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...
Do you grok it?
