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.

Business magazines, books, and articles use the word ‘disruptive’ quite a bit to describe an ultimate goal – the domination of an industry or the building of a virtually competition-proof customer base.  It’s an admirable goal and we all want that, don’t we?

The problem is that being ‘disruptive’ in this sense requires the Big Idea.  You have to invent the next iPhone, the next Uber, the next Facebook, etc. It’s a great goal and a great ambition – but I often wonder how much time and energy gets squandered attempting to be “Disruptive” (capital-D), when you could have a lot of success being “disruptive” (lower case-d) by changing the way you sell what you already have.   Yes, you can be disruptive in selling, and let’s talk about how.

In selling, disruption happens when customer paradigms are changed.  What this means is that, for disruption to happen, customers must not only evaluate YOU, but your COMPETITORS, through a different framework than before.

To change paradigms, change the conversation.  In every industry, there is an ‘industry standard sales call.’  It goes something like this, from the salesperson’s perspective:

“So, how are you using my competitor’s products?”

“What do you like about them?”

“What do you dislike about them?”

(By the way, there’s nothing wrong with these three questions – I teach them too – but most salespeople are done at this point; if you learn my program, you’re just getting started.)

“In a perfect world, what would you like to change?”

“The price question.”  I refer to it this way because it’s phrased as everything from “What are you paying now?” to “What’s your budget?”

By now, the customer’s mind is set that there’s really no difference between the person in front of him and the person that sold him whatever he’s buying; hence, there’s only one variable.

If you have the same conversation your competitor has, the only way to differentiate yourself is price.  When salespeople say to me, “But Troy, in my industry, everything boils down to price!” they’re probably right – but they’re also not changing the conversation.  They’re asking the same old questions that their competitors ask, getting the same old answers, and leaving themselves only one place to differentiate.  Price.

So, how do you disrupt?

Ask questions that your competitors don’t ask.  Be inquisitive to the point of OCD.  Know everything you can know about your customer – or THEIR customers.  Use lots of questions that begin with “why.”  Make your prospect dig deep in his or her head for answers that your competitors don’t hear.

Research things that your competitors don’t research – and your customers might not, either.  If you’re going into a business that deals with the public, you should know their Yelp ratings (as well as other review sites) to the decimal point.  You should be able to quote from some notable reviews, or have them printed out and with you.  Are you selling recruiting services?  Be prepared to discuss your customer’s comments on GlassDoor, and how that affects their hiring picture.  Be Brave.  Some salespeople are scared spineless to confront a customer with a low Yelp rating or a bad review.  Don’t be that salesperson.  It’s reality and we sell in the real world.  Maybe there’s a ‘hook’ there that can get you in the door.

Tell Stories.  Stories, as I’ve said before, are one of the most powerful means of communicating customer success – and precious few salespeople know how to do it.  Learn, and get good at it, then use that skill constantly.

Tell them “No.”  Few things are more disruptive than a salesperson who tells a customer “no,” particularly if the customer is asking about price.  “Can I get a lower price?” is usually followed by weasel words like, “Well, I’ll have to check with my boss….” Or “If I could, would you?” This nonsense plugs you into the exact same size hole as your competitors.  Tell them “no,” and mean it.  You have different and better value than your customers; be proud of your price.

Try things.  This sales mindset virtually mandates that you try new techniques and discard the ones that don’t work.  Don’t worry – unless you do something truly offensive, no failure is permanent.  Try new presentations, new benefits, new questions, etc.  Your customers will let you know what works.

I’ve said before that FEAR is the obstacle of all good things in selling.  I mean it.  The reason this approach isn’t tried more often is that it’s safe to go with what’s ‘proven.’  Taking this approach means stepping out of your comfort zone as well as your customer’s, trying new techniques and skills, and making note of what works and what doesn’t.  In essence, you’re letting your customer be your sales coach – and with this comes risk of failure.

The reward, however, is being much, much more than the average salesperson.  The reward is being one of those people that dominates their industry, that is attractive to customers, and that builds bullet-proof customer relationships.  Do you want to be that person?