The Life of a Salesperson

By Jack Falvey, Founder, MakingTheNumbers.com

The life’s blood of every enterprise is sales. How much do you know about the sales professionals that keep our economy alive? Accountants say they spend too much on expenses. Marketing says they are just order takers. Engineering says the product sells itself. Management thinks they are little more than a shoeshine and a smile.

Sales professionals provide both the fuel and the lubrication that keeps our economy running smoothly. They create wealth and then make the adjustments needed to go to the next level. They take the hits and keep things moving. They are the eyes and ears of every business. You have to make the time to work in the field to appreciate the skill required to produce the top line of an income statement. Here are some of the things you will discover.

All days begin early. Sales people are morning people first and foremost. Even in trades that begin later in the day, they work the details till the customers can see them. They also work late in the day, because the customers do so as well. Physical stamina is a job requirement. They often beat the commuter traffic by being ahead of it in the morning and after it in the evening.

Appointments are made on the run. Calls are returned and problems solved or addressed between meetings. Notes are always scribbled. Paperwork is always late, so that they are always on time. They have no need to consult a database for information. It’s all there in short term memory and in great detail. Sale professionals know more about their customer’s business than the customers do themselves. Most of what they know should not be entered in the customer’s records.

What kind of person can do this job? Those that don’t play well with others are often a good fit. Sales is a lonesome business. Self reliance in the face of adversity is a requirement. Selling is not a team sport. It is one on one, with no group showers at the end of the day. It is not a game for the faint at heart because the box score is published for all to see each week, month and quarter. These are the people that actually make the quarters.

Why Incentives
Why must sales professionals be paid on incentives? High risk must earn high rewards. How would you like it if ninety five percent of everything you did every day didn’t work? That’s a good day for someone in sales. Mental toughness is a given, big or small, male or female, it comes with the territory.

If all this is true, what should be done to manage this function? First, do no harm. Second, realize that everything possible should be done to support the process of bringing in business. Rules must be flexible within reason. Truth and ethics are absolutes, but policies and procedures are not. What will it take, is the question? Get the business first and work out the details second. To manage the people who manage this is not easy. A sound night’s sleep is not part of a sales manager’s job.

Is it any wonder that sales is not understood by cubical dwellers? Sales is outside of all organizational norms by necessity. Sales is in the world of the customer. The rules are different in each situation. The sales professional must first learn the rules both written and unwritten for each customer and then must take the products and services they bring to market and some how, some way, get things to work together for the benefit of all, while making the numbers profitably.

Challenges
The toughest competitor faced by all sales people is an international concern named Status Quo Inc. How do you get things to move? How do you get those reluctant to change, to change? How do you get someone to take the next step? What should be the next step? Too small a step will take forever. Too big a step will stop the process. Step by step, account-by-account, day-by-day, each situation must be moved forward or all human progress will grind to a halt. This is the field the shakers and movers must play on. There is no school for all of this. The lessons are taught and learned face to face with suspects that must be qualified to prospects that must be converted to customers.

Working with the best of the best in the field, makes all this self-evident. One sales professional in a previous career spent ten years as a professional football player in the NFL. He said that the hits he took as a linebacker were less frequent and less severe than the hits he takes each business day of the year in sales. He says this with a knowing smile and a quick glance down reveals a shoeshine like glass!

Are You the Customer’s First Call?

By Dennis Sommer, Founder and CEO, Executive Business Advisers

How would you like to run a software sales organization that didn’t need marketing? Customers call you 24 hours a day nonstop, more business than you can handle and no need for a marketing budget. This can happen when you are the customer’s first call or what I call a ‘Household Name’ (a person/business that everyone thinks of when they have a serious problem that must be fixed). Are you that person or business?

If you are in need of investment help, does the name Charles Schwab and Peter Block come to mind? Do you think of Tom Peters and Stephen Covey when you are having management issues? If you are having real-estate development issues, does the name Donald Trump come to mind? You get my point. Do you think any of these business professionals really need to market their businesses? I don’t think so. How different would your business be if your name first comes to mind when your customer needs help? When you think about it, becoming a ‘Household Name’ should be your highest business priority.

Let’s take a look at how you can become a ‘Household Name’ in the software industry.

Superior Customer Service
Good companies provide quality customer service. Once you become their client, they will handle your issues quickly and professionally. The difference between a good company and a ‘Household Name’ is that the latter focuses on customer service even before a client becomes a client. By focusing on customer service from the first initial phone call or client meeting, you can eliminate customer complaints instead of reacting to them once they occur.

Follow these 6 tips for superior customer service:

1. Focus on the Customer
   A ‘Household Name’ always provides superior customer service. Household Names focus on the customer instead of themselves and their business. The focus on great customer service turns satisfied customers into lifelong loyal customers.
2. Positive Attitude
   A positive attitude, focused attention and commitment to resolving customer complaints will have a huge impact on customer satisfaction and the likelihood your customer will buy from you again and again.
3. Offer a Guarantee
   Guarantee your offering and stand by it. Offer an unconditional money-back guarantee on all products and services.
4. Focus on the Customer’s Goal
   Help customers achieve their goals, not yours. Your goals will be exceeded when you help customers solve their problems.
5. Recommend Other Solutions
   Have the best interest of the customer in mind. Try to bring a customer with a problem together with an offering that helps them solve it. If you don’t have the exact solution they require, recommend other business solutions that could help them.
   
6. It’s Okay to Disagree
   Customers are not ‘always’ right. Disagree with a customer, in a polite professional manner, in order to help them make a better decision.

Strong Communication
Take a moment and think about a ‘Household Name’ in your industry. Do they rattle off statistics, techno jargon and other mumbo jumbo that could only be understood by a NASA scientist? Do they go on forever lecturing you on incomprehensible topics and you never have a chance to talk? Most likely your answer is, “No.”

A ‘Household Name’ has the ability to sit down and listen to clients. Then, a ‘Household Name’ translates a very complex solution into terms that a six-year old can understand. They keep it simple.

A ‘Household Name’ focuses on improving written, verbal and listening skills. When dealing with customers you must become the master communicator.

Follow these 5 tips for building strong communication.

 

1. Communicate Your Value
   Always tell your customer why they should buy/use your solution. Use plain English (no technical terminology) and describe the benefits. Example: ‘Produce a widget in ½ the time’ or ‘Services are performed in ½ the time and at ½ the cost.’
   
2. Listen Naively
   Listen naively instead of defending and debating. Keeping an open, unbiased mind and allowing the customer to talk provides valuable information that you can address in the future.
   
3. Tell a Story
   Customers will better understand information if told as a story. Instead of showing numbers, statistics and technical points, tell them a story about customer experiences with the offering, how they used it and the value they received.
4. Use Simple Language
   You have a 50% greater chance of success by translating raw data into simple words, knowledge and wisdom that customers can use to make smart decisions. Turn raw data into a story.
5. Demonstrate Your Solution
   Highlight and demonstrate how easy your solution is to use.

Tremendous Knowledge
Would you hire a professional or purchase a solution from someone who didn’t take the time to learn about his or her industry or products? Would you have confidence in his or her solution? I didn’t think so. So what impression do you leave with your customers? ‘Household Names’ not only become the expert in their own solutions, they also become an expert on their competitors and the customer’s industry.

Follow these 4 tips for building tremendous knowledge:

1. Allocate Your Time
   Spend 60% of your time with customers, 20% learning more about your offering and tradecraft and 20% on other business needs like management and administration.
   
2. Know Thy Competitor
   No one should know more about your offering and your competitor’s offerings than you. Build confidence by knowing both, both the technical specifications and their applications.
   
3. Know Thy Industry
   Learn more about your industry. The more you read and learn, the greater your likelihood to be among the first to identify meaningful solutions.
   
4. Talk about Your Competition
   Learn to talk more about your competition, what the customers like and what they dislike.

Build Strong Relationships
A big portion of my work with clients focuses on improving sales by improving their relationship with the customer. In this fast-paced world, many professionals and organizations are so focused on short-term goals; they have forgotten one of the most important success factors. People buy relationships not products. It’s hard to focus on the customer when you are dealing with monthly quota goals, internal politics, investors, organizational changes and the overflow of email and voice-mail requests requiring immediate responses. Unfortunately, if you ignore your customer, they won’t be a customer for long.

Connecting with customers on a personal and professional level will build a strong customer relationship turning them into lifetime loyal customers.

Follow these 7 tips for building strong relationships:

 

1. Reduce Customer Stress
   The easier it is for customers to do business with you, the greater their likelihood of repurchasing. For example, make the selling process as easy as possible. A long, complex selling process will turn off customers and drive them to your competitors.
   
2. Pay Attention to Detail
   Customers make a direct connection between attention to detail and competence. Pay attention to such details as spelling, what you say, out of place items, grooming or dress.
   
3. Do a Road Show
   Do a 20-customer road show twice a year. Nothing beats going into the field and meeting customers face- to- face to better understand what they need and show them what you have to offer.
   
4. Over Deliver
   Create a pattern of dependability by making small promises and over delivering on results.
   
5. Be Honest
   Be an honest adviser. Present both the strengths and weaknesses of your offering. It is better for the customer to learn about your weaknesses now than to discover them later.
   
6. Stay Upbeat
   Keep your tone upbeat. Make a point to elevate the moods of people around you. Hearing your name should lift their mood.
   
7. Be Likeable
   Customers prefer to buy from people they like. Being likeable is as simple as helping customers feel happy, relaxed, and even feel good about themselves.

Are you ready to go beyond marketing and become a ‘Household Name?’

Are you prepared to become a leader in your industry?

3 Traits of All Super Sales Professionals

By Paul S. Goldner, Founder, Accent on Results (AOR)

Selling success does not happen by accident. Over the years I have had the pleasure to work with and observe a number of super sales professionals. While they all had their own style and way of doing things, they all had three things in common.

Be Proactive
First, all super sales professionals are proactive in the creation of their own success. Steven Covey, in his successful book, “First Things First”, talks about one’s circle of influence and one’s circle of concern. Your circle of influence is, all those things that you are aware of in your life that you can impact or change. Your circle of concern, on the other hand, is all those things that you are aware of in your life that you cannot impact or change.

This is a key point for the sales professional. In sales, there are a number of external factors that can impact your success – the economy, the political climate, your company’s policies and procedure and so on. Unsuccessful sales people tend to get bogged down in their circle of concern; all those things that we are aware of that we cannot change.

Successful sales people, on the other hand, focus most of their effort on their circle of influence. I have learned through experience and observation that there is always something you can be doing to move a sale forward. These things are all within your circle of influence and this book was written from the perspective of your circle of influence. Remember, if you wish to be successful, you must be proactive in the creation of your own success.

Think Strategically
Second, all successful sales professionals are strategic thinkers. By strategic thinking, I mean that they are always looking for new ways to penetrate their accounts and prospects, they are always looking for new ways to grow and develop their relationships and they are always looking for new ways to make their customers more successful.

Recently, I read a story about a sales professional who lost a major account where he was generating about $250,000 in annual business volume. He was obviously upset over the loss and tried very hard to regain the business. His efforts were without success.

If you read the story carefully, what you would learn is that the sales person was trying to penetrate account using old ideas. He went back to the same people he had always worked with and presented them with the same ideas. They saw no reason to change.

Finally, he started working with a person that he had never worked with before, a manager assigned with the task of moving the company into a new marketplace. They had no experience in the new market and the sales person saw the manager struggling over his decisions. When the sales person began to question the new manager, he learned that the manager was moving into a market that the sales person had worked in, on a prior job. While the sales person had no opportunity to make a sale, he was able to help the manger with some of his decisions. In the sales person’s own words, he noted ‘how the company began to perceive him differently as a result of the process’.

To me, successful sales people differentiate themselves on the quality of their ideas, and our sales person had done just that. He went on to describe how the company began to view him differently, on the basis of the quality of his ideas. The company began to request other information of the sales person, all in areas where he had no opportunity to make a sale. Yet he helped anyway. Eventually, the company started to buy again. In fact, the sales person was not only able to regain the account. He was able to grow it as well. His one time $250,000 per year account was now generating in excess of $1,000,000 in sales. The key to success, in this instance, was strategic thinking.

The key learning point of this story is that there are always a number of ways to approach an account. If you think strategically, you will use your creative imagination to develop new and innovative approaches in developing your customer relationships. If you think in a linear manner, you will only see one way to approach and develop a relationship. I think you will agree that strategic thinking would greatly improve our chances of success in the sales cycle.

Be Customer Focused
The third key to success in sales is that you have a strong customer focus. I once read a book by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, the author of “The Power of Positive Thinking”, that best defines customer focus.

The book was called “Stay Alive All of Your Life” and relayed the story of a small town furniture store owner. The store owner’s business was not doing well and the store owner was on the verge of going out of business. As you might expect, the store owner was quite distraught and went to Dr. Peale for consolation and advice. In turning to Dr. Peale, the store owner told the story of a woman who would come by his store every day to look at a chair in his window. Since he needed money, the woman only added to his frustration. The store owner could not understand why the woman would not come into his store to buy. Here’s what Dr. Peale had to say:

“Think first of helping Mrs. X. And to do that, you must first get to know her and her family; study her needs. Do not think so much about putting her money in your pocket as putting your chair, which she needs, into her home. Do this with all of your customers. Think of them as people needing your goods instead of yourself needing their money. Find ways of helping them overcome their difficulties, and you will overcome your own in doing so.”

Dr. Peale’s advice can be used as a beacon of light for all consultative or customer-focused sales professionals. Plainly stated, Dr. Peale tells us to learn about our customers, study their needs and solve their problems. If we do this successfully, we will, in turn, be successful. Never have truer words been spoken.

Conclusion
It should come as no surprise to you that sales is a tough profession. However, sales is also a rewarding profession. My wife is very quick to remind me that too often we look at actors and actresses when they receive their Academy Awards and forget what it took for them to be successful. To me, success lies in the journey, not in the destination. Be Proactive. Think Strategically. Be Customer Focused.