Time for another “renewing an old post” post.  This one is even more important now, given the challenges of 2020; for many of us, retaining our customers is our lifeblood.

We talk a lot about how to retain customers, and I address it in my sales training.  Basically, there are three things that every business must do in order to build and maintain a customer base:

1.  Sell NEW business through prospecting.
2.  Develop current customers into better customers through selling them more products/services.
3. Hang onto your current customers (retain them).

Too many salespeople and sales managers think that those are three separate and distinct activities; in fact, some companies have them performed by three separate people.  They shouldn’t.  Sales relationships tend to be formed at a single point of contact.

Retaining your customers depends upon meaningful dialogue. In this video, I show how to retain customers by having that meaningful dialogue.

Side note – I just realized that, not only do I still have the shirt I was wearing when I made this video in 2014, I’m WEARING it right now!  Good old Brooks Brothers USA-made shirts – it still looks like brand new!

If that video was helpful, you might like this one too:  The Core Beliefs of Successful Salespeople

Taking a look back at another six year old post, it seems extremely relevant now.  Professional development and evolution is always important to stay on top of developments, but 2020 has put an unprecedented series of challenges in front of salespeople, and we have to adapt to stay abreast.  As always, updated comments are in italics.

Are you continuing to learn?  Or have you stopped – and when did you stop?

Last week, I had a speaking engagement that went really well, but I didn’t really understand how well until I received a message from the owner of the company that promoted it.  I won’t exactly quote the message, but the gist of it was that he was amazed at how I have only gotten better at speaking over the years.  It was a great message, and I truly appreciate it.  But there’s a reason for what he said.  At the end of every year for the past three years, one of the biggest line-items on my personal P&L statement is “Continuing Education.”

Still true, six years later.  My continuing education and professional development might vary from year to year – for instance, this year, I’ve put a premium on getting better at video communications for obvious reasons – but the commitment and desire to improving my professional education is always there.  Yours should be, too.  What have you learned this year that is helping you advance your career in sales?  I’ll comment on some of the things that we SHOULD have learned at the end of this article.

Years ago, I committed myself to becoming a student of professional selling, and I’ve always preached professional development – but I guess I hadn’t always PRACTICED what I preached.  Up until about three years ago, my speaking skills had stopped developing.  In fact, I stopped that development at about age 20, when I was still participating in speaking events in college.

When I started my business ten years ago, I resumed speaking as a way to promote my training and consulting business – but I never really considered myself a professional speaker.  Then, nearly four years ago, I was invited to speak at a major national convention.  Armed with the speeches that had dazzled them at the local Chambers of Commerce and Rotary clubs, I was flown to Miami, put up for three nights at the lovely Fontainebleu Resort on Miami Beach, and I spoke four times in front of a total audience of around 1,000 people.

And I bombed.

I never really put a lot of detail behind this, but I will now.  In debate, the object is to get a lot of content into a short time.  I suppose that speaking style had never really left me; I thought that if I gave 80 minutes’ worth of content in a 60 minute speech, my audiences would love it.  Turns out that it was the opposite – I came off as monotone and dispassionate, and audiences hated it.  I also learned that in any speech, there are vitally important points and then there are supplemental points.  My programs now focus on the vital points – and audiences retain a lot more.  I have counseled salespeople against doing the “brochure barf” sales presentation for decades, and yet that’s exactly what I was doing!  When I went to my first professional development coaching session with Patricia Fripp and Darren LaCroix, they helped me see that, even when I was giving MORE content, the audience was actually retaining LESS.

I learned a few things that week.  First of all, keynote speakers have a big advantage over breakout session speakers.  If a keynoter bombs, they only do it once per convention. I know this because I bombed as a keynoter a few years after this article – I was asked to do a sales program in a slot where a more general interest keynote would have been more desired by the audience. A breakout speaker gets to bomb multiple times – as I did. I still love breakouts.  I love giving multiple programs to multiple audiences at a convention. Secondly, I learned that the speeches and techniques that they loved in unpaid speeches at a local Chamber aren’t good enough when a client is flying you halfway across the country and paying you several thousands of dollars.

As I said, I had continued to develop my sales skills – but I realized that I had let my speaking skills stagnate.  I rededicated myself to building my speaking skills.  I read a book by Alan Weiss, which led me to become aware of Patricia Fripp, who in turn made me aware of Darren LaCroix, Ed Tate, and Craig Valentine – and now I consider those fine people my mentors and my friends.  It’s been a journey that’s been both very beneficial and very expensive, but for me the biggest investment hasn’t been in dollars.

The biggest investment was in swallowing my pride.  And believe me – that was a tough one to swallow.  But it’s been worth it; without swallowing pride, professional development is impossible.  I’ve given two major speeches at major conventions in Las Vegas in the last two weeks, and both assocations have immediately rebooked me for their next convention.  “We want you back; we’ll figure out what you’ll speak about later,” has been the reaction.

The lack of conventions has been a big blow to me, both professionally and personally, in 2020.  I love speaking, I love conventions, and I love people.  I do my speaking and training by web whenever possible, of course, but in-person is where it’s at. 

Am I bragging?  No.  I’m sharing.  And I’m sharing because I think that some of you can benefit from my journey.  Here’s what I have learned in the past three years (besides the speaking skills and techniques):

1. Never stop developing and never stop learning.  When you do, you might as well quit.
2. Sometimes your greatest successes can come from your greatest failures – IF you can swallow your pride and get out of your own way.
3. You may learn – as I did – that you are not good enough AT THE MOMENT to achieve your dreams.  It’s not permanent.  Seek out those who have made it and find ways to learn at their feet.
4. On a related note, choose your mentors wisely.  Learn from those who are doing BETTER than you.  I have met many people in the speaking business who ‘mentor’ each other into mediocrity because neither of them is making it.
5. Above all, there is no reward without risk.

Whatever your “it” is, you can achieve it if you follow these simple steps.  I wish you well.

So, what should we – salespeople and sales managers – gotten better at during 2020? I’m glad you asked.

1. Multiple paths of communication.  It’s interesting; some industries haven’t seen much of a blip in their sales activity – they have been doing face to face sales calls all along.  Others have been video-bound for eight months.  Wherever you fall on this continuum, your customers still need to hear from you and you from them – so being adept at email, text, phone and video (in all its forms; here’s an article with more on this) as well as face to face is vital.
2. Contributing more value on sales calls.  The “P.R. sales call” is dead. It was dying before Covid but it’s dead as a doornail now. When you do talk to a customer, you’d better be prepared to be of use and value to them.
3. Resiliency.  We have had to adapt, improvise, and overcome in 2020 in ways that we would have never imagined before – and those salespeople who could do so have done okay.  Those who can’t, not so much.

One of the biggest ways salespeople cost their companies valuable profits (and themselves commission) is when the customer asks them to match the price of a competitor.  “Gee, Bob, I’d really like to buy from you, but….” Never match a competitor’s price.

When I do sales audits, I find that this is one of the biggest profit and revenue sinkholes in a company’s financials.  In this video, I’ll expose the biggest reason why you should never match a competitor’s price, and then I’ll give you an alternate strategy to capture more revenue and profits.  Sound like a win?

Time for another “updating an old article” post.  This article holds up well, except that it’s too short – there’s definitely more to be said about generating new business.  This time I’m going to say it.  As always, updates in italics.

Selling involves many skills, but in terms of their value, one rises above the others.

I received a call the other day.  It was like many calls that I have received over the years.  The caller explained that he had a long background in selling, sales management, and training, and was interested to know if I was looking to add to my ‘team.’  Now, let me pull back the curtain a little bit.  My ‘team,’ such as it is, consists of myself and some trusted associates to whom I outsource administrative and marketing work.  This is not a conglomerate.

In the five and a half years since I wrote this piece, I’ve had a similar call about a dozen more times – and they’ve all progressed like this one.

Still, you never know, so I asked him what he was seeking to do.  He’d emphasized a long background and a large amount of contacts – was he wanting to bring me new business?  No, it turned out; he wanted to know if I was looking for a new trainer.  That’s the way this call almost always goes.  Everyone who approaches me wants to train the clients that I already have; nobody wants to bring me new clients.

That’s common in the world of selling, as well.  When I’m doing searches for my clients, the most common questions that applicants ask are, “Is there existing business?”; “How do I get my leads?”; “What does the company do for marketing?”; etc.  Only a small minority of candidates volunteer that they want to BUILD a territory – most want to RIDE a territory.

Unfortunately for them, the most valuable skill in sales – the skill that will get you employed time and again, and have you at the top of the sales boards time and again – is the ability to consistently bring on and develop new customers.  Period.

The good news is that this is a skill, not a trait.  Traits are who we are; they are not learned and usually not coachable to any strong degree.  Skills are learned, and coachable.  But you have to start with the willingness to learn.  If you’re not interested in learning how to prospect, you’re probably not going to be extremely successful in selling, and when you do have to enter the hiring market, you’re not going to be in demand.  My #1 piece of advice to build your career?  Learn how to successfully prospect for new business.  That’s the most valuable skill in sales.

So what does that successful prospecting look like?  It’s obviously different than it was in 2015.  What hasn’t changed is that salespeople should be self-contained business generation machines, and that machine has several components.  Today’s salesperson must be adept in:

1.  Data-driven telephone prospecting.  That means that today’s salesperson must know and understand how to use databases to find not only the right company but the right person; they must be able to capture the prospect’s attention quickly; and they must be able to work with the fact that contact ratios (the ratio of calls picked up to dials) is anywhere between 1/2 and 2/3 what it was five years ago.  That doesn’t mean that teleprospecting is a waste of time – it means that you have to be better and more efficient at it.

2.  Face to face networking.  Yes, that part of the world has been hit hard by the current year’s events, but that doesn’t mean that the skill of face to face networking for referral generation is going away or has gone away – it means that you have to be good at it and efficient at it.

3. Online social networking (particularly LinkedIn for most of my readers).  LinkedIn is potentially either the best or the worst social networking platform for salespeople to use for prospecting – if you understand that LinkedIn requires building and nurturing relationships, you’re going to do well and it’s the best.  If you hit everyone with a hard-sell message as soon as they connect with you, it will be the worst, no question.

4.  Using technology to connect.  Video and other messaging platforms are here to stay, gang.  That means that if you don’t know how to use Zoom, Skype, Marco Polo, and other communication apps in your prospecting and business generation strategies, you’re in trouble.

The best and highest-paid salespeople are still those who can reliably and consistently bring on and nurture new business.  That’s not going to change, and that will always be the most valuable skill in sales.  And I still don’t need another trainer.