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.
Monday 30th
September 2002
I reckon that
selling falls on a scale between convincer and qualifier.
Are you a good convincer or a good
qualifier?
If you’re both then great, but it’s my
observation that most salespeople fall somewhere on the scale.
What is your preferred style, where do
you fall on the scale?
I know that I’m a good qualifier and a
crap convincer, so I’m far on the left with qualifying skills.
I don’t convince very well but I know
where to go for the business that doesn’t need much convincing.
Other are much better convincers and
therefore don’t need to be as good qualifiers, because they close/win more
often with the client/customer.
If you’re a better qualifier than
convincer then you need to call on the right people or do lots of calls to make
up for your poor convincing skills!
I should know!
Sunday 29th
September 2002
I’m Sales Training
tomorrow, and I’m finding new ways to express the same thing.
Found this quote today.
“The successful person is the individual
who forms the habit of doing what the failing person doesn’t like to do!” Donald Riggs
That just about sums it up, doesn’t it.
If you want to keep on being what you
are keep doing what you’re doing.
If you want to change or improve, do something
different.
Saturday 28th
September 2002
Pile of crap if you ask me.
Beware of any company that has a mission statement.
How do I know?
Well check these ones generated by the Dilbert Random Mission Statement Generator;
All generated at random!
Thursday 26th September 2002
If you believe that Keeping in Touch (K.I.T) is one of the most important things then keeping a cardbox is a great way to do it.
Buy a card box. 12 separators one
for each months of the year, and four more numbered 1-4 for the current weeks
of the current month.
Put all your contacts on cards and place them into the months when you’re
next going to contact them.
It could be in a few months time or a few weeks time.
When the cardbox has been in operation for a few weeks, you will have a
group of cards for people to contact in that month.
After you’ve spoken to them, you then use your judgement to work out when
to contact them next.
You then have a rotation of people to contact and stay in touch with,
names, numbers, details you talk about.
Some people claim they do this all in Outlook but either I’m missing
something or it just doesn’t have the flexibility of physical cards.
It takes time to set up, and discipline to keep it going, but if you’re
looking for the route of selling success, than K.I.T and networking is the
source.
If you are also good at qualifying, then that’s it done!
I’d better practise what I preach and set mine up properly when I get
back to Melbourne.
Wednesday 25th September 2002
I’ve sent a good few emails out over the last 2 weeks.
And guess what? It really shows up
who are the best salespeople by the way in which they come back to me and
maintain contact.
I could probably have predicted who would come back to me quickly.
It also reflects in how successful their part of the organisation is.
Those that have or make the time, seem to be the most successful.
What they’re good at is keeping in touch with people at minimum effort.
Even if they answer is no, or we have no answer, they maintain the
contact.
It really really shows up who are the best.
And the others wonder why business struggles, why others are more lucky
than them.
“The more I practise, the luckier I get.”
It’s a real eye opener to me over this last week about how much I should
maintain consistent contact with people.
The more experience I have in selling and training, the more I believe
Keeping in Touch, and setting an Objective, are the two most important factors.
I was illustrating this to a group yesterday.
I said, I bet you as consumers are all making purchasing decisions right
now on products like a DVD or a car.
If the DVD supplier or car supplier get you at the right time then just
like a houseowner with burst pipe seeking a plumber the decision is
instantaneous, no selling needed.
That’s why “professionals sort and amateurs convince”
And those that are looking to buy a DVD, couldn’t but help talking about
DVDs, they’re bursting to buy.
That’s why Abe Grauman is so good, he knows who is bursting to buy
insurance because they’ve just had a baby.
It’s called a feeding frenzy when you feed fish in a barrel.
What you’re looking to do is create a barrel of fish; customers who are
so keen to buy it becomes a feeding frenzy.
1. What I learn from all this is to create something which becomes a
feeding frenzy.
2. Set up my cardbox of names again and phone people on rotation over the
year.
Tuesday 24th September 2002
Someone pointed out today that if a client is ducking an issue, it’s easy for them to avoid a decision if you contact them by phone or email.
But if you meet them face to face it’s more difficult to avoid the issue
and you can bring the decision to a head.
Just one problem with that, how do you get the face to face meeting
without using phone or email?!
Just turn up?
Monday 23rd September 2002
I don’t have the answer to this one.
Do you make contact by phone or email?
They both have their pros and cons.
Phone is the standard. Any backing
off from using the phone suggests you have Sales Call Reluctance.
You’re worried about making contact by phone and it will hold you back.
On the other hand you can’t always get hold of people by phone, you often
get their voice mail or P.A.
I don’t like leaving messages; it means the ball is in their court and if
you phone again you’re nagging.
Email is seen as less personal and less direct, but it gives people the
chance to read at their leisure.
The problem is many people don’t reply to emails, and you don’t know if
they’ve received and read it.
It’s very interesting to ask people and clients how they’d rather be
contacted.
You get a spectrum of opinion.
My view as a client. I love
email. I love sending them, I love
receiving them, and it’s my preferred method of contact nowadays.
I don’t want someone contacting me by phone and trying to sell me
something or explain who they are, but I love email contact, I can take it in
at my leisure and it’s stored away.
I’m good at responding to email, so I’m an easy client to contact, but
other clients?
This last week I sent out quite a few emails, and out of 12 clients, one
has responded so far.
They’re all clients I know and have met, but a response of 1 in 12 is not
very good so far, let’s see what happens.
On the other hand I could have spent a long hour each day trying to
contact them last week, and that wasn’t practical.
Me, I prefer email, and some people I’ve recently spoken to prefer that,
but I’m not sure how successful it is.
Sunday 22nd September 2002
And more from the
Rob Lamicela stable.
“ASK FOR A GO - Give me the
opportunity to prove myself, ask them for the opportunity no matter how small
to gain their confidence.”
Now think about
that, even though they’re not interested, you’re asking for the chance to prove
yourself.
Genius. Okay, the tasks may be too onerous or
Herculean but you’re opening the door.
Let me prove
myself.
Who could refuse
that offer?
Not many!!
Saturday 21st September 2002
Thank you Rob
Lamicela! I hope you don’t mind me quoting you.
“We were talking about the
fine line between being professional and becoming a pest.
I went to a gig last night
and almost wasn't going to say hi to a potential compering client I have met
before.
He told me he was stuck for
an MC just a few days ago but couldn't get hold of my number.
The lesson for both of us:
You can't really burn anyone from being persistent.
If you lose them just
because you followed up, you weren't going to get them anyway.”
And that last line is genius. If you lose them just because you followed
up, you weren’t going to get them anyway!!
Friday 20th September 2002
Can you imagine how
much extra business would be generated by a restaurant if all the waiters asked
the people if everything is ok, what else would you like?!!!
What if the
people in shops actually asked the people wandering round, what information
they’d like to know, or how can they help?
What if all
suppliers of products and services, phoned their clients to see how things are
going?
Can you imagine
how much extra business that would generate?
Huge amounts.
It reminds me, I
must call my clients.
Actually, I’ll
report back.
Email or Phone?
That’s tomorrow’s
dilemma.
Thursday 19th September 2002
I amaze myself
sometimes at how little prospecting I do and yet I seem to find business.
How do I do it?
Sitting in cafés
with people I like, that’s how.
Networking with
them and getting referrals.
Not overtly, it
just seems to crop up.
Also whilst I
remember, I must follow up on the work I’ve done (and products/services you’ve
sold) and see what’s going on.
If only suppliers
followed up on their sales.
I was just
thinking about my mobile supplier.
My contract is
coming up for renewal in 3 months time.
If only they got
off their arses and phoned me up prior to renewal, instead of sitting in the
shop waiting for passing trade and relying on advertising.
I’d favour
renewing with them, but right now it open competition.
All they have to
do is make a small gesture and they have my business.
Let’s see what
they come up with, with the two broken handsets.
I really don’t
think they care because one lost sale in a day isn’t much to them.
I bet it is to
their senior management!
More on this
tomorrow with Good Service.
Wednesday 18th September 2002
It’s time to take
a stand here.
Risky, because there’s
powerful forces at work including companies I train.
Having trained
people to use a CRM I know a bit about it.
Firstly, what is the total cost of a CRM system,
and I mean total cost, and what is the payback?
Sure it's about commitment from people high and low capturing and sharing
knowledge, but how much of a salesperson's time is used up just filling in CRM
data, account planning, meetings, etc.
You could spend the whole day every day filling up
the data systems.
So is there a payback for the salesperson?
From my observation, there is no way you can't
impede the day-to-day workload.
At the end of the day you're capturing more
information.
What is the business payback for the salesperson?
The idea of a CRM is that it can be used as a
single source of information on customers/clients, and everyone will have the
same information and sing off the same hymn sheet. Nice idea. In reality, I’ve
seen a CRM implemented as a forecasting system because the CEO complained that
a companies forecasting was poor and someone suggested that CRM could be used
as a common forecasting system.
And that's how it was implemented, as a forecasting system, with maybe a few
bits of information added if anyone can be bothered.
There was nothing wrong with the evolved forecasting
system except the information going into it, and the culture of fear.
A CRM system is great for process driven people and over-preparers, and
Account/Client Directors who don't talk to their own people so getting them to
fill in something electronically is ideal. It also re-enforces the bottleneck
where everything has to go through the Client Director.
The reality is that most salespeople, I'd say 60% hate process, and get nothing
from a CRM. There's no What's in it for me (WIIFM). Sales Managers and Sales
Directors love CRMs because they're not very good at managing people anymore so
they think they can manage them electronically. You could spend all day, every
day filling in CRM details, look very good, and never get out there and meet
clients.
That's the crunch, a CRM is very much secondary to meeting people, getting out
there and networking. Sure you need the information, but it becomes an excuse
for not prospecting. You can get constipated with information.
From a customer/client perspective, how much does a CRM system help. Well sure
it would be nice if my supplier would behave as one entity, and I'd be
impressed if telesales could see all the business I lodge with their company,
but again, it's secondary. I want suppliers to set a strategy of wanting to
contact their clients, and ask themselves what information is required in a
perfect world. In other words, contact first, information secondary.
So what makes CRM unique? I don't know. Mr Siebel seems to come up with a
technology that enabled PC and servers to update each other in real-time, and
he then found a solution needing his technology, et voila CRM.
Monday 16th September 2002
Take some time
out to Sharpen The Saw.
Suppose
you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a
tree.
“What
are you doing?” you ask.
“Can’t
you see?” comes the impatient reply. “I’m sawing down this tree.”
“You
look exhausted!” you exclaim. “How long have you been at it?”
“Over
5 hours,” he returns, “and I’m beat! This is hard work.”
“Well
why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen the saw?” you inquire.
“I’m sure it would go a lot faster.”
“I
don’t have time to sharpen the saw,” the man says emphatically. “I’m too busy
sawing!”
Stephen Covey “The 7 Habits
of Highly Effective People”
You
have to take some time out to Sharpen the Saw, both in you current job and
future planning, otherwise it’s going to take a lot longer than 5 hours to saw the
tree down, and you’re not doing your family any favours either.
I
understand the grind and having to earn the money now, but that shouldn’t stop
you dreaming and setting goals for ideally where you’d like to be in 5 and 10
years time.
And
guess what? It starts to come true.
It
won’t happen tomorrow, and you don’t have any time tomorrow.
Things
don’t change overnight, and it doesn’t mean a drop in salary to change things,
you’d be amazed at how when you set things in place they start to happen in weird
ways.
You
have to allow yourself to dream 5 years hence write it down, and it starts to
happen.
Sunday 15th September 2002
Women make 53% of all car-buying decisions, and 83% of all purchasing decisions.
I don’t know where I got those percentages from but I read them
somewhere.
The point is, just make sure who the buyer and decision maker is.
Ask women who’ve been in that role, how badly they’ve been treated by
most salesmen.
It’s such a simple thing to put right and lead to many more sales.
Saturday 14th September 2002
I must say, it always impresses me how nice the QANTAS staff are with my baby daughter Georgia.
Be nice to the kids.
It’s the way to win over the parents!
Thursday 12th September
2002
There’s a point at which we make a choice.
Do we go off and have that coffee and snack, or do we make that call.
Just hold on one minute and pull yourself up as you distract yourself yet
again.
Snap out of it, give yourself a mental jolt, and get back to making those
calls, or making the call you should have made.
What does it take to get you to prospect?
It’s the most important thing you can do.
Ok, call it networking then but either way at the point of moving away
from the desk and phone, give yourself a choice.
Do I distract myself or do I make a few more calls?
Wednesday 11th September 2002
One of Charles’s favourite lines.
Life is too serious to be taken seriously.
Just watching the firemen’s viewpoint of Sept 11.
Shot by two french brother’s doing a doucmentry on a rookie fireman.
They were with the watch that were first in the World Trade Centre.
Much of the footage we saw on that first day was their footage.
The footage of the first plane flying over the people doing the test for
gas was their footage.
It’s unbelievable. Fate.
Two brothers survive, the rookie survived, the whole crew of the
firestation survived.
Whilst you have the chance, don’t take it so seriously.
Tuesday 10th September 2002
This is it for today.
Monday 9th September 2002
What a difference good service makes when you’re a client.
We had a disaster at the Medina Apartments in Brisbane.
They were nasty, rude and effectively robbed us of $400 by playing to
their rules.
Having said we’d never do business with Medina again, it’s convenient to
stay with them down here in Sydney.
And why should Sydney be penalised for what they’ve done to us in
Brisbane.
And what a difference. They’re
nice, pleasant, helpful.
We were supposed to change rooms tomorrow, but they’ve sorted that out so
we can stay in the same room.
Of course I told them about what happened in Brisbane. They couldn’t believe it, and told me to
complain.
It seems a shame (as they also pointed out) that the rest of the
organisation suffers for the indiscretion of another part of it.
Let’s see what happens when we complain to the big manager who runs both
Sydney and Brisbane.
Sunday 8th September 2002
Someone (Rob) was
explaining that those who have money, save first and spend after.
Those who don’t
have money, spend first and save what’s left, which is usually nothing.
That rings so
true, especially in my case!!
In a selling
environment, he pointed out the same thing.
We should all
look at our time and plan the prospecting and networking time first and then
the rest of the week.
Spot on. The most important part of selling (as well
as qualifying) is the time devoted to prospecting and networking.
So it makes sense
to block time out each week to prospect and network.
Amazingly, I
wrote about this on Thursday and Rob gave me his wisdom on Friday without
prompting!
Another idea is
to go somewhere away from distractions to make the phonecalls in a block of
time.
Thursday 5th September 2002
The key to all
success is the number of contacts you make with prospective clients in a
consistent basis.
If you believe
this to be true then you must block out time every week to make those contacts.
2 Blocks of 2
hours per week for Selling contacts.
1 Block of half
an hour each day for Networking contacts.
In some cases the
two may overlap, to become 3 half hour blocks per week and ideally 2 two hour
blocks per week.
Do I practise
what I preach?
I’d better,
because my funnel is drying up a bit!!
Wednesday 4th September 2002
Selling starts
with you.
I was thinking of
putting a new course together and that’s what I’d start with.
You.
Why are you here
today?
How satisfied are
you?
Do you want to
change anything?
What do you want
to change?
How are you going
to change it?
I’m thinking
about this in education in general, to make it you centred instead of trainer
or subject centred.
Tuesday 3rd Sept 2002
Back to chaos theory again.
The more butterfly’s wings you set flapping, the more frogs you kiss, the
more you put out to the world what it is you want,
the more the world hears what you want and gives it back to you.
I wanted to go train in America for a week.
It looks like that will happen because someone heard me say I wanted to
do that.
It’s also helped me get the possibility of the UK as well.
It reminds me to set of as much possibility as possible with as many
people as possible and not to be put off by knock backs.
Monday 2nd September 2002
A great quote today from a manager to his staff.
“We’re not trying to become Picassos here with our selling.
We’re just doing our best. Go and
contact people.
Not everyone who takes up art becomes a Picasso.
It doesn’t mean that no one should take up painting.
Do your best. Paint as best you
can.
People who go to art school go regardless of them becoming a Picasso.
So go and see your customers, sell to them, and you don’t have to be what
Picasso is to art.”
He continued the analogy.
“Selling is an art, but you need to study the science of art to become an
Artist!”
Love it.
Very few people are born to salespeople, just like few are born Picassos,
but you can study the science to become a good artist or salesperson.
Sunday 1st September 2002
One of the keys
to success, if not the key to success, is to have a stretch objective
for a meeting, as well as a normal objective and a fall-back objective.
I may have said
this before, but I found this great quote which reminded me of shooting for the
stars and only hitting the sun.
“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and
we miss it,
but that it is too low and we reach it.”
Michelangelo via Tom Peters!
When I observe
role-plays, the single things which would most improve selling capability is
not masses of process and planning, it’s not silky sales skills, qualifying, or
convincing.
It’s setting an
objective for a meeting which includes a stretch objective, something which is
beyond what you think you can achieve.
Oh, and of course
remembering to try and achieve that objective in the meeting, and reviewing how
it went against the objectives you’d set.
Simple really.