One question I get asked a lot is, “Troy, is there still a role for direct mail communication in sales?”  My answer is “Yes.”  First, however, I want to make one very important point:  The very best sales letter, brochure, or marketing piece is no substitute for even an adequate face to face sales call.  Written sales communications should be designed to facilitate the sales process, not replace it.

With that in mind, let’s think about our objective for a sales letter (for brevity’s sake, I’ll refer to all written sales communications as letters).  The purpose of a sales letter (or for that matter, any form of sales communication) is to advance the relationship between seller and customer.  Period.  The litmus test for anything you’re about to send out, therefore, should be: Does this advance the relationship in any way?  If it does, you’ve got a good start.  (This is true for letters to prospects, as well – if the letter makes it more likely that a prospect will see you, it has advance the relationship.)  Following are some ways a good sales letter can advance customer relationships:

Educate the customer.  This is perhaps the all-time best way of advancing a customer relationship.  If you can impart some piece of knowledge that helps your customer do a better job of running their own business, you win.  If you’re selling to end users, think about ways to teach your customers how to better use your products and services; more successful implementations reflect on your knowledge and expertise.  If you’re selling wholesale, consider teaching your customers better ways to sell, market, and price your products.  If you sell to a vertical market, consider regular communications that help your customers identify industry trends quickly.  You get the idea.  If you hadn’t already figured it out, “Educating the Customer” is the primary purpose of the HotSheet.

Tell them about new products or services.  Most companies add products and services from time to time, yet many of those same companies forget to tell their customer base about the new products and services.  If you’ve ever had a customer say, “Hey, I didn’t know you did that, too,” you’re probably one of those companies.  Remember – our objective with each customer is to sell them as much of our stuff as possible.  A letter announcing new products helps advance the relationship by letting them know everything you could be doing for them.  Make sure you remember to talk about the BENEFITS of the new products, as well.

“By the way, we also sell:”  This is a close relative of the “new stuff” letter.  If you sell multiple product categories or lines, your first sale usually will not cover the entire length and breadth of your product line.  You still want your customer to know what you do, so after thanking them for their first purchase, send out a letter saying, “You might not be aware, but we can also serve your needs in these ways,” etc.

Personnel change notifications.  Although it’s not pleasant, turnover in sales and service can’t be helped.  If your outgoing salesperson has a large customer base, it’s probably going to be difficult to call them all (either by phone or face to face) before one calls in asking for Joe, who no longer works for you.  Be proactive and let your customers know who will be taking care of them after the current person’s departure.  Personnel changes tend to induce fear in customers (that their needs won’t be taken care of), so the more proactive and reassuring you can be, the better the relationship.

Of course, the types of written communications you might want to do encompasses much more than I have space for here, but if you give each letter the litmus test discussed above (does it advance the relationship?), you will be far ahead of those companies that send out communications that do nothing for either the sender or receiver.

I knew I’d asked an uncomfortable question.  I can always tell by the way the owner and the sales manager get an embarrassed look on their face, and then close the door.  The question I’d asked was, pointing to the bottom person on a ten person sales force, “Tell me about Ed.  Why are his sales so low?”  Ed was at 50% of quota with a downward trend line.

“Uh, Troy, you’ve got to understand,” the owner said.  “That’s Ol’ Ed.  He’s been with the company for more than twenty years.  He’s sort of an institution here, and he used to be our very best salesperson.  Maybe the best the company has ever had.  He’s just no kid anymore.”  “I love veteran salespeople,” I responded.  “And I understand about getting older.  Does Ed have some physical limitations that prevent him from doing the job to its fullest?”  I already knew the answer to that one; I’d seen Ed walking around the office – nearly skipping at times – as he greeted everyone in the building.  But from there, the conversation got pretty shocking to the business owner.

“No, of course not,” the owner replied.  “But we’re loyal to him and he’s loyal to us.”

“Nonsense,” I told the owner.  “You might be loyal to him but he’s not loyal to you,” I continued, seeing the jaws drop on the other side of the table. “If you’ve read my work, you know that I’m a big fan of the principle of job equity.”  I saw them nodding along.  “Here’s what people don’t understand about job equity.  Job Equity is the principle that, over time, a company and an employee become more valuable to each other, as the employee learns more about the job and performs better, and the company continues to be a stable source of income, rewards, and security.”

“The problem you have,” I continued, “is that you have someone – Ol’ Ed – who SHOULD be one of your top performers based on longevity and experience, but is by far your worst.  That tells me that Ed just doesn’t put effort into the job.  Would you agree?”

Both the owner and the sales manager nodded uncomfortably.

“Moreover, this situation exists because you have let it happen.  Ed didn’t just walk in one day and say, ‘hey, I’m going to half-ass it from here on out,’ did he?”  No, they both responded.  “His performance just declined little by little as he lost customers through attrition or non-attention, and unlike in the past, failed to replace them with new customers, right?”  Again, nodding.  “And you didn’t have the heart to manage the trend when you saw it start, right?”  Now, very uncomfortable nodding.

“The result is that you’ve got your highest-potential territory taken up by someone who will no longer prospect and build his business, and that you’re afraid to manage.  How many millions of dollars do you suppose this has cost you?”  At this point, the sales manager became indignant.

“What would you have me do?” she asked.

“Your job,” I replied.  “Manage Ed.  Let him know that his behavior isn’t acceptable, it is costing the company money, it is an obstacle to your personal achievement and compensation, and that it won’t be tolerated anymore.”  Nods were replaced by jaws dropping.

“FIRE ED?” they said in unison.

“Not necessarily,” I said.  “You have options.  I’d start with a Performance Improvement Plan, giving him a certain period to turn things around.  He knows how to do the job, he’s just not doing it.  You could also consider a reassignment to a less demanding position like Customer Service.  But ultimately, you cannot continue to grow your company with your highest-potential territory not being worked.  And here’s one more thing – by doing this, you actually give Ed RESPECT.  You’re treating him like an accountable human being instead of some weak welfare case.  If Ed is half the salesman I think he is, he’ll understand that, and his pride will get his back up.”

“And if not?” the Sales Manager asked.

“Then Ed isn’t earning his keep.  Whether you keep him on as a welfare case is up to you, of course.  You could reassign him to a very weak territory where his lack of effort won’t matter.  Or you could keep the status quo and know that you’re leaving big bucks on the table every year until he decides to officially retire.”

The client decided to put Ed on a Performance Improvement Plan.  This was six months ago.  Ed is now ranked #4 out of ten salespeople – and climbing.  Whether he makes it back to number one or not, I don’t know, but I’m rooting for him.

Recently, I had the opportunity to present a training program at DocuWorld in Isla de Mallorca, Spain.  It was a great experience, not the least because I learned that selling is essentially the same game the world over.  No part of the program illustrated this more than when we discussed prospecting and cold calling.  (If you’re wondering, I trained the English speaking group – I don’t speak Spanish.)

“I have a question,” said one person at the back.  “I read an article recently that said that cold call prospecting would be obsolete in five years, as something else would replace it.”  “Did the article say what the ‘something else’ would be?” I asked.  “No,” he replied with a smile.  I didn’t think so.  I’ve been reading that article for 25 years.  And yet, one of the biggest problems in selling that I see is people who are spending most of their time looking for the ‘something’ rather than selling in today’s environment.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’d love to know what that ‘something’ will be.  Heck, I’d like to invent it.  If I did, I’d be writing these articles from a cabana on a beach somewhere.  And I’ve thought a lot about what that ‘something’ could be.  The problem is that, to be effective in replacing cold-call prospecting, the new mechanism would have to offer these characteristics:

1. First, it would have to be controllable and be able to be used proactively by a salesperson who is seeking out new people to sell to. In other words, it would have to be active, and not passive.  This, in a single stroke, eliminates social media – at least as it currently exists. No current social media platform allows targeting of clients and real-time conversation to attempt to establish interest and sell the appointment.
2. Second, it would have to generate predictable results for a given input of time, dollars, or other resources. I have yet to read any survey – or have personal experience, either on my own or with clients – that can tell me how many social media inputs generate a personal appointment.  Even a stat like “number of followers” isn’t predictive of real business conversations; it’s too easy to click a “like” button.  I can’t tell you how many tweets or likes generate an appointment (and neither can anyone else), but I can tell you how many dials a salesperson can make in an hour, I can tell you how many contacts (conversations) should result from those dials, and how many appointments should result from those contacts.  We can all think of “internet celebrities” in our lives who have hundreds, or even thousands, of followers on Facebook who don’t have two nickels to rub together.
3. Finally, it would have to be user-friendly enough to allow even rookie salespeople to be trained properly in it and use it to fill their calendars. This is a huge bugaboo; social media tends to be a moving target, impacted by other users, permissions, and even Google search algorithms that can vastly change the landscape from one moment to the next.  If there’s any certainty in SEO, it’s that what worked last year won’t work this year.

The point is that no such mechanism exists other than teleprospecting – so, if you want to succeed in sales in 2016, teleprospecting should be part of your life. It should be a very good data-driven teleprospecting program with a well-done infomercial approach, but teleprospecting it shall be.

I use this as an example of the “I’m going to get ahead of the curve” phenomenon.  I know that it’s tempting to want to be leading edge and advanced.  I do it too.  But when you’re searching for the NEXT thing, don’t forget to execute the CURRENT thing.  We still have to sell in the current environment.

Well, last week we discussed how to find your “Fred,” your ideal customer.  If you haven’t read it yet, you might want to read it now = and perhaps my blog post following up on some of the questions I received.  This week, as promised, we’re going to talk about how to implement a sales strategy to win your Fred.

I will point out again, although I made it clear in the first article, that it’s still OK to accept non-Fred business IF IT’s PROFITABLE TO DO SO.  Fred selling is all about the pursuit and where you put your energies.  To review a bit, the three characteristics that determine your Fred are:  Demographics, Specific Contact Title or Role, and Attitude.  Now that we’ve got that straight, I’m going to assume that you’ve identified your Fred.  Now let’s put him in the crosshairs.

1. Define your sales process for getting Fred. Here’s where it gets tricky.  Can you create a process to generate inbound Fred leads at the same time that you implement an outbound process?  Are there any specific steps that you need to insert in order to get a Fred’s attention?  One company with whom I’m familiar created a Fred-only inbound sales process.  They created a webinar that was strictly targeted to their Fred, so much so that it would be of little interest to others but high interest to Fred.  Then they built an ad campaign around driving their Freds to the webinar, with a payoff of a consultation call with their Fred that resulted in Fred joining their sales process.  Yep, it worked – but it took a lot of commitment on the part of their entire staff, marketing and sales.
2. Decide how much of your sales force’s time is going to be spent going after Fred. I am a fan of balanced sales – salespeople need regularity in results to stay on an even emotional keel – so the first thing you should do is figure out how you’re going to dedicate your resources to chasing Fred.  Unless you’re really, really lucky, it won’t work out for your salespeople to be spending all of their time selling to Fred – so what is the appropriate mix?  Over the years (unless there are very, very few Freds), I’ve found that a 50/50 mix works nicely.  That means that you can simply take your existing sales activity metrics (you do have those, right?), and split them in half.  Hence, if your salespeople need to perform eight appointments per week, four should be with Freds, etc.
3. Create Rules of Engagement. You need to define how to sell to Fred.  What level of effort are you going to make to get Fred?  What are acceptable parameters (price/profitability/terms) are you going to assign to Fred business?  This should be self-solving, since Freds are your most profitable customers, but you still need to guide the process.  This is also a good time to put some rules and parameters around non-Fred business so your sales force has a level of discipline about what they pursue and what they accept.
4. Train, train, and train some more. Your Freds deserve the best – and that means the best selling effort you can give.  Think of your face time with Fred as your “Lightning Round,” the time that’s the highest potential reward.  How skilled are your salespeople?  Do they have the skills to correctly discover, define needs, success, and results with Fred?  Can they give a world class presentation that will show Fred why you are the only potential source?  In short, are your salespeople equipped for the job?  Training isn’t a one time thing, it’s an ongoing investment.
5. Put your BEST people on Fred. One mistake that I see – particularly on the relationship building and servicing side – is that too many companies allow their weaker players to be in charge of their Fred relationships.  DON’T DO THAT.  If Freds are your key contributors, then your key people need to be in charge of every step in dealing with them.  Think of airline first class service here.  Do you think that airlines put their newest, least experienced and trained flight attendants in First Class?  Not hardly.  They put their very best people up there because they know that First Class passengers are spending the most, the most often.  Take your cue from them.
6. Get EVERYONE on the same page. Everyone in your company needs to know what a Fred is, how you’re going to go after Fred, and how you plan to retain and build relationships with Fred.  That means that Marketing and Sales need to be aligned and on the same page.  It means that Service, Shipping, and other support departments need to be tuned to the idea that you go the extra mile for a Fred, and if Sales says, “this is a Fred,” that no other conversation needs to happen.

Like I said last week, yes, this is a lot of work.  That’s life.  Excellence isn’t easy, but it is profitable and this is how world class sales forces generate world class performance.  If you want to get past mediocrity or ‘acceptable’ results, Fred is Job One.

I’ve been consulting with business owners, sales managers, and training salespeople for a dozen years now.  Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember what it was like to have a job working for someone else.  But if there’s anything I’ve discovered in that twelve years, it’s that those business owners, sales managers, and salespeople have an incredibly difficult time with defining their “Fred.”

OK, full disclosure – I don’t remember where I got this expression but I’ve been using it for a long time.  “Fred” is my shorthand name for my ideal target client.  Not a client that I will accept, mind you – but the ideal target for me.  I can ask the toughest questions of my clients and get the straightest answers – but when I ask my clients to define their Fred (and I explain what Fred means), I get weasel words.  Why?  I think it’s because we want to leave ourselves a lot of opportunities to accept non-Fred business (non-ideal business), and that’s where we go wrong.  If you want to succeed in sales, figure out your Fred.  Let’s take a deep dive into this.

Figure out who your BEST customers are.  Notice that I said “Best,” and not “Biggest.”  That’s because the two are not necessarily the same customer.  What attributes do you assign to your best customers?  I’d suggest that measurements like Profit, Growth, and Time/Labor Spent to Service would be big attributes.  A customer that is profitable for you, grows well, and has an acceptable amount of TLS is your ideal client.  Feel free to use your own measurements here, but I’d advise you not to use gross revenue as your measurement – we’ve all seen high volume customers that weren’t profitable, didn’t grow, and required an extraordinary TLS to keep.

Your best customers will have some common elements, whether that be demographics (size/location/industry) or attitudinal and cultural, or some combination of the two.  Start writing them down on paper – you can always revise them.  The key is to make your window fairly narrow – remember, we’re talking about your IDEAL business, not the business you ACCEPT.

Don’t just settle for demographics; remember the WHO.  What I mean by the “WHO” is this:  I might describe my typical client as a business-to-business company from $5 million to $500 million.  That’s a big window.  But then I have to apply the “Who,” as in, “A business to business company, from $5 million to $500 million, WHO has a sales force and intends to use that sales force as a key growth driver.”  The “WHO” defines the attitude and culture.  This works on an individual level, too.

A while back, I challenged a new-car dealer friend of mine to define his Fred.  He said, “Well, Troy, you’re probably my Fred.  You’re mid-40s, you’re successful and have disposable income, and you’re into cars.”  Yep, on the demographics alone, I was his Fred.  But the WHO knocked me out.

I said, “Nonsense.  The newest vehicle I’ve ever owned is a 2004.  Attitudinally, I hate the idea of taking the depreciation of a new car and I don’t like car payments.  My driver right now is a 1996 Impala SS – which I absolutely love.  My wife also doesn’t buy new cars.  Worse, we do most of our own maintenance so you don’t get revenue through the service department, and we have no kids to buy for.”

So I helped him with the WHO:  “Your ideal customer is probably mid-30s to mid-50s, married, likes new cars and trades every 3 years or so, has a family that also drives their own cars, and has no interest in getting dirty working on their own cars, so you get steady income in the service department, right?”  He agreed.  Now he thinks in terms of the WHO.

Individualize your Fred.  OK, so now we’ve got the demographics and the attitude.  We’re still not done, because for all you B2B types, you have defined your Fred in terms of companies.  The problem is that you don’t sell to companies.  You’d look pretty silly making a sales presentation to a brick building.  You sell to PEOPLE.  So, now, who’s your Fred?  Look at your company “Freds.”  Who is your key point of contact within those companies?  Again, I’m betting you’ll find some commonalities.  Remember, your point of entry into a company determines your chances of success at selling to them; where do you need to enter?  Most likely it’s at the top of whatever department buys and uses your products and services.  Don’t just settle for an ideal COMPANY as your Fred, or even a COMPANY with an ATTITUDE (the WHO), define it all the way down to the PERSON or the TITLE.  If you do not define your Fred this far, you will never have success finding more Freds.  PERIOD.

So, now that you’ve defined your Fred, what do you do?  Well, you will…….have to read my article next week, because that’s when I’m going to deal with this.  You have enough work to keep you busy until then, just doing the above exercise.

Of the questions I’m asked in my training programs, one of the easiest to answer is, “Troy, should we have a CRM program?”  My only decision is whether to answer, “Yes,” “Hell, yes,” or “Only if you want to succeed in this century.”  In this day and age, if you don’t have some sort of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, you’re going to lose business, both new and existing, to companies that do.

But the next questions I’m peppered with are, “How should we do it?  What platform should we use?  Etc.”  To be honest, I seldom duck questions, but these questions I find quite duckable.  I beg off, saying that I’m not a tech guy, I’m a sales guy.  That’s true.  But, the sales function is the most important in making a CRM implementation work, so I’m going to break my own rule and give you my recommendations and opinions in this article.

What system should you use?  Whatever is easiest for you to install and implement.  My own preference, going back over 20 years now, is ACT!  I have found it consistently the easiest to buy, install, import data into, and use.  That said, there are other systems.  I have a good relationship with the people at esalestrack.com, and their system appears to be a good one.  If you’re really wanting to get basic, Microsoft offers an add-on to Outlook called “Business Contact Manager,” which can be a very good CRM system if used correctly.  Which brings us to the next point.

What makes CRM successful?  PARTICIPATION and MANAGEMENT.  If you want a CRM system to work successfully, your sales reps have to enter data on every customer contact.  This has to be managed and driven from the top, through sales management.  Further, ideally, everyone who has customer contact should be a participant in the CRM system.  That means customer service, tech support, etc. – anyone who can make an impact on that customer, good or bad, or who can gather data on that customer, should be a participant.

Why would sales reps want CRM?  Isn’t it just Big Brother?  That, dear manager, is where you can make the difference.  CRM can be an invaluable tool for the sales rep IF it is implemented and managed correctly.  CRM is never more valuable than when the sales rep can check his customer’s record right before a sales call and read that service had an interaction with the customer this morning, and what the result was.  CRM can be a launch pad for marketing support activities, as well, that can help the sales rep win more business and build stronger relationships.  If you only use it as an overseer tool, then sure, sales reps are going to rebel.

What technical capabilities should the CRM have?  When I say “techical capabilities,” I’m not talking about features that track data.  I’m talking about the actual interfaces of the program.  To me, there are two keys.  First, your CRM must offer some sort of sync package that allows it to ‘talk to’ your accounting package.  This allows salespeople full visibility to purchases, returns, billing, A/R status, etc.  Second, in this day and age, it must offer smartphone capability, preferably in real time, so that the salesperson can make the aforementioned smartphone check before a call, and enter the data on a smartphone after the call.  Finally, it should also sync with Outlook.  Yes, modern CRM systems have their own email and calendars, but let’s be real – Outlook is the standard that our customers use, and when we send meeting invitations, they’re Outlook invitations.

What should we be tracking?  Again, here’s where management comes into play.  First, understand this – the modern CRM systems are so feature-packed (much of it with features that are meaningless to a quality sales process) that even the best teams will struggle to use up to 40 or 50% of the software’s capabilities.  Don’t worry about maximizing everything on the software or your salespeople will rebel at the burden.  Instead, make sure that you have good field data – meaning the business-card information of each contact within your customer companies, plus meaningful user-defined data.  For instance, if your business works on contracts, you should be tracking contract expiration dates for your prospects and customers.  You should also track competitive data; i.e. who are they buying from and what are they buying?  The list can be long or short, depending on your industry.  Take a package and make it yours with good planning.  Yes, I can help with this.

You should also be tracking each interaction and activity with the customer.  Emails, calls, sales calls, service visits, etc. so that everyone who deals with that customer can have visibility to what everyone else is doing.  Use the Opportunity Management module to manage the proposal process.  Use Sales Statuses to track the movement of customers through the sales/buying process.

Finally, manage the program.  The Sales Manager must be diligent in creating standards for acceptable data, and manage to that.  Run Blank Fields reports to clean up customer data, and use the Opportunity Management tools to help you close sales (won or lost).  Yes, this does add work to everyone in the sales department, but managed well, it doesn’t have to be onerous, and the additional wins you’ll get will be worth it.

Disagree?  I have an open mind.  Email me at troy@troyharrison.com, and tell me your point of view.

A few weeks ago, you read about my flight from hell with American Airlines (and if you didn’t, read it here).  To sum up, American either delayed me by hours or stranded me on every leg of a flight to and from New York, and I didn’t find ONE sympathetic or empathetic face, gesture, or word from any American Airlines employee.  No apologies, no acknowledgement that they had done anything wrong.

Last week, on a flight home from Atlantic City, Southwest (which had gotten me to my gate early on the previous legs of the flight) was delayed by about 30 minutes on the leg of the flight from St. Louis to Kansas City.  That’s not great, of course, but in the grand scheme of things it was minor.  But what struck me was that the Southwest captain and crew apologized not once, but FOUR TIMES during a one-hour flight (in addition to several from the people at the gate) for getting into Kansas City late.  This, plus a later discussion with someone, illuminates my thoughts on personal accountability and within there is a huge lesson for salespeople.

When I told the story of the American flight to a friend of mine, he asked, “Do you suppose they’ve been trained NOT to show empathy or say that they’re sorry?  I once worked for a company that forbade saying ‘I’m sorry’ to a customer.”  My first instinct was to say that, no, the people I encountered were obviously unhappy people who had probably banished the phrase, “I’m sorry” from their vocabulary a long time ago, but I have heard of training of this sort.

But why would any company train its employees not to say that very important phrase?  Simple.  They’re avoiding accountability.  Some companies approach customer interactions like they are testifying in Federal court, where the object is to admit nothing.  That’s probably a decent strategy for keeping your butt covered, but what effect does it have on the customer?

The answer to that is in the end of my article on the American flight.  Trust is broken and I spent money to buy a ticket on another airline even though my fare on American had already been paid.

You see, here’s what those types of trainers – and the American Airlines employees I encountered – don’t realize.  When you are standing in front of the customer, you don’t represent the company.  You are the company.  An upset customer at a desk at an airport doesn’t have immediate access to the CEO, the President, or even the corporate headquarters building.  Usually, teeth must be pulled to gain access to a supervisor of some sort.  Therefore, the customer doesn’t care about the pilot that showed up late, the mechanic that was too slow on his maintenance, etc.  They care that the company has inconvenienced them or not lived up to its promises, and YOU are the company.

Does this scenario sound familiar?  When we have a problem with a customer, it’s all too easy to blame “the supplier,” or “the production department,” “shipping,” “HR,” or whoever else.  That’s a great way to lose a customer.  Instead, get in front of the problem, take the bullet, and then work back-channel – out of the customer’s sight and hearing – with other departments to resolve the problem.

Good customer conflict resolution isn’t that tough.  It simply requires a few very human steps.

1. Own the problem. We’ve already talked about this.  Don’t blame other departments and don’t transfer the person to someone else.  YOU be the person that makes the problem go away.
2. Yes, that means saying that you’re sorry that this happened to the customer.  And don’t weasel out with one of those crappy non-apology apologies, such as “I’m sorry that you’re upset by that.”  What you’re really saying there is, “This happens a lot and our smart customers just deal with it.”  No, give a real apology and mean it.  Remember, YOU are the company.  Does the company regret the problem?  They’d better.
3. Let them vent. If the customer needs to vent, let them do so and don’t interrupt unless they become abusive.  To me, ‘abusive’ means personal name-calling and so forth.  You don’t have to put up with that.  But let them vent and gain understanding of where they’re coming from.
4. Engage them in the solution. If there are multiple possible solutions, engage the customer in deciding which one would best solve or address their concerns.  Making the customer a partner in the solution gives the customer back what they value the most and they feel they’ve lost – control.
5. Offer a make good if possible. Sometimes, there is a small gesture or act that you can give your customer to attempt to make the problem right.  Maybe a shipping discount, maybe a token of appreciation, etc.  Just make sure that the make-good is in proportion to the inconvenience.
6. Follow up on satisfaction. Finally, make sure that you got the problem fixed on the second try.

As I said, good customer service isn’t tough, but it can sometimes be very rare.  Do it right and you can keep customers while putting the problems behind them.

A few weeks ago, I was engaged in a debate with someone in one of my training classes. The salesman that engaged me was a good guy, well intentioned, but like a lot of salespeople, he’d been trained into some bad techniques. He asked me about a particular technique for voice mail that relies on deception (getting the contact to believe you are a customer, rather than a salesperson) to get the contact to call you back.

“It works,” he said. “I get a lot of calls back.” When I asked him how many of those call backs result in sales, the answer got a lot more vague – but I can’t blame him. It occurred to me that one of our problems, in building sales methodology, is that we (salespeople and trainers) many times define “success” incorrectly. We only look at the immediate step rather than the overall result. So how should we define success?

The ultimate success in selling is when you sell a customer, they’re enthusiastic about buying from you again, and they will evangelize for you by giving testimonials and referrals. That’s the ultimate success in selling. Too often, we settle for much less, and the reason is the way we sell to our customers. Let’s look at a sales process and see where we can go wrong – at EACH STEP – to prevent ourselves from doing that.

Initial contact: Typically this is a prospecting call but it can be a call from the customer to you. Our objective is to turn this initial contact into an opportunity to discover the customer’s needs and present solutions. Definition of success: The customer is interested enough to enter into a sales process with us. Failure point: Either we don’t give the customer a reason to be interested, or worse, we do or say something that creates a NEGATIVE impression so that the customer becomes biased against us. Deceptive tactics fall under this umbrella.

Discovery: Our purpose here is to work, in tandem with the customer, to discover their needs, define the successful result of a purchase, and create interest in a Presentation. Definition of success: You discover needs and the customer agrees that you have identified the correct needs, and the customer is enthusiastic about seeing a presentation. Failure Point: You skip or shortcut the needs, you don’t get the customer’s agreement that these are the needs, you move to Presentation before the customer is ready.

Presentation: Our purpose here is to show the customer how we can satisfy the needs and met the customer’s criteria for a successful result. Definition of success: The customer’s interest increases, the customer agrees that your solution would achieve their desired result, and the customer requests a proposal. Failure Point: You don’t show the customer how you can achieve their needs, you don’t confirm with the customer that you have achieved the needs, or worst – you do or say something that is perceived as deceptive. Rushing through the Presentation to get to the Proposal will create customer discomfort.

Proposal: We show the price and terms of our solution. Definition of success: The customer understands the price and terms clearly because we present in a simple fashion with no “fine print” involved. Failure Point: You quote a proposal that glosses over important details, leaving the customer to be surprised later by things like incidental and ancillary charges, etc. You use “sales words” that increase customer skepticism about your credibility.

Closing: We want to get the business in a customer-friendly fashion. Definition of success: Your customer agrees, enthusiastically, to buy. Failure Point: You ‘hard close’ the customer until they bleed from the ears. Maybe you even get the order but the experience is so unpleasant that they won’t repeat and won’t evangelize. When I first started in sales, selling cars, we had a sales manager that was nicknamed “The Hammer” because of his hard closing style. Many times he “hammered” a customer into buying a car – and most of the time, they wouldn’t ever return our calls again.

Post Sale: We want a customer that, as I said above, would happily buy from us again, would evangelize and refer us, and in general smiles when they think of us. Definition of success: Your customer recommends you, takes your calls, takes your meetings, and is open to buying more from you. Failure Point: Poor customer service, poor follow up, or any negative experience during the sales process.

Some tactics in selling are best thought of as “buy or die” tactics – in other words, if the customer doesn’t buy, we’re dead to them. In my experience, I’d rather lose the sale today and preserve a potential customer than go all-in on burning a customer with the hope of slapping one deal together. If you stay in your business and your job long enough, you’ll be surprised at how many of those customers come back to you later because you treated them with respect – and many times, the ultimate deal ends up being far more lucrative.

On the other hand, you can use tactics that deceive, manipulate, and use words to try to box your customer in to try to get them to buy once. And when you do, they’ll remember you, but not in a good way. The choice is yours.

“Trust.” It’s a short word and perhaps the most important word in selling – but do you really know what it means or how it works? In my experiences, too many salespeople do not. Trust is the hardest won, yet most easily lost, characteristic in a customer interaction – and will cost you more sales than any other.

The dictionary defines “trust” as “firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.” A lot of times I’ll put a “sales definition” on top of the dictionary, but today I won’t. That definition works. I think most of us would agree – and yet, even salespeople who would readily agree that “customers have to trust me” still use sales tactics that destroy customer trust, even from the beginning. I’ve had two very diverse experiences of how customer trust can be forever destroyed in the last couple of weeks, and there are lessons in each.

In a recent training class, a young salesperson asked about the old cold-calling tactic where you call the President of a company, and upon getting his/her voice mail, you just leave a name and number. The way this tactic works is that you’re hoping that the President thinks that you’re a customer rather than a salesperson, and thinking so, calls you back when they wouldn’t readily call a salesperson back.

The problem with this tactic is that, as soon as the President realizes that you’re a salesperson and not a customer, they realize that they have been deceived. Do people place “a firm believe in the reliability or truth of someone” who has initiated their conversation with a deception? I’d venture to say that very few do – and while this tactic might result in more call-backs from phone calls, it results in fewer actual appointments, and a miniscule number of sales.

The sale goes for another old, hackneyed tactic, where the salesperson calls, leaves a name and number, and then starts into a message and pretends to get cut off right before you get to “the good stuff.” Again, the thrust of the message is pretending that you’re not a salesperson. And the result is the same.

But what about instances where you’re already doing business, the company already has your money, and destroys your trust? I had an instance like that a few weeks ago.

I was flying to Islip Airport on Long Island for a training session. My flight on the airline – let’s call them American Airlines, because that’s who it was – was to leave Kansas City for Philadelphia at 11 AM, where I would change planes, and fly into Islip at around 6 PM. My flight from Kansas City was delayed both due to maintenance issues and then to the weather, to the tune of three hours – just long enough so that I could see my connecting flight to Islip take off while I watched longingly.

No problem, I was assured. I would be rebooked on the 9 PM flight. That was fine with me, as I’d still be able to start my training program the next morning. After about an hour, I was notified that my 9 PM to Islip was canceled, but I could be rebooked on the 9 PM to LaGuardia. You guessed it. 30 minutes later this flight was canceled. The reason for the cancellation was given as “weather,” but I was watching other planes take off.

At the customer service counter, there were now about 20 people wondering how we would get to Islip. American “helpfully” offered to rebook us – on 9 PM flights THE NEXT DAY. You see, the earlier flights were all booked up. One man in the crowd made an incredibly logical suggestion. “Why don’t you just delay the 9 PM flight tonight to 7 AM tomorrow? That would get us into Islip by 8, and we could go about our day.” That would have worked for me, since I could have started my training class perhaps a half-hour late. No, they of course couldn’t do that, “Because we wouldn’t have time to sell seats for that flight.” The logic that they were flying people to whom they’d already sold seats cut no ice.

Long story short, I ended up renting a car from Budget and driving three hours to Islip, arriving at midnight. My training program was a great experience for myself and for the company, and I headed to Islip airport on Friday knowing that this flight would be better.

I was incorrect.

When I got to the ticketing desk, the man informed me that the flight was to be delayed about an hour and a half due to a “late arriving crew.” He then said that I’d be stranded overnight in Philadelphia (seems like I’ve heard this before), and offered me my choice of Saturday morning flights home, one at 8:15 and one at 9:15. He assured me that both flights were direct, take off in Philly and land in KC, no problem, so I selected the 8:15 flight.

Arriving in Philadelphia and picking up my hotel voucher I was informed differently – that the 8:15 flight first flew to Charlotte, where I’d sit in the airplane for an hour and a half, and then fly to Kansas City. Keep in mind that American had screwed up every leg of my trip so far. The next morning I went to the gate, explained that their person in Islip had made a mistake, and that I would like to switch to the 9:15 flight. I had already checked and there were seats.

The person at the counter informed me that this wasn’t possible – I could fly standby on the 9:15 but she couldn’t guarantee me a seat on it. Keep in mind, the only reason I was on the 8:15 was a mistake by THEIR employee. It didn’t matter. She rudely shoved the boarding pass back at me and said, “Be on the 8:15 or go standby on the 9:15. Those are your choices!”

I reflected on her, and on the fact that every American Airlines employee I had encountered was a stone-faced, sullen, unhappy, unsmiling person who made it very clear with every gesture and word that I was an intrusion and that they didn’t care whether or not I got where I was supposed to go when I was supposed to go there, and I realized something important.

I no longer trust American Airlines to transport me. Anywhere. At any time. I envisioned another bout of incompetence in Charlotte stranding me there (granted, I love Charlotte – but not on this particular weekend), and I made another choice. I walked to the Southwest desk and spent nearly another $500 because I trusted Southwest to get me home. And they did, 15 minutes ahead of schedule. The Southwest ticket desk employee was the first smiling person I’d seen at an airport in my journey.

So, what does all this mean? Am I just complaining about American Airlines? Well….to be honest, yes, a little. But more important than that is this: What broke my trust with American was not the flight logistics issues, even though those were awful. What broke my trust was the utter lack of empathy and caring shown by their employees, every one of whom acted like I was an imposition. Those people didn’t care one bit whether or not I got home. Had even a single AA employee shown real human empathy, I’d have stayed on them, and had I had a successful experience on the 8:15 flight I wouldn’t have written this article and I wouldn’t have sworn off flying that airline (and I will not, again, EVER). I should point out that the last three trips I’ve taken on AA they have stranded me on my way home, so this isn’t new.

Machines, computers, and processes may impact your customer experience. But to truly establish, or destroy, trust requires a human being. Think about that the next time you’re dealing with a customer who has had a bad experience, show empathy (and MEAN it), and you just might preserve a customer relationship.

When you think of a natural expert in social media, what picture do you get in your head? Is it a gray haired CEO, or might it be someone young? Perhaps someone who is, say, 25? A person who has accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tumblr? I bet we’re getting closer. Now, what if that person actually worked for a tech company – maybe a company like Yelp? I’m betting that you would say that this is a person who really knows how to maximize social media. I would, too.

And we’d be wrong. Because the prototype of the person we’re describing is a young woman named Talia Jane, a (former) employee of Yelp. Not too long ago, she posted an open letter to the CEO of her company that went viral. This letter decried her “poor pay” and “starvation living conditions.” She was – appropriately – fired. But not before she was thoroughly debunked using her own social media accounts. You see, what Talia failed to consider – and what too many salespeople fail to consider – is what I call the “open door” effect of social media. Within Talia’s story is a huge lesson for any salesperson who plans to make social media a part of their personal marketing and branding strategy.

As it turned out, many readers of her open letter didn’t simply take her claims of starvation (so bad, she said, that she had to drink a quart of water before bed every night to stave off midnight hunger pain) at face value. They looked at her other social media accounts, and found pictures of her using expensive beauty products, description after description of gourmet cooking of such items as proscuitto-and-brie meatballs (no, I didn’t get the recipe) and a story of her having expensive bourbon delivered right to her desk at work.

What Talia didn’t realize is that social media opens a door into your life. Granted, it typically only opens a door as far as you allow it to (every story above was posted by her, to her own accounts), but on the Internet, everyone can open that door as far as they would like to, and view your life as it really is. When they do, what will they find?

“But wait, Troy,” you say, “I have privacy settings on my accounts. Only my friends can view my pictures.” Yes, that’s a good idea. I have those settings too. But why would you expect that the world stops with your friends? Consider the case of a salesperson that I’ve known for years. I’m one of her Facebook friends.

For years, she had complained about her largest customer. They were a screwed-up company that didn’t communicate well, didn’t deal with vendors fairly, and were such a pain in the rear that she constantly wondered whether or not it was worth doing business with them. She was safe, of course, because none of the decision makers at that company were tied to her Facebook page. She could post whatever she wanted.

Except, that one of her Facebook friends was on a first date, and during the conversation, he mentioned that he worked for this company. The friend, having read for years about how awful the company was, said, “Wow, that must be a horrible place to work.” Asked why, the friend explained that she had been reading about how badly run the company was for years. Then – don’t get ahead of me – she showed her new prospective beau some of the posts. When the new beau got back to work the next day he asked a few questions, and you can guess the rest. Long story short, my friend has one less Facebook friend and one less large customer.

You can be nailed on social media without being the poster, too. During a recruiting search a few years ago, I did a Facebook search on a candidate. His own page was locked down tight – only accessible to his friends. However, his friends had tagged him in a number of pictures and videos that depicted him behaving in manners that were both illegal and showing very bad judgement. Out he went.

So what’s my point? My point is this. If you want to get heavily into social media, you have to carefully manage your own presence. Once you open that door, sometimes you can’t control how far it opens. Social media can be a good tool for building your own brand and your own business, but it has to be used correctly.