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October 8, 2008 at 1:14 pm · Filed under rant, anti-biscuit dunking

Listening to BBC Radio 4 most mornings recently, they’ve an innovative approach to consistent programming. Eight o’clock, Business Editor Robert Peston talks you through constructing your own gallows. Quarter-past eight, a pair of luminaries recommend their take on which rope makes the sturdiest knot and how to tie the most effective noose in it. 8:24, six minutes of adverts for ‘wonderful’ programmes to look forward to elsewhere around the network.

Normally a pretty positive person, this repetition is getting a bit much for me. A former Chief Investment Officer of Baring Asset Management (Michael Hughes) passed on sobering facts. There have been (a remarkable) 42 banking crises since 1970. That’s more than one a year around the globe. The average impact has been to reduce GDP by 13%. He intimates that this one is worse than ‘average’. At any rate, does this mean that if our selling numbers currently add up to 100, then pretty soon they’ll drop to 87? If we’re hitting “8″, then are they destined to fall to “7″?

Of those with the binoculars looking for golden skies, retail giant BHS’s boss, Philip Green, reminds us that (even though his latest profits have dropped) we need a little perspective. Business will not disappear, he reminds us.

So how will this effect the solution selling rep? The low-hanging fruit has clearly all been picked. One mindset is to overshoot last year’s results. If previously you could reach 100, and this year doing the same would lead to 87, then perhaps now, simple maths tells us we must focus on how to sell 115.

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More Sales Reality TV

May 22, 2007 at 12:48 pm · Filed under reviews, grapevine, anti-biscuit dunking

The doyen of business reality telly has got to be ex-ICI Chairman John Harvey-Jones, with his awesome Troubleshooter series throughout the early Nineties. Since then, several pop-tv shows have introduced helping businesses escape dire straits (like the aforementioned show), pitting contestants against one another for dream jobs, through to start-up funding gameshows. And now we add another to the growing list from a runner-up on Alan Sugar’s Apprentice.

Its tabloid title, Badger Or Bust, gives an inkling as to the protagonist’s (Ruth Badger) approach. Whilst frankly nowhere in the same league as industrialists and gurus to have performed a similar role before, you can wholesomely forgive her because she makes decent telly. It is true that pretty much all of her advice could be dished out by anyone that had hit their targets two years running straight out of college. The requisite depth for which I crave is sadly absent, but isn’t it funny what doors a prime time humiliation can open…. The episode I saw featured a caravan and trailer homes lot. This was particularly interesting for two reasons; on her Apprentice torment, she took part in a second-hand car sales day and although made a couple of mistakes, did quite well proving that she had done that kind of thing before, and also, one of the very best fly on the wall docs ever on selling, The Real Swiss Toni (aka Would you buy a used car from this man?), took place in a similar environment. So, what are the lessons you can take from this show even if you never saw it?

Keep yourself disciplined – as the boss himself admitted, “when you’re busy you become less disciplined” just at the point you need more professionalism. One way this manifested itself was a lack of any “sales boards”, where targets and achievements were kept up-to-date so instant snapshots could be gleaned.

Training is continual – the sales manager also acknowledged that he wasn’t spending enough time one-on-one with his three charges. Role play and mystery shopping unearthed all sorts of deficiencies that he must address, like not asking how much money the prospect wished to spend, and when a budget was announced of £12,000, being shown product for less than £10,000 (!)

It’s fine to recap the basics – I remember with misty eyes way back in the 90s running sales training over breakfast before my guys hit the cold call trail and catching them with a ‘pitch this product to me’ exercise. How can I forget one session where the choice was a mobile phone, bottle of champagne, banana and condom where everyone messed up until Stuart Shenton played a blinder with the banana. Sheer class he was with a simple single F-A-B sentence approach ending with “enabling you to hit your numbers!” Anyway, Ms Badger did the same trick with phone, apple, handbag and brolly. It’s a good way to sharpen up basic skills, although her ’sell the dream’ intonation is a touch corny.

Demo skills are critical – the 3 guys she was asked to turnaround were lazy, as evidenced by body language for instance, but when in the caravans, some truly shocking pointing took place rather than showing properly. At the end one of the guys changed his behaviour so that he would focus on “what you do with it rather than what it’s made of”.

And as a footnote, here’s one tactic that whilst I clearly cannot condone, did bring a smile to my face….one rep put a couple of his business cards in a colleague’s card holder so he’d inadvertantly give them out, hopefully giving him more leads.

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Beware The Snidey Salesrep

February 12, 2007 at 5:06 pm · Filed under rant, anti-biscuit dunking

Met a fella at a huge car parts distributor. Good to meet him, as he’d risen to the top after starting out a van-driving sales rep aged just 17. He mentioned a couple of stories where recently he’d needed to reprimand a couple of his reps.

Quality link-selling is a joy to behold. How often do you discover only a fraction of your customers that buy one product, are not in fact, actually buying a complete no-brainer accompaniment.

Yet one example I learned of, was where apparently there’s a particular part on a car that when taken off (a ‘cat’ I think?) sometimes has an element or two break. So when asked for a box of such parts, one rep always also (unprompted) provided an extra item, a kit with spare parts.

He was selling around ten of these (at around nine quid) every day. None of them requested. Yet each week, only one or two were being returned. Incredible. The rep reasoned that when a part eventually broke, the mechanic saw the repair kit, broke the seal, took out a tiny piece of it, “and the job’s a good’un”!

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Air-Freshener Wars

September 5, 2006 at 11:00 pm · Filed under anti-biscuit dunking

Anti-biscuit dunking is a crusade against any type of bad selling. This pre-dominantly means lazy, arrogant or downright stupid tactics. Here, unusually, is one example I came across today that, although I knew was wrong (and most definitely not to be recommended) I thought was well-worth mentioning so others avoid succombing in similar fashion.

In 70s Britain, cut-throat competition in the air-freshener aerosol can market saw two main players battle it out. Cadbury-Schweppes in one corner, Reckitt & Colman in the other. A salesrep, brand new to selling, was encouraged by his old-stager sales manager to adopt two tactics, which combined allowed the new rep to win a prestigious portable telly at the next sales conference, for raising his patch’s performance from the 64% when he joined, to 170% and finish top of the logs.

Faulty Stands

When delivered to the warehouses of supermarkets and chemist chains, the rep would ensure his items were always high up on pallets, where no-one could easily reach them. He’d then find his opposition’s, and when no-one was looking, kick their products, so the display stands, invariably at ground level on the pallet, would be damaged. They would be discovered at the store, and sent back, meaning lost competitor sales.

Faulty Cans

When walking round the warehouse, he’d also find his opponent’s pallets, and sneak in through the top. Lifting the plastic cup-lid up, he’d then squeeze off the small round nozzle that you’d press down to release the spray. He’d then replace the cap. When they arrived in-store, it would be a while before customers noticed and when they did he’d gain more shelf-space.

Revenge?

Amazingly, after a few months, the competition rep realised, and returned the favour with the nozzles. To counter the impact, the first rep went round the warehouse where the problem was identified, and used the nozzles he’d taken off his competitor’s cans, and put them into his.

Incredible. The lesson is quite clear. If something feels like Enemy Action, then it probably is.

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Who can sell?

September 1, 2006 at 9:39 pm · Filed under rant, grapevine, anti-biscuit dunking

I crossed paths with a chap who’s company I enjoyed a few years back called Tom Hannon. He was the MD (having been promoted from Sales Director no less, that rare, but heartwarming scenario for us mere reps) of a large British-founded erp software vendor (the financials, order processing and stock type stuff) in those days known as JBA. The founder (Chairman I think was his title) sold out not long after I first met Tom, pocketing £15m ish and went out to buy a Rolls straight away. Anyway, Tom was a shrewd cookie (I later heard one of those 1999-era tales of him investing a few grand in a dotcom start-up, to see his profits run into six figures on the first day of the IPO) and being of sales bent, he often (always, even) got involved in sales management meetings.

At one such forum, I presented my wares. I made a quip about what MD would ever slate his salesforce when chuckles turned into roars with Tom moaning about his charges. It was all light-hearted, but after I did feel, that perhaps every MD does indeed moan about their sales team because, whatever their numbers, surely they can always do more?

And then today I met a fella I first met over 5 years ago. He had a gripe that they had a high-margin product (wine) and yet only 25% of customers taking it, were also taking an obviously associated one (champagne). Now, every single firm selling lots of products across loads of customers can share a similar story. Yet how difficult is it for reps to ask, in this example, ”how about champagne as well wine now”?

I asked whether an 80/20 principle was at play. Pareto devotees would no doubt argue that one-fifth of all reps would make four-fifths of the sales. His opinion was that his sales team was split, 70/30. With the 30% being the good ones. That’s still a huge number of, as he described them, “poor to awful” (expletive removed!) and does beg the question, who can actually sell…..?

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Forget the lame excuses

August 3, 2006 at 5:16 pm · Filed under anti-biscuit dunking

Bizarrely I’ve just been reminded of a piece of PR put out by a company selling sales software. It talks about the excuses sales people use for not getting sales. Apparent reasons to explain away failure include hangovers, personal crisis, car problems, reports eaten by the dog, cricket, bad dreams and, in one case the wrong type of tie.

Technology breakdown also scored highly, and as one person writing about this wittily and sagaciously observed “…although we’re not told how often it was [the vendor’s conducting the survey]”.

Some examples of pathetic biscuit dunking behaviour that have also come to me since writing my last post include:

“I can’t cold call now ‘cos it’s nearly lunchtime and nobody’ll wanna talk to me”
“I couldn’t send off that letter last night because my email was down and I needed some info from someone”
“Sorry you couldn’t get hold of me today, boss, but my girlfriend took my phone with her this morning by mistake”
“I didn’t get the order because they’re in the middle of a takeover”

And then there’s one you need to approach delicately:

“My wife told me she wanted a divorce and I had to move out and not see the kids”

Hmmm.

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Anti-Biscuit Dunking Crusade

August 3, 2006 at 1:29 pm · Filed under anti-biscuit dunking

I’ve for a long time used term that represents the unacceptable face of selling and sums up sales peoples no-nos; Biscuit-Dunking. It was coined by often encountering this kind of situation:

A salesrep has a number of visits to make this day, as they do everyday. Trotting along their milk-round they amble into yet another reception. They are kept waiting. So they accept the obligatory cup of coffee. And what a result, there’s a Biscuit on the saucer! Even better still, it’s chocolate! The prospect (who in this case is probably a customer in the broadest, yet official sense) eventually grants them an audience and they sit, chatting away.
And the salesrep sits there, Dunking away.
Not a single proactive, intelligent selling question ever leaves their mouths. No conversation that approaches anywhere near the nub of an issue that will help the prospect gets underway. No value is added to the prospect’s day by seeing this salesrep. The salesrep acts as little more than a carrier-pigeon of gossip, a social secretary.
And they sit there. And they Dunk some more.
Then at last, Hallelujah! They ask a Closing question!
“Can I have another Biscuit please?”
They are completely unaware of what the prospect should or could be taking from them. It means they are grateful for any order, scratched randomly on their precious order pad. Which means that targets are always a struggle on the distant horizon.
This salesrep is a Biscuit-Dunker. They give all salesreps a bad name. Death to the Dunkers!

So what is a Biscuit-Dunker? It is someone who embodies all that can make salesreps held in such low regard by others in their organisations.

My Anti-Biscuit Dunking Crusade will draw attention to where I see people making mistakes in sales, and hopefully showing how such can be rectified. Don’t let the Dunker’s stain taint you….

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salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

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+15% Credit Crunch Impact

More Sales Reality TV

Beware The Snidey Salesrep

Air-Freshener Wars

Who can sell?

Forget the lame excuses

Anti-Biscuit Dunking Crusade

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