The wondeful world of Email.

Now that I run a sales division, I have loads of salespeople pitching me on copiers, trade shows, marketing ideas and whatever else people sell these days. I welcome all sales calls and treat each and every one of them with respect. That is until I get an email like this:

Mr. Haddon,

I just wanted to see where we were at with that proposal...

Sincerely,
Joe Schmuck
XYZ Ltd.
"Useless tag line that offends me"
(XXX)-XXX-XXXX


What are salespeople thinking when they hit the send button after putting such little effort into earning my business? The fact of the matter is, they aren't thinking.

Email is a wonderful and easy way to non-invasively keep in touch with prospects and customers. It allows you, the salesperson, to separate yourself from every other salespeople. You can do this with minimal effort.

Sending emails like the one above; or emails with subject lines like 'touching base' or 'checking in', will fast track you to mediocrity. You must add value to the relationship and show you care. You can easily do this by sending links to e-zines, articles and useful tips that will help your customer with their success. Focus on them, not yourself or the sale. Everyone knows salespeople get paid on commission. Your customers know that every time you call, you are calling to check on your paycheque and see when you are going to get money out of them. Eliminate this feeling by caring about the customer's success and you will never worry about your paycheque again.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. How long have you not been the top earner in your organization? I guarantee if you send every single prospect an email that is useful to them, you will have greater success this year, than last.

Here's a link to some useful links, provided by Jeffrey Gitomer, my favourite sales authority.

Two ears, one mouth. 2.0

I mentioned in a previous post that I would touch on the sales practice of asking questions in order to secure an order. I understand that every product/service is unique, however, I truly believe every person is similar when it comes to how they want to buy your product or service. If you ask the right questions, you'll discover that your prospect will basically tell you how they want to be sold.

I was once challenged by my former Vice President of Sales, Sean, to spend an entire day cold calling while only asking questions. I pushed back, citing that this approach would seem salesy, flighty and unnatural. Sitting in a training room this idea seemed far fetched and unrealistic. After two weeks of sub-par selling I decided one Monday morning to give it a shot, thinking what's the worst that can happen?

I wrote 4 face to face, cold, one call orders that day. Which is my best day of cold calling in that industry to date. I was shocked and excited. At the end of the day I reflected and thought that it was just a lucky day. The rest of the week I got 2 more orders after reverting back to my old ways.

The following Monday I gave the 'questions only' method another shot. Guess what? Three more cold, one call orders. Did I become a believer in this method? You bet I did. To this day I practice this method and owe it to Sean for the tens of thousands of dollars in extra commission.

Some of the simple leading questions I use are very basic (Mostly geared for Business to Business sales. Please email me for Business to Consumer sales questions.):

-Hey there! How's business?

-Hi! I know you don't know me from a bag of potato chips, but it's hot out, is it alright if I suck up some of this Air Conditioning while I'm here?

-Hey! What do you folks do here?

-Good Morning! How's it going today?

Now, these are very basic opening lines that are questions. The answers will tell you alot about the person you are dealing with. Once I have established whether I wear my professional or funny-professional hat I continue asking only questions:

-Cool. How long have you worked here? (Alt. How long have you been married? etc)

-Wow, long time. Do you like what you do?

-It's funny, as a receptionist, everyone knows you really run the place. Do your bosses treat you well?

-What's your boss like?

-Is he/she pretty hands on or rarely in the office?

-Is this his/her card? (Alt. What is his or her name?)

Wow! Look how much information I've received. I know if the gatekeeper likes their job, has any clout in the company based on how long they've worked there, I know if they have a sense of humour. I also know what the boss is like, his/her name, management style and likely their sense of humour as well. How great!

The rest of the questions peak interest and qualify. These vary from industry to industry. One part of the question should not change. No matter what you're selling, I suggest asking in a way that activates both their personal and professional brains, like this:

-Are you or your company looking for ways to reduce your carbon footprint?

-Are you or your company looking to reduce costs at all?

-Are you or your company concerned with the new H.S.T.?

-Have you or your company ever dealt with a Worker's Compensation claim?

You can alter the questions to suit your industry. The premise is still the same. By phrasing it as YOU or YOUR company, you have 2 chances per question to peak their interest. Once their interest is peaked, they will then begin to ask you questions. Once you have them interested and asking you questions, you're off to the races.

Remember, "In selling as in medicine, prescription before diagnosis is malpractice."

Who's name is at the top of your company's sales leaderboard?

Mind Your Own Business.

Building a true sales team is a heck of a task these days. My demographic especially, is the worst demographic of sales people ever born. We're lazy, unfocussed, spoiled and uncultured. Show me a 20-30 year old who is a hard working and I'll show you 1000 who aren't. Show me a 45-55 year old who didn't hustle their butt off when they were 25-35 and I'll show 1000 who did. What happened? My opinion; Video games and unrealistic Reality TV.

As I weed through resumes on the weekend I find one common theme, many former business owners are applying for sales jobs. Great! I used to think. Business owners are hustlers. The motivated, big picture thinking, creative people I've been looking for... - In most cases I couldn't have been more wrong. Many of these men and women were beaten up and wimps. They feel like failures and they acted the part as well. When I asked why they were looking into sales as a career there was one major common theme; THEY WANTED TO RELAX. THEY WANTED TO NOT HAVE THE STRESS OF HAVING THE BE SUCCESSFUL.

So let me get this straight; You've walked into a sales job so you didn't have to do what it takes to be successful? This isn't a government job pal, go pound sand!

Being a professional salesperson is in every way, shape and form running your own business. I tell my team all the time that they have the luxury of being entreprenures that already have the brand, office, supplies, stock, service team and admin support - all they have to do is sell the best product in our industry. You wake up every single day deciding whether you will be 'a poor', 'a good', 'a great' or 'the best and most successful' business owner. I strive every single day to be the latter, why doesn't everyone? Are you?

Ask any successful small business owner where they get most of their business and they will likely say, word of mouth or referrals. If they say the ad in the local paper or fax blasting, I'll eat my shoes. Look around at all the salespeople you know. Who gets the most referrals? Who has the best relationships with their client when the order is made?

Wake up! It's the same person.

Now, think about the barber, mechanic, tailor or any other provider of a product or service you use every single time you need something. Do they have the lowest price? Are they members of the Better Business Bureau? Do they have 24 hour turnaround time? Are they open 24 hours a day? Maybe. But does that matter? Nope.

You continue to go back to these people/places because of how they treat you and make you feel. When was the last time you recommended someone go to a barber just because it was open twenty four hours a day? We recommend people go deal with people that we liked and that did a good job.

Just doing a good job isn't good enough for repeat business. What is enough to get people coming back and sending others? Doing a good job while making the person you are dealing with feel great. Most sales are emotionally driven. I don't know a single woman who has ever had a 'happy period' but Kotex still emotionally sells them on that.

Whether you like it or not, you are running a business. Where do successful small businesses get the majority of their orders from? You should already know.

If you clicked on the link, you need to master retaining the information you read before attempting to become a true sales professional.

So, you can beg your organization for longer service hours, faster turn around times, lower pricing or more advertising... Or you can treat engage people while treating them with respect and let the bad sales reps ask for that stupid stuff. See you at the top!

Kicking ass, not kissing it.

You walk into a Wal-Mart to buy something and you are just a customer. As a customer you feel you are entitled to certain things. Generally a quality product and quality service at a price you are willing to pay. If something doesn’t go right, many of us ask for a manager to voice our concern. I do this often, and generally to some level of success with a red vested middle manager (all other employees at Wal-Mart wear blue vests). Many times by the end of the conversation I have the manager laughing, engaged and ready to do almost anything I ask to keep ME as a customer. The reason for this is simple; She is also a customer and she knows how it feels to be treated poorly or have something she bought be defective and not up to par. I end up getting what I want, as long as I being it to her attention with finesse, understanding and compassion.

Let us take that one step further, not only is this manager also a customer, she is a person, a normal human being. Someone who pays bills, gets parking tickets, eats, sleeps, cries, laughs and fights with her husband. Imagine that! A middle manager who is also a human being. The truth is when you are wearing your ‘customer hat’ you are very comfortable talking to this middle manager. Now, let’s look at what happens when you talk to a middle manager wearing your ‘salesperson hat’. You are over polite, meek, dry, boring, uncreative, and nervous. You don’t engage, you’re not funny and you sound just like the last salesperson who they talked to. You product puke and data dump all the while making it nearly impossible to establish a real human to human relationship. The words, “I’m not interested at this time.” simply means, “You’re not interesting to me bucko!”

All your niceties about your product and company history, all your insincere manners and all the boring banter you had, got you nothing. You’re a kiss ass salesperson who walked out of an appointment with no signature, no cheque and no real connection with the decision maker. Sound familiar?For some reason when salespeople are trying to make a sale, they forget that managers, decision makers and business owners are all just regular people. What do regular people like to do? Have a laugh with other regular people. They like to golf or garden, eat and drink, have sex and travel. They want to be engaged. They want to be heard. They want to feel alive and real. They want to deal with people who are real. If they wanted to talk to salespeople all day they would not have a no-soliciting sign, a receptionist who acts as a gatekeeper and they would go to timeshare presentations every night.

Want to start kicking ass in the sales world? Stop kissing the prospects ass and be real. Every single day I walk the line with my customers and I push my sales team to do the same. When was the last time you had a prospect talk to you about something real? I have had customers rant to me for twenty minutes about ex-wives, taxes, family members and sex lives. The rants I remember the best though are the ones where they tell me stories about some pathetic salesperson they’ve dealt with. Imagine that, they start putting down some other salesperson because I’ve made them feel comfortable and they no longer see me as just a salesperson.

Do you want to be the butt of a salesperson joke your prospects are telling or do you want to kick butt?

Actions, not words.

Three weeks ago I asked a colleague of mine for a professional favour. It was a very simple task that required at most, 15 minutes of organized thought. The person responded; "NO PROBLEM".

Here we are three weeks from then and I still have yet to received what I asked for. This morning I spent 7 minutes doing it myself.

How many of you salespeople are in the business of saying, 'No problem', 'For sure', 'Consider it done', 'I will have that for you on delivery' or the most insincere and most common, 'It would be my pleasure'? I'll bet over half the time you don't follow through. Why would you? It's easy to blame service, operations, the customer, your sales manager or anyone other than yourself. The fact is, when you say you are going to do something for a customer and that something doesn't happen, you've lost. You've lost some trust, some credibility, practically all chance of being referred and in short you've lost future money.

Now you're thinking, how I've lost money Haddon? Well;

TRUST + CREDIBILITY = REFERRALS
and
REFERRALS = MONEY.

Therefore you've lost money.

Think about that, MONEY! The very reason you have a car, house, nice things and a pot belly. MONEY - the root of all evil and modern innovation, the thing you work so hard (and dumb) for. MONEY the thing you dream of having more of and claim to be doing everything you can to get.

Wait, no you aren't. You're just lying to yourself.

By not exerting the extra effort and spending the extra time, you've lost future sales, repeat orders and lay down referrals. You are giving money away to the smarter sales person. The more organized salesperson. The salesperson who is a person of action!

If I had Loonie (proudly Canadian) for every time someone told me they were going to do something and they didn't do it, I would have more money than I'd know what to do with. Now, what if I told you that if early in my career I would have actually done everything I ever told someone I would do for them, I'd have even more money than that?

The point is, whether you are new to the sales game, an old dog with a pipeline the size of Alberta (Texas for you Americans) or someone who just switched to a new industry; a sure way of getting to the top is by doing what you say you are going to do. Under promise and over deliver - you've certainly heard that since you started your career. The problem with age old sayings is that they often fall on deaf ears.

Let me suggest this; If you promise it, look up the word promise in a dictionary and act accordingly. Otherwise look up the word failure and prepare to accept that as the definition or who you are.