How many of your salespeople would you describe as “engaged?”

Before you answer that, let me define “engaged” for you.  The “engaged” salesperson is one who sells (for you) because of a passion and love for the job, for your company, and for the activities in sales.  “Engaged” salespeople do what’s right because it’s right.  They may have to be managed – most salespeople do to one extent or another – but they seldom have to be MOTIVATED.  Oh, and they’re also not out looking for another job.

NOW answer the question.  How many would you describe as “engaged?”  If you said “All of them,” please contact me.  I have some great oceanfront property in Kansas City and I’ll make you a great deal.  Here’s reality, based on national surveys:

• 30% of salespeople are truly “engaged” at their jobs.
• 50% are “disengaged.” This means that they’re going through the motions, doing enough to keep their jobs, but not giving it their all in any way, shape, or form.
• 20% are “actively disengaged.” This means that they’re mad and they’re trying to hurt you.

Now think about your sales team, and ask yourself where everyone fits.  I’d caution you to not use performance as a yardstick; I’ve seen some very talented salespeople who could perform very well without being truly engaged; I’ve also seen some of the most engaged salespeople in the world struggle to make quota every month.  Not all salespeople have the same abilities.

First of all, if you have an ‘actively disengaged’ salesperson, get rid of them.  NOW.  There’s no way you can recover from that.  It is possible to re-engage a “disengaged” salesperson, but not when they have become “actively disengaged.”  Once they decide they want to damage your business, you have to cut that cord.

We can work with “disengagement.”  The first question is, how do “disengaged” salespeople get that way?  Well, the overall statement is that the job – or the company – or the manager – isn’t meeting their needs.  The next statement is that, most of the time, management doesn’t KNOW what the needs of the salesperson might be, or how those needs could be met or unmet.  Hint:  it’s more than just money.

We’ll talk in a moment about how to re-engage a disengaged salesperson, but first, let’s talk about how to engage them from the start so that they never become disengaged.  Here’s the reality – while we spend the first 90 days of a salesperson’s tenure deciding whether they are for us, they are spending the first 30 days deciding if we are for them.  For that reason, it’s essential that we begin engaging our salespeople from the very first day of employment.

How do you begin the onboarding period for new salespeople?  Well, if your company is like most companies, it works like this.  You start with HR paperwork.  Then you give a quick tour of the facility, with quick introductions to other managers and department heads.  These introductions are quick because the other managers make it clear that they have other, better, things to do than meet a new salesperson.

Then they meet the rest of the sales staff, who eyes them suspiciously.  With some luck, they are taken out to lunch by the sales manager, and then it’s into training.  All of which leaves the new salesperson feeling….meh.

NOW think about how you entertain a great customer or potential customer when they come to visit.  The colored lights and the brass bands are turned on.  There’s a welcome sign in the lobby.  There’s a tour, and those managers that were too busy to spend much time with the new salesperson suddenly have all the time in the world to entertain and show off for the customer.  There’s either a very nice lunch in a restaurant or a catered lunch in-house.  The customer leaves feeling that this company is by far the best vendor they’ve ever seen.

These two experiences shouldn’t be different.  Especially when you consider that your new salesperson will be responsible for bringing in those new customers.  When you bring in a new salesperson for their first day, it should be colored light and brass band time.  Roll out the welcome wagon just as you would for a new customer.  Assign a ‘buddy’ within the sales department to mentor them and bring them into the fold.  Begin creating the internal networks they need.  And when the day is over, have them going home thinking that they just made the best decision of their lives.

Beyond the first day, your sales skills are essential to engaging (or re-engaging) a salesperson.  When we sell, we discover needs and present solutions.  We should do this with salespeople as well.  Starting close to the first day of employment, and periodically thereafter, we should be doing a quality discovery with them – asking them what their needs are, what they want to get out of this job, out of their careers, out of their lives.  Helpful hint:  It’s not just money.

Once we know those things, we can work toward solving those needs as we would for a customer.  For instance, if your salesperson wants to progress into management, what can you do, on a periodic basis, to groom and prepare him/her for the next step?  Little efforts like this can make all the difference between “disengagement” and “engagement.”

We spend a lot of time worrying about whether the salesperson is meeting our needs – but if you really want to succeed, put yourself under the microscope and ask yourself if the job is meeting the salesperson’s needs.  The answer might surprise you – and help you re-engage your salesperson.  An engaged salesperson is a performing salesperson.

A few nights ago, I had what is called a “sleep study.”  For those who haven’t had it, this is a tool for diagnosing issues such as sleep apnea (which I’m pretty sure I have).  It’s, um, an interesting experience.  They hook about 25 wires to you (I lost count at 20 but there weren’t many more, and these wires are TINY) and then tell you, “Okay, go to sleep.”  Yeah….I got right on that.  Without getting into detail, it was not an overly comfortable experience but hopefully a productive one.

In the morning, the tech came in, unhooked me, handed me a clipboard, and said, “As soon as you fill this out and leave payment for your copay, you’re free to go.  There’s a shower and bathroom if you’d like to shower up before you leave (I did, the great gobs of adhesive in my hair used to attach the wires took about 20 minutes to wash out).”  But….that was it.  No guidance on what happens next.  And here is the lesson for salespeople and business owners.

After a couple of days of hearing nothing, I emailed the person at the sleep institute to ask what happened next, and he replied that someone would be getting ahold of me soon; it typically takes around 7 days to process the sleep study.  That’s good to know, but frankly I would have been much happier to know that the morning after – or even the evening before – the study.

My mantra, as you know, is “Comfortable Customers Buy.”  It’s a truth in any business.  The more you throw customers off-kilter, the more reluctant they are to buy.  In my case, of course, NOT buying wasn’t an option.  I suppose I could have run for my life when she got the wires out, but that’s what I was there for.

Your customers, however, have the right and ability to run for their lives – and sometimes they do, when they get uncomfortable.  Salespeople, of course, have many hackneyed old techniques for making them uncomfortable, but if you read my articles often, you know how to avoid those.

The best way to keep your customers comfortable is this:  Tell them what you’re going to do with them.   Give them a road map of what lies ahead.  The most vulnerable a customer can feel is that moment when they have given commitment and/or payment for a service that’s about to be rendered.  That’s where buyer’s remorse sets in.  You can nip buyer’s remorse in the bud by telling the customer, step by step, what happens next, how it happens, and who is responsible.  You already have these processes in place; why not share them with your customer?

Want to REALLY get brave?  Share your sales process.  (I can hear people fainting all over the country right now.)  Yes, I know, your sales process is a carefully guarded secret, and customers aren’t supposed to know that they’re in a sales process.

Helpful hint – THEY KNOW.  When you start selling to them, they know they’re in a sales process.  But, what if instead of making them guess, you opened a sales call like this:

“Mr. Customer, thank you for meeting with me.  I’m here to establish if there is a fit and a mutual win from us doing business together.  I’m sure you’ve already figured that out.  Just so you know what I’m doing and there aren’t any secrets between us, I’m going to start out by asking you questions to gather information to see if we can help you score a win by doing business with us.”

“Assuming that there is a win, I’ll make a recommendation (or set of recommendations) of how we can create that win for you.  On the other hand, if we can’t help you, I’ll tell you that, too, and we will shake hands and part as friends.  If you like our solution, I’ll need to develop a proposal for you (or quote price on the spot, however it works in your company), and if you like the proposal, I’ll ask you to go ahead and do business with us.  That said, here’s my promise to you – I’ll ONLY ask you for your business if the purchase really does help you and really does create value. And either one of us can stop this process at any time if we wish.  Shall we get started?”

By the way, there is an old technique called the “Up Front Contract” that, if you know it, you may see some similarities to.  It goes like this (highly simplified version):  “Mr. Customer, I’ll be asking you questions and presenting some solutions.  If you like the solutions, and the price, you’re prepared to go forward with a purchase, aren’t you?” (The wording is different from trainer to trainer, but the intent is the same.) The key difference here is that the old “Up Front Contract” asks the customer for a commitment BEFORE they have heard anything you have to offer.  To me, that’s not customer-friendly and it’s designed to start down a path of entrapping the customer into a buying situation while keeping as much of the sales process a secret as possible.

The road map just tells them what your steps are and how you plan to accomplish them.  You can even couple them with a timeline; for instance, if this process requires multiple meetings, you might give an idea of how many meetings it will take and how long between meetings.  You might need to include steps like plant tours, on-site or online demos, etc.  The road map gives a customer a feeling of security and comfort from the start; the up front contract puts them on edge and has them preparing their defenses from the start.  See the difference?

The road map also helps manage customer expectations, particularly if you couple it with a timeline.  Explain to the customer BEFOREHAND that it takes two weeks to get the product in after you order it, and you won’t have an impatient customer.

The truth is that I’m still not comfortable with the sleep institute.  I just know that I might be getting a call in about 4-5 more days, and maybe I’ll talk to a doctor, perhaps there’s surgery, or CPAP, or God knows what else.  I have done some research, but my time to do so is limited – and they are the ones getting paid.

Don’t leave your customers uncomfortable.  Share your road maps.  Tell them what’s happening – before, during, and after the sale.  You’ll bring on more new business.  You’ll build stronger, longer lasting relationships.  You’ll get more testimonials and referrals.  It’s nothing but a win for you.

I’m writing this from San Antonio, Texas.  A lovely city, if you’re wondering.  My hotel is about one block from the Alamo.  Yes, of “remember the Alamo” fame.  And no, I didn’t do anything that Ozzy Osbourne did at the Alamo (kids, look that up if you don’t get the reference).  The Alamo is a truly inspiring place – where about 300 Texans chose to stand off a Mexican army numbering over 6,000.  A fool’s errand?  Perhaps, in our modern world – but in their world, it was a matter of honor.

For those Texans, the Alamo was their last retreat.  One thing that strikes you as you walk around the original footprint is how small it was, and how little fortification there really was for those people.  But, mentally, they had left themselves no alternative – it was to defend the Alamo or nothing.  As you might expect, this brings me to a question that I often wonder – what’s our Alamo, in our careers?  What’s our ‘defend or nothing’ point?

I started my business nearly 14 years ago.  My official first day in business was September 1, 2004.  On that day, I made up my mind that I was never going to work for someone else ever again.  In doing so, I’d set up my own personal Alamo.  When it came to the question of success or failure (and I’ll be honest, there have been a couple of moments of potential failure), my only option was to succeed.  After all, if I’m not going to work for someone else, what am I going to do?

One issue I see in today’s world is that salespeople, confronted with failure, simply plan on moving on to another job.  “There’s always going to be another gig,” says the logic, “so if I fail here, it’s no big deal.”  And it’s not until that person has stacked up enough different failures to make themselves basically unhireable. And at that point, it’s too late for them.

That’s bad.  What’s worse is seeing business owners who are at their own Alamo, but are willing to fail rather than move out of their comfort zone.

Knowing that you’re at your own personal Alamo means that you have to have a willingness to do whatever it takes to defend your ground.  If that means swallowing your pride, so be it.  If it means learning a new skill, or changing your business model, or refreshing your sales model, so be it.  When you’re at your own Alamo, beyond the point of any retreat, you’re willing to do whatever it takes.

Here’s what I’ve learned, though, in nearly 30 years of sales and 14 years of owning my own business.  It’s almost always better to make a stand, decide that you’re going to do whatever it takes to be successful RIGHT NOW, and make it work, than it is to retreat and find success at some vague point down the road.

If you’re struggling, if you’re not getting the results you want, or even if the boss has you with one foot out the door, allow me to give you the advice that generations of Texans have taken to heart.

Remember the Alamo!

One of the most common ways for a sale to end up in the Graveyard of Lost Sales is for the salesperson to assume things as fact that aren’t fact at all in the mind of the customer; or, worse, they begin with ‘knowledge’ that isn’t correct.  Ironically, this can come from doing one of the right things before a sale; more on this later.

Since sales is a game that’s played inside the head of your buyer, it’s important that you work through the process in concert with your buyer – assumptions can be a sale killer.  To deal with this, I teach salespeople a concept that I learned in debate – the concept of Tabula Rasa.  That’s a Latin phrase meaning “blank slate,” and knowing it – and living by it – can be key to your success.

As the concept is applied in debate, it means that the judge has no presumed positions or opinions on the topic, and the entire result is determined by what is said or proven with evidence during the debate.  This concept also applies in legal proceedings; nothing is assumed to be factual unless it is testified to or shown in open court.

So how does this apply to sales?  Well, it’s simple.  In sales, there are no facts until and unless the buyer either states them or agrees with them.  That’s where a lot of salespeople go wrong.  A typical postmortem after a lost sale might look like this:

Salesperson: “But, I don’t understand why they bought from competitor A.  I proved that our machine was the best value.”

Me:  “Did the buyer agree that your machine was the best value?”

Salesperson:  “Well, not in so many words, but when you compare specs vs. price….”

Me:  “Doesn’t matter.”

In this case (a real live scenario from a month ago), the salesperson assumed that because he explained the specs vs. price, that the customer knew that his machine was the best value – even though the customer didn’t say so.  He assumed wrong and lost the sale.

When we go into a sale, the fewer assumptions we carry, and the fewer assumptions we make during the sale, the better off we are.  As I noted above, sometimes we can work against ourselves. Pre-call research is a great practice, but sometimes it can lead us down the wrong road.  For instance, the salesperson finds a statement on the customer’s website that the customer plans to open four new locations in the next year, which makes them a better candidate for the salesperson’s services.

What the salesperson didn’t find was a statement that the company has scrapped this approach, instead deciding to bolster their online presence.  See the train wreck that’s about to happen?  Sometimes the research you find – even on the customer’s own website – is obsolete or otherwise irrelevant.  If the salesperson builds an approach around that “fact,” the salesperson will be firing at a target that isn’t there.  So how can we deal with that, using Tabula Rasa thinking?  Simple.  Ask a confirming question.

Salesperson:  “Mr. Customer, I see on your website that you plan to open four new locations in the next year.  Where will they be?”

Customer:  “Wow, that’s still on there?  No, sorry, we’re not doing that.  Instead we’re going to bolster our online presence.”

In this case, there’s no harm and no foul.  The salesperson was able to check and confirm, BEFORE building a presentation around false knowledge, because the salesperson remembered the Tabula Rasa mindset – it’s not a fact until the customer says it’s a fact.  In this case, it wasn’t.

Assumptions cause lost sales, missed opportunities, and bad customer relationships.  Don’t assume.  Instead, in every new call, think Tabula Rasa.  If a piece of information will affect your sale, make sure you get that information confirmed or stated verbally during the call.  It’ll keep you visiting the Graveyard of Lost Sales quite so often.

Recently, I’ve been looking back through some of my old articles and posting #throwbackthursday posts on my LinkedIn and Facebook pages. ( As a side note, if you’d like to link with me, here’s my profile.)  It’s interesting – I’ve written over 500 articles, and sometimes I’ve found some really strong material that I’d forgotten about.

One example is this sentence:  Sales is a sport that’s played inside the customer’s head.  It’s one of the truisms of sales, now and forever.  Sometimes, we think that sales is like a pro/con comparison on a legal pad, and if we end up with more ‘pro’ entries than ‘con’ entries, we win.  And then we’re surprised when it doesn’t work that way, and we lose the sale.

The problem is that we’re playing on the wrong field.  If you’re playing football and you’re on a baseball field, you’re probably not going to do very well.  Same with selling.  Unless you know the rules of the field, where and how the goals are located, and what’s in and out of bounds, you’re probably not going to win the game.

That’s the bad news.  The good news is that the rules of the field don’t have to be a mystery.  You can discover them – all you have to do is have the patience and willingness to ask.

In the sales process, in fact, the customer has the entire control.  The customer’s head is the playing field, and the customer is judge and jury.  This being the case, shouldn’t you understand the rules first?

A good questioning process incorporates the questions that will expose the rules of the game.  Here are a few to get you started:

How will you define a successful purchase?

What’s your criteria for selecting a vendor?

Assuming this purchase is successful, who benefits the most?  Who gets rewarded?  How will they be rewarded?

Why don’t salespeople ask these questions?  Because they ASSume that they know the answers – and we all know how the word “assume” breaks down.   It’s not enough, in fact, to just ask these questions in an initial sales process. Things change, and the framework for a sale can change from sales process to sales process – make sure to refresh your knowledge often.

If you always remember what the playing field is when you start a sale, you’re going to be much farther toward the sale than salespeople who don’t.

More than two decades ago, I learned a lesson that has stuck with me since, and that I’ve taught countless salespeople – all of whom have used it to good effect.  It’s about the most valuable information you can possess.  Of course, I tell everyone that the most valuable information is information about their CUSTOMERS – but some pieces of information are more valuable than others.

In the situation I’m recalling, I was dealing with a repeat customer on a fairly large purchase of electric motors.  This customer and I had done business a few times, and I knew that anytime he was buying more than about $5,000 of stuff, he liked to let it percolate for a couple of days, and then he’d buy.  The problem was that my sales manager was trying to cram numbers to finish the month, and if I let the customer wait, the month would end.

“Hey,” my SM said, “don’t you want to finish STRONG?  Just apply a little salesmanship to this guy.”

I responded, “Look, I know him.  He’s gonna buy but if we try to pressure him, it’ll irritate him.  I’d rather not upset a good customer.”  My SM snorted in disgust – and then, unbeknownst to me, called my customer and offered him a “buy now” discount.  My customer called me and wanted to know who the ‘jerk’ was that was pressuring him.  I was caught unawares, and long story short, my customer ended up buying from my competitor, and it took me a few months to get back into his good graces.  When I did, he bought the same exact way as before.

I learned two things from that incident:

1. The most important thing you can know about a customer is how that customer prefers to buy.

2. Once you know that, the most important thing you can do is to respect how that customer prefers to buy.

This goes against all the old tropes of selling – “Persistence pays off,” “closed mouths don’t get fed,” etc.  But there’s a reason those are old tropes.  Respecting your customer and how they want to do things is key to an arrangement.

“But Troy,” the old-time salesperson says, “Buyers are liars, and what if they’re just stalling you to get a better deal from your competitor?”

My up-to-date response is this:  Ultimately, the buyer buys from who they want to.  If they’re just stalling me to get a better deal elsewhere, then I haven’t sold my value well enough.

“So you’re telling me,” o-t-s says, “that when a customer tells you to wait, that you wait?”

My response is that, yes, normally I do.  Over the years, I’ve won far more deals than I’ve lost by respecting the customer’s buying process.  The truth is that it’s a lot harder to sit and wait than it is to push, push, push – I’m not an overly patient person.  But it’s a lot harder to lose a potentially good deal because you pushed a customer away.

So my advice to you is, with every customer:  Find out how they want to buy and then align your sales process to it.  Your customers will thank you – and sooner or later, your Sales Manager will too when you show him/her the numbers.

Sometimes, great sales or service isn’t all that complicated.  In fact, sometimes it all boils down to one great question.  I had a reminder of this fact last week.

I was in the Houston airport connecting from Corpus Christi to a flight home.  I had a couple of hours, so instead of a typical airport fast-food dinner, I decided to have a nice sit-down dinner at Pappasito’s Cantina (a great Mexican restaurant chain that’s located all through Texas).  I wasn’t concerned about the time – as I said, I had a long layover.  I travel a lot so I eat in a lot of airport restaurants – still, I was blown away by the one question that the hostess asked me.

“What time is your flight?”

The simplicity of it was huge – but so was all that it implied.  Without saying so, she was letting me know that they would do everything they could to get me fed and out of there in time to reach my flight comfortably.  In hundreds of visits to airport restaurants, however, I’ve never been asked that question.

Without explicitly saying so, the hostess said, “We are going to provide you with a great service experience.”  (This in and of itself is unusual for airport restaurants, in my experience.)  And that was exactly the experience I received – even though my timeline wasn’t tight at all.  Great service and delicious fajitas; what more could I ask?

Interestingly enough, when I related this experience to Jesyca Hope, my social media and branding coach (yes, the Sales Navigator also has coaches), she said, “That’s amazing!  I just had a similar experience.”  Apparently, she was dining at a restaurant in Washington, DC, and the server asked each person at the table if they had any food allergies that she needed to know about.  Again, a small and quick question, but one that asserts first, that the person asking actually cares about the customer, and that second, efforts will be made to accommodate the customer’s needs.

Think about your own sales environment.  What one great question could you incorporate in order to provide a great service experience for the customer?  We cannot produce success for a customer unless and until we know what success means to them.  Do you ask the customer what their definition of success is?

There is, of course, a risk to this approach.  The risk is that, once you ask and get the answer, you become responsible for achieving the customer’s desired result.  For instance, if my timeline had been tight at the airport, it’s the hostess’ responsibility to either ensure that they serve me quickly – OR tell me that the time was too tight for me to get in and out of the restaurant.  Same with the allergy question – if the customer did have an allergy, the server is responsible for knowing what’s in the dishes that everyone is ordering and advising if there’s something in a dish that would trigger a reaction.

But here’s the thing – GOOD SALESPEOPLE AND SERVICE PEOPLE ARE CONFIDENT ENOUGH TO TAKE THAT RISK.  And without risk comes no reward.

Here’s my challenge to you.  What’s the one great question you could ask your customers, at some point during the sales process, that could greatly alter their service experience?  Once you come up with it – ASK IT.  Your customers will thank you.

In all too many industries, sales die due to insufficient questioning and discovery, and due to salespeople who only look for the low-hanging fruit.  In some businesses, salespeople just know what the common issues are, and look only for those issues in discovery.  The problem is, if they don’t find those issues, they’re pretty helpless.

The salesperson who does the common ‘easy pain’ discovery and doesn’t find it then has two options – walk away, or present to a need that hasn’t been discovered, and hope.  The problem is this – just because the customer doesn’t have the easy pain doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have needs; always remember that there is a reason the customer is seeing you.

We salespeople do this often.  Not finding easy pain, we’re helpless.  We don’t have to be.  The first thing you have to remember is that customers don’t always buy to soothe the sore thumb; they have numerous reasons.  In the B2B world, buying motivations can be numerous, but they can be expressed by the simple term SWOT.

S: Strengths; in other words, what is going well now for the customer.

W: Weaknesses; what’s going wrong.  This is typically the ‘easy pain.’

O: Opportunities; how the program being discussed can be grown or improved.

T:  Threats; what could go wrong in the future.

Customers can and do buy based on any one, or any combination, of these motivators.  If you notice, the ‘easy pain’ only covers ¼ of the possible motivators.  Here’s the kicker:  Oftentimes, the biggest return on investment for the customer isn’t fixing a Weakness – it’s improving a Strength.  But if you never ask about Strengths, or never look for ways to improve them, you leave that on the table.

So, what should the salesperson do when in a sales call where the ‘easy pain’ doesn’t come to the surface?

First, compliment the customer on avoiding the issues so common in this industry, product, or service.  Anytime you acknowledge what your customer is doing well, you gain credibility.

Second, if you haven’t already (and you should be doing this through your questioning to begin with), start probing the Strengths, Opportunities, and Threats.  If you spot an area where you can improve a Strength, bring forth an Opportunity, or head off a Threat, point that out and ask about the buyer’s motivation to move forward based on those issues.

Third, if you can’t come up with anything, you have two options – neither of which is attempting to nitpick or push something forward that won’t sell.

You can look at your customer and say, “Let’s be honest.  I can’t come up with a single way to improve what you’re doing.  Congratulations.”

Or, and depending on your personality, this might be best, (if the sales call was a preset appointment) you can be honest and say, “Mr. Customer, there was obviously a reason you wanted to see me – but I can’t figure out what it is based on my questioning.  What motivated you to take this meeting?”  Sometimes, the buyer will tell you a motivation that you hadn’t thought of, and you’re off to the races.

However, when you attempt to diagnose a problem that doesn’t exist, or nitpick, or just toss out an unqualified proposal, you just end up ruining your credibility.  To be more successful, acknowledge and probe ALL the buying motivators.  Don’t just shoot for the ‘easy pain,’ because sometimes the best sales aren’t easy.

A month ago, I did a workshop on networking at a trade show on the East Coast.  This program typically gets rave reviews.  It’s about NETWORKING – the process of meeting people, forming relationships, and converting those relationships into referrals and sales.  It’s a great program and a useful one. I’ve constantly updated it; I now include about ten minutes on incorporating online social networking into a networking program.

When I got my audience feedback results, I was surprised.  The program didn’t get the reviews it normally does, and over 50% of the comments were some variation on “I was expecting this to be about social media networking.”  That makes me wonder if the emphasis on social media is starting to squeeze out the skill set of live networking.

My opinion is this – whether it is or whether it isn’t, it shouldn’t.  There’s a huge qualitative difference between a network that looks big online vs. a network that can be monetized.  Think of the “facebook hero” who has 1,547 “friends,” and who has actually met about 10 of them in real life.  Most of those contacts are, at best, arm’s length “acquaintanceships,” and are not necessarily good contacts that can generate results for you.

When I asked for a definition of a good networker, one person used the word “connector”, and I think that works pretty well.  Good networkers are able to “connect” people with other people that they can benefit from knowing; not-so-good networkers can name-drop with the best of them, but can’t actually arrange, or get, a meeting with very many of the names they drop.

This, too, is a difference between online ‘relationships’ and real networking contacts.  If you’ve had the experience of asking someone for an introduction to an online contact of theirs and not gotten it, you’ve probably encountered the difference.  The truth is that, much of the time, the person doesn’t introduce you because they really can’t – they don’t actually know the person they’re being asked to introduce.

Taking it one step deeper, I think that good networkers are “hubs of value.”  In other words, they are capable of GETTING value from the relationships they have with others (think referrals, business, favors, etc.), and are able to GIVE or CONDUCT value to others they know (similar to the above).  Here are some other measuring sticks to determine whether you are a good networker or not a good networker:

Good networkers are successful.  First and foremost, good networkers are able to produce success for THEMSELVES, on their own.  They are producers.  I’ve never met someone who was incapable of producing success on their own terms for themselves, but was able to produce it for others.  I should point out here that “success” has its own definitions, and those definitions are not necessarily financial.  For instance, the high school football coach who is capable of generating a winning team and who is able to help his kids get scholarships might not necessarily be wealthy in financial terms, but has certainly achieved success in his/her own measurement.

Good networkers have stability.  Here we are, back to that “job stability” thing again.  The truth is that those who are constantly expending their own energies finding new jobs for themselves have precious little left over to conduct value to others; and of course, they also have issues with generating the needed respect from others to conduct value.

Good networkers are selective.  It’s impossible to generate value from or for everyone that you meet, particularly if you’re an active networker and are constantly meeting new people.  Hence, good networkers are selective with the relationships they want to pursue, and once they select someone, they work very hard to generate value for them.

Good networkers are willing to be the first giver.  There’s an old law which I believe is still on the books in Kansas that says, “When two cars meet at an intersection, neither shall move until the other has passed.”  Think about that brilliance of lawmaking for a second; somewhere at a seldom used intersection in western Kansas, the skeletons of two old farmers sit in their Model T’s, still exhorting the other to move first.  That’s a good analogy for how many potentially good networking relationships die.  If you are always waiting for the other to give first, you run the danger of never getting any value.  Along these lines, good networkers seek out MUTUAL relationships and not just coattails.

Good networkers never stop.  I have encountered a number of people in my travels who came to me with the reputation of being “great networkers,” or even “networking gurus.”  I’ve always been amazed at how many of these people seem to have retired, or withdrawn, from networking efforts.  They’re not encouraging new contacts or new relationships, and seem content to rest upon whatever laurels have bestowed on them.  The problem with this is both simple and obvious – people retire, they change jobs, they move.  The network that you have today might not be the network you have tomorrow.  For that reason, a good networker always remains open to new relationships.

So why do people emphasize online networking over live networking?  Several reasons, in my opinion.  First, it’s easy; live networking is hard and time consuming.  There are events to attend, real introductions to make, etc.  Online, you just have to send a ‘request.’

Second, online people can see how many contacts you have – again, it’s the “Facebook hero” syndrome.

Finally, it’s trendy.  Online networkers can feel up-to-date, as opposed to the somewhat ‘old school’ method of live networking.

Here’s the rub.  A quality network built on face-to-face encounters can be monetized much more easily than can an online network.  My advice to those who are looking to build a quality network is this:  Emphasize live networking and use online social media as an adjunct and a tool for achiving your goals, not an end in and of itself.

In my years of experience in working with (and for) companies large and small, I have discovered that there is a common element to the most successful businesses.  The most successful companies have a sales culture.  A “sales culture” is a philosophy that permeates the company, from the corner office to the loading dock, that says, essentially, “We are a sales organization, and everything else we are able to do is a product of our ability to sell our products or services to our customers.”

This isn’t a philosophical statement; it’s reality.  The only difference is whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.  It’s reality because no matter how good your products or services, if you can’t persuade someone to exchange money for those products or services, there’s no reason for production or service to exist, and hence your business will cease to exist.  An acquaintance of mine attempted to make a go of it as a financial consultant, and to be frank, he was the most brilliant financial guy I’ve ever met.  He’s now working for someone else as a CFO – because despite his brilliance, he was unable to make a single sale.

The most successful companies both acknowledge and embrace the idea that they are first and foremost a sales organization, and that culture flows from the top.  It flows from the top because it must.  Despite the protestations of those who advocate bottom-up leadership, the reality is that any corporate culture is set not by the employees at ground and field level, but by the overriding philosophy of management.  That’s you, by the way.  So, let’s assume for the moment that you have decided that your company needs to accept and embrace a sales culture.  How do we go about that?

Set the mission:  First of all, whatever your mission statement, throw it away.  I know, it’s something that you’ve put a lot of thought into and probably has some great phrasing.  It’s probably also something that your employees couldn’t remember if a gun were put to their heads.  Let’s replace it with something simple like this:  “We are a sales organization, and we grow profitably by Acquiring new customers, Developing current customers to greater profitability, and Retaining profitable business.”  Use this as the mantra that guides your company’s decision making.

Communicate:  All good things in sales (and business) come from good communication, and most bad things happen because of insufficient communication.  Knowing this, the next step is to communicate the message to your people, and to do so consistently.  This is where a lot of companies fail, because the communication happens like this:  The Big Guy at the Top will have a staff meeting where he/she communicates the ‘new mission’ forcefully to his key managers, and then expects the managers to communicate it downstream.  They do, but with varying degrees of emphasis and enthusiasm.  The Sales Manager obviously embraces the mission, while the Production Manager may be less enthusiastic, and so forth.  If you really want to effect change, it has to be up to you.

In creating a sales culture, there is no employee whose job is so small or insignificant that he/she shouldn’t hear this message from YOU.  Have all-company meetings, or all-department meetings, or all-branch meetings; however you need to do it in order to have the opportunity to have every employee hear the message directly from your lips.  I once struggled with the support personnel in a 50-person department; no matter what I told the supervisors, nothing seemed to change at ground level.  So, over the objections of several supervisors and even a couple of managers from other departments, I held a full-department meeting and laid out my goals for the next quarter, how we would achieve them, and what everyone’s duty was as part of the goal achievement.  The employees asked great questions, and within days were taking the actions that I needed them to take in order to achieve the goals.  Result – we didn’t just make the goals, we blew them away.  And you can bet that we repeated the quarterly meetings consistently.  The take-away is that, for the most part, if your people know the goals, they will act in accordance with them – if they believe that the goal is real and permanent.

Align Goals:  To accomplish your goal of profitable growth through acquiring, developing, and retaining customers, you must align all your departments and goals.  I once worked for a company that would set each department’s goals in a vacuum; for instance, sales would be tasked to grow the company 15% while the production department would be tasked to cut labor costs by 10%.  Assuming there are no major technical innovations (there weren’t), you had departments with goals that could not all be reached collectively.  This produced management and interdepartmental conflict on a constant basis.

Instead of this, set department goals in such a way that they can all be achieved together.  For instance, instead of budgeting in dollar terms, budget in percentages from the top line.  This way, when departments need more resources for equipment and personnel, they know how to get it – help grow the company.  Even with the best goal setting, however, you’re going to see some internal conflict.

Remove Internal Conflict:  Good sales forces, by their nature, create internal conflict.  This isn’t because salespeople are bad people, obnoxious, or difficult to work with (although that is a separate issue), but because good salespeople push the frontiers.  Because sales is all about growth, good sales forces are always creating extra work and pressure for the other departments which must then function at a higher level to support the sales growth created.  This creates conflict and push-back.

As a business owner, it’s your job to mediate and handle these conflicts and push-backs.  It’s a delicate issue because no department, or department manager, wants to feel subordinate or less important than sales.  The reality is that, if you’re truly embracing a sales culture, the other departments are exactly that – subordinate to sales.  When conflicts arise, you should go back to your mission statement; what helps your company grow profitably through acquiring, developing, and retaining customers?

Few things can be as demotivating to a sales force, or as detrimental to sales productivity, as the daily interdepartmental battles that can result when other departments feel that they must act as a brake pedal on progress.  Good sales cultures overcome this problem by empowering managers who are sales advocates and by removing internal obstacles.

Have a High Performance Sales Force:  So far, we’ve talked about aligning a company’s objective, people, and goals around the sales force, which creates a very sales-friendly environment.  Now it’s time to turn up the heat on the people who are doing the selling.  You have the right, and the responsibility, to demand excellence from your salespeople once you have molded the culture of the company around them.

First, you need a strong sales manager.  A “strong sales manager” is one who actively works, on a day to day basis, to strengthen and enhance the abilities of his/her salespeople.  Your sales manager should be not only a good administrator, reporter, and forecaster; the sales manager must be a good coach and developer of people.  He should be willing to advocate for the needs of the sales force while simultaneously demanding the highest effort and achievement from them.  He must be capable of surrounding himself with top talent and then making that talent even better.

The sales manager must understand the basic equation of sales achievement:  Quantity of activity x Quality of activity = Results.  To this end, the sales manager should have performance metrics in place to assess both quantity and quality of sales activity, and be equipped to hold salespeople accountable for those metrics and for the results.  Struggling personnel must be either coached or changed; top performers should be rewarded and coached to even higher levels.

Your salespeople should be excellent “fits” for your company and environment, and should be capable of winning new business, developing current business, and retaining customers (remember the mission statement?).  They should have the appropriate mix of traits necessary for success, while being highly skilled and trained (which means that your investment in training should be ongoing).  The salespeople in a high performance sales force are not salespeople that must be babysit or constantly watched to achieve results.

Moreover, the people in your sales force should be excellent relationship builders, both inside the company and outside.  That means that the sales force shouldn’t have any “cowboys” who are negative or abusive to other employees; for a sales culture to work, the other employees have to want to get behind the sales team.  Salespeople who can’t play nicely with others will work against your goals, no matter how good they are with customers.

Reinforce the culture:  As you’ve probably guessed, it’s not enough to have some meetings, say “we are a sales organization,” and call it good.  Cultures happen because they are reinforced, directly or indirectly.  For this to work, key decisions must be made based on the new mission statement:  “Does this decision help us to acquire, develop, or retain customers?”  That doesn’t mean that non-sales departments starve; that new machine for the plant may be completely justified by its benefits in product quality.  The raises for the production staff may be appropriate to reward them for their part in acquiring, developing, and retaining customers.  It does mean that your company has one universal criteria for spending, personnel allocations, and any other key decision making.

The Benefits:  There are numerous benefits to aligning your company around a sales culture.  The biggest is this:  Sales focused companies tend to produce excellence in every department.  The reason is simple:  Companies with a strong sales department cannot stay bad or mediocre in other areas; if they do, those sales gains will quickly be lost through customer dissatisfaction and attrition.  As noted earlier, good sales departments tend to lift other departments through necessity.  This is not true of other departmental objectives; an excellent production department seldom creates pressure on other departments to up their games.