Releasing negativity is more than attitude; it’s about your worldview.

You know, I’m amazed at how surrounded by negativity we are every day. Here’s but one example: Recently, I picked up a copy of Laura Ingraham’s “Of Thee I Zing,” which is touted as a humorous look at our culture. Now, I’m a Laura fan; in fact, I picked the book up at an author event here in Kansas City. I find her to be sharp and witty; unfortunately, I found the book to be anything but. It started as humorous, but after 200+ pages, what started out feeling funny felt more nasty and snippy – perhaps because of repetition.

Of course, you don’t have to buy books to find negativity. It is all around us, and I usually don’t notice it because I’m a pretty happy-go-lucky guy. Sure, I have my moments, but I decided years ago that as long as I’m looking down at the dirt, instead of up at it, any other issues are solvable. It seems, unfortunately, that too many people wish to wallow in what’s wrong rather than what’s right. Let’s talk about one particular manifestation and how it can affect your relationships and your career.

There’s an old saying in sales that goes something like this: “Buyers are liars.” You’ve probably heard it. Heard it? Heck, there are entire sales training philosophies and careers built on that saying! The idea is that the mere act of dealing with a salesperson is enough to turn an honest person into a lying scoundrel (I don’t think we use the word ‘scoundrel’ enough, and I’m trying to bring it back. Next week – ‘rapscallion’), and that if buyers are liars, we must go into sales calls with our defenses up to protect ourselves from those liars. Plus, if buyers are liars, that justifies whatever we do to them, right?

Wrong. If you’re going into a sales call prepared to deal with a liar, the way you act is going to send a message to the customer – and that message is that YOU can’t be trusted. After all, trust is a two-way street, and if you’re not prepared to give trust, you’d better not be prepared to receive it either. Do some customers lie? Absolutely. So do some doctors, lawyers, clergy, accountants, salespeople, etc. But ultimately those with ethical lapses are by far outnumbered by those who are willing to give the ethics they receive.

Over the years, I have found that customer mistrust – as well as acceptance of other negativity – is part of a larger worldview about one’s life and career. Worldviews are all-encompassing ways of viewing life and your place in the world, and it’s far too large a subject to deal with here. But we can take a small component of one’s worldview (the selling/professional component), and break it down here. Here are some pieces of my professional worldview:

• As long as I’m looking down at the dirt, all other problems are solvable.
• Most customers are prepared to deal with me in an open and honest fashion. And I’m a good enough judge of character to spot those who are not, and either discontinue the relationship or alter my behavior if necessary.
• My professional rewards are in direct proportion to my inputs (the combination of effort, skills, and talents that I apply). And if I feel that the proportion slips, I should look in the mirror first.
• The worst thing that can happen in a sales call isn’t that bad; there’s always another sales call to be made. And if the ultimate worst thing happens – I somehow lose my livelihood and savings, I’m good enough to make it back.
• Every call I make is a potential new opportunity; every call I don’t make is a guaranteed lack of an opportunity.

Ultimately, I believe that we are all in control of our own destinies. Negativity, in all its many forms, is a loser’s lament. “Buyers are liars” is the ultimate excuse; after all, how can someone be expected to be successful in selling if he’s dealing with dishonesty day in and day out?

For those reasons, negativity sells. The only question is – are you buying?

There’s a lot of bad sales advice, and some of the worst surrounds the close!

There’s an awful lot of bad sales advice floating around out there right now. Sometimes I think that our profession is caught right between people advocating old-time sales tactics that just don’t work anymore, and other people trying to be ‘hip’ and ‘techno-savvy’ by focusing on social networking as the all-encompassing solution for everything – but that doesn’t work either.

A prime example of this is a recent column by Hal Becker in the Kansas City Business Journal talking about the popular “when to close” topic. Hal’s answer – fueled by his Xerox sales training and illustrated by a personal anecdote of his experience in 1976 – was that the salesperson should always be closing. This the old A/B/C (Always Be Closing) philosophy has done more to kill sales and irritate customers than anything else salespeople do. There’s a right way, though, and let’s find it, shall we?

It’s appropriate that Hal’s anecdote was from 1976; A/B/C is very much a 1970’s sales approach. For that matter, so is the Xerox approach. The old Xerox approach, heavy with tactics, pressure, and technique, worked back when Xerox dominated its market. Today? Not so much. Today’s customers are more savvy, more educated, have more information available to them, and ultimately have been trained by years of salespeople using heavy sales tactics, and are more capable than ever to resist. This means that today’s customer responds to an approach that is more customer-friendly and respectful.

First, let’s look at what it takes for a customer to buy:

• The customer must be motivated; i.e. the customer has a need that he/she wishes to solve through a purchase.
• The customer must have investigated that need; the customer and the salesperson must both understand the need, and your product must fulfill it (and the customer must agree that your product fulfills it).
• The customer must trust you.
• The customer must believe what you say (i.e. you have credibility in the customer’s eyes).
• The customer must respect you.
• The customer must not dislike you (I know that conventional wisdom says the customer must like you, and certainly that’s a huge help – but I’ve found it’s better to seek respect and trust that is genuine than to seek a like and friendship that is phony).
• You must have presented a proposal that is to the customer’s liking.
• The trouble with the A/B/C approach is that it interferes with several of these things. Closing is the part of the sales process where customers are most likely to put up defenses; if you are always in some phase of a close, your customers will be defending themselves too much to be able to give you the candid answers you need to be able to match your products to their needs. Closing too early will interfere with trust and credibility, as well; the customer will perceive you as reaching for their wallet. (Answer to the old question: Why do customers perceive salespeople as pushy? Because too many are.)

Instead, today’s salesperson must have patience as part of the selling/closing process. To assess motivation, accurately assess needs, present your product, check customer agreement, build trust, etc. takes time. Sometimes it can all be done within a single sales call, but even those sales calls can get long. It’s very important that you are patient enough to allow the customer to move through their buying process properly (see my book, Sell Like You Mean It!, for more on this) and get to the closing arena at the same time you do.

Once you are at this point, the close becomes a natural part of the sales process, and how you ask for the business matters less than the actual asking. What’s better is that, by handling this in a customer-friendly manner, you are more likely to get invited back for repeat sales opportunities! Isn’t that better than a one-shot quick close?

Just because it worked for Xerox in 1976 doesn’t mean it will work for you today. Success in today’s selling arena requires a different approach.

Would you like to know what makes up the worst sales questions?  Read this.

As you know, I do a significant amount of recruiting for sales positions, not only locally in Kansas City, but nationwide. I love it because it keeps me in touch with what’s going on with salespeople; you can’t interview over a hundred sales reps a year and not be in touch! Plus, to be frank, a lot of times it inspires new articles. Today’s article is one such example.

I was interviewing a gentleman for a sales position on the second round. My second round interviews tend to be a behaviorally focused interview. This is where I ask a series of open ended questions asking the candidate to describe situations they have encountered in the past, and how they handled them; the idea is that past performance is a predictor of future performance. In this case, however, the technique itself was a huge window into the candidate’s head. What happened was very interesting, and revealed a lot about fear and its impact on selling.

When I started to ask some pointed questions (the first one was “Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your boss, and how you resolved the issue.” The guy hesitated for at least 20-30 seconds, and then seemed to deflate and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t think of one. I can’t answer that question.” No big deal – in a lot of behavioral interviews, the candidate will not answer one or two questions. Except that in this case, it happened several times. The ultimate result was that the candidate tanked the interview, and not in a small way. I should point out that this was a salesman with a 30-year career to draw upon.

Looking behind the curtain, what happened? Given the long hesitation, I think he was assuming that the questions were pass/fail, and he was valiantly searching for the “right” answer. When he couldn’t come up with one, he was so paralyzed by fear of giving the “wrong” answer that he chose to take the Fifth Amendment. It’s a shame, but it’s indicative of some big fears that can hamper a sales career (and probably suggested a reason that he’s job hunting at this stage in his career).

What the guy was guilty of is what I call “small thinking,” or the desire and tendency to place limits on the sales conversation so that it doesn’t go somewhere that’s “bad” for the salesperson. Essentially, he’s so afraid of the answers he might receive in the sales conversation (or in this case, give within the interview) that he fails to ask questions (or give answers) that are important to the dialogue.

The classic example of this is something that many of us probably heard in early sales training sessions: “Don’t ask a question that you don’t already know the answer to,” or the Lawyer’s rule of sales questioning.    For instance, this philosophy posits that you should never ask what the customer likesabout their current provider because this allows them to ‘reinforce positives’ and remember that they do like their current vendor. This is “small thinking” because you are trying to restrict the ‘ground’ of the sales conversation.

Does anyone see a problem here? Me, too. They’re going to remember what they like, whether you ask it or not. And what is the #1 thing that could cost you the deal? That’s correct – it’s what they like about their current vendor. So in that case, aren’t you better off to know what could cost you the deal rather than not know it? Don’t be a victim of small thinking, and the fear-based behaviors that surround it.

Sometimes, though, small thinking isn’t a product of fear; it’s a product of laziness or not knowing better. I was talking with one of my clients recently who was coaching a route salesperson in attempting to sell a particular product. The salesperson would initiate the conversation by asking, “Do you use X product?” (This is a basic closed-ended question.) The resulting conversation consisted of “yup” or “nope.” After a couple of these calls, my client coached the salesperson to instead ask an open ended question along the lines of, “What has been your experience with X product?” Suddenly, good conversations happened and opportunities opened.

You know, if there’s anything salespeople and sales managers love, it’s a good plan.

 Developing plans, refining plans, targeting accounts, doing research for plans, all of it – you could fill every day with planning if you wanted to. Heck, some salespeople will make plans to make a plan! There’s only one minor trouble with this – none of it involves activity. In my language, sales activity is that work that we do that involves direct contact with customers or prospects.

Over the years, I have had a lot of salespeople work hard to convince me that all this planning has value; in fact, a lot of salespeople will try hard to sell me on the idea that the planning is actually better than the activity being planned. Which leads me to the question – when is no sales activity better than sales activity?

To answer that, we’ve got to break down the activity and sales process, and figure out how we make money. As I’ve written many times before, the basic equation of sales achievement is: Quality of activity xQuantity of activity = results. In other words, the more of it you do, and the better you are at it, the more successful you will be.

The value of any non-selling activity, then, such as planning, meetings, or training, is measured in the degree to which it can increase the quality of activity. This, of course, assumes that you would fill the time used for planning or training with direct sales activity, were you not in the planning or training – right?

Of course, sometimes planning is another word for “procrastination.” If you need a great plan to sell, and it takes time to develop a plan, then it’s unreasonable to expect you to engage in direct selling before the plan is done – right? Hardly.

Another way salespeople put off selling activity is through “research.” Some trainers and books have preached that you must micro-research new prospects before making a call on them. The idea is that you will discover information in your research that will greatly increase the likelihood of winning an appointment. In the real world, however, it hardly ever works that way, and the reason is the contact ratio;or the ratio of calls to conversations. That isn’t helped by pre-call research, and you’d almost have to win on 100% of your conversations to make the time spent in research worth it.

The same typically goes for planning. In my experience, you can develop 80% of a good sales plan very quickly; the devil is in the details, and the last 20% is the most time consuming – and the least profitable because it delays the activity. In the time it would take to develop the last 20%, you could be performing activity that would test your plan, and help you understand whether it works or not.

Training can be beneficial if you apply yourself and learn skills that increase the quality of your sales activity; assuming that the quantity of activity is good, an incremental raise in the quality of activity will continue to pay benefits long after the training is over.

So, back to the question, “When is no activity better than activity?” The answer is, “Not very often, and always tied to an increase in quality of activity.” Whenever you (or your boss) wants to spend time on non-selling work, always ask yourself, “Will this help me perform better day in and day out?”

Professional salespeople control their own destiny, no matter what.  Here’s one good way.

It’s another lovely Kansas City day, and I just finished interviewing a candidate for a sales job. His candidacy was really over within the first couple of minutes after he described his separation from a previous job. He explained, “Well, the sales kept falling, so they had to cut me.” I asked, “You’re a salesman – isn’t it your job to KEEP the sales from falling?” He said, “Well, uh, yeah, but, the economy….stimulus went away….bids…” Finally he admitted that he had not altered his activity in response to a changing marketplace; he just kept responding to bids without noticing that there were fewer of them and he was getting a lower percentage.

Oh, for Pete’s sake. I’m getting very tired of listening to salespeople who can find everyone and everything to blame for their lack of achievement except themselves. Here’s reality, and I’ve said this before: Quantity of Activity multiplied by Quality of Activity = Results. Do external economic conditions affect this ratio? Sure. If you must, include a multiplier in there for current economic conditions. All that means is that, to succeed, you must alter either the quantity or quality of your activity to generate the same, or better, results. Let’s talk about the basic ways that salespeople can succeed.

All sales activities eventually fall into one of three buckets – Acquisition (the selling of new customers),Development (the selling of additional products or services to existing customers), or Retention (hanging on to what you have). Whatever the scope of your company, region, or territory, these are the three things you have available to you to grow the business. How do you determine what to do and how to direct your efforts?

For me, I always start by trying to figure out which accounts are basically retention accounts. A retention account is an account that currently spends money, but that is unlikely to spend more, even with significantly more sales input; i.e. they are at or close to capacity with us. We like these accounts, and we want to hang onto them, but it’s a waste of time to come up with new and different selling initiatives. For whatever reason, they just don’t have the capacity to buy significantly more.

That will narrow your targeted customer list. Now, let’s look for good development accounts. A development account is one that does have the capacity to buy more – maybe a lot more – from you, if you apply the appropriate selling effort. What does it take to develop the account? There are a few things you should answer about these accounts:

First, what other items or categories do they have the capacity to buy, that you aren’t selling them? I find it helpful to try to attach a forecast here.

Second, what new contacts do you need to make in order to make a selling effort on these additional products? I find that normally, the reason that salespeople don’t sell more stuff to their customers is that they lack the necessary contacts and relationships to do so. Time to develop them.

Finally, what is the profitability of the effort? Will the time invested be worth it when the result is generated? If not, the account may be better thought of as a retention account.

Now it’s time to look at your Acquisition efforts. For some of you – especially if you don’t have a lot of good Development prospects – this may be your major thrust. Target some new accounts, pick up the phone, and start making the calls. Ultimately, I always say that the Acquisition step is the step where salespeople really take their destiny in their own hands.

You may find it necessary to also increase the Quality of your sales activity.  This is where sales training, or books, or other reading material can come in handy. Part of being a pro is knowing when you need help; this is also taking your destiny in your own hands.

There are a lot of salespeople out there who never do, in fact, take their destiny in their own hands. I interview them frequently as part of my sales recruiting practice because they are seeking the next company to carry them for awhile. Real salespeople control their own destiny. So if you’re wondering what to do next in this economy, pick up the phone, make some contacts, and sell something. At the end of the day, the willingness to do this is what it really takes to succeed in selling.

One of the best success techniques is to understand how to overcome obstacles.

First of all, if you’re bored talking about overcoming obstacles, I sincerely apologize. But it seems to me that too many salespeople can’t figure out what to do when an obstacle – or an inconvenience – confronts them. Let me give you an example. You all know that when I started selling, I started out in the car business. It can be a cutthroat business to begin with, and it was worse because of a guy named Dan. Dan was another salesman on the floor. At the time, we didn’t rotate “ups” or incoming customers; the rule was that the first person out the door got them. That was encouraged in the car sales training we were going by at the time.

Well, Dan was a big guy, former football player, and I’m pretty sure a bully all of his life. And he was easily the biggest guy on the floor, and he would literally shove or shoulder-block other salespeople out of his way to get to the customers. For his part, the sales manager rooted Dan on for his ‘aggressiveness.’ How to deal with this? Well, I don’t know exactly how it happened and I certainly won’t claim responsibility, but Dan missed an entire Saturday (the best day in the car business) by being in the bathroom all day. Tummy trouble, so to speak; he must have drunk some tainted coffee or something. After that, Dan was considerably more respectful of other salespeople. That’s called “adapting, improvising, and overcoming,” a motto of the US Marine Corps, and it works well for salespeople, too. But what does it mean?

In a nutshell, it means “finding a way to make the right things happen, even when the right circumstances don’t exist,” and I think that’s where a lot of salespeople get lost nowadays. If you’re looking for the “right circumstances,” right now is a tough time to find them. That’s when you’ve got to do some things differently, and that’s when it’s time to take a look at those three very powerful words.

Adapt: The dictionary definition of “adapt” is “to become adjusted to new conditions.” Our profession – selling – is one that is in near constant change, and to fail to adapt is to fail, period. The biggest way to understand adaptation is to listen to what the marketplace is telling you. You might want to build a sales strategy around “whale hunting,” or pursuing a handful of new customers that could do huge business with you. But what happens when the whales don’t bite – or worse, don’t see you? (Yes, I know, we don’t make appointments with real whales – work with me here.) You’ve got two choices – adapt or die.

Me, I prefer adaptation. If one segment of your marketplace isn’t buying, rather than crying in your beer, how about pursuing another segment? If big business isn’t buying, try small business. If vertical A isn’t energized, try vertical B. To do this is to cease to blame others or circumstances, and to take ownership of your own success.

Improvise: Sometimes, a solution isn’t readily at hand. That’s when “Improvisation” comes into play. “Improvisation” means to make up a solution as you go, with the tools at hand. Think MacGyver as a salesperson for a moment. Or think of my example before with Dan. Now, I didn’t have many tools at hand to deal with Dan; my sales manager sanctioned his actions, and although I did try, I couldn’t beat him in a shoulder-block contest. So, again somehow, he came up with some tummy trouble and we all had a great day. Further, Dan got the message. I solved a problem with the tools at hand. Forget not having the right brochure, or the perfect video, or the best case studies; what can you do to communicate what you need to communicate?

Overcome: To “overcome” is to “succeed in dealing with” or to “prevail.” Overcoming obstacles in your way is really predetermined; it’s about your level of commitment to achieving your objectives no matter what – as long as you don’t do anything illegal, unethical, or immoral.

Right now, there are a lot of salespeople who don’t adapt, improvise, or overcome. I talk to them every day in my recruiting practice. Don’t be one of them. When you hit an obstacle, think of the Marines. Or, heck, think of Dan. Then find a way. That’s what professional salespeople do.

Did you know that salespeople are the primary agents of change in business?

As salespeople, we are many things. We are generators of growth, we are rainmakers, we should be profit centers, we are relationship builders, we are the company’s most valuable human asset. But – did you ever think of us as agents of change? Most of the time, that label goes on CEO’s and other high managers, but it fits us, too. I’ll give you some perfect examples.

Recently, I was in a sales meeting with a group of salespeople who had been tasked with a heavier prospecting duty than in the past. These salespeople digested their new duties, and then started worrying about the “hill beyond the hill,” i.e. what would happen AFTER they were successful in generating new prospects? This is a common stumbling block for too many businesses, and ultimately it is always handled the same way.

You see, the salespeople were already worried about who was going to handle the admin work for their current customers, who would help them generate all the new proposals, what new marketing resources could be brought to bear, etc. Part of this was probably trying to find reasons NOT to prospect, but part of it was the common stumbling block. I told them what I always tell sales forces during my sales training programs who get bogged down in this kind of concern: “Look, there’s only one way that these resources will become available to you, and that’s to give this company the actual problem – rather than the hypothetical problem – that you’re discussing. Go sell something! The ownership will make the resources available to you.”

The salespeople, of course, protested that good management would worry about the things ahead and clear the decks in advance of actual sales achievement. We could debate that, I suppose, but it wasn’t helpful. See, here’s something I have discovered: To business owners and managers, sales achievement only becomes real AFTER it happens, or at the soonest, WHEN it is happening. There’s a good reason for this. Salespeople tend to be the eternal optimists, and if management spent money on resources every time a salesperson told them he was GOING to sell something, there would be a lot of broke companies in the world. If you want management to solve problems that are barriers to increased selling, nothing works like increasing sales.

My first real experience with this as a manager was in the late 90s when I was a first-time sales manager for a uniform rental company. I took the first 3-4 months to get the right people in place and doing the right things, and I could see where sales were going to go. The trouble was that our service/delivery department was horrendous. I liked the service manager and had a good relationship and dialogue with him – I thought so, anyway – and so I took him out to lunch one day and said, “Al, the sales are starting to come together, and when they do, your department is going to be the biggest problem at this company. Frankly, you’re on the verge of holding me back already. I need some change.”

Al agreed, in principle, that there were a number of moves he could make, people he should replace, and so forth. So I offered to help him. I offered my time and even some of my budget to help fix his problems, and he politely refused. He said, “Look, Troy, lots of sales managers have promised sales and not delivered. I’m going to stand pat for now.”

I responded that, although I liked him, in the end I would do whatever was needed to make sure that my department – and our new customers – got the service that they needed. While my hope was that he would be part of that, the right stuff was going to happen regardless. One year later, I was a witness (for HR purposes) to his termination. You see, for Al, sales growth wasn’t real yet – even though he could see the green shoots.

We were able to effect a lot of positive change in that company, both at our branch and nationwide – but it only happened AFTER we were selling our guts out. So if you’re thinking that your company has issues or problems, the best way to fix those is to sell MORE, not less, and let the chips fall where they may. Nothing produces positive change like more sales – and that is something that is completely within our control.

Sometimes, winning business comes down to breaking the habits of your prospects.

It’s amazing to me how strongly habits can be formed in people. Take last Tuesday morning for an example. I’m a member of a breakfast networking club here in Kansas City, and when I’m in town I attend as much as possible. On this particular Tuesday, our club was meeting at a different location than usual. Now, I knew this. I’d been reminded of it multiple times. Still, on Tuesday morning, as is my habit, I drove right to our normal location – and remembered as I pulled into the parking lot that the location had changed. Well, to make a long story short, some rather remarkable driving got me to the changed location. But it started me thinking about how difficult it can be to break some habits.

Let’s be clear, though. The habits I’m talking about aren’t YOUR habits – we talk about those a lot. This time I’m talking about your CUSTOMER’s habits. Specifically, I’m talking about your customers’ nagging and annoying habit of not buying from you. Now, are you interested? See, what salespeople fail to realize is that often, getting prospects or customers to move their business to you has less to do with relationships than with habits.

“Take-away” selling can be the most difficult selling of all; that is, selling to break a current customer relationship. Often, we make it more difficult by misunderstanding the nature of that relationship. Essentially, there are three different kinds of buying relationships:

1. Occasional buyer: The buyer shops every purchase and buys when it most suits him/her.
   

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2. Habitual buyer: The buyer doesn’t shop and uses you (or your competitor) as the “default source” of product, but has no real affinity or loyalty. They buy from you because you’re who they buy from. Of course, in many cases, one mistake costs you the business.
   

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3. Loyal customer: The customer has a real affinity for you (or your competitor). The customer identifies with you, wants you to prosper, and is willing to evangelize for you. This is the type of relationship we all seek because these relationships will withstand the occasional hiccup – and hiccups are pretty much inevitable.Here’s the key: When salespeople assess customer relationships – both their own and those of their competitors – they tend to overestimate their quality and depth. Between #2 and #3, far more relationships fall into the #2 category, but salespeople tend to estimate that far more of them fall into the third category. This is a big mistake, because this causes us to both take our own relationships for granted, but to take the wrong selling approach against those of our competitors’.

   Since most of those relationships simply boil down to habit; i.e. “We buy from ABC Company because that’s who we buy from,” selling against those relationships boils down to breaking habits, not trying to displace loyal and carefully tied customer relationships. Now that doesn’t sound so difficult, does it? Of course, breaking those relationships requires a few techniques that I teach in my sales training programs:

Over the weekend, I was channel surfing and came across this “Reality” show called “Ma’s Roadhouse” on TruTV. Well, it was general brain candy, so I watched a couple of episodes. It’s a pretty funny show about a bike shop/biker bar/tattoo parlor in Dallas called “Stroker’s,” run as a family business. One episode featured a health inspector visit; one episode featured a visit from “Ma’s” old boyfriend, a con man type.

Some of the stuff just seemed a bit over-the-top, so I did a little Googling. Most of the stuff that the plots centered around wasn’t real. The health inspector? An actor. The arrest of the old boyfriend? Never happened; the “cops” were from a local security company. There are actually several pages on the Web from people in Dallas pointing out all the fake things that are a part of this “reality” show. Google is great, isn’t it? I also recently had a more business-related example of what the Internet can do, and there’s a sales lesson in it for all of us.

I mentioned my Kansas City breakfast club last week. I’m actually an officer. My duty is Classification and Investigation, which means that I check out new members. The club is a classification-exclusive club, and we only allow one member per profession. It’s my job to make sure that new members do not conflict, professionally, with current members. As part of my investigation process, I Google the person and look him up on LinkedIn.

As part of my investigation, I found that a prospective applicant had another business (which appears to be his primary business) that is a direct conflict with a member. In the discussion at our meeting that detailed why I was advocating his rejection, I explained my process. Someone asked if the person could change his application to avoid the conflict, and I said, “It’s not about what this person represents, it’s what he isthat is the problem.” In other words, we could call him whatever we wanted – but that didn’t change how he actually made his living.

The point of all of this is that, with all the emphasis on Internet presence, social networking, Search Engine Optimization, and other world wide web presence, it’s hard to hide. More importantly, it’s hard to hide what – and who – you are. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing; whether you’re applying for a job (I Google all the applicants in my Recruiting business), whether you’re applying for a club, or whether you’re selling to someone – whatever you put out on the Web is available to those who want it.

Now, there are people who have applied to my club that are basically un-Google-able (sorry for the awkward phrase). That’s because they have not chosen to give themselves a Web presence, and others have not chosen to create one for them by writing about them, etc. It’s still possible to live an anonymous life, but most people perceive the advantages of not going that route.

So, what will people find out about YOU? Well, if you Google Troy Harrison, here are some of the things you’ll find:

• Obviously, SalesForce Solutions as well as a lot of sales-related articles, blog pieces, and other work.
• You’ll find a number of articles on auto racing, and you’ll wonder if it’s the same guy. I’ll save you the trouble; yes, it is. A certain percentage of my blood is motor oil, and has been since birth.
• You might find a business that sells racing parts online. Yep, that’s me too, and that’s what I do during what I laughingly refer to as my “spare time.” It’s actually been very educational for my sales training business.
• Finally, you’ll find a guy in Australia with an athletic career in high school and college that I only wish I could claim as mine!

Those are the major things, anyway, and I suppose if you look really hard, you might find my Facebook page (privacy protected of course), and the occasional comment on message boards on the Wall Street Journal’s site. The point is that I’m aware of what I’ve put out there, and I’m not afraid of any of it.

What about you? Forget those pages that represent yourself as the professional you want to be seen as; what else is there? Are there drunken photos of you? Profane exchanges with other people? Complaining about your boss/job/product? Believe me, I’ve seen it all.

This is the impact of social networking. Every time you post ANYTHING on the web, or anytime that anyone posts anything about you, a bell is rung. Ever tried to un-ring a bell? For that reason, it’s more important than ever to self-manage your reputation and to make sure you know what can be found about you. It’s also important to comport yourself in a way that won’t reflect badly to customers, etc.

Once upon a time, it was said that “You can be whatever you want to be on the Internet.” Nonsense. More now than ever, whatever else happens, reality will come through. Make sure that your reality is what you want it to be.

Selling without passion and excitement isn’t selling – it’s pontificating.  Learn the difference in this article.

As part of my consulting business, I often do ride-alongs with salespeople who work for my clients. Lately I’ve seen a trend that is bothering me – an awful lot of what I call “flat” sales calls. By “flat,” I mean calls devoid of emotion, excitement, and interest. To be sure, information is exchanged. Questions are asked, statements are made, customers are educated about the product. But no excitement has been built, no momentum or what I call “Sales velocity” has been put in place, and it’s unlikely that the opportunities will result in wins.

What’s lacking? Passion. Passion, primarily, on the part of the salespeople. Passion is my word for that indefinable something that creates and builds interest and excitement on the part of the customer. Don’t get me wrong; the salespeople are asking questions. They’re making benefit statements. They’re explaining.  But there’s no fun or excitement in it, and that’s a problem. When the call is over, the customer is no more (or less) interested than they were before. Ultimately, I think there are two causes for this.

First of all, for whatever reason, the salespeople aren’t “into” the calls. They’re going through the motions. Going through the motions, regardless of what you’re doing, is obvious and boring. Here’s an example – I’m not an actor. Give me the script to “The Dirty Dozen,” and I could learn Lee Marvin’s lines. But could I portray Major Reisman like Lee Marvin? Not at all; it would be obvious to everyone watching that I was just reciting lines. Lee Marvin was passionate about that role and knew how to convey it. Me, not so much.

Where does sales passion come from? Well, for too many people, it doesn’t. Where it exists, it comes from an excitement, involvement in, and commitment to the selling profession. It comes from a true beliefin what you are selling – have you sold yourself before you try to sell anyone else? It comes from a need to make buyers feel the same excitement you do. It comes from recognizing the buyer’s needs, seeing what is going to happen through the adoption of the product, and feeling the same result as the buyer.

For too many salespeople, that kind of sales passion is left at the door. The result is wildly unsuccessful – and boring – selling. There’s another reason, though, that sales passion can be missed, and that’s the fact that too many salespeople don’t understand what the customer is really buying, and what I focus on in my speaking and training engagements.

Customers buy successful outcomes. Whatever need the customer is trying to address through a purchase, what the customer is really buying is the experience of fulfilling that need. If a customer is buying a tent, he is buying the experience of being sheltered from the weather at night. If a customer buys a new car, he buys the experience of driving it.

If you don’t know, understand, or address that successful outcome, you’re not going to be able to create that excitement in your sales calls, and you will find yourself offering a lot of proposals that sit on the customer’s desk with no sales velocity (we’ll discuss “Sales Velocity” next week). Want to avoid this problem? Here are 5 steps to incorporating sales passion into your calls:

1. Sell YOURSELF on your products or services. If you were in the position of a target customer, would you buy? Why? If you can’t do this, all else is meaningless. 
   

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2. Take a few moments before each sales call to remind yourself of #1, and get excited about the new opportunity in front of you. 
   

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3. Understand the buyer’s needs by asking good questions. 
   

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4. Moreover, get your buyer to define the most successful outcome that he/she is seeking from working with you. 
   

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5. Finally, paint the picture for that buyer of the successful outcome; don’t just describe it, help them experience it. Let them live in that moment for a few minutes – THEN move the sales process forward.
   

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If you do this consistently, you will get away from the “flat” sales call, and you’ll sell more and enjoy it more. How’s that for a good deal?