In any presentation, it’s vital that you know your audience. To simply present without having some idea of your audience’s needs and concerns can be virtual suicide. I saw two examples of this on a recent trip to Las Vegas.

The first, admittedly, was a non-sales situation. My wife and I decided to take in a comedy show at the Laugh Factory at the Tropicana. I was wearing a rather flamboyant shirt that my wife loved, and had bought for me earlier in the day. Well, the comedian – perhaps not getting the laughs he wanted from his routine – decided to take a couple of shots at me and the shirt…and discovered the value of knowing his audience.

He pointed at me, and said, “Wow, that is an awful shirt! Hey, the ‘70s called…and they don’t even want that shirt back.” (Admittedly, a funny line.) Then he made a fatal mistake. He said, “What, did you lose a bet or something?”

And I said, loudly enough to be heard by everyone, “Yep. The loser had to come see your show.” That got a bigger laugh than anything he’d said. He started to say something else, and I just pointed at him and said, “Think it through. I’m better than you are at this.” He decided to move on. One of my friends who is a stand-up comic told me that the riskiest thing a comic can do is to take on a member of the audience – because you have no idea who that person is and how they can bury you.

The next night, we were at the Italian restaurant at the Tropicana (which I highly recommend if you like Italian) and I overheard a salesperson presenting to a group of four distributors about how his company planned to help them grow their businesses. All was going well until he started telling them about the jan/san (Janitorial/Sanitation) program he had for them. His distributors just UNLOADED on him.

They told him that his products were inferior, and two presented him with printouts of how wildly uncompetitive his prices were. Now, I’m perfectly OK with selling at a higher price – but according to his distributors (who had obviously done their homework), the manufacturer’s product was three times the cost of his competitors. By the time we finished dinner and left, he was still doing damage control – and that was 30 minutes later.

His problem was the same as the comedian’s – except he doesn’t have the excuse that he was going before the audience cold. The salesman simply didn’t understand his audience or their concerns. If he was blindsided by the lack of competitive pricing, shame on him. One of the competitive sources they mentioned was Costco – which does not exactly keep their pricing confidential. Not ony was he blindsided by the issue, he didn’t have a good answer for them as far as why they might consider selling his product anyway.

So, before delivering a sales presentation, what should you know?

1. Your audience’s needs: This isn’t tough. Your customers and prospects will tell you their key needs and objectives, if you ask the right questions. They’ll also be honest, which is something that my salesman desperately needed.
2. “Third Rail” issues: When the salesman at the restaurant began discussing the jan/san products, he touched the proverbial “third rail.” (By the way – the “third rail” refers to the highly electrified power rail in a subway system. Touch it and you become quite crispy.) A “third rail” issue is an issue that is likely to set off a quick and intense negative reaction from your audience. Given the fact that two of the four distributors had done their homework on jan/san and the lack of competitiveness, it’s pretty obvious that this was a “third rail” issue. You need to know what these are – because if you touch it, it negates all the good you do in other parts of your presentation.
3. Your own weaknesses: I sensed that the salesman didn’t really know his competitive situation on the products he was pitching – and if so, shame on him. Even if someone else sets the agenda for your presentation, it’s still your credibility on the line. Know your groundwork.

If you read these columns regularly, you know that I’m not a fan of a canned presentation. Even when you’re presenting to a group, you should be able to interact with the group (or representatives thereof) enough to take the group’s temperature and know what the groundwork is. Take that time, and you won’t be in the situation of either the hapless comic or the unfortunate salesperson.

By the way, my wife laughed all the way back to the room after the comedy show. Four other women came up to us and told us that they loved my shirt. I always defer to her taste!

The phone rang, and the person on the other end had obviously researched me. “Hello, Mr. Harrison,” she said. “I’m the Human Resources director for ABC corporation (name eliminated to protect the innocent), and we’re interested in having you do some sales training for our sales force.” She went on to explain the size of the sales force, the general layout of the company, and how many days’ training she was seeking.

“Great,” I said. “Who is driving the project?” She explained that she was researching trainers, and I said, “No, by that I mean, who is the ultimate decision maker, whose budget this is coming out of?” She said, “That would be our Vice President of Sales, Chris XXXXX (again, not the real name).” “Terrific,” I replied. “When can I talk to Chris?” “You can’t,” she explained. “I just need you to send me a proposal, and I’ll send it on to Chris.” I then said one of the most important words in selling – a word that every salesperson should know and be comfortable with.

“No,” I said.

“Excuse me?” she asked. I clarified my answer.

“No, I won’t send a proposal without speaking to Chris. I won’t, because from past experience I know that if I don’t speak to the person driving the project, I’m only guessing at what to propose – and hence my proposal wouldn’t be for the right program aimed at the right needs. Which means that I won’t get the business anyway.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said. “We would have liked to have you involved in this project.”

“If I can speak to Chris, I’m happy to change my stance,” I said. She replied, “That won’t be possible.” We wished each other well, and that was that. Except that it wasn’t that. Three days later, my phone rang again.

“Troy, this is Chris XXXXX,” the caller said. “I understand that you refused to offer sales training to my company?” I explained that, in my experience, unless I had the opportunity to have a meaningful conversation with the decision maker, I didn’t get the business anyway, and I simply don’t have the time these days to issue non-viable proposals. “Well, we’re talking now,” he said, and we ended up having a conversation about his needs. Three days later, I received a FedEx package with a signed contract and a check.

What made the deal happen? Well, it seems counterintuitive, but refusing to propose was the difference. Had I simply spent time creating a proposal and sent it (as four other sales trainers did), I’d have been at the buyer’s mercy, and I wouldn’t have gotten the engagement.

Customers give us orders and strong requests all the time, and sometimes it’s not in our best interests to follow them. Yet salespeople are petrified by the idea of saying “no” to a customer, even when they know they should. It’s okay to say “no,” particularly when doing so means that you are guarding the value of your own time and resources. Here are some examples of times when saying “no” is the best option:

1. When you get a blind Request For Proposal: We get RFP’s all the time. Too often, we simply follow directions, fill in numbers, send them back, and hope. That’s a monstrous waste of time. Here’s a good rule of thumb: For every RFP you receive, someone is driving it and has written it. A salesperson has been able to talk to that person. If that salesperson isn’t you, you’re probably not going to get the business. When you get an RFP, you should endeavor to meet with the decision maker, and if you can’t, you should ask yourself why you’re taking the time to respond. “But Troy,” you’re saying, “If I don’t respond they’ll take me off the bid list.” So what? Every time you get the RFP and don’t get to talk to the decision maker, your results will be the same.
2. When your customer makes an unreasonable request: The old saying is, “The customer is always right.” Nonsense. Customers are wrong every day. Not to mention unfair, unreasonable, and downright unpleasant. Note that I don’t mean ALL customers – most are terrific. But sometimes even the best, most well-meaning customers can be unreasonable without knowing it. Your instinct, as a customer-friendly salesperson, is to accede to any and all requests – but sometimes that’s the worst thing you can do. When you accept an unreasonable request from a customer, you train the customer to be unreasonable. Sometimes, to protect yourself, you have to say “no.”
3. When your customer asks for something that’s not in their best interests: As a consultative salesperson, your job is to help your customers make buying decisions that are in their own best interests. Sometimes, your customer will ask for things that are not in their best interests, and when they do, you have to be brave enough to say “no,” and explain why.

These, of course, are only a few of the times that “no” can be your best friend – but it takes courage to say “no” to a customer. I do it, and every time I do, I’m aware that I’m jeopardizing a relationship. But, to be effective, sometimes that’s what I have to do. It works the same for you. Don’t be afraid to say “no;” sometimes it can result in your best relationships.

The conversation I detailed at the beginning of this article was over two years ago. That client has engaged me on numerous occasions since then, and continues to do so. Had I just said, “Yes,” it wouldn’t have happened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the whole, organizations that center their culture around the process of profitable growth tend to achieve that growth, year after year. It’s not easy, but the results are worth it.

I love stand-up comedy. When I travel, one of the entertainment venues I always seek out is a comedy club. Some are good, some are mediocre, and every now and then, one is truly awful – but I almost always seem to have a good time. One of my favorite comedians (well, me and millions of others) is Jerry Seinfeld. He has a routine that tells us a lot about selling services.

In the routine, he talks about dry cleaners. He doesn’t trust them, he says, “Because I don’t think they’re really doing it. What is dry cleaning? They take my clothes back into a room that I can’t see, and then charge them to give them back to me.” He then brushes some lint off his jacket and says, “Here. That’s dry cleaning.” It’s hilarious (much more in the viewing than in my retelling), but there’s a lesson here if you sell services. In fact, if you sell a pure service – perhaps one that is invisible most of the time – you can probably relate to what Jerry’s saying. Worse, your customers can relate.

When you sell products, it’s easy to remind your customers of the relationship, your value, and your quality. They see the tangible result all the time. Service sales are much tougher. To keep a service relationship alive, salespeople (and customer service people) must be much more proactive. Here are five keys to preserving the service relationship:

1. Always be diligent. One downfall of the ‘invisible service relationship’ is that sometimes, the people delivering that service can get a little lax. If your service is that way – for instance, your service is some sort of a recurring activity that doesn’t require the service people to check in with the customer on a regular basis – you MUST constantly check and verify that the service is being done. The worst thing is to get “caught” by the customer. Many times, if this happens, you simply won’t be able to recover.
2. Remind them. When your service isn’t the reminder of the great value to bring to them, YOU must be the reminder. Schedule ongoing business reviews. If you know the results of your work (ROI, cost savings, time savings, etc.), bring those numbers and show them. If you don’t know (and sometimes you might not), bring the data on the service activities you’ve performed, and don’t be afraid to ASK for the results.
3. Don’t be the Invisible Salesman. Just as with service personnel, it’s very tempting in these situations to sit back and wait for the call from the customer on the ‘no news is good news’ paradigm. Don’t. One of the great weaknesses of the insurance industry is the salesperson who only calls the customer at renewal time. Many times, that salesperson calls at renewal time only to discover that another salesperson has come in and picked his/her pocket by forming a relationship while salesperson #1 was sitting back and doing nothing.
4. Ask the tough questions. The toughest question for any salesperson to ask is, “Have I/we delivered on the promises we made?” The most fearless salesperson will choke a bit trying to get this question out – but get it out you must. Believe it or not, every sales question you ask will boil down to this one. And if you don’t ask it yourself, your customer will ask it of themselves – and answer it themselves, without your involvement. Do you want to be part of that discussion?
5. Keep renewing contacts. One potential pitfall in service relationships – particularly those that are contract-based – is that the salesperson can be lulled into falling out of touch between contract periods. Don’t do this. The problem is that, no matter how good your relationship is with the contact that signed your agreement, people move, they change jobs, they get promoted, they get fired. Then when it comes time to renew, you walk in fat, dumb, and happy, only to find out that nobody knows you and you’re basically on a cold call, having lost the advantage of incumbency. Don’t do that. Constantly work to get multiple contacts (remember High, Wide, and Deep), and keep relationships alive.

The reason that many customers are suspicious of service delivery are that, often times, services aren’t delivered as promised. If that’s your company, there’s very little you can do from a sales perspective to regain lost trust. The best thing you can do is actively monitor and check to make sure services are delivered, and to stay in contact with your customer. Do these things, and your customers won’t compare you to Seinfeld’s dry cleaner!

One of the questions I’m constantly asked is, “Troy, what do you think about having a selling Sales Manager?” By that, they mean a Sales Manager who also carries his/her own sales territory and is measured against a quota, not only for team production, but individual production. My answer is simple – I almost always dislike it.

Or, more to the point, I only like it when it’s a bridge to something else. For instance, I’ve always maintained that a dedicated Sales Manager needs somewhere between 4 and 12 direct reports. Less than four, you can’t support a Sales Manager. More than 12, your Sales Manager gets stretched too thin. But what of those situations where the object is to grow the sales force, but you’re not at the level of needing a dedicated Sales Manager yet? Well, that’s where the selling Sales Manager comes into play – but if you’re going to do it, you need to know the pitfalls and the must-dos. Hence, today’s article.

Having a selling Sales Manager (we’ll call it the SSM) has numerous pitfalls, and you need to be aware of these – whether you’re the owner employing the SSM, you’re the SSM, or you’re the salesperson working for the SSM. Here they are:

• Competing Priorities: Every management position has competing priorities; however, for a SSM, the conflict is built-in. The SSM has to budget time between hiring, training, and developing his/her staff (the Sales Manager side), and protect a certain amount of time for selling (the salesperson side). This is a difficult balancing act, and all but the most disciplined people will struggle with it.
• Personal Production: Production is, of course, important for all salespeople, but for the SSM, personal production can dictate the overall performance of the sales force. Think about it for a minute. If you’re a SSM, and you’re struggling in sales, how can you then coach and counsel performance issues? It’s hard to maintain the moral authority to keep your salespeople accountable for results if you’re not generating results. Hence, the SSM must produce, and ideally should produce at a star level (taking into account the reduced selling hours).
• Stockholm Syndrome: A struggle that many SSM’s have is that they end up thinking more like salespeople than managers. Let’s be clear – a Sales Manager must be an agent of the company, thinking in terms of the good of the company overall. Sales reps are more free to think in terms of their own territories – they are solo performers. “Stockholm Syndrome” comes in when the SSM stops thinking like an agent of the company, and starts thinking like a salesperson. There are times when the Sales Manager must do things that the salespeople may not like, but are in the interests of the company. This is tough for many SSM’s.
• The Compensation Conundrum: How do you pay and incent an SSM? One of the most common mistakes is to create a compensation plan that rewards personal production far more than team production. Let’s be clear on this – for the SSM, time and effort directed toward building and developing their sales force must be at least as valuable to the SSM, from a compensation perspective, as time spent selling – or the SSM would be a fool not to direct most of his/her time toward selling.

So, how do we make the SSM a successful position? Well, here are a few guidelines:

1. Hire the right person. I know, this sounds obvious – but it’s not. The right person for the SSM spot might be different from the right person for either a Sales Manager slot or a Salesperson slot. They need excellent management abilities, precise personal discipline, and exceptional sales abilities (more than you’d normally demand from a Sales Manager). It’s a needle-in-a-haystack proposition.
2. Have a very clear description and expectations. Clarity is even more important here than for a normal Sales Manager. The job description and expectations should clearly delineate how much time and effort should be directed toward selling vs. managing.
3. Design the right compensation plan. As I mentioned earlier, the time spent (and results generated) through coaching and developing the team should be at least as valuable as time spent selling. You may need to play with sales commission and override plans, or put a team-centered bonus in place, to make this happen – but if you don’t, you’re on the path to failure.
4. Manage closely. The SSM will need to be managed fairly closely by the immediate supervisor, whoever that is; managing tightly means that you will be constantly looking for that balance between selling and managing to become unbalanced.

Most business owners who hire an SSM find that their happiest day comes when they turn the SSM into a dedicated Sales Manager. Use the right processes and techniques, and you can achieve that day.

“Be Prepared.” That’s the Boy Scout motto, and I’ve spoken about it before. So many sales are lost not because the customer doesn’t want to buy, but because the salesperson isn’t prepared to sell. Every salesperson THINKS that they’re prepared to sell – but few actually walk through the steps and define what it takes to make a sale happen.

What is your sales process? By “sales process,” I mean, “what are the steps involved in making a sale? Walk it through, start to finish, with the objective of understanding the “catch points,” and seeing what you can do to eliminate them. You also need to understand the customer’s interest curve, which we’ll address first.

Think of the customer’s interest as a bell curve. On the left (the beginning) of the curve, your customer’s interest is typically low. Then, as you move forward discovering needs and showing how your product or service can address those needs and generate a positive result, your customer’s interest increases until it hits the peak of the bell curve. That moment in time when the customer’s interest is highest is, as we know, the best moment to complete a sale. But how do we know? Actually, it’s easy – the customer usually asks a question.

“So, how much does that cost?”

When your customer asks for a price, they are usually at the peak of their interest curve. Every word you use, every day that goes by, before you ask that question only moves the customer back DOWN the bell curve. This is one of the places that good sales go to die. It’s not the only one, though. There are other places and other ways that we hurt our sales potential through not being prepared to make a sale happen. Here are five moments where salespeople get in our own way:

Not having good questions: Sales is, as we’ve said many times, an activity of questioning and intellectual curiosity. You need to want to know about your customer’s needs, defined result, and defined ‘win’ from the sales call. It’s not enough to have a list of questions in front of you – you have to be prepared to create good questions on the fly.

Being your own worst objector: Salespeople are guilty of this one all the time. You’ve probably done it, too – gone into a sales call thinking, “No way they’ll buy today,” or something like it. This becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t think your customer will buy, they won’t. This manifests itself in a number of different ways, including being your own worst price objector, thinking negatively about your ability to carry out the sale, etc. This results in the salesperson artificially slow-playing the sale while your competitor walks right past you.

Not taking sales tools into the call: There’s really no excuse for this one. All the time, I see salespeople who are scared to death to take sales tools ino a sales call – including necessary sell sheets, brochures, even contracts and order forms. The explanation I hear most commonly is, “I didn’t want to intimidate the customer.” Really? Your customer knows why you’re there – even if YOU don’t. Don’t be that guy or gal. When you go into a sales call, be prepared to make that sale happen.

Being unprepared to price: Look, I know that not every one of you can be fully prepared to price every piece of business. Some needs are complicated. Some are complex projects. Some require quotes from manufacturers. And, if your situation is truly one of those situations, you are excused from this comment. That said, too many of you are not excused – you have the tools, price sheets, etc. available to you to quote price, and yet when the customer asks “how much” you immediately retreat to the Batcave to develop the magic proposal. Why? If you have the tools, quote the price – because if you don’t quote price, you can’t close! Which leads us to…

Being unwilling to seek commitment: Notice that I didn’t say “being unwilling to close the sale.” Not every appointment can end with a closed sale – but EVERY appointment should end with a commitment for a next step. If you can close (i.e. you have identified needs, presented, proposed), then by all means – ask the closing question. If you do really have to continue the sales process to another appointment, then set the next appointment right then and there. If you don’t, you have no one to blame but yourself for the customer losing interest.

Don’t get me wrong. Many, if not most, sales won’t be closed in one call. However, by being prepared, you can shorten the sales cycle without annoying your customer.

What’s your most precious asset as a salesperson? Most people would suggest that their most precious asset is their traits, their skills, their experience, their relationships, their customer base, or something else along those lines. Some might even list their products or their company. And all of those salespeople would be wrong.

Your most precious asset as a salesperson is your TIME. More specifically, your most precious asset is that time window during the week that you are able to call on your customers either face-to-face or voice-to-voice. Hours wasted or simply spent inappropriately aren’t hours that are turning into revenue, profits, or commissions for you or your company. The problem is that salespeople do things every day that waste their time, and today, we’ll discuss the three most common.

1. Working junk business. This is the most common time-waster for salespeople. Last week, I visited a client whose sales calls were inappropriately slanted toward tiny, marginally profitable accounts – while the salespeople were driving by accounts that were bigger and nicely profitable. For any company, there’s a ‘sweet spot’ of accounts that have stability, profitability, and ‘sell-ability.’ If these accounts represent the top of the bell curve, there are accounts smaller than your sweet spot AND bigger than your sweet spot that represent the unprofitable zone.

   In this case, not only were the salespeople calling on tiny business – they were chasing the tiny business, sometimes making five, six, or even seven calls to win business that barely justified one call. Chasing business too far above the sweet spot can be just as bad, however; increased competition and price pressure can make the largest accounts in your territory unprofitable and (if the pay package is constructed correctly) low commissioned for you – and yet the effort you’ll put into trying to sell these accounts is a major time suck.

   Working junk business typically has two causes – fear and emotional involvement. Salespeople sometimes work small business because they have a fear of working larger accounts. That’s bad. Worse can be the emotional involvement that says, “I have to win all the business in my territory because I hate seeing my competitor there.” Get over it. You’ll never get 100% market share, in most cases you really don’t WANT 100% market share, and it’s always OK with me if my competitors are selling the bad business.

2. Artificially Extending the Sales Cycle. Too many salespeople unwittingly extend the sales cycle themselves. They do so through fear, lack of training, and a lack of preparation.

   Fear comes into play because salespeople are scared to close business. Many salespeople believe that if they ask closing questions, or even ask questions that set a closing arena, the customer will be off-put and they will miss opportunities. Don’t be that guy or gal. If you’re unsure of where you stand with the customer, ASK. And never be afraid to ask a closing question. Sometimes the time you waste is your own.

   Lack of Training impacts the sales process because salespeople don’t know or understand how to expedite the process. For instance, every appointment should end with a firm commitment for the next appointment or activity, with times and places. It’s never easier to set the next appointment than when you’re on the current appointment. Use that opportunity wisely. The ‘chase cycle’ happens when you have to call the customer back to set the next action.

   Lack of Preparation is tied with lack of training, but occurs when salespeople simply don’t take the tools of the sale in with them. Salespeople should always be prepared to take the call as far as it can possibly be taken. If you have the tools to quote price on the spot, bring them into the call. Same with order forms, credit applications, and other tools. When you have to go back to the ‘bat cave,’ you become the obstacle. Always let the customer be the one putting the brakes on – not you.

3. Chasing Customers Who Opt Out. Here’s the hardest thing for salespeople to realize: Customers can and will opt out of your sales process. From the time that they do, any time you spend on them is time wasted. Here’s a perfect example. Recently, a prospect didn’t keep a phone appointment with me. By that I mean that we had a prescheduled appointment, it was on both of our calendars with a specific time, I called, and she didn’t answer. Nor did she return a call or an e-mail. This is a rare occurrence; in fact, the last time it happened to me was nearly three years ago. Once upon a time, I would have gotten very upset (I did get a little upset; not keeping an appointment is very disrespectful) and I’d have worn out her phone and email until she spoke to me.

   No more. I called and emailed once, so in case there was a misunderstanding, we could reschedule. With no response, I simply moved on. There are too many prospects out there, and particularly with my limited selling time these days, I don’t have the time to chase. She has opted out of my sales process. Why? Who knows. Maybe it wasn’t a priority. Maybe the funding wasn’t there and she was embarrassed. Regardless, there are too many other prospects out there to wear her out for a response. Too many salespeople treat situations like this like a dog treats a bone. Don’t. There are other prospects out there who will want to talk to you and work with you.

All of these problems are characterized by an emotional response rather than an intellectual one. Back in the days when I did chase and chase and chase customers, I knew – intellectually – that they had opted out. However, my pride wouldn’t let me admit that to myself, so I told myself that the sale was just around the corner.

When you’re up against any of these situations, respond intellectually rather than emotionally, and you’ll be more successful. I promise.

Recently, in some seminars that I’ve given, it’s become obvious to me that too many salespeople struggle with identifying “Buyers” vs. “Influencers.” That’s a huge problem. If you don’t know, or can’t tell, the buyer from the influencers, you’re going to do the wrong kind of selling to the wrong kind of people.

It’s always seemed to me that highly technical salespeople struggle with this the most. Being technically oriented, these salespeople will focus heavily on the intricate and minute aspects of their product – and in many cases, they’ll gain the interest of influencers but lose the sale at the buyer level. It doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s how to tell the difference and how to sell to both.

A Buyer is a person who can green light a purchase without asking anyone else. He or she is the person who either signs the checks, or whose purchase order goes unquestioned by the person who does. If the person you’re dealing with does not have unilateral authority to buy, you’re not dealing with the true Buyer. In any company, this type of authority begins in the corner office (CEO/President/Owner/etc.) and extends outward only as far as the person who is in the corner office wants it to. As a general rule, if you’re not dealing at least at the Vice President level, you’re probably not dealing with a true Buyer. If you are dealing with a Buyer, however, here are five quick guidelines to selling at that level:

1. Focus on the big picture: Buyers tend to be highly focused on the big picture level of their companies’ operations, not on the day to day minutia. Talk about profits, don’t talk about product specs.
2. Question, question, question: Despite what I said above, Buyers will have many motivators that you must discover.
3. Focus on Results: At the upper levels of company structures, Buyers will be focused on the result. Don’t tell them about the labor pains – show them the baby.
4. Be time efficient: You may not get the length of time with a true Buyer that you get with middle managers (influencers) – be prepared to make the most of your time with your most impactful questions and Achievement Statements.
5. Understand the hierarchy: Buyers will let you know who else in the company will touch your product; these will be Influencers. Buyers will also let you know who, of the Influencers, has their ear the most. Pay attention.

Influencers, on the other hand, are often the people who will deal with your product on a day-to-day basis. Influencers will be much more detail-focused and operationally oriented. They’ll be interested in the nuts and bolts. Here are five guidelines on selling to Influencers:

1. Know the details: Influencers typically will be hands-on with your product; they’ll want to know the details and the ins and outs of it.
2. Question about day to day issues: If you want to know how their current product/service works on a day to day basis, Influencers are the people to talk to. The Buyer will be handling the big picture; the Influencers the implementation.
3. Know the relationships: It’s important to understand the Influencer’s relationship to the Buyer; it’s also important to know the Influencer’s relationship with the current vendor.
4. Know how the Influencer is rewarded: The Buyers are most likely rewarded directly from the P&L; know what is meaningful and rewarding to the Influencer – then figure out how to drive those rewards with your product.
5. Ask “Day in the life” questions: Understand how the performance or non-performance affects the ability of the Influencer to do his/her job, and you’ll know how to get the Influencer on your side.

One other guideline is important here: Begin your selling efforts with the Buyer, not the Influencer. The reason is simple – once you have begun selling to the Buyer, he/she will introduce you to the Influencers. However, if you start your selling with the Influencers, there’s a good chance that you’ll never make it to the Buyer.

How to Sell to Purchasing Agents

When I started in sales, I learned that there were such things as Purchasing Agents, and I thought this created a perfect situation for me: I want to sell stuff, and they want to buy it. The trouble is that this isn’t exactly what happens with Purchasing Managers. Most (not all) Purchasing Managers see salespeople alternately as servants or as adversaries (or worse, both at once).

In most cases, whatever is bought by Purchasing Departments is spec’d by other departments within the company who are either using it or reselling it. Therefore, make an appointment with a Purchasing Manager to talk about how much better your product is than their current product, and it will fall on deaf ears. Why? Because the Purchasing Manager doesn’t really know their current product. Those specifications have been set by someone else in the building. If you want to understand what Purchasing Managers are really all about, read on.

What Purchasing Agents really value:

The Status Quo. Here’s the truth: Purchasing Managers are not normally agents of change within their organizations (and, of course, to sell something new, we need agents of change). The status quo is always safer for the Purchasing Manager because he’s not screwing anything up by making a decision to buy a new product.

Price savings. Purchasing agents love it when they have a product spec that sets up competition between multiple vendors. That means that he has leverage to beat the vendors up on price – which is never a winning situation for the salesperson. If you’re looking for a pure “bid” opportunity, this is it. But why look for that opportunity? Typically, PM’s are rewarded not on growth, but on cost savings and efficiencies. Other people in the building are rewarded for growth.

Gatekeeper power. Like it or not, Purchasing Managers function as intermediaries between you and the ultimate buying power. That makes them the gatekeeper, and my experience is that most PM’s employ this power to keep you at bay. For this reason, if you start your selling with the purchasing manager, you typically stay with the purchasing manager forever. You will never, or rarely, see the people who are really making the buying decisions.

Long selling cycles. Heavy reliance on PM’s tends to extend the selling cycle. First of all, because they are tough to see, it takes a long time to get on their calendar. Secondly, because they tend not to trust salespeople, it takes a longer time for them to buy into you and your products. Finally, they then have to advocate internally for the purchase of your stuff, which they tend not to be aggressive about. The selling cycle, if it does not get derailed completely, gets extended significantly.

In the interest of honesty, I must say that the above does not apply to all purchasing managers. There are some – not a lot – of proactive PM’s out there who will see value in your product or service and advocate its use within their client companies. But those PM’s are few and far between. In fact, I was fortunate enough to deal with one such PM early in my career, and much of what I’ve just told you came straight from him. He contributed greatly to my success by telling me that I shouldn’t be starting my sales process with him.

Dealing with Purchasing Managers:

The ideal situation is to be handed down to the purchasing department by someone who has seen you, investigated your stuff, and found it (and you) worthy. In that case, the purchasing department will be responsible for the details. When you are handed down to the Purchasing Department, you have some level of power. The key is to not abuse it.
Be nice, be respectful, and helpful. Don’t treat the PM like a lesser being – they hate that and will do whatever they can to place obstacles in your path. Treat them as if they have decision power, and you will be fine.

The ultimate selling tool: When you are selling to someone who makes decisions based on some sort of growth or comparative advantage, you can effectively sell change.