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The Lazy Salesman

The Lazy Salesman in Jan 2002, The Worst Customers I Ever Had, Fill the Funnel, Negotiation, Collecting NOs, Thinking Time, Number 76 of my Selling Manifesto, Change Now!, Sales Job Interviews, Fail, Cluetrain, Action, The Perfect Customer, Integrity, Closing, Objection Handling, Summarising, Objectives, Rapport, Networking, Decisiveness, Qualifying.

The Lazy Salesman in Feb 2002,  Thinking  Aloud, Positioning, Honesty, Move On, Practising what I Preach?, Doing the Business – Networking, Issues and Personal Wins, Small Acorns, 4:2 Rule, Conscious Competence, Question, Listen, and Summarise, Sales Teams, Hunters and Farmers, The Competition, The Truth about Selling!, What’s in it for Me? (WIIFM), The Best Salespeople I know, Presenting, Calling High, Networking Again, Birthday – Ghost Story, Little Things make a Big Difference, Difficult Customers, Prospecting, Hot (Cheesy) Tips, What Irritates me as a Client.

The Lazy Salesman in March 2002; Who Wouldn’t I Work For?, Sex Sells, End Users, Cheesy Closes, High Risk or Low Risk, High Level Contacts, The Hook, Contact K.I.T., Pricing, Risk, Contracts, Selling Something You Don’t Believe In, Corporate DNA, Good News, Rejection, Calling High Level Contacts, Good Days and Bad Days, In the Client’s Shoes (The Observers learn the most), Advance not Continuation.

The Lazy Salesman in April 2002; Wait and They Did Come!!, Persist or Walk Away, Prospecting from Cold, Wait and They will come!, Stamina, Involve the Audience, One Thing Each Day, Luck, Good Selling Organisations, Be your Word, Be Honest with Yourself, More Corporate DNA and Zipf’s Law, Smile, Exceed Expectation, Shut Up Tony, Cardbox, Grassroots Selling, Persist and Have a Dream,  Pick an Onerous Task, Guilt, Style, Good Will, Mind Expanding Questions!, Tenacity and Lunch, Recovering Lost Momentum, Competing Customers, Selling Pranks.

The Lazy Salesman in May 2002: Contact, Resource Availability Close, Hardware Store, SPACER, My own Call Reluctance, Greetings and Handshakes, How much to you care?, Advancing after a Good Meeting, What Goes Around Comes Around, Concept to Cash, The Perfect Supplier, Follow-Up, All Talk and No Product, Elio the Photographer, Battles and Wars, Dissatisfied Customer, Crooks, Exhibition Leads, Small Acorns Conversations, The P.A font of all Knowledge, Practising What I Preach, Don’t Let Things Drift, Human Touch, Dreams Really Do Come True, Find Your Market.

The Lazy Salesman in June 2002: Lost Leaders, Loss Leaders, My Sales Call Reluctance, Can you talk?, Cover your bases, Selling Should be Effortless,  9 out of 10 people just aren’t interested, Selling Picks and Shovels, Tony the Café Owner, Playing 2 games of chess, Selling Ratios, Professionals Sort, Amateurs Convince, Onerous Tasks, Marketing your website, Internet Marketing, Struggling On, Time, where does it go to?, Prospecting is Non-Urgent and Important, Sell Better or Qualify Out!,  Easy to do business with, Is Selling Manipulating?, Big Coincidence, Revenge Referrals, Engaging, Can you help me?,Trial Close.

The Lazy Salesman in July 2002: Small Things, Hang in There, Selling Motivation, Stick at It, Gap in the Market, More Contact, Anticipation.

The Lazy Salesman in August 2002: The Perfectionist Salesman, What would you do if money was no object?,  The True Cost of Business, Good Clients, Run Like Hell if you see a Bow Tie, I have a dream, Heart and Soul, Check is out with former buyers, Good Job Multiplier, What’s Your Job?, Ask what is the key issue, Keep Prospecting.

The Lazy Salesman Sept 2002: Convincer or Qualifier?, Success, Mission Statements, Cardbox, Getting back to your client, Face to Face, Email of Phone?, Give me a chance, Pest or Professional, Good Service, Referrals and Networking, Why I hate CRM Systems, Sharpen The Saw, Women, Be nice to the kids, The point of no return, Life’s too serious to be taken seriously, Very Lazy Salesman, Good Service, Prospect and Network first, Block the time out for Prospecting and Networking, You, Creating Chaos, Not Trying to Become Picasso!, Stretch Objective.

The Lazy Salesman in Oct 2002: Born Natural, Goal Setting Yet Again!, Creative Break??, Outlook Contacts, Email Qualification, Gut Fell and Instincts, Partners and Third Parties, Persistence, Time Planning, ABC’s of Relationship Selling, ABC’s of Selling, Take it Easy, Definitions of Marketing, Thinking Time or Idle Time?, Selling to Women (or Women Selling!), Losing a large deal this week.  What have I learnt?, Negotiate and Mediate, Talk to a lot of People, Hang in there or get the hell out, Network Marketing (Multi Level Marketing), Genius, Interlude, Losing Sales through Prejudice, STOP!, He who hesitates, masturbates!, 86 Contact Bill,

The Lazy Salesman Nov 2002: For those who think selling is a dirty word, It starts to go well when you give up!, Matching, Sales Competencies I wish I had more of!, Sales Competencies, Pick your second and third level clients to contact first, Presentations, The Rollercoaster of Selling, Network, Netwok, Network, Is it an Acorn or a Rabbit Turd?, Enthusiasm and Passion, Life is too short to work with jerks!, Why Can’t Management Support Big and Easy, Sales Conmen, The Perfect Sales Team, P.A Advice, Humour, Convincer – Not!, Bloody Listen, Attributes of the Best Salesperson, The Best Salesperson, Monday Monday, Persisting, Letting Go, Make that Call, Getting to Talk to People, Selling Manifesto, Leaving a Message.

 

The Lazy Salesman Dec 2002: The Future of Selling, Summary, Tenders and Proposals, Recorded Meetings, Best Price and a Get Well Plan, Tendering, Government Contracts, CRM and/or SellingPower is shit!, The Point of Destruction, The Future of Selling, Uniques – Your Network,  Why Clients Don’t Buy,  Transaction or Relationship, Why Clients Buy, Mobile Phone Salespeople, Lazy Selling, Why are you in Selling?, Publicity and Excuses, Are you easy to do business with?, Curiosity, Don’t push too hard,  The Face of Your Business,  Call the day after receiving a business card, Sell from the Heart, not the Head, Clients who don’t call you back, Have a Nice Day, Be true to yourself, The Biggest Coincidence Ever, Fun, Gathering.

Coming Soon:

 

Tuesday 31st December 2002

The Future of Selling

In some ways there will always be selling, bartering, the exchange of goods, selling yourself, making yourself appear as good as possible (or even better!)

But many people are tiring of the model of selling that has been there for what seems the last 100 years.

Push Selling, Push Advertising.  We’re becoming immune to it. We’re not that stupid.

The advertisers seem to be moving to younger and younger age groups who they feel can be influenced.

And of course there will always be corrupt people who over exaggerate themselves and their product capability.

 

Many people don’t like “Salespeople”.

They think they don’t want to be sold to, and they certainly think they themselves can’t sell, simply because they have a stereotype of what a salesperson is.

This article in FastCompany 23 Ideas for a Stellar 2003 has many pointers to the future of business and advertising.

Many of us want it to be this way but very few companies deliver on this.

 

I also had a look at selling.  I looked at the all the skill, processes, behaviours, competencies that people have told me a salesperson needs, and of course everyone has a different opinion of what makes a good salesperson, which is quite right because customers come in all shapes and sizes as well.

One thing I noticed when subdividing all these Sales “Competencies” up is that they fall into very clear patterns, and there is a pointer to the future of advertising and selling.

Traditional selling falls into 2 of seven categories these are what can be called Drive and Corporate.

Drive is the skills of things such as Tenacity, Authority, Ambition, Enthusiasm, Ambition.  These are the skills of a Rupert Murdoch type.

These are needed for a successful Salesperson.  They’re the typical stereotype of a “Salesman” and I think this bloke best represents that stereotype.

The other area is Corporate which are the traditional skills – Account Planning, Processes, Task Completion, Farming, Company Citizen.

These are required as being part of a company set-up, and not so necessary if you’re out on your own selling.

 

Now over the last 20 years the areas of Relationship Selling and Creativity have been allowed to prosper.

More rounded salespeople sell by relationships and are allowed to be more creative, more entrepreneurial.

None of this is surprising, but what is surprising are the 3 missing areas.

Integrity

Lifestyle

Inner Development

 

Now the issue of Integrity, and being honest is the current hottest theme, post Enron and WorldCom, but what’s most interesting is that no sales skills or competencies fall into the areas of Lifestyle and Inner Development.

Whoever heard of a salesperson who wants more spirituality or to spend more time with their family?

And yet I think this is the direction that selling will go.

More rounded people and a move away from the stereotype even though there will still be room for that type.

As long as there’s the current cult of the celebrity and Hollywood there will be selling stereotypes.

 

But for the rest of us we want to buy from a person and company that matches our values.

We’re sick of being conned.

If someone has our values of integrity, family and spirituality and they’re genuine about it rather than that what we think we want them to display, then I think there’s an enormous market out there to grow into these areas.  Very few companies have taken this challenge up, because those who are in charge got there doing it the old way, so why should they change.

It’s going to have to come from new people and new companies who may give the old companies and old ways of selling a good kicking that they so richly deserve.

The Larry Ellisons of the world will still be around especially as long as there are enough people to buy from that type of person, but a part of the market will defect, especially the Internet savvy people.

 

I started to realise all this a few months ago, and blow me down if Wired Magazine and FastCompany Magazine don’t have lot of articles over the last 2 months reflecting the new ways that companies should be.

 

I don’t know what the full answer is to more Integrity, Lifestyle and Spirituality in selling but I think it’s coming soon.

I don’t know about you but I don’t want to buy from a slick, well-groomed, 18 hour a day worker, spending limited time with their family, and who appears interested in me but isn’t really.

Those aren’t my values.

Are they your values?

 

Monday 30th December 2002

Summary

So I’ve written for a whole year on selling, and I’d like to summarise over these last two days what it’s all about.

I think selling can be covered in 3 key areas.

Qualifying

Networking

Rapport

 

If you can qualify then you know which business to go for, and which clients to have.  This makes selling much easier.

If you network then you don’t have to cold call or do much selling.

If you have some kind of rapport with people either naturally or learn the skills then once you find the clients your job will be easier.

 

If you combine those 3 areas with activity, kissing as many well qualified frogs as possible, then that’s all you need.

 

Simple really.

 

Good Luck (oh, and you need lots of that as well!)

 

Sunday 29th December 2002

Tenders and Proposals

I know I keep harking back to this tenders and proposals thing, but take it from me who’s trained quite a few people over the last few years;

each group of 12 people I’ve trained, nearly always has someone who was a client in procurement.

In other words they assessed a lot of proposals and tenders as customers, so they know what makes a good one and what makes a bad one.

Go ask them!

You’d be amazed at how few are good, and the good ones stand out.

Find out what it is that made a winning proposal.

It’s even better than copying the winning proposal that someone in your company has written, because they don’t know why it was good.

But people who’ve read many proposals do know a good one, and a winning one when they see it.

 

And it’s fun to ask them about the bad proposals they’ve seen, the bad companies they dealt with, and the crappy presentations they’ve witnessed!

 

Saturday 28th December 2002

Recorded Meetings

Ever been in a recorded meeting?

It’s weird. It’s not that you fear lying, it’s just that you change your commitments to maybes instead of yes’s!

I answered a request for a proposal for a Geographic Information System (GIS) for the UK Land Registry.

A real cut and paste job, and answering yes to as many questions as we dared.

We were new to the market and finding our feet.

To my utter amazement, we got shortlisted and were summoned to the Land Registry.

I walked in with my team of people.

 

And without warning the Land Registry told us they were recording the meeting.

I didn’t know how to react, I’d never been in that situation before.

I was more conscious of my words and not over committing to something we couldn’t deliver on.

 

I guess if you sell with integrity it’s not a problem, but it sure was off-putting.

 

Friday 27th December 2002

Best Price and a Get Well Plan

Sometimes in tenders it does come down to best price.

So firstly you have to ask or see if you can be tipped off what is the lowest price and see if you can match it.

Also you have to negotiate with your own company and suppliers to give you a best price to bid with.

That’s the tricky bit, getting your own company to drop its price and back you.

That is very much dependent on you showing your company that the risk is low and/or manageable and how you’re going to grow the business that you win with a “Get Well Plan”.

So your skill in bidding for price sensitive business is a good Get Well Plan, to show growth after you’ve won the current business at around cost, or even below!

 

Thursday 26th December 2002

Tendering

Yes I have some tips on tendering, especially for government business.

 

Expect to lose a few before you win a few.

Learn from your mistakes; learn how to get shortlisted and then how to win.

Simple really.  But it isn’t.

I have seen so many companies repeatedly, time after time after time losing bid after bid in different parts of their own organisation, and not pooling their experience together or learning from someone who’s won one of those damn bids.

 

Is your company easy to do business with?  The chances are if you not easy to do business with you’re not going to win!

 

Ask someone in your company who’s been a procuring customer in a past life, what made them choose the winner. 

It’s nearly always 2 things they say;

Compliance and They didn’t pack the proposal out too much with crappy generalised brochures, or over engineer the solution.

When I’m training a group of people on sales skills, I always ask if any of them have been a procuring client and to tell the rest of the group what it was like.

 

Ok you can be creative with your solution, but it’s a fine line between being creative and being smug and over complex.

Don’t bid more than the client is asking for.  If they tell you about problems 1, 2 and 3 then your solution should solve 1, 2 and 3.

 

The more you say yes to all the questions the better your chance.  Sounds obvious, but ask people who’ve assessed tendered responses, how badly written and unclear most of them are.  A wining tender is about saying yes to almost everything and managing the risk of saying yes in your own company.

Yes, it’s about selling the idea of going for the deal, not to the client but your own people.

Does your company want it bad enough to cover the risk? 

Can you show your company how you’re going to grow the business once you’ve won it to cover most of the risk? 

What is the risk?  Simple really, as I’ve said before, it’s the chances of it going wrong and the cost of putting it right.

 

Emphasise your specific track record and lots of contactable references. 

Mind you they’ll expect you to only tell them about the good ones – if you have any, so they won’t read too much into your references.

 

What not to do.  I don’t think you can influence the specification and tender that much.  Sales training courses and Sales Managers always go on about getting in there early and influencing the tender in your favour, but from my own observation I’ve never seen much of that going on. It’s all macho bragging.  Sure you can get them to like you a bit more than neutral and know who you are, yes I’ve worked for a supplier that bought the pilot business, but it had limited influence.  It might have got us shortlisted but it didn’t help us win.

 

My own advice.  Avoid open tenders like the plague!  They’re largely soul destroying and you lose lots of them unless your company is backing you 100% or you hit the jackpot, but that’s a bit like buying a lottery ticket, or 2 lottery tickets.  Why not sell in a market place that really appreciates you and wants you rather than just competing on price.

 

All things being equal you lose on some small thing in the proposal and one bad word you may have said in your presentation.

A good point I read recently that you have to get it right in the presentation because people remember the presentation more than the proposal.

Get the people who are going to install it and make it work to present (if they’re good enough).  Then the client sees who they’re getting instead of some smug slick salesperson.

 

I can’t remember if I’ve told this one yet, but the day I knew Government procurements were not for me was the day that this happened.

I was shortlisted with 2 other suppliers for a very big UK Government procurement.

All three suppliers were benchmarking their equipment with our assigned manager who the customer had given us to oversee the benchmark.

In the middle of the test I noticed our assigned manager (and I have to say I believe we lost it in having a dull manager assigned to us), had gone down to sit at one of the PC screens with his back to us.  He’d placed something ups against the screen.

“Richard,”

I asked,

“what are you doing?”

“The tender specifically states that along with PC keyboard being tactile and having at least 102 keys, the Capital Letters on the screen must be at least 3mm high, so I’m measuring the capital letters on the PC screen to make sure that they’re 3mm high!”

I knew that was the time to get the hell out of Government procurements!

 

I’m going to have a think about a few more tips on tendering for business, because it’s one of the most often talked about issues in selling nowadays.

This piece reads a bit like a patronising SellingPower magazine article.  Maybe I’ll submit it!

 

Wednesday 25th December 2002

Government Contracts

What have Government contracts and Christmas Day got to do with each other?

I was reminded the other day by someone who said they were working on a government tender over Christmas, here in Australia.

So it’s no better here than in the UK.

How dare those arrogant bastards in government release tenders that have a completion date by say end December or early January and expect bidders to work on them.

I’ve worked on a few over Christmas in my time, and looking back it make me fume that clients will make suppliers jump through hoops over Christmas and usually don’t know what to do with the bids for a few weeks when they get back in January.

How dare a client make suppliers work unnecessarily over Christmas.

 

I guess it the choice of the supplier to no bid, but it often not the choice of the salesperson but the company they work for.

And of course you have the choice of finishing the bid early well before Christmas but who achieves that?

I remember bidding on a contract near Christmas and stuck down in Reading when I was based in Manchester.

It was sole destroying working so hard and so near to Christmas away from the office parties and social life.

Looking back it wasn’t the sort of customer to have even if we’d won it, which of course we didn’t!

 

Government tenders can be sole destroying, but also greatly rewarding if you win one.

I must write some more on government tenders.

I’m not an expert on winning them but I’ve had some good experience and good tips gathered over the years.

 

Tuesday 24th December 2002

CRM and/or SellingPower is shit!

Just read an article in SellingPower called,

“The CFO, the ROI and the CRM
How to show your company’s CFO that CRM will return its investment in added sales and increased productivity – without a lot of unnecessary bells and whistles”

 

Oh how fascinating, at last an article that lays out the benefits of a Customer Relationship Management system.

What a pile of shit the article and SellingPower is given that it leaches off the CRM advertisers.

You’d think they could write a good article which cost justifies, if that is possible, CRM.

But no.  The whole article is about laying out the full costs to your CFO.

Well he/she will be really pleased about that.

“We propose to spend $1m on our CRM and we’ve budgeted and accounted for every cost so there’ll be no surprises.”

Just one thing missing…

WHAT”S THE BLOODY PAY-OFF IN HAVING A CRM?

This article which has its chance doesn’t give one costed benefit or pay back on the investment.

Not one example of where a CRM has generated benefits, that justify the investment.

If I were CFO and someone had written a justification based on this article I know where I’d shove the report.

 

Monday 23rd December 2002

The Point of Destruction

It takes a lot for a customer to leave you.

They’re loyal creatures and even high pricing and poor customer service won’t cause them to leave until it goes past the point of destruction.

I realise that today reading about Linux software.

I don’t think that people are producing good free software and other products and services for the good of the world, more that consumers feel so ripped off by suppliers charging high prices for shoddy products and services that enough of them band together to produce free goods and services.

 

So be careful.

Are you pricing to the point of destruction?

Is your customer support so bad that other players can move into the market with a radically different product?

Consumers will stay loyal if they are not abused too much.

Actually it’s the same with employees as well.

They’ll put up with so much and then leave.

That’s why Dilbert is so funny.

It tests to the point of destruction but not quite beyond.

 

Sunday 22nd December 2002

The Future of Selling

I really do believe that the future of selling is in moving away from the stereotypical “Salesman”.

Most people don’t like to be sold to by that stereotype, and don’t think they can “sell” because they think they have to behave like the stereotype.

The future of selling lies with the Project Manager and not the I.T Salesman, the Garage Mechanic and not the Car Salesman.

The people who are going to make the thing work and support it once it’s been sold.

 

The differentiator will be customer support for products.

This has such a long way to go and so few companies use this successfully as a unique differentiator.

You can see it starting to happen with the airlines.  South West Airlines, Easy Jet, Virgin.

They sell on quality of service, and value for money.

And they’re doing very well.

That’s the pointer to the future.

This is all very Tom Peters!

 

I really believe that those who will become successful at selling are those who genuinely have a curiosity about the customer and most salespeople don’t have that curiosity.  What most salespeople care about is the money and the status.  Those are good things to have a bit of, but there’s more to great selling than just that.

If you want to see the stereotype reinforced then have a look at SellingPower magazine!

I read it, but it’s mostly so full of shit, written by journalists who also have the same stereotypical view of what selling is, and supported by advertising from companies who also reinforce the shit.

 

It’s the non-salespeople who are the future of selling.

They’re the hunters who can find the prospects because they genuinely care and have curiosity about their clients’ businesses.

 

Saturday 21st December 2002

Uniques – Your Network

Often as I’ve said before, the only uniques that you have when selling to a client are you, the fact that you’re talking to them, and your company's track record, which is unique.

But I have a new unique for you.

Your Network.

What you also bring to a client is your own network of people.

Come to think of it, though I say it myself, that’s quite profound!

Your network of people, who you know in your organisation who can come up with a solution for the customer, and also who else you know who could help the customer.

In some cases, clients want to see you because you know more about their organisation than they do.

You know the politics of what’s going on and can sometimes get to see their colleagues more often than they do.

Also, you know what’s going on with their competitors and/or other similar organisations such as Local Government, Central Government, Police, where one authority is keen to know what another authority is doing.

 

So yes, you bring your network as unique.

So the better your network the better your unique.

You’d better go and build a good network then!

 

Thursday 19th December 2002

Why Clients Don’t Buy

CRAVPIT

Change – Don’t want change, can’t be bothered, too frightened

Repeat – of a bad experience, or someone else’s bad experience

Authority – The don’t have the authority, (but sometimes pretend they do)

Variance – Things are at variance with what they thought they were buying

Price – Value is less than price

Influencers – Political, Market, Personal, Unions, Government

Time – Timing

 

I’ll add a few more

Indecisive/Procrastination

They don’t like you!

 

I want to come up with a new acronym for this one as well and have a think about why clients don’t buy.

 

Wednesday 18th December 2002

Transaction or Relationship

There’s a guy who a few colleagues and friends have been dealing with recently who it doesn’t feel quite right communicating with.

And my friend hit it on the head.

This guy deals with people as transactions and not relationships.

He acts like he networks but in fact he transacts.

He read it somewhere in a book about networking and building networks but the there’s no soul to him.

There’s no glow of human warmth that makes a good natural networker.

Admittedly he seems very good at transacting and I’m sure if he keeps it going he’ll be successful.

But don’t ask the rest of us to buy into this transacting and pretend it’s networking.

 

This is also what lies at the root cause of the problem with CRM systems.

It’s nothing to do with Customer Relationship Management.

It’s more Customer Transaction Management.  There’s no heart and soul, just head and transaction.

 

Just make sure you’re relating to people, customer and clients and not just transacting with them.

That doesn’t mean you can’t do business with them, but don’t pretend you’re networking with them when you’re not.

I think you can do both, transact and network, but it shows in how you go about it and this person I’m thinking off goes about it in a way that lacks spirit.

 

Tuesday 17th December 2002

Why Clients Buy

ENSCADE

Economy - Will it make me or save me money?

Novelty - Something new, unique, different

Safety - Security, stability

Comfort – Convenience, sticking with the same supplier

Appearance – It looks good to me and/or others. Branding.

Dependability – Reliability, durability

Efficiency – It does what it says it will do

 

I’d like to add a few other reasons. 

Impulse – I just feel like a change

Fun – It’s a bit of fun to buy it.

Revenge - I’m buying out of spite for another supplier and moving my business.

Pick me up – Something to cheer me up.

 

I’m working on a new acronym for why people buy so watch this space.

 

Monday 16th December 2002

Mobile Phone Salespeople

I have to say I was impressed with all 3 salespeople in the 3 shops I went into today.

The Telstra woman was nice (attractive!), polite, knowledgeable, and not pushy at all.

The second guy in a Telstra dealer was a bit young and bluffing a bit when I asked why I should buy from them, but I gave him a hard time not because of him but because of the shoddy service I’ve received from his company.  They advised on the wrong mobile handset which I’ve been stuck with for 18 months.  I hate it.  It’s a fiddly Ericsson T28, the first two completely packed in after a week each, and this third one was repaired 3 months ago for a faulty microphone receiver.  And guess what?  It’s just packed in again.  I’m sick of it but it will cost me to buy a new handset.

 

The final salesperson in the Optus (competitor to Telstra) was also nice, polite and appeared knowledgeable.

Which one would I go back to?

That’s not really part of my criteria right now.

What I want is a good deal, but they all seem the same just dressed up differently.

They’re all ripping us off here in Australia.

A licence to print money.

There’s a chance I may be training a group of them, so it will be fun to buy a phone right now and to see how I’d put some training together.

I must say, the young guy did try to ask me what I wanted the phone for, maybe with a view to upsell.

Good for him, but unfortunately his own company have really screwed it for him.

 

I’ve left a message on their website complaining.

I have never had a reply from a website, so I guess this one will be nothing new.

I remain to be surprised.

 

Sunday 15th December 2002

Lazy Selling

What’s Lazy Selling?

I’ll tell you what Lazy Selling is.

It’s getting someone to sell on your behalf.

And why not?  If they’re better at it than you and they have better contacts than you then swallow your pride.

If a third party wants to bid your product, or you think they can bid better than you then let them do it.

If a recruiter can find you a job selling you better than you can sell you then let them do it.

If a company thinks you or your product are worth more than you’re asking then let them sell you for the extra amount which they can keep.

I’ve come across people who could sell better than me.  I let them do it.  Sell my product. Even if I lost some margin on it.

 

It pays to widen your channel and not to just sell direct.

Have as many people working on your side and behalf as possible.

There’s only one of you but hundreds of them.

When I think about it, right now I’m meeting with more people who can sell me than people I’m selling direct to.

No harm in that if the people selling me have better contacts and are better at selling.

 

We have pride. We think it’s lazy. But it’s clever.

 

Saturday 14th December 2002

Why are you in Selling?

I’ve started thinking anecdotally and as I’m writing about selling I guess it would be good idea to say why and how I got into selling.

 

I joined ICL the British computer company in 1983.

I’d worked for them the previous year as part of my sandwich industrial trainee placement from university, and they seemed happy to have me back.

I joined as a graduate trainee which meant that ICL recruited a group of students from college and university to stream into the company.

We would go through a 2 year training programme working in the various parts of company and have 4 training courses in the two years before being place permanently somewhere in the company.  The stream I was in was for pre sales and customer service.

Consequently some graduates were dying to get into selling as soon as possible, other weren’t so sure and other wanted to remain in pre sale support or customer service.

For those who wanted to get into sales the race was on to see if you could make it before the two years were up.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go into selling, but 2 events changed my mind.

 

Firstly, the day I joined ICL in ’83 I met Mark on the first course.  He asked my why I work.

To earn money of course, was my reply.

He asked me if I live to work or work to live.

Work to live of course.

I work for the money.

Well if that’s the case and money is the only motivator then why not go into sales and selling where that is the primary incentive and more money could be earned.

I thought about it and realise he was right.  If I worked to live, I might as well choose the one role which maximises that.

But could I sell?  Well, I’ve never been a natural salesperson nor had the inclination.

 

One thing changed that and it’s the case for many people, not just in sales.

I worked with a crap salesperson!

They were so bad that I realised I could at least be as good as them!

And that’s often how people get along in life; they don’t think they can do something, they see someone worse doing it and realise they’d be at least as good as the person who’s crap at it!

So I made my mind up.  Sales is for me.

Now to get into sales you have to jump through many hoops, but somehow I got lucky.

Firstly I found a mentor and coach; someone who helped me and gave me the inside track and knew where the quick openings were.

Thank you Derek.  He coached me in my panel presentation to make it into sales, convinced the Sales Manager I had what it took.

Et Voila!  I never looked back.

I’ve never been a great salesperson.

I’ve had my good times, but I never had the real drive and focus.

Do you know why?

Because I was in it for the money, but only enough money to live.

I neither cared about the job or the money enough.

I did it with my head not my heart.

 

That’s why I got out of selling and into training, because my heart wasn’t in it.

My heart is in training, and now I have to sell my training, but it’s far easier and I’m much better at it because my heart is in it now.

I believe in what I’m doing and I believe in what I’m selling.

I believe I’m making a difference to people.

 

So why are you in selling, and what drives you?

 

Friday 13th December 2002

Publicity and Excuses

It’s so hard to go out and meet clients and customers without the right promotional materials.

We all use it as an excuse to not get out there and see more people.

I’ll do it when I have the right story to tell.

I’ll do it when I have the right marketing material and brochures.

I’ll do it when I know what’s unique about our offering.

I’ll do it when marketing have told me what’s unique about our offering.

I’ll do it when I’ve written my own material.

Just get out there anyway and it will sort itself out.

 

Stop allowing the perfectionist to stop you getting out there.

Looking back and now working for myself I realise how much I held myself back and watched whole organisations hold themselves because they didn’t have the right material.

And worse instead of creating the material they’d wait and blame marketing all the time.

And lord knows the marketing people usually deserved the blame, because personally speaking I’ve never worked for great marketing companies who even remotely understood the meaning of brand.

 

However what I realise is to just get on with it.  Just Do It.

I remember a few years ago, being held back by people who didn’t have the right material to go and talk to customers.

But did they do anything about it?

No.

Have they yet done anything about it?

No.

Meanwhile all these American companies with great branding and materials get away with mediocre products.

 

I say this because being out there this week having meetings, people have asked me for something to leave with them.

And I’ve not really thought it through.

If I had thought it through I wouldn’t have seen them yet, I’d be spending day, weeks and months developing perfect material.

Instead I’m in a mass panic today working out what the hell to send people.

It’s actually because I have so much to send them and not because I have nothing.

Hell, I’ve just developed a 170 slide presentation!

The issue for me is being succinct.

Cutting down on everything and at the same time expressing what I do.

Of course I’m planning the next link on this website to be some of my training material.

Watch this space.

 

Thursday 12th December 2002

Are you easy to do business with?

Are you and your company easy to do business with?

I was thinking today how difficult some people make it to business with them.

It’s almost like they don’t’ want your business.  They don’t want anyone’s business.

Business prevention.

 

I.T companies who I worked for never seemed easy to do business with.

One wasn’t that bad, but they were far from good.

The other was worse because as an American company in the UK there was an extra level of management controlling “Europe Africa Division”.

So any big business that you were putting together had to go through them and sometimes on to America.

Each division also added a mark-up to the manufacturing cost, making things very uncompetitive.

This was a long time ago so maybe things have changed.

 

Other I.T companies seem easier to do business with. 

Microsoft, HP, Sun, Apple seem easy to do business with.  I could be wrong on this and giving bad examples, but just a subjective impression.

You might not agree with Microsoft pricing policy and strategy, but pricing, upgrades, information seem easy.

 

On a lower level, I hate filling in forms that are unnecessary with information that no-one is going to use or could possibly use because there’s so much asked for.

Why ask me for information that is already on my business card and CV?

I was presenting a few weeks ago and someone had phoned me up to ask for my profile.

I asked them what was not on my CV that they wanted.

No real reply.

So what did they do, instead of giving out my CV to the attendees they copied the first paragraph and enlarged it.

It looked terrible.

Why do people chop and change things which look perfectly good already?

Why is that people interfere and want as much information as possible that they do nothing with?

 

And that brings us on to Risk Assessments.

Risk Assessments are simple. 

What are the chances of it going wrong?

And how much will it cost us to put it right?

Why we salespeople have to fill in 30 to 100 page documents that nobody can possibly read or digest or use and that don’t answer those fundamental questions, I really don’t know.

 

Client used to ask for performance guarantees.

My company refused them.

“Fitness for Purpose” they used to say back, whatever the hell that meant.

Why not give a client a performance guarantee?

It depend how much it costs if the system doesn’t work.

It would have cost us $100 if the processor didn’t’ work.

If would have cost us $30,000 if the discs didn’t perform.

So why not give a performance guarantee on the processor and make sure the discs were sized correctly.

Delight the customer by being easy to do business with.

 

I was having lunch at a Café yesterday.

The waitress was a delight.

She kept asking us if everything was ok, could she get us anything, what else did we want.

It so stands out when you get good service.

 

Are you easy to do business with?

I hope I am. 

 

Wednesday 11th December 2002

Curiosity

The reason most salespeople aren’t that good at selling, or could be better, is that they have no curiosity!

They don’t really care about the customer; they just want to sell them something!

In other words, they don’t have a curiosity about the business that’s buying their product.

Oh sure, they pretend to be interested, because they learnt it on a course to ask open questions. 

But they really have no real curiosity about the clients business, no desire to see the business and actually spend some time with the end users, using the product they’re selling them.

Any curiosity most salespeople display is in the head and not their heart.  And I don’t mean intellect.

When I’m training or presenting, and I hold up a book or magazine I recommend, how many people do you think come up to me at the break and have a look at the book?

About 1 in 30.  1 in 30 people are naturally curious.

In contrast, technical people, support people, who have to make the product or service work, usually have a heartfelt intellectual curiosity about the client’s business, because often their areas of interest match the clients.

 

Skills are the job skills we have or aim for.

Job Market is the demand for our skills.

Interests are our personal interests and hobbies; the things which capture our passion.

Now most of us have a job in the two overlapping circles (marked X) of Skills and Job Market.  We have what the Job Market wants.

And most of us settle for that.

Selling is usually in that area as well.

 

The ideal job is marked ü. It brings interests to combine with our skills and the job market demand.

What I found interesting about 2 years ago when I was training a group of technical people is their interest was computers and Information Technology.

They loved I.T.  I.T was their interest.  So dealing with clients was part of their interest.

Some salespeople may love selling, but is their product or their client, an interest? Rarely.

 

I remember years ago a seasoned and successful salesperson telling me to go down to my client and spend a day there with the users using the systems I was selling, and understanding what it is they do.

Did I?  Did I hell.

In all the 15 I sold I.T I never spent more than a cursory “management” tour of the computer room.

I never spent time in Medical Records Department, or Patient Admissions using a Patient Admin System, or with Magistrate Courts Admin staff, or with a Police Command and Control system, or any I.T department running the systems I sold them.  I regret that, because now I’m more curious than I used to be.

 

Now I sell Sales Training and Development, and I’m very curious and interested in my clients’ organisations.

It comes from my heart and with curiosity.

I think the technical non salespeople make good hunters looking for new prospects because they have a natural curiosity about their customers.

Most salespeople are only interested in making the sale.

That’s fine, and it can work, but there’s something missing, isn’t there?

Mind you, curiosity killed the cat!

 

Tuesday 10th December 2002

Don’t push too hard

It could be the Yielder in me that wants to be nice all time, but a few of the meetings I had today, I just felt it was appropriate to let things go and not push too hard.

If I could do it all again, I’d have done the same thing again.

If you have enough prospects you can afford to let clients move at their own pace more or less.

It’s only if you have to close that deal that you start to try and close that deal!

The judgement is not will they go for it, but when will they go for it.

If they’re going for it in a few months time, then let them, at least you know it will happen in a few months time (unless something happens in the meantime!).

But if you have enough prospects all happening at different times, then you can be relaxed about it.

If you don’t have enough prospects then no wonder you’re trying to “close” the ones you have!

Do we think clients/customers are stupid and susceptible to cheesy closing techniques?

If we do, then what does it say about us when someone tries those things on us?

 

Monday 9th December 2002

The Face of Your Business

“If you want to manage customer relationships,

invest in your people, not in software.”

There’s a great article in this month’s Business 2.0 magazine called “The Face of Your Business”

 

A great one for slagging off CRM, and asking why don’t companies spend the money instead of CRM on people!

“Maybe companies are spending on the wrong thing.

Before you can manage a relationship, you first need to build it,

And relationships are built less by fancy data mining than by what happens to customers when they actually make contact with the organisation.”

 

Here Here.

 

Sunday 8th December 2002

Call the day after receiving a business card

This is a bit like sending a thank you letter or email.

If someone gives you their business card, give them a call the following day. 

They’ll love you.

It shows you care.  Not only did you take their card off them, but you took it and read it, and called them!

How often does that happen?  Not very often.

I’d love it if someone actually showed they’d done something with my card other than lose it, or put it in their Outlook system and lost forever.

 

People are proud of their business cards, it says who they are, it’s their egos on show.

Call them.

I don’t always do it, but I must say I’ve been very good at it recently.

Sometimes an email as soon as I get back to the office.

Business Card = EGO \ Massage it!

(It’s good to reconnect with the therefore sign (\) after all these years!)

 

Saturday 7th December 2002

Sell from the Heart, not the Head

If you can do it, sell from the Heart, and not the Head.

Sometimes that’s easier said than done.

Most salespeople are just doing a job.  They neither love nor hate the product they’re selling.

They’re doing it for the money, they’re not there to con you, but they’re not there because they passionately believe in you or the product.

It’s difficult to sell from the heart if you don’t believe in the product.

It comes from the head because it’s an intellectual exercise; a game of knowledge, and selling by numbers.

Also there’s a particular skilled type of salesperson who seems to show total enthusiasm for what’s currently being sold, and then can switch off and move to the next product with apparent equal enthusiasm.

I’ve never been able to do that, often thinking, why am I selling this end of range shit!  Would I buy this stuff, if I was in their position?

I hate it when I know there’s something new coming out and you have to sell the current stock.

Difficult to sell from the Heart then!

And non salespeople seem to have more of a curiosity about the client, and reasons for buying.

Salespeople seem to ask because that’s what they’ve been trained to do; they don’t really have a curiosity about the clients business.

I’m more genuinely curious about a clients business and how I can help, than I’ve ever been.

I often want to help more than they’ll let me help.  Do if for free because that’s what drives me now.

 

On the other hand, I’ve been asked would I sell something I don’t believe in.

Hell, yes!

The reason being, who am I to judge what’s right for someone else, let them decide.

And it’s not that any product is wrong, because price should adjust for its shortcomings.

The main reason is; Have you ever tried to sell something you passionately believe in?

And the customer’s not interested.  It’s so damn frustrating that the idiots don’t want what you so clearly realise they need.

Much easier to not care and be detached, by selling something you don’t care about!

You often have more success with that, than something you believe in.

Here it is, take it or leave it!

 

Having said that, I’m becoming more passionate again as I create my own product and sell it.

It’s a part of me, heart and soul, especially my new training material, which I think is becoming kick-ass and very entertaining and amusing.

I’m just about to roll it out to the big wide world, so let’s see what happens next year.

I may do some trial runs just to test it.

My heart is in this one, which can sometimes be a disadvantage because I end up talking too much because I’m so passionate and enthusiastic, but hopefully my heartfeltness will come through.

 

If you sell from the head it shows.  People can spot it.  There’s something missing.

With the heart, anything can happen, but it’s genuine and fun!

 

Friday 6th December 2002

Clients who don’t call you back

I was writing back to Glenn today and …..

 

Glenn,

You are spot on.  This is my current biggest selling gripe.  Clients who don't call me back.  These are clients I know, and have done business with, clients who I've personally trained, and they don't even have the courtesy to call back or email and say no thanks.  I've written recently about today's technology being used to communicate less and screen out people.

 

A friend of mine who's been doing telesales in the UK, in her words

"I asked to be put through to the IT Dept of a company today and I got a voicemail message saying I had reached the mailbox for unsolicited sales calls!!!!!"

What are the chances of them replying?

 

And you're absolutely right; the most successful people, the busiest people, are the ones who call back.  I have one client company who has locations across Australia.  I can predict by the way each location director has treated me, how each of their businesses will run this year.  Those that come back to me, even to say no thanks, will be successful, those who haven't come back to me, won't be successful.  The way they treat me is the way they treat everyone.  And it's not my style to go to the top of an organisation and get the big chief to hit them with a big stick and make them talk to me.

 

You're right to build a list of "A" clients.  Tom Peters says,

"YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE YOUR CLIENTS! (Wanna be-stay-get COOL … Work With Cool Clients!) (YOU ARE YOUR CLIENT LIST.)

(LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO WORK WITH JERKS.)"

 

There is another school of thought which says stick with even the bad ones; you never know when something changes.  I'd recommend that rather than just ditch them, you put them to the back of the call rotation and call them in 6 months to 1 year's time.

 

But if you can build a good "A" list with enough business for you, why do you ever need to call a "jerk" again.  To hell with them.  The only reason we have bad clients is because we've not given ourselves the "Luxury of Choice" by having lots of good clients!

 

Thursday 5th December 2002

Have a Nice Day

Just read this today, about the difference between American customer service and European customer service

BBC NEWS | UK | Have a nice day? No thanks

American customer service is perceived as over the top and false, and European customer service is non-existent.

There is such a huge potential for organisations that offer good customer service as a means of differentiator and added value to generate more revenue and profit.

We all know what we want, someone who is polite, knowledgeable, honest, human, and gives good service.

I often do an exercise in training, asking a group to name their favourite organisations and the ones they hate.

I ask them what they like about some organisations and hate about others.

That’s the way to sell.  Sell like the organisations and salespeople you like, and don’t sell like the ones you hate.

If you think saying “have a nice day” irritates you then don’t say it yourself.

What do you like about the people who have successfully sold to you?

Just one thing to be aware of.  No-one admits to liking being sold to by a rogue, but in fact many love loveable rogues.

Especially ones called Gary, which I’ve written about before.

 

Wednesday 4th December 2002

Be true to yourself

The older I’m getting, the less compromising I am, the more true to myself I’m becoming.

People trust me to tell it the way it is.

My integrity is starting to shine through, which is leading to a passion about what I believe in.

Most of my passion was bled dry when I started working for corporates from aged 20.

It’s taken me a while after leaving corporate life to really find my feet and passion.

Still more to come.

 

What I’m saying is that when you’re not in such a compromised position with product and what your employer wants of you, it’s a damn sight easier to sell and it comes naturally.  Selling never came naturally to me, but I’m finding it is now, more and more.

 

Tuesday 3rd December 2002

The Biggest Coincidence Ever

This isn’t so much a selling story as the biggest coincidence I’ve ever witnessed!

A professor from a Business Management School was running a workshop for new Salespeople.

I was sitting in on the training.

There were six new salespeople being trained.

It was a days training on economics.

The professor was training them in analysis tools for corporates to foresee future trends.

He used the Shell/BP Brent Spar decommissioning as an example of a company not anticipating the economic damage done to the companies by not foreseeing environmental issues as being key to consumers.

He said something like

“Imagine if you were Shell/BP and you were hit with the protests, what would you do?  You’d blame the decommissioning engineer!”

He then points at one of they guys in the group and says,

“You, what do you think would happen to you if you were the BP/Shell decommissioning engineer for the Brent Spar platform?

You’d be scapegoated, blamed and sacked, when in reality it’s an environmental, consumer issue which the marketing people should have spotted.”

 

The guy replied sheepishly,

“You’re right, I’d be sacked.”

 

This trainee salesperson then said something that made both mine and the professor’s jaw drop.

“My father was the chief decommissioning engineer for the Shell/BP Brent Spar platform!”

“What!  Your father was the chief engineer?”

Yes.

And what did they do to him?

They sacked him!!!!!!!!!

 

Now what are the chances of the hypothetical situation being recreated in classroom and narrowed down even to a 1 in 6 chance, and the professor points at one of them and says, “Just supposing….” And that is the guy’s son?

I’ll never ever forget that one.  And what makes it great is the good professor said hypothetically they’d sack him.

In real life they did!!

 

Monday 2nd December 2002

Fun

I’m having a lot of fun re-writing my PowerPoint slides for a new workshop.

I’m laughing out loud at my own slides.

I guess right now, I’m not creating them for someone else, I’m creating them for me.  The creative shackles are off.

And this is where I want to go with this, instead of developing for clients, they come to me begging for the material!

What can I show you here which will give you some idea but not give it all away.

Let’s re-create one of them here.

 

No let’s not!  I can’t without giving too much away.

My fear is that I.T organisations will find it too funny!

Maybe they want something more “professional” and serious!

Well I’m having fun anyway.

 

Sunday 1st December 2002

Gathering

Why are so many people reluctant to “sell”?

Why do people think selling is a dirty word?

What is it that people think selling is?

I guess most people think selling is convincing people into something they don’t want.

What about selling yourself?  Don’t we all have to sell ourselves at some point in our lives?  Interviews?

So what is it that people think selling is?

 

Do these people think everything in life is played in a fair way?  Is self promoting yourself wrong?

Do they not realise that those who are successful in life aren’t the best at what they do, but self promoters.

 

Self promoters do 3 things.

  1. They Network.  The talk to people, they help other people talk to other people.
  2. They Persist.  Despite all their knockbacks they know what they want and stick at it through thick and thin.
  3. They have a memorable Style.  There’s something about them that get them noticed; either natural or developed.

Now where is the “selling” in all of that?

That’s right, there isn’t.

 

Maybe the word “selling” should be changed.

A friend, Rob Lamicela has an idea for what the word should be.  GATHERING.

That’s right.  Instead of the dirty word “selling”, what is it that people who say work in a news team do?

They gather.  They gather information.

So if that feels more comfortable then why not call it GATHERING.

You gather information.

There.  Does that feel better?