Salesgrok

Sales Guru

Last post I mentioned a mentor of mine, John Waisath.  Since I hadn't seen him in years I decided to track him down and see what he was up to.  After no results on the popular search engines, I ended up getting to him through his daugter Jennifer Waisath Harris on LinkedIn.  Hasn't social media made the world seem so much smaller?

John and I worked together at Dahill Industries (a Sharp electronics dealer) in the mid-90s.  The Sales VP partnered me up with John,  a veteran in more ways then one, so he could show me the ropes. This was my second sales job and I was still pretty green.  John knew it, but he threw me right into the fire anyway.  

When we met for lunch, all the great memories of the sales blitzes, training sessions and sales calls started cueing up in my memory banks. John is a soft spoken man, with blue eyes as intense and sharp as his mind. The red hair that made him stand out in a crowd had faded to gray, but his handshake still popped my knuckle.

We did sales blitzes every Tuesday and Thursday morning. The goal of the blitz was to find contacts and leads for the rep in the particular territoty. For example, zipcode 78701 in Austin included 601 Congress Ave. We would reference our CRM system (a stack of 3x5 cards) then divide and conquer.  Of course we totally ignored the "No Soliciting" signs and we had to stay clear of building security lest they prevent us from engaging in commerce- how dare they!  

Most of the people we called on were professional and helpful, but still walking into an office (cold calling) without an appointment to sell takes nerves and creativity. I quickly learned how to size up the office staff and choose the best approach to engage.  What a feeling to walk out with an appointment with a decision maker!  John recalled how much tougher building security got over the years - and you thought it was a pain to get SPAM...

John was also our designated sales trainer.  Our owner gave him a training budget of a couple hundreds bucks a year - Randy didn't buy into that "touchy feely stuff". John related how he had to beg, steal and borrow for sales materials for the program.  In the end, he leveraged his 15 years at Xerox and certification with SPIN Selling. 

And what does SPIN stand for?  Situation - what's happening in the business? Problem - what are the customer's symptoms? Implication - how does the problem affect operations? Need-payoff - What would solving the problem means in terms of cost and revenue benefit?  

We agreed that every training methodology we've seen since has incorporated SPIN - 

with an additional twist here and there. John said he never thought about being a trainer, it just fell on his lap because he was the most seasoned.  In the end, he found a new religion in Kevin Davis' Getting Into the Customer's Head.

We found great success in the field.  It was a solid act - the young, brazen guy who was a bit too aggressive and the wise statesman who knew exactly what to say and when to say it.

John helped me close my first few deals then we teamed up when he picked up the full color line of Sharp systems. Much like SaaS, the biggest value with copiers isn't the equipment (or application), it's the SERVICE!  . Instead of "software as a service", it was "copies as a service"!  If you could get a lease contract for $.01 per copy with hundreds of thousands of copies per month, you ended up with a five figure commission check.  

  

Copier sales helped me develop a thick layer of "street fighter" sales skills.  If you're just starting out in the sales business or if you've lost your way, I highly recommend you jump into it.  I know just the guy to get you started...

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Customer, Interrupted

One of the most rewarding, exciting part of being in sales for me is getting to meet and work with so many new and interesting people. You can learn so much about business, the world and life from customer relationships, especially so if you are interested in your customer's success as much as your own.  Dale Carnegie'sclassic How to Win Friends and Influence Peopleis as true today as when he wrote it in the 30s.  Another guy I aspire to, John Costigan, likes to say, "be interested, not interesting".  It's really that simple because to be "interested" you must...ask questions, be curious, whereas to be "interesting" you must...talk.

I get calls from a lot of salespeople - and let's face it, we salespeople are easy marks for our peers, especially those with talent, because we're most empathetic.  There are a couple of things that drive me nuts when I get a sales call.  First, I hate it when the caller doesn't ask me if it's a bad time to talk and just launches into a pitch.  It's just not respectful and it reduces the callers credibility right off the bat.  One of my favorite sales questions is "Did I catch you at a bad time?" - one of my guys used to throw in "terribly bad time", because while it may not ever be a "good" time, it is most often not a "terribly bad" time.  You've got 15-30 seconds to engage - the last thing you want is for the prospect to be thinking of the meeting they have in 2 minutes or thinking of the call they were expecting from the same area code.  If you are not employing this simple courtesy, make it a habit now.  My Mom teases me because I even ask her when I call on the weekend!!  "What happens if the prospect says it's a bad time?", an executive asked me the other day.  Simple - you ask whether morning or afternoon is best to try them again and then do it.  Often times, the contact will go ahead and engage right then because you are different than the other callers...

Another basic mistake I see all the time is reps not doing their homework.  I'll get a call and the person knows zero about my business - no reference to shared connections, customers or partners or general questions that are out of context.  There is just no excuse for this with the unprecedented availability of information - see Google, Bing, LinkedIn, whatever!  So I lose interest immediately though I never hang up without closure because I do believe in a certain level of sales karma. 

I already mentioned diarrhea of the mouth as a problem, but I want to rehash a topic a covered in the SE Whisperer.  It seems fairly obvious, but I'm still seeing salespeople interrupting customers. I grew up in the business with a bit of the old school.  One of my mentors, John Waisath, was a 30 year veteran when he took me under his wing at the Sharp dealership.  He taught me that if you spoke before the customer after you asked a question, that you "lost".  What it is you lose is credibility and whatever perspective and/or information you would have gained from the customer answering the original question.

I've had this happen to me where a salesperson asked a really thought provoking question and as I thought deeply about the answer, they stepped all over themselves thereby changing my answer and delaying the insight that would have been gained by the original question!!  This often happens in team selling, where a manager or technical resource thinks they've got "the line" on the customer's thinking.  So you ask a question and they answer on behalf of the customer - unbelievable!  When I'm working with new people, I tell the team before a call that even if I ask the customer a completely idiotic question like what color underwear they are wearing to wait for the answer.

Most of these interruptions can be explained by many salespeople's discomfort with silence.  But some of it comes with experience - thinking they've "heard it all", I believe many just try to show customers that they understand their problems by trying to complete their sentences.  There is a better way!   Listen, be curious, understand then share relevant customer success stories.

Here is an idea for you next time you are sharing dinner or drinks with your best customers.  Ask them to share with you the top three reasons why they do business with your company, what they like and dislike about salespeople, how they let people in their "inner circle", etc.  Ask for stories, laugh, learn...and send the good ones my way!

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Integration in the Cloud Event

It's been a busy couple of weeks for SalesGrok.   Lots of selling, planning and travelling! We even took a vacation to Riviera Maya, Mexico.  Yes, we survived the pandemic!  Ironically there were more people in Austin, Texas with the swine flu than in Cancun...go figure.

I've been thinking a lot about Marketinglately.  I was wondering how many of you out there are 100% satisfied with your company's marketing efforts... hmm? There is a decades old love-hate relationship between these departments.  When you strip away all the intricacies, it comes down to these basic facts: Sales always want more and better leads and Marketing believes all the leads are golden and Sales doesn't manage them well enough.  We should talk about how marketing automation technology can eliminate this barrier another time - companies like Eloquaand ExactTargethave absolutely addressed this paradigm. 

At the moment, I'm thinking about event marketing (not event-based marketing...this time!) because my company put on a stellar executive summit in Boston last week.  I'd like to share some of the details, highlights and lessons learned. 

With all of the noise - hundreds of emails, webinars, banner ads, cold calls, etc., etc. we get on a daily basis - the opportunity to get face to face time is invaluable.  What better way to strengthen relationships with existing customers while developing relationships with prospective customers than to bring them together?  What if you could have your customers tell your prospects about your solutions and how you helped them achieve success? Powerful!

We call the summit Metamorphosisto mark the evolution of technology and our business.  This was the 9th installment of a series we kicked of in 2005.  Metamorphosis has been an extremely sucessful forum for our people, partners and customers to collaborate, learn, teach, and network in a fast-paced, highly interactive environment.  Every year the event has gotten bigger and better...so much so that the return is greater than any other industry event we sponsor.  

This year the turnout was fantastic even with the economy still sputtering along - a great indicator for the value of our technology!  Our speakers and honored guests included industry titans like Bob Andersonof Gartner, Jeff Kaplanof ThinkStrategies, Dean Robison of Salesforce.com, Sanjay Jainof Microsoft, Chris Broylesof Daptiv and Lonnie Willsof CloudTrigger.  OpSourcejoined us as a platinum sponsor, which was very cool since they brought another dozen attendees with them!

THE highlight of the event was our customers and partners!  They delivered more than two-thirds of the content for the event with solid, real-world presentations about how they solved business and technical challenges with our technology.  Take a look at the agenda to witness the quality and depth of the speakers.

Lesson learned:
-Give back - Make it easy for your customers to get involved.  We funded local transportation, lodging and meals for all qualified attendees.
-Lose the spin - Avoid "pitching" your company and/or products.  A brief overview is appropriate, but be pithy and focus on customer success, industry trends and business value.
-Keep it real - Encourage your customers to speak frankly about the positives and the negatives associated with their experience.
-Be spontaneous - we organized a bus tour to the Boston Commons for a pub crawl.  The fun we had will not soon be forgotten!
-Follow through - The execution of a great event is the first step.  It is critical to enroll participants in post-event materials - audio/video, blogs, analyst reviews, PR, etc. - to foster the relationship, keep the momentum going and to facilitate a viral effect as attendees share the event with their colleagues.

Would be interested in your feedback on what your company doing right now to drive demand...please share!

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Death by Corporate Overview

This post is brought to you by Peter Cohan, author of Great Demo! and founder of the Second Derivative, an organization dedicated to delivering innovation and consistent success to the process of creating and delivering software demonstrations.  Peter has over 20 years in senior management, sales and marketing roles so enjoy and take it to heart...for the love of the customer!

We often hear the question, “How much of our company’s corporate overview
presentation should we include in customer meetings?” Good question.

The answer: as little as possible! Many salespeople and technical staff feel comfortable opening a meeting with a “brief” overview of their company. Most customers refer to this as “Death by "PowerPoint”!

Why? Because at the beginning of such a meeting, the customer is not interested in the vendor’s history. The customer is interested is seeing if the vendor can help the customer address their Critical Business Issues (CBI’s) or enable the customer to achieve their objectives.

Making the customer wait and listen to 3, 6, 10 or more slides from a standard corporate overview presentation about the vendor is just cruel! Instead, start the meeting with a “Situation Slide”.  In the case of a follow-up meeting that takes place after an initial meeting, this slide simply recalls the information gathered previously from during qualification/discovery discussion(s).

You should list:
􀀹 The customer’s name and job title for each major player or department.
􀀹 The CBI’s, Reasons, and Specific Capabilities needed for each player or
department.
􀀹 The Delta for each situation (you may want to create a Situation Slide for each major player or department involved).

The “Critical Business Issue” (CBI) is a problem that the customer sees as important enough to invest resources to address. It is best to use the customer’s words, such as, “I’m concerned about our ability to achieve our forecasted revenues this year”, which might come from a VP of Sales. In your Situation Slide you would re-phrase this as:
• VP of Sales, Acme Software
• CBI: Concerned about achieving forecasted revenues

A “Reason” is the issue behind the top-level problem that makes it a problem. In our example above, a typical Reason might be expressed by our VP of Sales as, “The reason I’m concerned about making our numbers this year is that we are having difficulty closing the technical sale – there is miscommunication and misalignment between our salespeople and the pre-sales Systems Engineers, and their demos are simply not getting the job done!” Your growing Situation Slide would then look like this:

• VP of Sales, Acme Software
• CBI: Concerned about achieving forecasted revenues
• Reason(s): Not closing the technical sale, due to miscommunication and
unsuccessful demos
The “Specific Capabilities” are those capabilities expressed by the customer as needed to address the CBI. Our VP of Sales might say, “We need training to improve the communications within the Sales Teams and to enable our demos to generate a ‘Wow!’ response on the part of our customers.” The Situation Slide would reflect this:
• VP of Sales, Acme Software
• CBI: Concerned about achieving forecasted revenues
• Reason(s): Not closing the technical sale, due to miscommunication and
unsuccessful demos
• Specific Capabilities: Intra-Sales Team communications and
demonstration effectiveness training

Finally, the “Delta” is a measure of the difference between the way things are today vs. with a solution in place. In our example, the VP of Sales might share that, “Right now it looks like we are about $1,500,000 short of achieving our annual quota.” The complete Situation Slide would then look like this:

• VP of Sales, Acme Software
• CBI: Concerned about achieving forecasted revenues
• Reason(s): Not closing the technical sale, due to miscommunication and
unsuccessful demos
• Specific Capabilities: Intra-Sales Team communications and demonstration effectiveness training
• Delta: $1,500,000 in annual revenues

Situation Slides enable the sales team to “recall the facts” and start the meeting with the customer’s issues. By presenting the Situation Slide, the sales team can confirm that (1) their information is correct and accurate or (2) determine whether there have been any changes since the last meeting with the customer.

In the case of an introductory meeting, you would use the same format for the Situation Slide, but instead of listing the specific customer’s Situation you may need to list another, similar customer’s situation (known as a “Reference Story” and sanitized to remove any confidential customer information or specific names).

Once the facts have been recalled or the Reference Story presented, you have the choice either to drill deeper into qualification questions (particularly if the meeting is “Vision Generation” in purpose) or proceed directly into a demo or other method of offering proof.

When should you present the information in the corporate overview? The answer is when the customer asks for it, specifically. Once you have shown that you have capabilities that can help the customer address their business issues, then the customer will begin to ask questions about your company – and, the answers then have relevance.  For example, if the customer is contemplating a deployment into three countries, then they may ask, “Do you have sales and support offices in the U.S., Germany, and France?” Providing the answer at the beginning of the meeting makes no sense (particularly if your standard presentation describes showing sales, customer service, customization, and training offices in 54 countries around the world – the customer is only interested in the three regions they occupy).

Most corporate presentations are entirely vendor-focused. As an exercise, review your corporate overview presentation from a customer’s perspective. Ask yourself, “What information really captures my interest?” It is likely that the answer will be, “Very little!”

As a final tip, for sales and marketing teams that simply must start with a corporate overview, work to reduce it to a single slide that focuses on the top-level business issues that your tools address.

Focus on the customer’s interests first - and enjoy the rewards of crisper sales!

Copyright © The Second Derivative – All Rights Reserved.

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Reading for Hungry Salespeople

To never stop learning is a common philosophy of top performers.  There are myriad methods for continuing your education and personal development, such as higher education (MBA), executive seminars (Selling Power), sales training, interacting with a mentor and reading (or listening:) to books.

Over the years, I've learned some of my best stuff from reading the great sales leaders like Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins and Neil Rackham.  One of my favorite interview questions is to ask what the candidate is currently reading.  There was a candidate who told me they were reading SPIN Sellingand even had the book on the nightstand because it was so great.  When I asked who wrote it and what SPIN stood for, the silence was deafening...ouch!

My goal is to consume a business book every 2-3 weeks.  I believe that getting just one solid, actionable idea is worth the cover price.  Now don't get me wrong, non-fiction is important as well.  We all need a quality diversion now and again and you'll look pretty damn boring reading some sales tome on the beach.  Case in point, my wife distracted me with last month with the Twilightbooks...there was some bribery involved, but I must say they were delightful.  Right now I'm reading Digital Body Languageby Steven Woods, CTO and co-Founder of Eloqua Corporation.

If you want to add some more girth to your repertoire, check out a few of the top books on my "hungry salespeople" list below.  I welcome your suggestions - feel free to send me your favorites!

It only takes 1%by Tom Freese - easy read and lots of useful tips. The "executive survey" paid for the book hundreds of times over.

Power Base Selling: Secrets of an Ivy League Street Fighterby Jim Holden - better than Selling to VITO!

The 5 Paths to Persuasionby Robert Miller (of Miller-Heimann), etc. - categories of leadership and how to effectively communicate with each.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasionby Robert Cialdini - tremendous insight on how to influence...and defend yourself against it.

Secrets of Closing the Saleby Zig Ziglar - "You can have anything you want in life if you will help enough other people get what they want."

In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disastersby Rick Chapman - hilarious stories and 1st hand perspectives on why many tech companies failed.

The Tipping Pointby Malcolm Gladwell - Learn how Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople create "stickiness".

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