Tag Archives: Sales Management

How to Update Your Hiring Techniques to Attract Younger Sales Talent

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The sales profession is changing, and unfortunately, it’s graying.  Statistics show that the average age of a professional salesperson now is 47.1 years old.  Fifteen years ago, that number was 42.  That means that our profession has aged five years in the last fifteen – and that’s unsustainable.  The sales profession needs new blood.

With millennials now making up the majority of the workforce and Gen Z close behind, you might need to evolve your hiring practices to continue attracting top young sales talent. The old way of hiring salespeople – putting out a basic job description and waiting for resumes to trickle in – just won’t cut it anymore for recruiting younger generations. I’ve seen this in working with my clients – and I’ve seen some new methods generate great results.  Sales managers need to take a more proactive and strategic approach to stand out and connect with qualified candidates. Here are five updated hiring techniques that have been shown to be successful in reaching younger sales professionals.

Showcase Your Company Culture:  “Culture” isn’t just a buzzword anymore. Today’s younger workforce values culture, flexibility, and purpose when job seeking. Showcase what makes your company culture, and your job opportunity, unique when recruiting. Highlight your culture on your careers page, company website, and job posts. Let candidates know if you offer benefits like remote work options (sales is well positioned for this in my opinion) and professional development programs– these attract young talent. Use images, videos, and employee spotlights so candidates can get a feel for your work environment. Culture can make or break whether you connect with younger applicants.  One key – whatever you do, it must be authentic.  Understand – even if you fake your culture, sites like Greendoor will very quickly let candidates know the truth.

Leverage Social Sourcing:  Younger generations live their lives online and on social media. You should incorporate social sourcing strategies into your hiring process to connect with talent where they already spend time. Strategically post job openings in relevant Facebook and LinkedIn groups in your industry. Share and engage with content from top performers and rising sales stars you’d like to recruit and connect with them. You can also identify passive candidates by searching profiles with relevant backgrounds or skills. Social recruiting allows you to grab the attention of talented individuals who aren’t actively job seeking.  This also means being innovative with respect to your recruiting message.  Don’t be afraid to step out of your lane and try things like a video job ad (keep it to 60 seconds or less) or memes (funny or serious).  Post not only to the “normal” mediums like LinkedIn and Facebook, but consider TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram.  Remember – you can’t hire them if they don’t know you are hiring.  Don’t be snobbish about the way you get your candidates.  Just get them.

Highlight Development Opportunities: Younger sales talent care about career growth and acquiring new skills. If your company lacks structured development programs, highlight other growth opportunities in your job posts and outreach.  Better yet, BUILD some structured development programs, starting with your 90 Day Onboarding program (you have one of those, right?). Mention if top performers have a chance to take on mentees, have access to skill-building resources, or can participate in stretch assignments. You want candidates to see that your company supports professional advancement so they envision future opportunities. Having one-on-one meetings with candidates to discuss career path trajectory is also powerful.

Showcase Tech Stack: Millennials and Gen-Z candidates expect companies to harness modern technologies and encourage innovation from employees. When recruiting, thoroughly describe your tech stack – like sales engagement platforms, LinkedIn integration, data analytics, and automation tools you leverage (and if you aren’t already, get comfortable with phrases like “tech stack”). Discuss how your sales team utilizes technology to enhance productivity. Today, you’d better be comfortable discussing AI as a sales tool. You want tech-savvy candidates to see you provide cutting-edge resources to drive results.  By the way – if you aren’t using tech to drive sales results, start doing it.  The sales profession isn’t going to be backtracking to a low-tech environment anytime soon.

Convey Company Mission & Impact: Younger people increasingly seek out purpose-driven work. When recruiting new team members, sales managers should communicate how their company mission makes a difference and highlight recent company impact metrics. For example, explain how your product or service tangibly helps customers.  If you have community involvement programs, those should be part of your messaging.  One fear I’ve heard is that sales managers are reluctant to get into politics with candidates.  That’s fine; you don’t need to.  Companies can be seen as positive without being seen as taking a particular political stance.

Respond Quickly:  Younger generations have been conditioned by social media to expect quick likes, comments, and attention.  If you want to succeed in hiring, get used to doing the same.  I used to recommend that managers collect resume’s for a week, then sort through, pick ones to call, and call.  Now the best practice is to receive a resume’, do a quick scan on it, and then call right then.  If your candidate doesn’t answer, you should also email and text.  You want the candidate to get that quick dopamine hit that comes with a quick response, and then give multiple ways to get back with you.

Never mistake this:  You are competing for talent in a highly competitive environment.  If some of the tactics above resemble ways that you’d compete for customers, that’s not an accident.  Compete for sales talent with the same intensity as you compete for customers, and you’ll have a great sales team.  And you’ll leave many of your competitors behind.

How to Build a Sales Culture in Your Organization

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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 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.  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 Recruiting new customers, Re-selling current customers to greater profitability, and Retaining profitable business.”  Use the Three R’s of Business Growth 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 (or Gal) 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.

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.  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 Recruiting, Re-Selling, and Retaining customers, you must align all your departments and goals. 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 they can be, and 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.

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 Recruiting, Re-Selling, and Retaining customers?  This doesn’t mean that “sales is always right;” there are times when the sales department is actually acting against profitable growth through mistaken reasoning.  That’s why you have to be the arbiter.

Have a High Performance Sales Force:  Now it’s time to turn up the intensity with the sales department.  You have the right to demand excellence from your salespeople once you have molded the culture of the company around them.

You need a strong sales manager who actively works to strengthen and enhance the abilities of his/her salespeople.  Your 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.

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 Recruit, Re-Sell, 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.  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.

Why Not? Four Innovative Ways to Prospect

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Are you getting tired of me telling you that sales is changing?  Too bad.  I’m going to do it again.  Sales is changing.  That doesn’t mean that you have to throw out all of your old prospecting methods – but it does mean that you need to be adding new ones, and new tools to your toolbox.  That can be uncomfortable for some of us, but it’s necessary.

The reality is that we have more ways of contacting prospects than ever before. Some work – some don’t.  And there are some that you should try to see if it works for you.  What’s cool is this – there is no model of prospecting that “doesn’t work anymore.”  Teleprospecting?  Yep, still works, although the ratios are different now.  Walk in cold calls?  For many industries, they’re dead – but I have a client who lives off of them quite successfully.  And then there are new ones that you probably haven’t tried, nor have I.  Let’s talk about four innovative ways to prospect that you should probably try.

  1. Video messaging: This is an offshoot of a conversation that I had with a recruiter this week while on a speaking engagement.  He’s finding good candidates on LinkedIn and, instead of sending a generic text message on LinkedIn, he is recording a highly personalized 30 second video, tailored directly to the individual, and sending that.  Yes, it takes more time to do – but he tells me that his pull-through has actually doubled.  That’s a great idea for recruiting, but it might be a great way to prospect, too.  The key to this (as will be the key to all the methods we’ll discuss) is that it must be very 1-to-1 and speak to the individual – not a mass message.  Have I done this yet?    Am I going to try?  You bet your commission check I am.  And I’ll tell you the results.  But don’t wait for me; give it a shot yourself.
  2. Rethinking the cold call: We know that the ratios of calls to contacts (someone actually answering the phone) have dropped precipitously.  Whereas we used to see someone answering on about half of the prospecting calls we made, now it’s closer to 1 to 5, or even 1 to 10.  So why not make that work for us?  Instead of hanging up or leaving a boring voice mail, think of something exciting to say – and tailored – and consider it an opportunity to get your name on their radar screen, rather than considering it a failure if you don’t get an answer.  In my training with my clients, we see that salespeople who leave voice mails get views on their LinkedIn pages from some of the people they called.  Great!  Leave a tailored voice mail asking them to call you – but also to look you up on LinkedIn or to text.  When they do look you up, send a connection request.  Then slow-play the relationship development (see my comments on LinkedIn prospecting below) so you don’t immediately get blocked.
  3. Buy the appointment: OK, this one is out there a bit, but a close friend sent it to me and it was too good not to share. One ad agency discovered that it cost them $126 to get a lead on LinkedIn, so they skipped the middleman and sent out a nice brochure with $126 in cold hard cash, asking for an appointment.  As the article shows, the sample size is small so far – but the results are good at the start.  This is admittedly one for a company with a decent sized budget, but if you can, why not?  Save it for your top prospects, of course, but if you get business, the ROI is there.
  4. LinkedIn prospecting: You’ve probably seen it.  You accept a connection request from someone you haven’t met, and immediately you get bombed with a hard-sell message.  If you’re like me, you either tell them you’re not interested, or you block them.  Don’t get caught in that trap.  You absolutely should use LinkedIn to prospect, but you should also be aware that it’s a slow play.  Once you receive the connection request, just send a simple message thanking the person for joining your network.  Then, engage with them – like their posts and comment or share where appropriate (but make sure your comments are appropriate and not stalkerish).  Then – when they post or comment something that indicates an opportunity for you – send them a SOFT message suggesting that you can help with their problem, and asking if they’d like to have a conversation.  If they say no, keep engaging.  LinkedIn is a relationship based strategy, but it can work if you do it right.
  5. Send a handwritten note: Admittedly, this is not “new” or “innovative.”  But it’s pretty damned different now.  Nobody sends handwritten notes now.  And by “handwritten,” I don’t mean a note with a printer that looks like handwriting.  I mean an actual handwritten note.  Again – as are all of these methods – it must be tailored and speak directly to your prospect on a one-to-one basis.  This is one that I can tell you works today.  In fact, on a percentage basis, it might work better today than it used to.  Want to combine old tech and new tech?  Send a handwritten note on a card that has a QR code that allows them to reach out quickly.

While you’re digesting those four innovative ways to prospect, I want to cop to a change in my own thinking.  I used to say that prospecting was a function of the law of large numbers, and I told managers to discourage their salespeople from doing extensive research on prospects – instead, make the calls and get the appointments. A good database that tells you who your target contact is and their company’s demographics and industry data was enough. For some industries and environments, that still is appropriate.

For many of us, though, it’s time for a shift.  Notice that every one of those four methods above demanded tailoring.  To succeed, you must speak directly to your prospect on a person-to-person level that demonstrates that you know a little bit about them and have a reason for reaching out.  The good news is that it’s so easy to research now that, within five minutes, you can come up with enough information to have a ‘hinge’ for your contact.

Have I personally tried and trained on all of these methods?  No.  Not YET.

Do I think some of them might fail for myself or for you?  Possibly.  Not everything is a fit for everyone.

But we are in a moment where there aren’t many rules, where these four innovative ways to prospect present a relatively blue ocean (because not many salespeople are trying them), and thus you have an opportunity to use them to succeed.  So try things.  Learn things.  Innovate.  Hell, think of ways that I didn’t think of above.  Maybe in a year, you’ll have developed four innovative ways to prospect that are all yours.

Sales is changing.  You can sit back and not change with it, and you will likely fail.  Or, you can change with it, or even be an agent of change.

Let’s move forward together.

I can help.

 

A Don Doesn’t Wear Shorts.

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I loved the HBO show, The Sopranos.  I’m a bit of a Mafia aficionado; I’ve been fascinated with that culture ever since my grandmother (!) gave me a book by Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno to read when I was 16.  In an early episode of The Sopranos, James Gandolfini, playing Tony Soprano (the main character and the leader or “Don” of the Soprano mob) was hosting a barbecue in his back yard for other mobsters.  Tony manned the grill while wearing Bermuda shorts, and this prompted a visit the next week.

As Gandolfini told the story, at a shoot the next week on location in New Jersey, he was approached by a man that was obviously a real-deal mobster.  The man walked up to Gandolfini and said that he loved the show, “But Jimmy,” the man said, looking dead into James’ eyes, “Dons don’t wear shorts.”  Gandolfini took it to heart, and Tony Soprano never wore shorts again in a Mob gathering.  In fact, this became part of a Sopranos episode later when Tony was reproached by a boss for the shorts.  What the mobster meant, of course, is that when you have that kind of a leadership position, you can’t afford to look too casual to those that you are supposed to be leading.  It’s a lesson that’s often forgotten.

I thought about this recently when watching a Zoom sales meeting.  Zoom has been a great tool that has enhanced the capabilities of managers and sales reps alike – but it’s also, in my opinion, contributed to a loosening of standards that isn’t healthy for sales managers or salespeople.  In this meeting, the sales manager had 20 sales reps on the line, all were ready and able to hear what he had to say.

The problem was that the manager, attempting to be too cute by half, had employed one of those digital backgrounds on his screen.  Those backgrounds suck up bandwidth, so instead of being a clear communicator, his image was pixelating, his voice was cutting in and out, and he was virtually unwatchable.  In fact, the only clearly visible image was the background itself, and when the manager attempted to share his PowerPoint presentation on his screen, the entire screen locked up.  What ensued was ten minutes of the manager attempting to get rid of the background, then logging off, and finally being able to get back onto the meeting – by which point he had lost his audience, in attention of not reality.

The manager forgot that Dons don’t wear shorts.  He had important information to convey, but lost his chance to make it impactful because he was trying to take a too-cool, too-casual approach to the meeting.  How often have you seen this since last year?  I’ve experienced it myself, many times.  During a Hiring Assistance program, there was the guy who logged onto a Zoom job interview for a sales position (he was the applicant) in a T-shirt and ball cap, for example.

Video calling is here to stay.  I do not expect it to replace face-to-face selling (we human beings crave actual human contact), but the skills and technology will be part of our repertoire going forward, so we might as well do it right.  The key to remember is that Zoom is merely another way to communicate messages – and your message should be the star, not the tech!  Whether you’re a manager addressing your team, or a salesperson making a sales presentation, there are a few fundamental best practices you should employ:

  1. Forget the silly backgrounds. Yes, these platforms allow you to use a lot of cool backgrounds.  When you use one, in many cases, the background itself becomes the star and you’re just in the way – or worse, the background eats up your bandwidth.  Stick with a stationary background.  Even a blank wall is fine, or your office, or whatever.  If you want your company branding in it, make up a banner for a backdrop and use it, but the background should be a physical background and not an electronic one.
  2. Dress like a pro. Casualness is the enemy of persuasion; when you are presenting, you should look and dress the part.  Dress and prep the same as you would for a live meeting or sales call.
  3. Get the camera at eye level. Looking down at the screen makes you look amateurish – whether you’re using a phone or a laptop, position it so that you are looking directly into the camera lens while looking straight ahead.
  4. Look into the camera lens, not the screen. This is the hardest to master, but very important.  When you’re speaking, you should be looking at the camera lens – that means that you’re making eye contact with your recipient.  Peripheral vision is a wonderful thing; you can always see their movements and expressions out of the corner of your eye even when you’re looking at the lens.
  5. Get good sound. If they can’t hear you, they can’t buy from you.  Make sure that you have a good microphone setup, if your device doesn’t already have a good microphone.  Lavaliere or USB microphones are less than $100, which is a cheap investment.
  6. The best way to get good at anything is to practice, and presentations are no different.  Practice, practice, practice, until you know the tech, you know how to quickly share your screen without fumbling, and you are able to handle all other aspects of the technological platform you’re using.

Remember – you want your video presentation to be just as professional as, if not more so than, your live presentation.  Dons don’t wear shorts.  Be a Don.

How to Prepare For a Sales Call

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I’ll be honest.  How to prepare for a sales call is something that is so fundamental that I forget to write about it.  For one thing, it’s not all that “sexy;” it’s much more fun to give great presentation tips, or some killer questions, or even talk about management strategy.

But then I talk to salespeople, the conversation slips around to how to prepare for a sales call, and I realize that many salespeople still don’t use all the resources available to them.  So, in that spirit, here are four ways that you should research every prospect with whom you will be meeting:

  1. Company web page. Yeah, it’s simple, and I have to think that nearly everyone does it – but not everyone looks for the right things.  We tend to get overwhelmed by the ‘pretty’ of the site and fail to read what we should be reading.  Here are the biggest touchpoints on their site:

    The ‘about us’ page:  This is where they will show potential customers why those customers should be buying from your target company.  In essence, this is their best foot forward.  Know it and refer to it.

    Their ‘news’ section:  All too often, this will be obsolete – if it happened in 2017 and it’s still top of their blog, they don’t have much ‘news.’  That said, if there is genuine news, scan it to see if there’s anything that impacts you or gives you a feel for their company culture.

    Executive bios: Is your contact listed here?  If not, why not – are you starting your selling efforts too low in the company? If so, what can you learn about your contact?

    Ease of contact:  This will give you a great idea of how “open” they are to the world.  This might seem surprising to you, but some companies close themselves off to the outside world.  They have a great web presence, but getting ahold of them can be very difficult, to say the least.  Openness to contact can mean openness to new ideas.

  2. Reviews. You should ALWAYS look at their reviews.  If they are on Yelp (for instance, food and hospitality), look at those reviews.  If not, Google and Glassdoor can also be great sources of insight into what their customers and employees say – and you’d be surprised at how often a sales need can be uncovered in looking at reviews.  Don’t be afraid to ask about those reviews in the sales call, even having them up and on your phone to refer to if necessary.  It’s possible that your customer might not have even seen the review.
  3. LinkedIn. You should always look up your contact on LinkedIn.  Looking at their career history is good – looking at their activity is better.  What things do they like or share on LinkedIn?  What causes are they passionate about?  What GENUINE (never fake this) commonalities can you find with yourself or your company?
  4. General Web Search. Finally, search (Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, etc.) the company name and your contact name and see what comes up.  A couple of years ago, I had a client who sold large-ticket items that usually involved some level of company-offered credit terms.  A quick Google search ended that idea – the first ten results after the company web page were lawsuit filings from the previous year – all for non-payment of debts.  Usually your results won’t be this dramatic, but you can get some good general insight on the company by searching them.

How to prepare for a sales call isn’t that tough; you just need to plan for it. Are there more things you can do to research? Sure – but sometimes it’s better to simply ask questions in the call.  Hitting these four touchpoints above won’t take you that long (probably fifteen minutes or so), but will make you far better prepared to ask good questions to discover deep needs which then gains you a competitive advantage.  Don’t skip this step.

Five Outdated Sales Techniques That Have Only Gotten Worse With Age

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I’ve been going back lately and reviewing some of my past articles; as Jeff Foxworthy once said when listening to his old material, “There’s some good stuff in there!”  Some of these articles are pretty relevant today as-written; others will do with a little updating.  I’ll put updates, where necessary, in italics.  This one focuses on outdated sales techniques that should have been retired long ago.

Some outdated sales techniques are not like wine or cheese – they don’t get better with age.

I was listening in on some sales calls with a distributor of high performance auto parts, along with their Inside Sales Manager.  A customer had called in to ask about a particular engine wiring harness.  The salesperson explained that, yes, the harness would work on his engine just fine.  Right as the customer was about ready to buy, the salesperson said, “However, it’s not designed as a stock replacement harness; it won’t work on your original 2000 Camaro.”

The customer stopped and said that what he wanted was a stock replacement harness for his Camaro, and the salesperson explained that this harness was designed to swap the engine into an older car and wouldn’t support all the functions of the Camaro’s system.  The customer thanked the salesperson and hung up, and the Inside Sales Manager came unglued.  He referenced one of the worst outdated sales techniques you can use, and if you’re using them, you’ll want to STOP now.

  1. “Never answer the question the customer didn’t ask!” is what the Sales Manager yelled at the poor salesperson.  He said, “If you hadn’t volunteered that information, he’d have bought.”  The salesman was a rookie, so I stepped in.  “If he’d bought,” I said, “that harness would have come right back to you as a return, and the customer would have been upset.  What’s your win there?”  As the manager stammered, I said, “Or worse, he’d have tried to cut into and modify the harness to make it work, it still wouldn’t have worked, and then he couldn’t return it OR use it, and he’s out $1,000.  How does that help anyone?”  “Never answer the question the customer didn’t ask” is an old canard that’s built around “get the order at all costs, and to hell with what happens afterward” transactional sales.  It’s old and outdated.  Your role is to help the customer reach a succesful buying decision.  So here’s your new rule:  If it’s information the customer needs to know in order to have a successful result, give it to them, whether they asked or not.  I’m reminded about the old trope that salespeople shouldn’t be “Free consultants;” another old saw that I disagree with.  My thoughts on that are in this video.
  2. The “take away” close.  The way this one works is that, at closing time, you say something like, “You know, you really shouldn’t buy this (for whatever noble reason).”  The idea is that the customer now wants it so badly that he will then justify why he should buy (and deserves to own), and in so doing, sell himself on the product.  Here’s the problem.  If you’ve been selling correctly, you’ve built up a lot of trust and credibility with the customer.  Based on that, when you use the “take away,” one of two things will happen.  First, the customer will believe you because of the credibility and trust – which means that you lose the sale (or you end up having to re-close, which makes you a liar).  Second, the customer sees right through the tactic, realizes that you’re lying, and walks.  Neither is good.  Just play the close straight.  Only take it away if you’re really going to take it away; i.e. it’s not a good purchase for the customer. Or, I would add, bad business for you – I’ve taken offers away more than once if they wouldn’t result in good business for me.
  3. Never ask a question to which you don’t know the answer.  This is the old “lawyer’s technique,” and basically it means that the salesperson is scared to death of being surprised by the answer to a question.  There are two problems with this philosophy.  First of all, you must ask questions to which you don’t know the answer to properly discover and interpret needs – and be prepared for surprises and for the call to go in directions you hadn’t anticipated. Second, by the time the lawyer gets into the courtroom, the witness has already been questioned – numerous times – and the lawyer already knows what the witness is going to say.  That’s not the case in a sales call.  Not asking questions to which you don’t know the answer means that you’re fearful. Drop the fear and do good customer discoveries – that’s the best way to sell today. It always has been the best way to sell – and always will be.
  4. The salesperson should seek to control the customer and the sales process.  First of all, any salesperson who believes that he has “control” over the customer is fooling himself.  The customer can always remove themselves from the process.  Whatever control we have is more aptly referred to as “influence,” and is shown by the customer allowng or asking us to direct parts of the process.  Seek influence, rather than control, by respecting the customer’s intelligence, showing your expertise, and working side by side for a successful result.
  5. The Up Front Contract.  Essentially this is a technique where you open the sales call with a closing question designed to lock the customer in with “intent to buy if things are right.”  This can range from the car salesman’s “Are you here to buy a car today?” to “If you like what you see today, is there any reason we can’t move forward?”  The problem with this question is that it occurs at the start of the selling process, before you have built any trust or equity with your customer, and before you have earned the right to ask a closing question.  At this point your customer knows nothing of your offerings, your pricing, and many times their needs haven’t been defined and matched to a product or a service – and you’re asking a closing question?  Ridiculous.  And if the customer says “yes” to the question and later says “no” to moving forward, the only thing you can do is whine, anyway.  Don’t worry about the buyer’s intent until the buyer has a reason to have intent.  If they are seeing you, they are Motivated to enter a buying process – but that’s all.
  6. I’m going to add a sixth technique, which I call the “Good Time Charlie.”  Good Time Charlies hardly ever focus on customer needs and solutions; instead they focus on being the customer’s buddy, buying lunches, drinks, sports tickets, etc.  They seldom know much about their product, and beyond the personal level, they know little about their customers.  GTC’s were becoming obsolescent – but the events of 2020 have made them obsolete.  If you are one, or if you employ one, it’s time for that person to update their skills.  It’s never too late to do so.

All of these outdated sales techniques have one thing in common – they are designed to maneuver and manipulate customers into places that they don’t want to be.  If you’re using them, the ‘70s called and they want their sales techniques back. Even the customers of the ’70s didn’t like these techniques – they just didn’t have an alternative.

Today’s customers do have alternatives.  The ability to buy nearly anything over the Internet allows customers to eliminate salespeople from their buying process at will – and if you use any of these techniques, they will eliminate YOU.

How to Build a Sales Process That Works.

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This is actually an update of an article I wrote six years ago after missing a flight.  The article is still a very pertinent tutorial on how to build a sales process.  While there isn’t much that I’d change about what I’ve written, I’ll add a few notes in italics that reflect our current realities in 2020.

Skipping steps in your business processes can be disastrous.  Read why here.

I’m writing this article from the Baltimore-Washington Airport.  That wasn’t my intent.  My intent was to write it from the warmth of my living room (yes, I do write a lot of these articles at home).  Unfortunately, I can’t do that.  The reason I can’t do that is that I missed my connecting flight.  And the reason that I missed my connecting flight is that I skipped a step in one of my processes.

When I fly, no matter what I’m told, no matter what’s printed on the boarding pass, I do the same thing every time I get to the airport, whether it’s a connecting flight or an origination flight.  I pull out my boarding pass, and I carefully double- and triple-check the flight number, the gate, and the time.  However, after arriving in Baltimore from Providence, I didn’t do that. I looked at the board and saw my destination and time, and didn’t check the flight number.  You guessed it.  I was at the wrong gate, and I arrived at the correct gate two minutes after the doors closed.  The result was that I ended up cooling my heels for four extra hours in Baltimore, and getting home later than I should have.

You know, every time I fly now, even six years later, I remember this moment and I recall sitting in the airport after a long trip, pretty disgusted with myself.  I’ve had similar feelings over the years whenever I attempted to skip a step in my sales process and it came back and bit me.

And yes, there’s a sales lesson on how to build a sales process here, and here it is.

Don’t skip steps in your sales processes.  Salespeople tend to get really excited when we get positive signals from a customer – so excited, in fact, that we want to speed things along and get the deal done.  Sometimes that causes us to skip important steps – like a complete discovery, a full proposal, etc.  And invariably, it comes back to bite us.  Usually, the results cost more than a few hours in an airport.

One of the issues, I think, is that too few salespeople and sales managers really understand “sales process.”  So, I’ll lay it out here in very simple terms, and you can expand on it as you need to.  The definition of a “Business Process” is this:

A Business Process is a set of steps, tasks, or operations that must be performed EVERY TIME to generate a successful result.  Notice that I said “must be performed.” One common mistake I see in businesses that want to build their processes is that they include steps that are good, and perhaps advantageous, but don’t have to be done every time to get the desired result. Here’s how to build a sales process:

  1. Find someone to sell to.  Whether this happens through prospecting, inbound marketing, or a current customer relationship, the sale begins with the identification of the person to sell to.
  2. Discover needs.  When a purchase is being considered, needs must be discovered and identified in order to move forward.
  3. Identify Product/Service Recommendations.  The needs are then correlated to a product or service that should be purchased.
  4. Price and Terms.  Most of the time we consider this the Proposal phase; the customer must be made aware of the necessary price and terms for the purchase.
  5. Decision.  The customer decides to purchase.

These steps happen on EVERY sale and purchase.  Right now you’re saying, “But wait, Troy, what happens when the customer buys and doesn’t even talk to a salesperson?”  Guess what – the customer still goes through those steps.  The difference is that the customer executes those steps HIMSELF OR HERSELF.  The customer still identifies his or her own needs, identifies a product or service to satisfy those needs, finds the price and terms, and makes a decision.

That’s not all parts of how to build a sales process, of course.  Your sales process may include other steps.  For instance, for a technical product, your customer may have to go through a technical demonstration, and this may be a mandatory step so that the customer fully understands your product.  That’s fine, but don’t fall into the trap of introducing steps into the process that don’t HAVE to happen.  The prime example of this comes from a regional manager at a company that I used to work for.

He discovered that closing ratios were much higher if the customer took a plant tour prior to buying, so he mandated that all prospects had to take plant tours before they could be offered a proposal.  The result?  Sales dropped dramatically.  The reason was simple – most customers didn’t want to take plant tours and wouldn’t. Yes, closing ratios were higher IF the customer took a tour – but the tour wasn’t a mandatory part of the process.  And if you’re wondering, sales at my branch were fine.  I ignored the directive.  The point was that my regional manager attempted to add an extra step that was nice IF we could get it, but shouldn’t have been mandatory – hence not part of our process.

Where salespeople really get into trouble is when they try to skip or shortcut steps.  For instance, salespeople – in a hurry to get to the close – will cut the Needs Discovery short because they think they have all the needs, when in fact they don’t.  Missing needs means that the customer probably won’t buy.

I’m sitting in an airport writing this when I should be home eating a nice dinner, and the reason is that I shortcut one of my key processes.  Processes exist for a reason.  If you shortcut yours, it might cost you more than time.

Here is what I would add.  In addition to thinking through the steps in your process, you should also think through HOW they will be accomplished, and leave flexibility.  For instance, will these steps be accomplished by phone, video, or live and in-person?  Can you build in options?  Let’s say that you need to add a step to demonstrate a piece of equipment, and the ideal way to do it is live and in-person.  If that live demo is impossible, how much of that live experience can you simulate via a remote demonstration or a Zoom call?  Today’s salesperson must be competent in both process and the means of delivering the process – which requires more of us.  That’s okay; we need to always be developing our skills.

You might also benefit from my video Six Tips For Better Video Selling.

How To Compete With Online Vendors

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I paid $22.99 for a magazine yesterday.  Not a magazine subscription; a single issue of a magazine.  The magazine is called Magneto, and it is (big surprise for those who know me) a car magazine.  But it’s not just any car magazine.  It’s perhaps the finest magazine focusing on rare and exotic vintage cars, and the racing thereof, that I’ve ever seen.  And in the fact that I paid nearly 23 bucks for it is a sales lesson that’s very timely and very applicable in how to compete with online vendors.

You see, I’m passionate about car magazines.  I love them.  I love reading them, and I spent over ten years writing for them as a freelancer.  In fact, I wrote over 300 articles for them, and one of my stories was nominated for a National Motorsports Press Association award.  I was good at it and I loved it, although it was never more than a side gig.  I quit writing for them in about 2008, when two things happened – first, my business as The Sales Navigator started occupying all my professional time.  And second, the magazine business itself was in a decline.  Magazines got thinner in both page count and paper quality, the amount of space allotted to editorial content went down, and there was less of a demand for the in-depth analytical articles I liked to write.  And, full disclosure, the magazines were paying less.  It felt like a race to the bottom.  That was one race I had no interest in.

Fast forward to 2020.  Most of the magazines I used to write for (Circle Track, Stock Car Racing, Street Rodder, Rod & Custom, Racing Milestones, and many others) are gone.  History.  In fact, the largest publisher of car magazines shut down 19 titles last year.  The few that they have left are a shadow of what they once were.  Even Hot Rod, the magazine that arguably started the car magazine industry, is a shadow of what it was just fifteen years ago.  The reason is simple – the level of content and photography that those magazines used to provide is now widely available on dozens of websites, for free or very inexpensively.  Those titles attempted to continually cheapen their product to try to make the numbers work in the face of Internet competition – and they lost.  (Is any of this starting to ring a bell yet in your business?)

So, you’d expect that when I go into my local Barnes & Noble, the magazine rack would be barren, right?  Nope.  The space once taken by thin, low-quality magazines is now occupied by high-end magazines.  Magazines like Magneto, Rodder’s Journal, and many, many other titles that, on a per-copy basis, go for double or triple the price of the magazines they replaced.  And yet, people buy them.  Why?

Because those magazines are incredibly high-quality in all phases. The editorial content is the best, period.  The cars covered are unusual and important, and the stories told are complete and interesting, and not just a list of specifications and dates.  The photography is high-end, done either in studio or on location by the best photographers, in the best lighting, with the best equipment and the best editing software.  Advertisements are present but don’t dominate the magazines.  And these magazines are BIG.  My new issue of Magneto is 178 pages of automotive goodness, and it’s produced on very heavy paper and cover stock, most resembling a paperbound book.  In fact, some people refer to these as “bookazines” or “coffee table magazines.”  Are they successful?  Many of these magazines are all out of back issues for purchase, so I’d say that, yes, they are.

These magazines are successful because they don’t attempt to compete with cheap online vendors.  They have picked out a niche, they are doing that niche better than anyone else, and they have created an economic structure (the amounts they pay for writing and photography) that the Internet simply can’t match.  Do they sell as many copies as, say, Motor Trend?  Probably not – but they make the economics work very well for them, and have figured out how to compete with online vendors.

Take a look at your business.  At least once per week, someone asks me, “Troy, how can I possibly compete with cheaper online vendors like Amazon?”  My answer is, “You probably can’t – especially if you’re trying to do it the same way.”  Cheap online vendors aren’t a fad – they are here to stay.  But there is still a high demand for a higher-service, higher-contact, higher-quality business model.  Here are five quick ideas to help you compete, and win, against pure online vendors:

  1. Establish two-tiered pricing. Some of you CAN compete with Amazon on pricing – IF you do business the Amazon way.  With Amazon, everything is automated and there is no personal customer service involvement whatsoever.  If you’re selling a more commoditized product (for instance, reams of copier paper) and can make money at that pricing level as long as no personal service is involved, consider allowing your customers to buy at that price point IF and only if they are willing to buy with the same no-personal-service model.  But when they need personal service – even if it’s a phone call – they get a different and higher price point.
  2. Do it better. Let’s be honest – Amazon doesn’t thrive off high-end products.  Their biggest niche is in the low-end, cheapest possible, products.  Look at the Magneto solution; sell products that are so good they nearly require the buyer to have a more personalized experience (and the higher price point to go with it).
  3. Know your customer. One big edge you should have is this:  Your salespeople SHOULD know your customers better than any online vendor ever could.  That SHOULD be because they consistently question and update their knowledge.  It’s an unfortunate truth that too many salespeople don’t ask questions and don’t know much about the customer (good sales training should focus on questioning as a primary skill) – and those salespeople then wonder why they lose business.  Not only should you be asking lots of business-related questions early on, you should be updating your knowledge of those issues every six months or so.  Your business changes, and so does your customer.
  4. Focus on helping your customer run his/her business better. This is related to the previous point – what do you do to truly help your customers run their businesses better that isn’t tied to a check?  For instance, do you refer business to your customers?  Even better, do you put customers together who could do business together?
  5. Create an experience. I often pick on the car business, and for good reason – I sold cars at the start of my career.  As part of my education, I read a book called Customers For Life, by Carl Sewell, the owner of Sewell Cadillac in Dallas. He talked about making a visit to Sewell an experience.  When salespeople greeted customers, they didn’t race each other to get to the door and they didn’t immediately ask them about buying a car.  Instead, they welcomed them and opened by offering them a cup of (good) coffee, a glass of wine, or a soda (I visited the dealership several years ago, and they really do this). They created an experience out of a visit to Sewell – and they sold an awful lot of Caddys.

There are, of course, numerous other ways to compete with the Internet vendors, but this is a start.  The key is to not try to be Amazon.  One of my favorite sayings (and as far as I know, it’s my own) is:  “You can’t beat your competition if you’re trying to be your competition.”  Magneto and their counterparts have figured that out, and that’s why they’re successful.  You can be, too.

Successful Coaching: How to Be a Better Manager

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I’ll say it right up front.  I love coaching.  I’m very passionate about it, and the reason is that when coaching is done successfully, the coach can see the results as they happen.  My first real experience as a true coach came in my first sales management job, and in that experience, I realized that successful coaching is a partnership between the coach and the coachee.  My most recent coaching experience reminds me of that, and in this article, I’ll outline how to make coaching work.

First, I’d like to point out one critical aspect of coaching.  Coaching is an individual process and a collaborative process.  That means that coaching is not training (which typically is a group experience with a defined curriculum), nor is it discipline and dictation (which is a “do this or else” process).  Successful coaching requires investment of energy from both parties, and if either party drops the ball, their efforts will not be successful.

With that said, here is the basic coaching process:

  1. Seeing the coachee in action: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You can’t coach from your desk.  The only way to coach sales behavior is to observe them live and in person.  That means doing ride-alongs, listening in on phone calls, or watching them on video calls (whichever is their main venue).  Only seeing them in action gives you the real-world perspective you need to be able to coach accurately and fairly.
  2. Identify a behavior (or behaviors) that, if changed, will increase the coachee’s success. Everyone has behaviors that can be improved upon.  Your job, as a coach, is to identify those behaviors and come up with a plan for improving them.  One word of caution here.  The rule of three applies – never ask your coachee to change more than three behaviors at a time; if you do, they will likely just shut down.
  3. Sell the new behavior to them. The best coaches are also salespeople; they understand that the best route to change is through selling the benefits, not dictating.  Explain how it benefits the coachee (not you) to change the behavior, how they will be more successful, have more fun on the job, etc.
  4. Gain the coachee’s buy in. Now, ask the coachee how they feel about the new behavior, and if they agree that it could help.  Failing that, ask if they at least buy in enough to give it a full-throated try.  If you’ve done a good job of selling the behavior to them, gaining commitment to give it a whirl shouldn’t be difficult.
  5. Role play the new behavior. Now, role-play the new behavior with them to see if they grasp the basics.
  6. Put them in a situation to implement the new behavior as soon as possible. Now it’s time to get real; they should be placed in a real-world situation ASAP to use that new behavior.  It’s even better if you are present to again use this as a coaching opportunity.
  7. Follow up periodically. Make sure that the new behavior is now part of their professional repertoire; also, make sure that the change is generating the results desired.
  8. Re-coach. A coach’s work is never done.  Now it’s time to continue the coaching process by finding new opportunities.  Remember, even your very best team members can improve.

If your coachee is open to change and improvement, trait-fit for the job (this is critical), and is willing to put in the hard work and effort, great things can be accomplished.  A client of mine recently had this experience.  We had identified two sales managers whose performance was marginal, and frankly, they were potential turnover candidates.  We made the decision to invest time in coaching them.  My client did a great job of coaching them up, and now, a year later, those same two sales managers are being groomed to be given more responsibility in a promotion to Regional Manager.  Those are the moments that make any coach proud.

People are not disposable.  Yes, sometimes we have to terminate substandard employees – but it’s usually worth the time investment to attempt to coach them up first.  I don’t have patience for employees who won’t do the hard work that the job requires, but I do have patience with employees who simply haven’t been given the skills to succeed yet.  Successful coaching is the most critical skill that any manager has, and the most gratifying.  Make sure you take the time to be the best coach you can be.  I do, and I love it.

How to Make Classroom Training Effective

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A few days ago, I saw a post on LinkedIn asking, “Is classroom sales training effective?” Unfortunately, like most of these threads, it quickly devolved into post after post of sales trainers saying, “Well, no, most isn’t – but MINE is!” I honestly hate that, because some people are looking for real information about this topic. So, I’ll answer as best I can and I won’t mention my training; if you want to learn about it, you’re more than welcome to, but that’s not what this article is.

The truth is that classroom training gets a bad rap. If classroom learning didn’t work, why would we spend all those years going to school? And don’t give me that “but adults learn differently” stuff. They might – a little – but classroom training still can be very effective. But making it effective requires work – on the part of the trainer, on the part of the trainees, and on the part of management. I’ve been doing classroom training for 20 years, and here are the key elements I’ve discovered.

BEFORE THE TRAINING:

• The trainer should learn about your company, what you do, and what specific functions your people perform, and how that will impact the training.
• The trainer should prepare enough to be at least conversant with the language of the trainees. He/she doesn’t need to know as much about the specific work environment as the trainees – that is unrealistic – but at least the basic terminology; the trainer should incorporate this into the training materials.
• The manager should be open to conversation with the trainer. Sometimes, managers will want to hold back on their true impressions of their staff a bit to have the trainer ‘evaluate’ their people during the training. This is the wrong approach. The trainer’s job is to educate, not evaluate; if you want a second opinion on your staff, this should be a separate project. Sure, all trainers – myself included – will gain impressions and will probably share them, but this shouldn’t be their prime mission. If you want the best training experience, help your trainer help each person get the most from the experience.
• The manager should set expectations with his or her staff. Those expectations should include sharing the trainer’s bio, their agenda (the trainer should provide you with these items), and what the expectations for both learning and conduct will be. For instance, staff should know beforehand that phones should be silenced, side conversations kept to a minimum, etc.

DURING THE TRAINING:

• The training should be as interactive as possible; nobody wants to listen to a talking head all day. The trainer should break up the lectures with exercises, role plays, and other ways to get staff involved.
• The manager should be in the training session. I can’t emphasize this enough. Talk to any trainer – myself included – and they will tell you that the worst and least productive training sessions they have ever done have been those where the key manager is absent. This means that the manager doesn’t know what’s being taught and doesn’t know how to follow up later, and it means that the conduct of the staff can be unproductive.
• Which leads me to this. The staff’s conduct should be professional and they should participate. It’s okay to have fun – good training should be fun – but the primary mission is to learn. On a (fortunately very) few occasions, I’ve had training programs that felt like Romper Room. The trainees just basically played around, talked among themselves, etc. “But it’s the trainer’s responsibility to control the room!” Not really, to be honest. I’m there (and other trainers are there) to help staff learn important techniques to help them succeed. I’m not there to babysit, and frankly, if your staff needs much “controlling,” you have deeper problems than a training program.

AFTER THE TRAINING:

• Most training fails to affect behavior because the training ends when the trainer walks out of the room. To make sure that the training bears fruit, the manager (who was in the training, remember) should reinforce what is taught with follow-up exercises, role plays, and on-the-job observation. Most of the time, less than 20% of what is taught makes it into the actual workplace. Good follow up can radically raise this number.
• The trainer should give some tips or guidance on how to follow up with staff. This can be written or verbal, and it can be as simple as showing the manager how to use the workbook to create future training and dialogue. If the trainer has an advanced program, milestones can be set up to trigger when that program is appropriate.

As a trainer, the most gratifying aspect of my work is when a trainee tells me that they have used my training to make money. The worst aspect of my work is finding out that the training died in the training room. In either case, proper preparation, in-training conduct, and follow up makes all the difference in the world. You’re investing the time and money in training. Invest just a little bit more and make it stick in the workplace.