by gawping aisle-fever.

Both examples had the aim of bolstering “litrage”.  This apparently forms the basis of a filling station’s re-sale value; the more liquid gold pumped on the forecourt, the more you can sell the business for.

Free Coffee

The first example concerns the Newlands plot at a major traffic light junction in Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs.  The Engen garage had issues.  Like the rest of the country, even this wealthy area was not immune to violent crime.  The locally renowned Billy The Buns bar/restuarant across the street suffered a hold-up, where a gang of half-a-dozen bundled in brandishing pistols to take everyone’s valuables, and on the forecourt itself a student was fatally bashed over the head with a brick whilst withdrawing cash at 2am.  The owners realised security fears could cause trade to go elsewhere.  The solution was to offer free coffee to all police and security workers inside in their shop, which had a small seating area.  The result was staggering.  Word quickly spread, and during darkness you’d always see a couple of cop-cars and similarly liveried vehicles from the likes of Chubb and ADT parked up.  The place became known as a meeting place, and somewhere to rest-up before the new dash to the inevitable next troublespot.  This presence in turn gave passing trade satisfaction it was a safe place to do business during nightfall, and litrage soared.

Free Coke & Meal

My friend Cobus’ brother bought a run-down filling station in the dust bowl that is the N1 highway between Cape Town and JoBurg.  He paid next-to-nothing, and is now able to sell with a handsome appreciation.  He made the instant decision to erect a huge sign, saying “All Truckers, Free Coke & A Meal When You Stop By”.  And stop by they did.  In droves.  And each time, they filled up.  Big style.  Yes, the initiative cost margin, but what is the cost of a bottle of coke and a roll, compared to a 500 litre fill-up?  Especially considering the aforementioned litrage calculation.

How often have you told someone everything you think is great about your product, but all you get in response is disinterested silence with glazed eyes?  How can the prospect be so stupid?!

Well, they’re not stupid of course.  In our tunnel-visioned enthusiasm, we’ve forgotten to get across a key hook of why we’re terrific.  And I came across an excellent reminder of how to avoid this trap, albeit with a grating example using candles.

Imagine two candlemakers.

One says, “My candles have only the finest wax with the best quality wick!”

The other says, “These are prayer candles. Light one whenever you pray.”

There are dozens of people who will buy the first.

But there are millions who will buy the second.

Clearly, it urges you to think less about the ‘features’ of your product.  Jettison references to the quality of your wax and wicks, for instance.  Instead, focus on the circumstances under which you’re product would be used.  What situation does it enhance, or work alongside, that would promote use?  And also, what is the experience the customer should enjoy that you can ride alongside?

As reps, we often experience the two competing forces of motivation.  One school says, it’s many incremental improvements that progress you.  The other, claims you only score big by thinking big and dreaming high is the true way.  Here’s a sporting example of how the small improvement theory can fail, picked up from The Times. 

In 1991 Greg Searle won Bronze at the rowing world championships.  Just after, his relatively new coach sat him down for a motivational chat. “He told us that he’d worked out that, as we’d won bronze this time, we could get a silver medal next time.” Searle said it was one of the most deflating things he could have said; Searle and his teammates needed a manager who believed in their potential and recognised their need to be challenged.

A later coach brought a different perspective.  When the world champions beat Searle by 11 seconds, he told him that he was within touching distance and could go on to become the best in the world. He did; Barcelona 1992 coxed pairs Olympic Gold.

In the daunting surrounds of a Canary Wharf boardroom, the latest London-based Apprentice won through last night.  One of the post-match analysts was Cobra Beer founder Karan Bilimoria.  His is an entrepreneur’s story with a strong message that all too often gets overlooked.  It took him a decade to truly ‘make it’, and a significant landmark (achieving £1m in sales) took the first five years.

He offered a pair of insights I’d not heard from him before.  The first along the lines we all know, namely the name of your offering is unbelievably important.  What I didn’t know was that his original choice, Panther, was given a resounding thumbs-down by potential consumers, and that he managed to switch to Cobra only at the last, pre-launch minute.  As a salesperson this is interesting for two reasons.  

1. I often got at least peripheral involvement in the new product naming process, and I reckon taking the responsibility to ask a few of your customers about your own ideas and making your marketing colleagues think it was all their idea may well score you huge brownie points and avoid the shackle of your own ‘Panther’.
2. It intrigues me how the Police assign random Operation names from a pre-cleared sterile list.  The occasional winner emerges (Blunt for knife crime, Trident for gangs) which stays in your mind like any good brand name should.  And most of us can surely recall the names of the US Iraqi operations.  Creating a project name for a specific activity with a prospect can also be a winner.  I’ve done this a few times at the point of sign-up.  Some real successes for me when dealing with different sales knowledge share programmes included Reloaded, Excelerator, Virtus, Interstellar, Streetsmart & Optimise.  So to create a project name, especially pre-sale, helps to distinguish you from competition, and identifies Champions I bet.

The other is his view of what makes a good manager.  He roughly says that the best managers “let you take the praise when you do well, and take the blame when you don’t”.  As a Sales Manager, creating such a culture in your team should therefore produce high loyalty and better results.

England’s latest footballing messiah has a worse hand than the one Eriksson threw down the drain; no world-class ‘traditional’ centre forward, little flank prowess, players picked on ill-deserved reputation, too few youngsters coming through, goalkeeping worries, Rooney depriving Gerrard and Cole space.  To mention just a handful.  So how will he mould us into world-beaters?

According to his latest musings, any successful team must be “together” and “a strong group” with “spirit”.

Sounds straightforward, yet I’ve seen at close quarters many, many salesforces at their quarterly booze-ups, often masquerading as sales team meetings.  And looking back, the ones ahead of the game have always tended to be those that are ‘together’ and share a healthy common ’spirit’.  Now, the tricky thing to identify, is how to engender such an environment…

So last week I sent 14 emails to firms (suspects) where their receptionist told me they had a ‘no names policy’.  My email was sent either to a specified address given to me by said first-line answerer, or one I had to get off their website.  Typically, these addresses start with ‘info@…’

I thought I stated my case in a polite and professional manner.  Simply mentioning I was aware of their ‘no names policy’ and requesting how I’d best provide solicited information, given what I wanted to propose.

I received one response.

And that response was both impolite and slammed the door shut in my face.  Well done Britain, Go The UK.

Next tactic starts today….

Roger Milla helped light up Italia 90.  He was the perfect antidote to the defensive footie and cheating Latinos that had plagued much of the preceeding tournaments.  Possibly in his early-fifties even back then, as Westerners like to think can only happen in Africa, the Cameroon President made the national team coach take him to football’s World Cup.  On Saturday I was reminded of all this on the way to a barbie, reading a Euro2008 broadsheet preview mag, and lamenting the fact that we’d somehow contrived to outdo the taylor of 94, and plummetted to new depths through our mclaren.

Alright, so he claimed he was actually ‘only’ 38, but that still made Roger old enough to be the father of most of the rest of the squad.  He recounts how when he joined up with his team-mates, he was greeted by “collective rejection”.  He knew he was in for a rough ride.  So how did he transform from local pariah to global saviour?

Well, when I read this, I instantly thought of how tricky it is to be entertained by a prospect that has (perhaps several) suppliers already in place, and therefore way above you in the pecking order.  When performing the occasional ‘account management’ duties for products with clear competitors, I always revelled in subtly discussing the tangible cash costs and headaches of switching suppliers, and how all that inevitable downtime, re-training, mistakes and process-changes caused costs to balloon, and careers to slide.

Roger’s masterstoke was to speak out at a squad meeting.  He made his intentions plain.  He was there “not to take a place, but to win one“.  He set out to work hard and get selected on merit.  The result was game-changing appearances off the bench, a superb goal against England and that impressive waggle to celebrate with the corner flag…. if only Nigeria hadn’t fallen asleep in the last couple of minutes against Italy four years later, then maybe he’d have paved the way for the first African World Champions.

I’ve been back in the saddle reminding myself of the very beginnings of the sales process.  My intention is to secure a customer for a recent product addition from a totally cold start.  To this end, I accessed a listing of firms from the ’software and services’ sector.  The range in terms of turnover size is roughly £5m to £50m.

I began with 66 names, spread throughout the UK.  A couple of rather long and tedious evenings’ effort on the web uncovered named contacts as The Big Sales Cheese for 16 of them.

I was then left with 50 names.  Handy for percentage calculations.  My next task was simply to phone each up, and ask for their Sales Director (that’s English for all those ‘head of sales’ monikers, like CSO & VP Sales).

18 of them (36%, just over a third) gave me all the info I could wish for, including their personal email address.  Respect.  In all, 40 (80%) passed on enough to be getting on with.

A total of 10 wouldn’t give me the name at all.  It seems that these 1 in 5 (20% of firms) have a ‘no names policy’.

This is a disgrace.  They should all be ashamed of themselves and lose business forthwith.  I’ve heard all the arguments before for with-holding such info.  And they’re all nonsense.  Three memories spring to mind.

1. I once mentioned to a Sales Director that his receptionist had told me they couldn’t give out names, so I asked him how he’d expect his reps to handle such a situation.  He spluttered with embarrassment into his coffee.
2. A story I use a lot.  A couple of years ago I was asked my opinion on which of two options to buy by guys that worked for me who couldn’t quite bring themselves to decide.  I simply called both prospective vendors up and asked their receptionist for their Sales Director’s name.  When one said that she wasn’t allowed to give out names, our decision was made for us.
3. Before I offshored to S Africa (…would I do it again, though?) I decided to test their waters by trying to arrange meetings for my then product set.  I grabbed 10 names off the web, all in JoBurg, that were mirror companies to clients I then had in England.  When calling them up first time, each one of the ten gave me all the info I requested.  That’s 100%.  Now that didn’t hurt, did it?

update: the next day I realised that of the 18 firms that listed names on their website, 4 were actually a touch too ambiguous with the job titles, so I called them up, just to check.  Amazingly, only 1 of these 4 would give me the simple info sought.  This worsens the percentages, so that now 24% of UK firms are undeserving of making sales, almost 1 in 4…

Caught a decent piece on Newsnight the other day about who wins when economic times get tough.  There were some great hints at how you can nudge your products up a notch when all around are doom and gloom from adapting these:

Lipstick Theory

Attributed to Leonard Lauder, former top dog at Estee Lauder, whenever a recession strikes, lipstick sales rocket.  It seems that women like to have luxuries to make them feel better.  Retail giant John Lewis explained that as of June 08, their lipstick sales were actually up 9%, and make-up overall up 18%.  They also noted that their Homeware dept was booming, as people tended to also buy say, a new lamp or cushion to make them feel better.  People still need treats, even if they downgrade the type of treat they take, and the lowest price ‘treat’ can see sales soar.

The Contrarian

Recession?  What Recession?  The OECD reckon growth will continue, just at a lower rate, not fall into recession in the UK.  A recession by definition is where two successive Quarters fail to produce GDP growth.  They believe the UK will grow by 1.8% in 08, and 1.4% in 09.  In addition, there are apparently £400bn worth of hedge funds that all expect to make a killing by buying at the bottom and selling at the top.  Also, the last downturn, inspired by the dotcom ‘re-adjustment’, showed the value of continuing your investment and advertising.  The most famous example is Pizza Hut.  They still spent cash on upgrading stores and advertising and as a result their sales accelerated quicker than any other in their sector when the good times returned.

Trade Downers

There seems to be a knock-on, with people that always bought from one price bracket, slipping down to the next one, slightly lower down the ladder.  Classic UK examples are the current sales surges reported by Cost Leadership driven Asda and Matalan retailers, with perhaps the best ‘live’ example the 25% sales increase reported by discount fashion chain Primark.

So there you go, you can make your own conclusions, but it does seem that offering a small desirable luxury, finding people that value investment and tempting people to leave your more expensive competition are all winning strategies.

A pal of mine sent me a link to suggest that the choice of Boardroom nibbles can make or break a deal.  To get ahead, simply have a plate of chocolate covered digestives on hand.  If you’re selling, then never have more than two, and do not dunk either.

I know this is true to my cost.  When I was a cub rep, the very first time I was allowed in on a customer meeting at our own offfices, I messed up on this one.  An IT bod from a wallpaper manufacturer called Graham & Brown visited to be shown spangly new software, in the hope he’d add to his existing service.

My mukkas Ann and Colin took me in towards the end of their demo and introduced me to “Andrew”.  “Hi, Andy” I breezily replied.  “It’s Andrew” came the stern retort.  I decided to shut up for a while, and to help me do this, I spied the mostly uneaten plate of biccies occupying centre ground on the table.  Munching away, it wasn’t long before I felt a tap on the shoulder.  “Had enough of those now?” I was asked.  I’d scoffed over half-a-dozen in rapid order.  It apparently didn’t look good and I was ushered out quick march.