As I write this, I’ve just returned from a trip in Spain that was one of the greatest of my life – professionally and otherwise.  For those who don’t know, I was engaged to do sales training at DocuWorld Europe, a program put on by DocuWare, a document management software provider.  I did the English speaking sales training portion.

In my room, I had about 40 people representing 15 different countries.  For most of these people, English was a second (or third) language, which presented some unique aspects – I won’t even call them “challenges.”  To make a long story short, the training was a fantastic experience for all of us. This was an all-day program, which allowed for more of a “shared experience” environment than a strict seminar environment.  And as part of the program, these wonderful Europeans (and one American) reminded me of something that I learned last year.

Sales is a universal language.

By that, what I mean is that we tend to think of business having great differences between cultures.  After this program, in which I had people from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the United States represented, I feel pretty comfortable in saying that the art and science itself of selling is probably about 95% universal worldwide – and the 5% difference is just in the details.

In fact, some of the really gratifying moments in the program were moments when I’d describe a technique (usually when answering a question), and one of the repeat attendees said, “You taught us that last year, and I tried it, and it really works!”

With that in mind, let’s talk about some of the challenges that are being faced worldwide by salespeople right now.  We’ll talk more about how to overcome those in coming weeks.

The effects of the Internet:  This, I think, is the primary challenge being faced by salespeople worldwide.  The Internet is the ultimate double-edged sword for salespeople.  Never before has something that is such a useful tool also been such a direct competitor.  The Internet is unquestionably useful for expanding our networks, prospecting in new and different ways, and in general disseminating our message.  It’s also a huge challenge because it allows customers to come to the table with far more knowledge than in the past.  It’s just that sometimes, that “knowledge” is really misinformation.  How can we as salespeople maximize the positives of the Net without falling victim to the problems?  This is something we’ll explore for much of the year.

The need to find the right prospects:  The most common question on both sides of the Atlantic is, “How can I reach the decision maker?”  There are several answers to this question.  First, you have to know who the decision maker is.  Many salespeople start out by selling to the wrong person, thinking that they’re selling to the right person.  Second, once you have the right person, you have to approach them with the right words.  Third, once you get their attention, you have to craft a sales call that will make the most of that person’s time.  None of this is easy, but all of it is worthwhile.

Building buyer urgency:  “How can we get our customers to pay attention to our proposals, and to put urgency behind them?”  That’s a huge question worldwide.  The truth is that we cannot “inject” urgency, no matter what a snake-oil trainer tells you.  We can, however, find genuine causes for urgency, and bring those causes to bear in our presentations and proposals.  Using GENUINE reasons for urgency will get you farther than all the phony-baloney techniques in the world.  And yes, I have a methodology for that, and we’ll talk about that later this year.

Fear of change:  I’m not talking about the customer’s fear of change here (although this, too, is a topic we’ll spend time on).  I’m talking about the fear that salespeople have of trying something new and different.  It’s amazing, really; even when the current techniques aren’t working anymore, salespeople will automatically respond, “I don’t think that (the new technique) will work for me.”  The truth is that no new technique will work – until and unless you try it.  And on this note, I should point out that one big difference between European salespeople and American salespeople is that – in my very small sample size – European salespeople are more likely to try to put something new to work as quickly as possible.  Don’t let fear of the new hold you back.

There are other points, and we’ll talk about them all this year.  For now, though, I’d just like to close this column with a sincere “thank you.”  Thank you to DocuWare for bringing me back to Europe for the second year in a row, and from the bottom of my heart, thank you to my European friends old and new who have welcomed me into their careers.

I am hoping to cross paths with as many of you, wherever you are in the world, this year.  This is already one of the most exciting years of my career, and it’s only going to get better from here.

I’m writing this from my room at a lovely resort in Portopetro, Spain, on the island of Mallorca.  On Wednesday, I’ll be delivering leading-edge sales training to the DocuWorld Europe conference, put on by DocuWare, for the second year in a row.  I’m excited about the training, but this article isn’t about DocuWorld.  It’s really not even about me.  It’s about one man who made a huge difference for myself and my wife.

We arrived Saturday in Barcelona, and immediately drove to Fraga.  Fraga is a little town of about 15,000 people, and the sole reason we went there was because it was the closest place to Sunday’s World Superbike Championship race with an unbooked hotel – the Hotel Casanova.  The Casanova is a great hotel, built in 1954 and still completely in the Mid-Century Modern design, with nice rooms.  One person at the Casanova changed our entire experience.

I should point out that Fraga is not a tourist area of Spain.  I was spoiled last year, because we stuck mainly to tourist areas, and hence there was someone who spoke English nearly everywhere.  Fraga is not such a place.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that the only English speaker in the city was the constantly smiling woman who checked us in to the hotel (she was the only hotel employee who did speak English).

This didn’t present a problem while walking around town, although we frequently got a look that anyone who has sold in small town America is familiar with – the look that says, “You’re not from around here, are you?”  Some things are the same the world over.

Our lack of Spanish – and their lack of English – presented a problem for us at dinner.  We sat in the bar/cafeteria, ordered iced teas (hint – in Spain, say “Nestea”), and chatted, but when we attempted to order food we just got a shaking head.  Suddenly an older, well dressed man appeared.  He also spoke no English but he mimed eating motions and we nodded vigorously.  He then led us back into a very nice, white-tablecloth restaurant that was basically hidden from view of the lobby.

To make a long story short, we got a meal of sautee’d pork sirloin and potatoes in an exquisite cream sauce, a starting course of cheese tortellini, crème brulee, a bottle of the house red wine, and of course our Nesteas, for a grand total of 33 Euro for both of us – about 40 bucks U.S.  More than that, we got great service by the same gentleman and an attitude from him that made us feel completely at home and still has us smiling two days later.

We never got his name, but we will remember him fondly.  As we will the Hotel Casanova.  We may never pass that way again – but if you are in the area, you could do much worse than staying and dining there.

Here’s the point.  Had it not been for him, we’d have felt very much like the outsiders that we were.  But one person made all the difference.  In today’s Internet age, it still takes people to create experiences, and that’s the lesson to come forth from this article.  What difference are you making for your customers?

If you’re still stuck in the mode of taking orders and showing features, that’s what the Internet does best.  You’re not going to survive.  If, however, you’re willing to find ways to be a difference maker, opportunities will present themselves every day.

Yesterday, I ran into an old high school buddy of mine.  He and I had faced each other across a wrestling mat twice in junior high, before I decided that wrestling wasn’t my thing (I won two matches – both against him), and so when we were assigned to be partners in Weightlifting class in high school, we were initially less than excited.  As it turned out, we became great friends and weightlifting partners all through high school, because we pushed each other hard.

When we began, in my sophomore year (Freshmen were in junior high in my district), I weighed 160 pounds and could bench press 120 pounds.  Weak.  But, Charles and I worked hard, pushed each other hard, and by graduation, I weighed 170 pounds – and could bench press 240 pounds.  In my weightlifting experience, there are several lessons that apply to selling.

First of all, when we started lifting, we focused on milestones.  I’ll be honest.  We focused on milestones that LOOKED good.  For instance, when we started lifting, we put the “small” weights (25 pounds and down) on the bar because that’s all we could lift.  The bar weighed 45 pounds by itself; the biggest weights were 45 pounds.  Hence, to LOOK really good, we worked our way up to lifting at least 135 pounds.  I remember how good it felt the first time I put those ‘big’ 45 pounders on the bar and got it all the way up off my chest.

As we continued forward, we focused on other milestones – for instance, adding the 10 pound weights to the 45s, then the 25 pounders, etc.  Again, every milestone was based on how it looked, but it WORKED for us.  Charles and I both built strength (not just on bench press – but this is the one that I remember well) based on those milestones.  The last semester of high school, we pushed each other hard to be able to lift 225 pounds.  Why?  Because that meant that we could put TWO 45 pounders on each side.  Yep, a visual milestone.  As I recall, it was in the last month of school that we each managed to hit that mark.

LESSON NUMBER ONE: To improve, you need milestones to get where you want to go.

Another lesson that I remember is how, over the summer, our strength would atrophy because we weren’t lifting every day.  That should seem obvious – but that first lift of junior year it was quite a revelation to put my previous spring’s maximum on the bar and find out that I couldn’t budge it.  And that was with doing pretty physical work over the summer.  In fact, between junior year and senior year, I made it a point to lift every week at a minimum.

LESSON NUMBER TWO: If you’re not going forward, you’re going backward.  I couldn’t simply maintain a level of strength – I was either building strength or losing it.

As it turned out, I did actually gain strength over that summer.  Not much, but a little.  Then, after high school, I stopped weightlifting.  The results were, well, predictable.  That 240 pound bench press is but a distant memory, and even though I’ve started lifting again, I’m still firmly stuck at junior year levels.  That’s a blow to the ego – but I do believe that, at some point, I’ll pop those four 45-pounders off my chest again.  It’ll just take awhile.  In fact, I think it’s going to take longer to get BACK there than it did to GET there.

LESSON NUMBER THREE:  It’s easier to STAY in shape than it is to GET in shape.

One challenge I see in my chosen profession is that too many salespeople get complacent.  They don’t continue to develop their skills, find new customers, and seek out new challenges that make them better.  They stop reading books, they don’t train or retrain, they don’t even conduct meaningful business reviews.

And, like my strength when I stopped lifting, their customer base shrinks – and they can’t understand why.

Today’s customer is more demanding than the customers of 10, 15, 20, or 30 years ago.  They are better informed, better educated, and more savvy in terms of how they deal with salespeople.  In dealing with them, you have several options:

1. You can take the low road and try to win on low price.  That’s never a permanent solution.
2. You can keep doing the same things you did in the past, and watch the customers move past you and on to other salespeople.
3. You can update and improve your skills to meet and exceed today’s customer’s expectations.

Today’s salesperson must be able to have a higher level of customer dialogue than salespeople of the past.  You must be able to get to the need behind the need.  You must be able to diagnose and prescribe the EXACT solution to the customer’s problem.  And then you must use advanced persuasion techniques to win the business.  The old stuff won’t get it done.

And, as my example above shows, if you’re not in constant development, you won’t be able to keep up with the marketplace.  So, of the three examples above, which salesperson are you going to be?

I’ve always said that it’s possible to learn from sales fails as it is from sales successes.  If you’re anything like me, you’re constantly doing postmortems on past sales calls, both winners and losers.  What salesperson hasn’t sat in his office, shaking his head, saying, “Good grief, why in the world did THAT come out of my mouth?”

As you can imagine, I’ve become a collector of sales stories.  People are always coming up to me and starting stories with, “Hey, you’re a sales guy, let me tell you about THIS salesperson that called on me!”  It’s fun and funny at the same time.  Today was no exception; in talking with a friend of mine in the marketing business, I heard a story that can teach us all a few things – especially with the surprise plot twist at the end.

My friend opened with, “Let me tell you about THIS sales call!”  Immediately, my ears perked up.  I knew I was about to hear something good.

“I was cold called,” she said, “by a guy who represented a company offering a service to marketers like me.  This was a couple of weeks ago, and it happened to be an absolutely horrible day.  I was slammed at work, some things had gone wrong, and my stress level was about a 12 on a scale of one to ten.  Still, what he had was of interest, and I told him that I wanted to know more.  Could he call back after 5 PM, or on Monday (this was on a Friday morning)?”

She continued, “The prospector responded that, if I was interested, he’d have Brian call me back.  Apparently Brian was the guy who really knew the program and he could handle my questions.  The caller was just a prospector.”

I’ll admit to having mixed feelings on this issue.  I’m usually not a big fan of ‘prospectors’ in selling; however, this one was at least effective enough to generate the lead.  The story continued.

“Brian called me back in about an hour.  He said that his prospector told him that I had reached out to them regarding their program, and wanted to know more.”

My note:  Why would the prospector not take credit for the lead generated by the cold call?  Especially when doing so forced Brian into a false statement?  This hurt their company’s credibility, which is one of the hardest things to establish.

She continued, “I explained to Brian that I hadn’t reached out; his caller had.  And then, I told Brian that I’d told his prospector that this was a very bad time, and that after 5 PM or Monday would be a better time.”

Brian apologized for the mix-up, and then asked, “So, what would be the best time to talk?”

My note:  She’s already told him that.  Why not instead agree to call back after 5 PM, or set a time on Monday?  Brian didn’t listen.  I don’t have to tell you what a mistake this is.

My friend responded, “Honestly?  Saturday morning would be the best.”

Brian:  “I don’t work on Saturdays.”

“OK,” my friend said.  She could have reminded him about Monday, but at that point, she was rapidly losing interest.  Can you blame her?

Brian offered, “How about I send you a written workup with costs and ROI numbers?  That way you’d have more information.”  Personally, I think that Brian’s offer to ‘send info’ was a big mistake.  ‘Send info,’ when it comes from a customer, is usually a stall or a put-off.  Why Brian would choose to offer to be put off is beyond me.  But, of course, he still hasn’t cottoned to her offer to talk on Monday.  My friend agreed to receive his information, and the call ended there.

In fact, so did the sales process. Brian never sent the info.  Offering to be put off by sending information is bad; not actually sending it is far worse.

PLOT TWIST:  The previous events happened nearly three weeks ago.  I wrote the above article yesterday afternoon.  Just as I was preparing to send it, my friend called me and said, “You’re not going to believe it.  Brian called just now.  He wanted to ‘follow up on my interest,’ he said.  My interest has GONE by now.”

This, to me, is a case where a good sale went to die.  After the first phone call, my friend was a motivated prospect – and those are like gold.  How did the sale get killed?  Let me count the ways.

1. The nature of the first call was misrepresented, thus damaging Brian’s credibility.
2. Brian was offered two choices of call back days, didn’t listen, and missed them entirely.
3. Brian refused to call on Saturday (I can’t ding him too badly for this – I try to keep weekends free – but the Saturday issue was the result of #2).
4. Brian then offered to be put off by offering to send info.
5. Brian then failed to send the info that he volunteered to send.
6. Finally, Brian called back with no recollection of anything that had gone before.

Now, look in the mirror and be honest.  Have you committed any of those errors?  This year?  Last year?  Note that none of the unforced errors above was huge – but they all add up to a customer that likely won’t buy at any price.  Sales is about the conversation; make sure yours are meaningful for you and for the customer.

One of the topics I’m frequently asked about revolves around the topic of name dropping.  This happened last week with a fairly new salesperson who happens to be a good friend.  She had, she said, received several “referrals,” and wanted to know if it was appropriate to use the person’s name who referred them.

The reason that this is a common question revolves around the issue of sales credibility.  Without exception, when someone is dropping someone else’s name into the conversation, they are attempting to establish their own credibility by borrowing some of the person whose name they are using.  This is a technique that can, depending on the situation, range from entirely appropriate to downright annoying.  Let’s dissect the issue and figure out which is which.

In the particular case of my friend, what I learned after some questioning was that these “referrals” really weren’t referrals at all.  They were cold leads.

A referral occurs when someone not only points you to a new potential client; they get in the middle of the conversation, make an introduction, and assist in making the connection.

A lead is when someone suggests that you make a sales call on a potential customer but doesn’t get involved in the conversation or help make the introduction.  My friend had leads; the other person had simply suggested that ‘she ought to call on’ a certain group of businesses without being able to facilitate the meeting happen.  Her not knowing the difference wasn’t her fault – her company termed these ‘referrals,’ as would many networking groups.

In this case, once we’d clarified what she was working with, I gave her these simple guidelines.  In the case of a lead, the name shouldn’t be dropped, since it’s entirely possible that the person giving the lead doesn’t even know a key contact at the target company.  Since name dropping is all about borrowing credibility, you might be borrowing from an empty bank.

In the case of a true referral, however, the name should be used; i.e., “John Smith suggested that I call you, as he thinks that what I do could help you.”  In this case, the borrowed credibility is real, and the name (along with whatever the other person might have done) should assist you in getting an appointment.

The same rule goes for testimonials, as well.  A testimonial should always be used in conjunction with the name of the person who gave it.  Again, borrowed (and real) credibility is at play here.

Now, let’s talk about a different situation.  This is one I see all the time in the speaking community – let’s call it, “The Name Drop Apropos of Nothing.”  If there’s anything speakers like to do when they congregate, it’s drop the names of other speakers they may have seen, might know, or whose articles they might have read.

“Have you seen Jack Smith speak?”

“Have you read Ellen Suchandsuch’s book?”

Or, they’ll pepper their speeches with references to others’ work and material.  “As Guy Kawasaki says,” etc.  I also see this happening in too many sales presentations.

Here’s the rub with this kind of name dropping.  It can work against you and be annoying to your audience (or customer).  There are a few reasons for this.

First of all, if your audience or customer hasn’t read the books or heard the speakers, then they can feel that you’re trying to diminish them or put yourself above them – or that there’s a ‘club’ and you’re not a member.

Second, remember that name dropping is borrowing credibility.  It’s one thing to borrow the credibility of someone you know.  It’s entirely another to borrow the credibility of someone you don’t know.

Finally, if you use this technique too much, it greatly diminishes your own credibility.  At some point, you cease to be an expert and become someone who read an expert’s book.  There’s no way that this can work in your favor.

Here’s my advice.  If you like to use expert quotes or examples in your sales presentations, keep them to a minimum.  You’re much better off using one great quote or study than five mediocre ones.

Remember this:  Others’ credibility might get you in the door, and it might help move a presentation along – but at the end of the day, if YOU don’t have credibility of your own, you won’t get the sale.  My advice is to build as much of your own credibility as possible.

Is there any part of selling that’s more talked about these days – or less understood – than social media?  Ever since Linkedin came on the scene, various trainers, consultants, and other assorted “experts” have been telling salespeople that the magic button that they had always sought – the one that would remove the need for prospecting – had finally arrived.  Simply put up your profile on LinkedIn, make some posts, and while you’re at it Tweet a bit and Facebook a lot.  Then say, “come to Papa,” and all the prospects you’d ever need would come to you.

Some salespeople are still waiting for that to happen.  Want to know how I know?  Because I was one of those salespeople.  You see, I’ve been building my national speaking career for about five years now.  I read and heard the advice of the top people in my profession, and they all said, “It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or where you’ve done it – this is the one place where cold calling doesn’t work.  You WILL NOT get booked off a cold call.”

Since they were the experts, I believed them.  So…..I posted on LinkedIn.  I Tweeted.  I Facebooked.  And I put up videos on YouTube.  And I said, “Come to Papa.”  And….well, to be totally honest, I did get a few speaking engagements from word of mouth, and my “rebook rate” (the rate at which past clients bring me back) is very high for the industry.  Still, I looked at my business last year and realized that I didn’t have as many national-level engagements as I wanted.

So, I decided to take matters into my own hands.  I would do what “didn’t work,” at least by what the experts told me.  And I found out something.  In the industry of professional speaking, cold calling doesn’t work…..except when it does.  Yes, I have booked several well paying engagements at quality conferences by cold calling.

But, this article isn’t about me or what I’ve been able to do.  It’s about YOU and what YOU can do.  You see, I discovered something very important about social media in this process.  I made cold calls, I set appointments, I had good conversations.  And then, do you know what my prospects did?

They went to my social media and looked at all of those posts, all those YouTube videos, the testimonials, etc.  Social media was their tool for establishing my bona fides.  Once they did that, we re-engaged and they booked me to speak.

You see, in today’s world, it’s not enough to just do conventional prospecting.  Nor is it enough to do social media.  You must do both.

Think about the last time you exhibited at a trade show.  You had your display, samples, and you had people assigned to the booth just for the purpose of prospecting (new lead generation).  Now imagine that you’d done it one of two ways.

First, imagine that you’d only put up your display.  You didn’t put any people in the booth; perhaps you just put a bowl on the table with a sign saying, “If you’re interested, drop your card into this bowl.”  All thoughout the show, the booth sat empty with no people in it. How many cards do you think you’d have at the end of the show?  Not many, if any at all.

Now, imagine the opposite.  Instead of putting up a display you put a simple sign up with your company’s name, and had two of your people in the booth.  Now how do you think you’d do?  My guess is that you’d probably do a little better than by using the display and no people.  That’s because your people could engage people as they came by.  But, either way, you probably wouldn’t get the results that you’d get with a display and your people.

In prospecting, your social media is your trade show display.  It’s your backdrop, your brand, your samples, and it provides you with the air of legitimacy and bona fides that your display does at the trade show.  It’s a way for buyers to check you out and to discover more about you.  Nowadays, you’ll find out that many of your potential customers – even ones that you cold call – will check you out on social media.

This is a switch in paradigm from how most salespeople are attempting to use social media (unsuccessfully in most cases).  When we recognize that social media is not our primary prospecting mechanism, but a supplementary prospecting mechanism, it changes our approach to our social media postings.

Instead of posting with constant calls to action – in an attempt to get a cold response from your readers and followers – instead focus on postings that build your brand, your name recognition, and your professional reputation.

One particular mechanism you should focus on is the “Recommendations” tool on LinkedIn.  There’s never been an easier way to get testimonials from your happy customers than by requesting recommendations through LinkedIn.  Those recommendations can be in context (since LinkedIn specifically refers to the job you’re requesting the recommendation for) and allows you to review the recommendation before posting.  Once you have a recommendation, then it’s time to fire up Twitter and link to your new recommendation.  It’s easy.

YouTube videos can be great for posting product demonstrations, case studies, etc., and if you link to those, your customer can use these as a tool to check you out.

That said, the knowledge that social media is a “due diligence” mechanism for your customers also has implications about what you should NOT post.  Everything you post on any of your social media pages needs to be carefully vetted with an eye toward what you might not want your customers to see.   When in doubt, don’t post it.

Social media may someday replace conventional prospecting – but the medium for that hasn’t been invented yet.  For now, keep prospecting and use social media as your backdrop.

Recently, the news media, and even some of our government officials, have been agog about what they call “Fake News.”  In the current, working definition, “Fake News” is a story that has no basis in reality, but is designed to play into political beliefs; for instance, “(Candidate X) smells like old cabbage.”  What these media sources are saying is that one should only pay attention to media sources with CREDIBILITY.  Interesting concept, and I’ll get back to it in a moment.  The problem comes in when you fact-check some stories from a “Credible” media outlet, and they too come up wanting.

You see, the most desirable characteristic in news media is the same as the most desirable characteristic in selling.  I’m often asked what the #1 characteristic a salesperson needed to possess to succeed with his or her customers.  Most people expect me to say, “Trust,” but I didn’t.  I said, “Credibility.”

My definition of credibility is this:  Credibility means that people believe what you are saying because it is you that says it.  They don’t feel the need to check your sources, research your facts and claims, etc.  Credibility means that, in the customer’s mind, “Troy said it.  That’s good enough for me.”  You might be wondering, “Isn’t that just another word for trust?”  My reply would be, “No, not at all.  Credibility works at a higher level than trust.  Trust is simply one of the prerequisites for credibility.”

In professional selling, trust means that the customer believes that you would not intentionally steer them wrong, and that you have their best interests at heart. That word, “intentionally,” is a big deal.  “Trust” means that the customer allows for you to make mistakes in your verbiage, in your claims, in your references, and in your recommendations – and if the customer allows for these mistakes, that means that they will back-check at least some of those potential mistakes.  You cannot have credibility without trust, but you can have trust without credibility.

See the difference?  Credibility means that they don’t back-check you.  This is desirable not just for you, but for the customer.  Just as it’s a lot of work to back-check a suspect news story, it can be a lot of work to back-check the claims of a salesperson.  Many customers will solve this time crunch by opting out of both the salesperson and the transaction. Can we agree, then, that credibility is a much higher level of dialogue with the customer?  Let’s talk about how to achieve it.

First, achieving credibility means taking something of a sales Hippocratic oath:  “First, do no harm.”  In sales, that could mean, “First, make no false statements.”  This is a big problem for salespeople for a couple of reasons.  The first reason is that salespeople want to be seen as experts – even if they’re not.  Now, I’ve said before that becoming an expertise provider should be the goal of every salesperson; part of expertise, however, is realizing what you don’t know.  The salesperson who decides to “wing it” and gives a false answer forever calls his claims into question.

The second reason is that salespeople fear giving the “I’ll get you that answer” answer to a question because it can slow down the selling process.  Well….maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t.  The advent of technology means that we can be far more prepared with resources to answer questions than we used to be.  I once sold for a distributor of bearings and power transmission products that represented and stocked over 150 product lines.  If I needed technical information on all of them, my car wouldn’t have been able to store all the catalogs and technical documents I needed!

Today, however, we can carry all those documents – or access to them – on a smartphone.  Think about it for a minute.  What if you carried all your technical information on micro-SD cards (or whatever memory source your phone takes), labeled, so that if you had a particularly tough question to answer, you could simply load the proper document on your phone and give the CORRECT answer?  That wouldn’t slow the process and your customer would respect your efforts.  This, by the way, is one way that even rookie salespeople can generate credibility very quickly.

Another way of generating credibility is getting in front of particular problems.  If there is going to be a problem such as a delayed delivery, incorrect product spec, etc., the credible salesperson finds out about it before the customer, and communicates with the customer as soon as possible – rather than just letting the delivery happen incorrectly and letting everything hit the fan.

A third way of generating credibility is never throwing your team members under the bus to the customer.  This is difficult, but it’s the most common way I see that salespeople blow any potential for credibility.  You win as a team, and you lose as a team – and when you lose, the credible salesperson says, “we messed up,” not “they messed up.”  Take the lumps for everyone else – and then, fix problems in-house and behind closed doors.

Finally – and I know that this will hit some of you hard – credible salespeople stay at their jobs for a reasonable period of time.  I talk to a lot of salespeople who change jobs on a frequent basis, and it hurts your credibility, both in the interview process and in the selling process.  If you’re going back to your customers on an annual basis and saying, “Guess what – I’m selling something different now!”, you’re not going to have any credibility whatsoever.

Gaining credibility requires more than sales skills.  It requires discipline in your actions and your conversations.  It is, however, worth the effort, because it’s the highest level of business relationship you can achieve.

What will your 2017 look like?  Right now, I’m willing to bet that everyone reading this has projected that 2017 will be your best year ever.  Me too.  I’m also willing to bet that by April 1 – if not sooner – most of you will be saying, “Well, I can still hit my projections, if I have a solid last part of the year.”  Then by October, you’ll be saying, “Well, things will get better in 2018.”  I’m not saying this to put you down.  I’m saying this as the result of something I discovered recently.  More about that in a moment.

You see, most business owners – and salespeople, and sales managers – depend on EXTERNAL factors to lift their boats.  I just got back from a big trade show in Las Vegas, and the common theme that I heard was that “2017 was going to be a great year.”  When I asked why, they’d say, “Because the economy is going to be very strong.”  I happen to agree with that sentiment – but I always wonder what we can do to make our OWN economy.  This leads back to my discovery.

I’m going to step outside my normal mode here of ‘how to’ articles, and talk about my own business and something I’ve done recently.  I’ve had a lot of discussions with potential clients in the last two years, and I’ve done pretty well in winnning new projects with new customers.  My closing percentage on proposals is well over 50%, and I suppose it ought to be, if I’m trying to teach you how to sell, don’t you think?

Still, “well over 50%” isn’t 100%.  As much as I wish I didn’t, I lose sales, too.  We’re all living in the real world here.  When I counted my losses over the last two years, I found that I had 33 proposals that did not result in a ‘yes’ answer.  That bothers me; that means there were 33 business owners that didn’t see the value in working with me.  And these were business owners who had needs.

Some (most) needed to turn around an underperforming sales force.  These were comprehensive projects that included consulting, coaching, and training.

Some wanted training for salespeople or sales managers.

Some wanted individual coaching and consulting for themselves.

Some wanted help in hiring people.

ALL of them had unmet needs and goals.

Whether they were trying to build value in their business to sell and have a comfortable retirement, or whether they wanted to maximize profit to enjoy a better lifestyle, or perhaps they wanted to set the business up for success for the next generation of their family, they all had needs.

I decided to do some follow-up.  I decided to call each of the 33 to see if, and how, they met those needs, if they didn’t invest in work with me.  The results were pretty depressing.

I got ahold of 26 of the 33, which I figure is a good ratio.  Two of the companies were – unfortunately – out of business, so that answered every question I had for those owners.  Out of the 26 that I called, I reminded them of the goals they had when we talked, and I asked them how they achieved those goals.

The answer shocked me.  ONLY ONE of those 26 had hit their goals, and they did so by choosing a different coach.  That’s fair enough.  I’m not for everyone, and everyone isn’t for me.  To be honest, this was the least upsetting answer that I received.

More common was an answer that, “Oh, well, we didn’t hit our numbers because, you know, the economy.”  In other words, these business owners decided to play it safe, do nothing different, and defer their dreams and goals for a day when some undefined outside source would carry them to prosperity. How mediocre.  There’s nothing worse than just settling for being blown along with the wind.

That, however, wasn’t as bad as the answer I received from four of my contacts.  Four of these business owners confessed that they wished mightily that they’d worked with me back then, WHEN THEY HAD THE MONEY (I’m not cheap but I generate ROI).  Now, no matter how much they wanted to, they simply didn’t have the cash in the bank.  I suspect that in another year these phone numbers will be disconnected as well.

I’ve been reviewing those sales, examining my own efforts, and wondering what I did wrong.  Should I have closed harder?  Should I have presented more aggressively, or maybe asked a question that I neglected to ask?  At this point, it’s hard to say, and it won’t make much difference.  I will say that two of the 26 have engaged me now, so there was a profit to the exercise (and that, too, should be a lesson to you – don’t neglect past prospects as a source of future business).

So now that I’ve given you a peek behind the curtain, I have some questions for YOU.

How confident are you that your 2017 will be what you want it to be?

What are you going to do differently to help you get there?  Don’t give me bilge about ‘the economy.’  MAKE the year be what you want it to be!

If you need outside help, are you going to engage that help?  If not, why not?  In fact, let me say this:  If you need outside help to achieve your goals and your dreams, there is no excuse for not getting it.  If I’m not too proud to use outside help (and I’m not), you shouldn’t be either.  Get the help you need.

More to the point:

If you’re a business owner, have we talked?  If not, why not?  Contact me today.  I’m a nice guy – really – and I’ll be happy to give you a free phone consultation to see if I can help.

If you’re a salesperson, have you looked at my products to help you sell more and build better relationships?  You can buy them here – and I’ve even extended my New Year’s sale to help you afford them.

My pledge to you is this – I’ve learned many things from these 26 calls, including identifying service offerings that might have made the difference.  Look for these new service offerings in the first quarter of 2017.  There’s nothing I hate more than calling past lost sales and hearing about goals unreached, dreams deferred, and battles unwon.  I want to help you reach, achieve, and win.  That’s my theme for 2017.

Back in 2011, as I was still trying to figure out this business of speaking at a national level, I came across a live program that promised to help me figure it out.  It was called “The Odd Couple – Marketing for Professional Speakers,” and it was hosted by experts in the subject matter named Patricia Fripp and Alan Weiss.  Even better, it was being held in Las Vegas, one of my favorite places.

The problem was that, at the time, the fee for attending was enough to have made my finances a bit tight.  The scheduling would have been tight as well; I had a training program scheduled the day after I’d have had to take a late flight home from Vegas. Neither the finances nor the scheduling were prohibitive – just a little difficult. I decided not to go, and figured that they’d have it again the next year – after all, this was the third annual.  I would be there for the fourth.

You might have guessed the rest.  There was no fourth annual.  After the third, both Fripp and Weiss decided that the event no longer fit with their respective business models.  Since then, I’ve spent a lot of money and time taking advantage of Fripp’s expertise in speaking skills, and I’ve availed myself of Weiss’ work as well.  I even bought the MP3 audio of the last Odd Couple (the one I decided not to go to).  All of those things convinced me of one fact.

I missed one hell of an opportunity by not going.  I’ve gotten quite a bit out of the audio.  And Fripp has become not only a valued mentor, but a good friend.  But I’m quite confident that, had I been in the audience, asking questions, hearing things live, that I would have accelerated my career by a good 2-3 years at least.  This opportunity was a non-renewable resource.

If there’s any trend that I’m seeing in the world of small to medium sized business, it’s a growing conservatism in decision making.  I’d like to put this at the feet of the Baby Boomer generation aging and being more careful about spending and investing, but I can’t; the conservatism doesn’t seem to be isolated to any one age bracket.  More and more, business owners are allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good, and waiting for ‘the next time’ to come around.  Oftentimes, it doesn’t.

In business, life, and sales, the equation of success looks like this:  Success = need + solution + opportunity.  There’s a moment in time when opportunity is presented, and we need to take advantage of it.

In selling, one of my good friends, Marc Lonesk, says “any selling is useless unless the customer’s window is open.”  (I.e., if the customer isn’t willing to hear your message, they won’t.)  He’s not wrong about this, but more importantly, I’ve found that the entire buying process culminates in a moment in time where the customer is most motivated to buy, is on board with the solution, and just needs to be asked.

This is where all too many salespeople have to run back to the batcave to develop a ‘formal proposal,’ or ask permission from a manager for something, or otherwise follow a sales process that doesn’t sync with the buyer’s buying process.  Then they wonder why that sale no longer happened.  It’s simple.  Opportunity knocked and the salesperson failed to open the door.

Even something as simple as having to run out to your car for a contract or an order form can be a deal-killer.  The best salespeople are always prepared to do business when the customer wants it to.

A few years ago, a business owner I am acquainted with had the opportunity to buy his biggest local competitor.  He engaged me to do a bit of analysis, and I came back with the opinion that, while the competitor’s operations were lagging behind, he had just made some personnel moves that resulted in a potentially great sales department.  He should, I opined, buy them NOW, not later.  My rationale was something you’ve probably read before:  SFE. Sales Fixes Everything.

As that great sales force ramped up, I explained, they would create pressure within the company that would force the operations to fix themselves.  Once that happened, this company would eat his company alive in the sales arena (I should point out that this was the first engagement with the business owner – his sales force was very small and not very good).  If he didn’t buy now, his only alternative would be to beef up his own sales force to defend their accounts.

The owner of company A chose not to buy and not to invest in the sales force.  Instead, he stood pat, figuring that the poor operations of company B would continue to drive customers away and thus drive the price of company B lower.  Instead, the scenario that I previewed played itself out.  Company B is now the lone survivor, having bought company A three years later at a fire sale price.  I now work with company B from time to time.

I’m going to give you another example, and this involves opening my business kimono a bit.  I stopped doing recruiting, for the most part, two years ago (I still do a bit for selected favored customers).  At the time I stopped, my recruiting services started at $20,000 per search, and it was worth it.  We got winners.  Still, the time demands were such that handling a few searches at the same time became difficult.  So I dropped the service, but I’ve been looking for ways to monetize a very effective hiring process.

A few weeks ago, I attempted to do just that.  Partnering with Kirk Young of Job Match Assessment, I hosted a two-day training program designed to teach managers and business owners my hiring process, with nothing held back.  Since hiring is such a hot topic (and we were only charging $995 per person – $845 if they registered early), I figured we might sell out a 30-person class.  We did not.  Suffice it to say that attendance was very small and it was not a financial success.  But, as one attendee said, “I can’t understand why this isn’t sold out.  This is a great program and hiring is the #1 thing that’s discussed when I talk with other business owners.”

Still, I felt the market had spoken; this wasn’t a desired offering.  Then came a few calls and emails asking, “When will you be having this one again?”  The truth is that we probably won’t.  But the “best” response was one owner who said, “Well, I wanted to get some first hand knowledge from someone else who attended before I committed those resources.”  Really?  This person operates a $15 million business and wasn’t willing to risk $1000 to find out how to staff his company appropriately?  In fact, if all of the “When are you doing it again” people had stepped up and registered, we probably would be doing it again.

If you’re thinking that I’m venting a bit of frustration, you’re probably right, but to me it’s a commentary on our business climate.  The irony is that the businesses that are owned by these people weren’t built on conservatism; they were built on risk taking.

My message from this article, if you’ve read this far, is this:  Any business decision can be made on 80% of the applicable information, and your accuracy on those decisions will be near 100%.  Whether you are in Sales, Operations, Management, or Ownership, at 80%, stop dithering and pull the trigger.  You’re going to be right nearly all of the time, you’re going to save yourself many hours of hashing and rehashing, and your company will be growing while your competitors are trying to figure out what happened.