Sales and Sales Management Blog

One of the easiest parts of my job has always been writing.  I’m not saying my writing is good, just that it has always been easy to do.  When I write, whether a book, article, or blog post, I turn a topic around in my mind for a few days and then when I sit down, the writing just flows.  I can knock out a 20 or 30 page chapter in 3 or 4 hours, a 3 or 4 page article in 30 minutes.  Devote maybe half again that much time to revise and correct and its done.  Easy.

This post hasn’t been easy at all.  The topic is too personal–it deals with a very real and serious problem I face-and one that to one extent or another I suspect you’re facing also.

I’ve started and restarted and restarted and restarted this post time after time.  The issue is how personal should this post be?  Not that I have a problem discussing my personal struggles-I just don’t want to bore you to death.  But no matter how I begin, it always comes back to the issues I have.  Those issues are at the heart of what we all face-what do we do in THIS economy? Today? Right this second?

Forgive me if this comes off as too self-indulgent-it isn’t meant to be.

If you’re like me, you’ve watched your market change radically-maybe even disappear altogether-over the past few months.  You might be staring at a pipeline report that’s as empty as our national bank account-I am.  You might be seeing your booked business disappear due to budget cutbacks-I am.  You might be wondering where in the world you’re next sale will come from-I am.  You might be wondering just how much McDonald’s really pays-well, we’re not there, yet.

If we want to continue to be successful-if we want to survive-in this economy, we have to rethink everything about our business, our markets, and our approach.  We have to discover where we can be relevant and have an impact today and tomorrow.  We have to be ready to change in short order.

Over the past several days I’ve spent a good amount of time speaking with a number of my friends and colleagues such as Jill Konrath, Jonathan Farrington, Keith Rosen, Lee Salz, Wendy Weiss, and Dr. Greg Stebbins about the current state of the economy, where the sales consulting and training market is and where it is going, and how we must adjust our businesses in this environment.  This is a group of men and women that I both trust and respect their insights and judgment.  Each is one that I am comfortable confessing my current business concerns to and who have the wisdom and integrity to give advice and guidance worth taking seriously.

And I haven’t been disappointed.  Each has given great advice and guidance.  Each has brought to the surface new opportunities and new avenues to pursue.  In many cases they’ve reinforced my own thinking-but accompanied that with a good, hard, swift kick in the butt.

I suggest that whether you are the leader of a large company or sales team, or an individual salesperson struggling with the direction of where your business should be headed, find several people outside your company, men and women you trust, who know you, who understand your business and your challenges, and approach them for a serious discussion about your issues.  Go outside your company.  Get broader perspectives from men and women you are comfortable opening up your inner fears and doubts to. You will learn a great deal about where you are and where you need to go.  They’ll point out things you haven’t seen, help you organize your thoughts, and very probably help you pinpoint areas where the obstacle to your success has been the limitations you’ve put on yourself.

We all have put limitations on ourselves.  We all have self-limiting beliefs about who we are, what we do, where we fit in the marketplace.

I have them.

You have them.

Everyone has them to some extent or another.

If we want to expand in today’s economy we have to bust through those self-limiting beliefs.  The problem is we can’t eliminate them if we don’t even recognize what they are.

I had (have?) several limiting beliefs that were brought to the surface in my conversations this week.

• Although I’ve done work outside the financial services industry, the vast majority of my work has been with bankers, investment brokers, mortgage companies, insurance advisors, and others in financial services.  I had spent my entire career in financial services.  I saw myself as being a financial services specific expert.  That’s my market, my niche.  That is where my name recognition is.  That’s where my clients and consequently my references are.  Financial services companies are who I get referred to.
• No one outside of financial services knows who I am.  In my industry name recognition and reputation is a key factor.  How could I break into new markets when no one has ever heard of me?  Am I going to have to start from scratch as I did years ago?
• Virtually all of my references are financial services companies.  I have few contacts and references outside financial services and most potential clients will want examples of my work with like companies.  High tech companies will want references from other high tech companies, pharmaceutical from pharmaceutical, manufacturing from manufacturing.  How am going to overcome this?  Am I going to have to do free or extremely low cost training as I did at first in order to establish a foothold in a new industry?

These problems seemed very real to me.  I know how much work it took to get my business where it is and I didn’t want to ‘give up’ what I’d worked hard to create.  That, actually, was my biggest limiting belief-I was feeling sorry for myself.  I was allowing myself to wallow in misery.  I was steadfastly holding onto my image of who I am and what I do.

It certainly wasn’t during my first conversation that the light came on that my primary issue wasn’t the economy or the market, but rather me.  My thinking isn’t swayed that easily-and who really wants to admit that, as Pogo pointed out, ‘we have met the enemy and he is us?”

Yet over several days I ‘discovered’ a number of things about my business:

• I have good name recognition outside the financial services industry as demonstrated by some recent, unsolicited, out of the clear blue calls and emails I had received.  For example, I received an email asking my availability for a speaking engagement by a division of FUJIFILM and a few days after that a call about a potential training contract from one of the largest general contractors in the country.  They had to have heard of me someway, right?  Over this week I’ve seen many other recent, tangible examples.
• Finding and connecting with high quality, non price driven prospects who will allow companies to maintain margins and who will be loyal long-term clients is THE ISSUE most companies are facing in today’s market.  My business is focused almost exclusively in helping companies and salespeople learn how to develop high quality business by finding and connecting with prospects who are seeking real solutions to real issues and are not simply trying to buy the cheapest patch-up solution they can find and who will be the loyal backbone of the company’s or salesperson’s business for years to come.  What I do is in great demand and it is totally transferable to any business whose sale is primarily relationship based-and that includes thousands upon thousands of both B2B and B2C companies in hundreds of industries.
• References need not be in the industry I’m marketing to-they just have to be able to address issues of importance to the prospect firm.  If XYZ client is talking to ABC Company about how I helped them increase their business and both companies use a relationship based sales model, the connection is there even though they are in different industries.  The important thing to my prospects is what I did, not who I did it for.

My business is stronger than ever.  I have an almost limitless pool of prospects.  My services are needed now more than ever.  My strength is what I do, not who I did it for in the past.

Now, if you’re sitting there thinking, “gee, what a dope.  All of this should have been as obvious as daylight.  Is this guy blind or just an idiot,” don’t feel too smug.  When I lay it out as above, yes, it seems pretty obvious.  But when one is wrapped up in the issue, when one has developed a vision of who they are and what they do over a period of years, the obvious isn’t necessarily so obvious.  You may be in the exact position I’ve been in-missing the big picture because of your pre-determined vision of what the big picture is.

These obvious revelations came about because I had the good fortune to have some folks to speak to who cared enough to take the time to help me work through some problems.  These revelations came about because I had people who were divorced from the situation and could see what was there, not what they thought was there.

I encourage you to look outside yourself and your company.  The obvious isn’t so obvious to you when you’re right in the middle of the problem, especially when you’ve already determined what’s what.  Sometimes what you believe to be the situation is 180 degrees turned from reality.  It doesn’t mean you’re stupid, incompetent, or adverse from changing, it simply means you’ve formulated images and concepts that rule your thinking and in order to bust out of that box you’ve put yourself into you have to have an independent analysis-and neither you nor anyone in your company can really do an independent analysis.  You’re too close.  You’ve invested too much in what you believe to be objective.

I suspect you’re just as blind I was.  I suspect the obvious isn’t so obvious to you.  I suspect you have a world of opportunities at your doorstep just waiting for you to recognize the obvious-if you can, if you can see past what you’ve come to believe about yourself and what you do, that is, who you believe you are.

My discoveries over the past week will not change anything about my business unless I take the next step in the process-change my business.  In a sense, recognizing the limiting beliefs I’ve operated under is really the easy part.  Recognizing the opportunities that are out there is great, but unless I implement the needed changes in what I’m doing and how I’m doing it, the opportunities will go unrealized.  I’ll have accomplished nothing.

And I’ve got a great deal of work to do:

• I have to start marketing myself into new markets.  Join new associations, write for new publications, give presentations to new organizations.
• I have to pick up the phone and start calling on new prospects in new industries.
• I have to capitalize on my connections outside the financial services industry
• I have to concentrate on new income streams.  For instance, like most in my industry, I have products-books, CDs, public seminars to sell.  I’ve never really made much effort to do so since my business was corporate centered.  I have to take those products-which are great products by the way-as a serious potential income source.
• My website was not designed to be an attractor of business.  It has always been used as a supplemental resource once I’ve connected with a prospect.  It has to change.  It has to become a business attractor.  It has to be completely reworked, renamed, redesigned.
• My marketing model has to be changed from the ground up.  For several years I didn’t have to go after business, it came to me.  Those days are gone.  I have to be an aggressive marketer once more.  God forbid, I have work again.
• I have to find new ways of making what I do affordable in a tight economy.  Fewer and fewer companies can afford to hold in-person training sessions, conferences, and regional and national meetings.  The cost is just too great.  A one or two day training session for a large region of a company can cost anywhere from a tens of thousands of dollars to a few hundred thousand dollars.  There’s the trainer’s fee and travel, the travel expenses for the company personnel, probably some entertainment and many, many meals.  Very likely there’s the expense for the venue, additional personnel for coordination and set-up.  There’s the lost field time for the sales team.  Huge costs that just aren’t practical in today’s economy.  I must reformulate what I do into webinars where the company doesn’t incur travel and venue expenses, where the lost field time is counted in terms of the actual training time, not in days.  The costs for a business development session can be reduced by 80 to 90% or more-and without losing a bit of the effectiveness of the session.
• Coaching of sales leaders has never been a significant part of my business.  But in today’s marketplace with massive uncertainty, pressure to perform, the threat of being replaced on a moment’s notice due to budget cutbacks, being absorbed by another company, or perceived under performance, managers are in need of coaching now more than ever.  Their future and their sanity may depend on it.  Objective outside advice, criticism, and direction is vital to staying on top-or getting on top.  I must take a serious look at the possibility of taking on coaching as a significant part of my business model.

My work has just begun.  My company will be very different in two weeks, two months, two years.  My old comfortable way of doing business is gone-or more correctly, is going.  It’s an exciting time filled with great opportunity and tremendous new challenges.  In many ways, I’m re-energized.  In other ways, I’m apprehensive.  Change is never easy and seldom smooth–and usually doesn’t proceed in a nice neat straight line.  There’s great comfort in the status quo.  But in this economy we’re not talking about comfort or ease, we’re talking about survival, change, growth, and possibilities.

What are your possibilities?  Where must you change?  Where is your growth as an individual and organization going to come from and where will it take you?  Few of us have the luxury of maintaining the status quo today. Don’t assume you that haven’t limited yourself.  Don’t assume that you know what all of your opportunities are.  Don’t assume that you have the answers-in fact, don’t assume you have any answers.  You just might find that didn’t know as much as what you do as you thought you did.