Sales and Sales Management Blog

September 28, 2011

Seller, Do You Know Who You Are and What You Should Be Marketing?

Filed under: career development,marketing,sales,selling — Paul McCord @ 11:55 am
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Although I’ve addressed this issue before I think it should be dealt with again as I continually see a great many sellers make the mistake of marketing the company they are selling for rather than marketing themselves.

There is a tendency for many salespeople, especially if they work for a well-known company, to place the emphasis of their marketing on the company they sell for rather than focusing on themselves.  They identify their sales efforts with Wells Fargo or Merrill Lynch or GE  more clearly than they identify themselves. 

However, despite what we tend to think, and certainly, what the company believes, the prospect usually isn’t buying GE, IBM, or UBS.  They’re buying the seller and the seller’s trustworthiness and integrity.  The relationship in most cases isn’t between the company and the customer; it is between two human beings—the client and the salesperson.   

Companies continually market their name, whatever that name may be.  Whether it’s Caterpillar, Ford, or HP, the company markets itself because it wants to establish its brand, its name recognition and its image in the mind of the prospect. 

Sellers should be no different.   

No matter whom you sell for, if part or all of your income is produced through commissions or bonuses based on your sales, you are self-employed.  You are your own sales company– you are simply currently leasing yourself to sell for a single client company.  The company you sell for today may not be the company you are selling for this time next year. 

In addition, your competition isn’t that major company in your industry.  You don’t compete against Citibank or NY Life.  Glaxo isn’t your competitor.  The individual salespeople who sell for Citibank, NY Life and Glaxo are your competition.   Selling in a relationship driven industry requires you to develop and nurture relationships.  Sales are made on a personal level, not by the magazine ads or the direct mail piece.  Sales are ultimately made by you, not the company or its name.   

This isn’t to say that your company’s name may not help create interest or give you some upfront credibility.  Nevertheless, that interest and credibility is insufficient to close a sale.  Furthermore, it typically isn’t even enough to secure an appointment.   

That Merrill Lynch salesperson is digging for prospects and sales just as you are.  That Glaxo rep is trying to get into the same offices and sell the same people you are. 

Furthermore, if you’re selling against Microsoft today, you just might be selling for Microsoft tomorrow. 

In reality, you only have one thing of value to market—yourself.  Prospects buy from the men and women they trust and who solve the prospect’s problems and issues, not the ones they like or the ones with the big name company behind them. 

Examine your marketing carefully.  Who are you marketing?  If it isn’t you, then change everything about your marketing to focus the primary identity on you, not the company you’re selling for (that’s the focus identity, not the marketing message).   

If you are already marketing yourself instead of the company you sell for, examine your materials for their effectiveness and image. 

If you’ve done your job well, every contact you make, every client you sell, and every dollar you spend on marketing will go with you if you ever decide to lease your selling services to another company.  However, if you’ve marketed the company you are selling for instead of yourself, you may find you’re leaving your hard-earned clients, contacts and reputation behind, loyal to the company, not to you, forcing you to build your sales company from scratch once again.

September 26, 2011

4 Signs You’ve Lost Your Team’s Respect–And What To Do About It

Filed under: business,management,Sales Management,small business,team development — Paul McCord @ 11:03 am
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Everyday there are tens of thousands of sales leaders who are trying to manage a sales team that has lost respect for them—and many don’t even realize that they’ve lost control of their team.

Are you faced with any of these issues?

1. Team members are seldom on time and come and go as they please.  Are your sellers straggling into the office and scheduled meetings because of a lax office atmosphere—or because they simply have no respect for you and your ability to control them?

2. Your interactions with team members are usually monologues.  Are team members listening to you intently and respectfully and giving their opinion freely—or are they simply waiting for you to shut up so you’ll go away and they can go back to ignoring you?

3. Your team members try to talk over you.  Are they excited and want to get their ideas out—or do they think you have nothing worth listening to and don’t respect your opinion?

4. Your requests are ignored or assignments are completed in a half-hearted fashion.  Are they so busy with selling and taking care of their customers that they just didn’t have time to get to the assignment—or do they think the assignment was a joke not worth their time and effort, and besides, you’re not going to do anything about it anyway?

It’s easy for managers to ignore the above symptoms of disrespect.  In fact, it is far easier and a lot more comfortable to ignore them than to acknowledge them.

But if you’re in a position where you have a team that does not respect you, either you or they are short timers.  A manager—and the company they work for—cannot last long once they’ve lost the respect of their team.

But once the team’s respect has been lost, is it possible to regain it?

I’ve spoken to many management experts who have argued that once lost, respect is impossible to regain and the only solution is new management.

And for the most part I agree.  However, I have seen several situations where management redemption did occur.  In virtually every case, the manager took the following five steps:

  1. Personal acknowledgement.  The manager recognized the loss of respect and committed themselves to aggressively addressing and correcting the issue.
  2. Confessing to the team.  The manager confessed to each member of the team (either in a group meeting or during individual meetings with team members) that they had lost their commitment and had failed the team and have recommitted themselves to serving the team without reservation.
  3. Establishing new ground rules—and adhering to them.  The manager sets out a new set of rules that govern both the team’s and the manager’s actions along with the consequences for breaking those rules.  Discipline is not only needed, it must be demonstrated.  Consequently, it is necessary that the team know what is expected from them and from the manager and that both have objective rules and guidelines that all parties are aware of and can measure one another by.
  4. Encourage discussion–and dissent.  It is imperative that an open dialogue between the manager and the team members be created and it is the manager’s obligation to set the tone and get the ball rolling.  If the manager can’t break through the ice and begin a real conversation with the team, no amount of confession and fair rules will do any good.
  5. Treat team members with respect.  Very often the team begins losing respect for their manager not simply because they view the manager as weak, but because they feel that he or she isn’t treating them with respect.  A manager cannot expect respect from the team if they aren’t showing the team members respect.  Respect, more than any other aspect of relationships, is a two-way street.  Part of earning respect is showing respect and the manager must begin the process by making sure the team members know they are respected.

The above five step process isn’t an overnight fix.  In fact, regaining respect takes time—a lot of time, weeks and months worth of time.

Yes, once the team has lost respect for their manager the most expeditious solution is replacing the manger.  But that isn’t the only solution.  If you find yourself in a situation where you’ve lost your team’s respect—or if you have a manager that for whatever reason you cannot replace and they’ve lost their team’s respect, apply the steps above and you will, given time, repair the damage and once again have the team’s respect.

September 19, 2011

4 Rules to Make Your Sales Meetings Meaningful to Your Sales Team

Filed under: sales,Sales Meetings,selling — Paul McCord @ 10:04 am
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 “Paul,” one of my coaching clients said, “I swear if I have to sit through another Monday morning sales meeting I’ll quit.  They’re supposed to be an hour; they always last at least an hour and a half and often two hours.  It’s nothing but a management bitch session and a bunch of side conversations with salespeople about how crappy their performance is.  I either quit or go postal, and even though going postal would be the more satisfying course of action, I’m not ready to go prison–yet.”

Richard has obviously sat through a great many of the same sales meetings I’ve sat through—and I’m sure that you’ve sat through.  In fact, I’m willing to bet a number of people who read this have never sat through a sales meeting that wasn’t as pointless, obnoxious, and downright insulting as the ones Richard has been sitting through.

I’m also willing to bet that somewhere in the neighborhood of 95% of all weekly sales meetings are absolutely, positively, without doubt wastes of time.

They don’t have to be.

In fact, regular (regular does not necessarily mean weekly) sales meetings can be the backbone of creating a thriving, high production sales team.

Most often, however, they are the ruination of the sales team.

Weekly sales meetings have killed more manager authority and respect than probably any other activity a manager engages in with the possible exception of the ride along.  They have also driven a great number of high performers to the competition, one of which may be my client Richard who is one of the top 5 sellers in his company’s 300 member sales force.

Sales people generally hate this weekly meandering through sales meeting hell and the accompanying glimpse into the hollow caverns of the sales management brain in stupefying inaction. 

Why?

I believe there are four primary reasons sales meetings are such a waste of time and effort:

1.   No purpose.  A great many sales meetings are held for no other reason other that it’s Monday (or Friday, or Thursday, or whatever day of the week they are normally held on).  Consequently, the meeting is destined to be a time waster.  One time wasting meeting is bad enough, but I know of some companies who have three or even five of these meetings every week (often these mulit meeting companies are seeking to keep control of their salespeople).

2.  No preparation.  Whomever is in charge of the meeting (generally the immediate manager of the assembled team) has invested not a single minute in preparing for the meeting.  As they’re sitting down for the meeting, they take out a pen and jot down two or three things to talk about.  Again, the perfect setting for a waste of time.

3.  Too many tangents.  Without having prepared for the meeting and knowing exactly what to deal with, it is easy for the manager to veer off onto tangents that ultimately have nothing to do with anything. Yet another factor that guarantees the meeting will be useless.

4.   A haven of negativity.  Especially during times like the present when business is tough, an unprepared manager tends to focus on trying to cajole numbers out of his or her team.  People are put up for ridicule in front of their peers because of poor numbers, they are forced to justify their performance, and the rest sit in silence, knowing their turn is next once the manager has finished “coaching” their current prey.   Now not only is the meeting a waste of time, it is a real morale killer too.

Great, so sales meetings suck.  Everyone already knows that.  What can managers do to make sales meetings valuable?

I’ve found four simple rules seem to work very, very well:

1.  No purpose, no meeting.  Only hold meetings when there is a REASON to hold a meeting.  That may be once a month, once every two weeks, once a week, or as needed.  The company no longer paying for coffee is not a reason for a meeting; that’s a memo.  Reviewing the pre-call planning steps is a reason for a meeting.

2.  No preparation, no meeting.  If for any reason the person managing the meeting has not had time to thoroughly prepare, the meeting is canceled.  There is no excuse for wasting the team member’s time because the manager didn’t get their job done.

3.   A sales meeting is not the place for individual coaching.  A sales meeting is a group activity.  Address the group’s needs and issues, not individual salespeople’s.  There is no excuse for denigrating anyone in front of the group or for wasting the group’s time for individual coaching.  Each team member should have coaching time scheduled outside the sales meeting.  The rule is, if a meeting degenerates into individual coaching, the team members are free to leave (note, however, that answering a specific issue a team member has with the subject matter being discussed is not individual coaching).

4.   Set a time limit, stick to it.  Salespeople need to be selling, not attending meetings.  Under normal circumstances, sales meetings should be kept to an hour or less.  Only under extraordinary circumstances should a meeting exceed an hour. 

Your sales meetings should concentrate on helping team members sell.  Reviewing market conditions; presenting new products or services; reviewing sales skills such as prospecting, making presentations, asking questions, pre-call planning, and the other aspects of selling and the sales process; role playing activities; and other core content should be the heart of the meeting. 

Seller recognition and reinforcement should also be an integral aspect of your meetings.  Leave the meeting on a high note, not a downer.

Housekeeping notes and announcements should be kept at a minimum—discarded completely and put into memos if at all possible.

Meetings are important, but too many meetings or too much wasted time turns what could be a valuable tool into a wrecking ball plowing through your team, leaving lifeless, dispirited bodies in its wake.  If your meetings are unorganized, are designed to do little more than keep control of your salespeople, or drag on incessantly, you’re killing your team, not building it.

Turn your sales meetings into real strengths, not team killers–both you and your team members will be glad you did—and within short order you’ll actually see some smiles and enthusiasm Monday morning instead of the deadwood that drags itself into the meeting room.

September 7, 2011

Book Review: The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

Filed under: Book Reviews — Paul McCord @ 2:51 pm
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Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson in their new book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation (Portfolio/Penguin: 2011) challenge traditional sales theory at its very core.  According to their study, the generally accepted view that in complex selling the Relationship Sellers are the most effective and key for building a high performance sales team is 100% wrong.  In fact, they argue, that of the 5 types of salespeople they identified: The Hard Worker; The Relationship Builder, The Lone Wolf, The Problem Solver, and the Challenger, the Relationship Builder was the worst performer by far.

Not buying it?

Well, they have some pretty good support—Neil Rackham for one.  Now although  Rackham hasn’t reached the level of deity—yet anyway—having him write the Foreword to the book and endorse their conclusion has to make one sit up and take the book seriously.

The Challenger Sale is based on a study of over 6,000 sales reps from across the globe and “representing every major industry, geography, and go-to-market model.”  The study is based on a survey of forty-five rep attributes which include attitudes, skills and behaviors, activities, and knowledge.

The study broke the various sellers they found into five types:

The Hard Worker: the rep “that shows up early, stays late, and is always willing to put in the extra effort.” 

The Relationship Builder: “is all about building and nurturing strong personal and professional relationships and advocates across the customer organization.”

The Lone Wolf: are deeply self-confident and follow their instincts, not the company rules

The Problem Solver: is “highly reliable and very detail-oriented.”  They make sure all the promises have been kept and focus on follow-up.

The Challenger:  “They’ve got a deep understanding of the customer’s business and use that understanding to challenge the customer’s thinking and teach them something new about how their company operates.”

When the authors examined each of these groups in terms of production, they discovered no significant difference between the five groups when they looked at average sellers.  In other words, anyone can be an average seller.  However, when they examined the top sellers in organizations they discovered a huge difference—the Challenger model created by far the most top performers while the Relationship Builder model was left in the dust by the other four models.

In percentage terms, the authors discovered that the Challenger model made up 39% of all the top producers.  The Relationship Builder model stumbled in at only 7% of all top producers.  (The Lone Wolf model came in at 25%, The Hard Worker at 17%, and The Problem Solver at 12%)

What does a Challenger sales rep do that is so different than the Relationship Builder?  While the Relationship Builder wants to create deep, strong, and warm relationships that defuse any tension, the Challenger seeks to create and build what the authors call constructive tension

According to Dixon and Adamson, the Challenger is “defined by the ability to do three things—teach, tailor, and take control—and to do this in the context of creative tension.”

The Challenger:

Teaches: “The thing that really sets Challenger reps apart is their ability to teach customers something new and valuable about how to compete in their market.”  It is about giving the customer a new and unique perspective.

Tailor: “While teaching is the defining attribute of being a Challenger, the ability to tailor the teaching message to different types of customers—as well as to different individuals within the customer organization—is what makes the pitch resonate with the customer. . . . Tailoring relies on the rep’s knowledge of the specific business priorities of whomever he or she is talking to—the specific outcomes they value most, the results they’re on the hook to deliver for their company.”

Take Control: The ability to assert and maintain control over the sale.  “This is all about the rep’s ability and willingness to stand their ground when the customer begins to push back.”

The good news is the authors say that the Challenger isn’t born a Challenger; they learn the skills that make them Challengers, so any seller can learn to be a Challenger, at least to some extent.

This, for many sellers and sales leaders, is the exact opposite of what they’ve been taught.  That traditional warm, fuzzy, relationship building, give ‘em all the time in world selling style, the authors say, is dead, dead, and gone.

They do, however, have a consolation prize for the relationship lover—Challengers have strong relationship building skills as a supplement to their Challenger selling skills.

Have I bought the Challenger model hook, line, and sinker?  Nope, not yet anyway.  But I’d be foolish not to take a good, long hard look at it when Neil Rackham buys into it.  Might be a good idea for you take a good look too when the book is released.  The release date is November 11—but head on over to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and put your order in, you’ll find it not only interesting, but it will challenge a great deal of what you think you know about salespeople.

September 3, 2011

Pioneers, American Founding Fathers, Moonshiners, and a Certain Class of Salespeople

Filed under: management,sales,Sales Management,selling,small business,team development — Paul McCord @ 11:18 am
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What characteristics did the pioneers who settled and tamed the West, the American Founding Fathers, and Moonshiners have in common?  They were tenacious, hardheaded, independent, and fiercely self-confident.  They certainly didn’t go along with the crowd.  Turning tail or cowering before huge, apparently overwhelming obstacles wasn’t in their DNA.  They forged their own way and were willing to take great risks.

They also broke the rules—lots of rules.  Many a pioneer left the “comfort” of the settled east and headed off—often a’gin the rules set out by the authorities, for new lands in the west.  Needless to say, the American Founding Fathers broke a few of King George’s rules and risked hanging for doing so.  Moonshiners?  There are still some in them in them thar hills evading the authorities today–and paying the price when caught.

They have another characteristic in common—they fade away eventually.  The pioneers eventually decided that the law and order and community they had in the east was needed and they traded in their fierce independence for a Town Council.  The dream of the Founding Fathers died a slow death after their death—to the point that they couldn’t even begin to recognize the government of the US today as having the slightest resemblance to what they established.  And Moonshiners are slowly fading away also.  I heard one being interviewed on the radio a few years ago who said that store bought liquor tasted better and was better quality than what most moonshiners made, but that he made it because his father, his father’s father, and this father’s father’s father were moonshiners and his moonshining had more to do with tradition than a great desire to be a moonshiner.

What does this have to do with salespeople?  Well, there’s a certain class of salespeople who walk in this same tradition of independence and a determination to do it their way—and who, in many cases, pay the price for rebellion.  Call them what you may: Loners, Lone Wolfs, Prima Donnas, Arrogant SOB’s, they do things their own way. 

And a great many sales leaders hate them with a pure hatred.

Company mandated process?  Not for them.

CRM system?  “Update it yourself, Ms. Manager,” they say, “I’ll be out selling.”

Call reports in by Friday closing time?  “Yeah, right.  I’ll see you Monday—and bring you a contract I got signed over the weekend while you were wasting your time playing golf.”

This is our sales process, use it.  “Sure,” you hear, “when you get a sales process that can sell more than I can, come talk to me.  Until then, see ya later.”

We’re a team, you say, we work as a team.  “Not me,” they say, “When you start paying me part of these other folk’s commissions, I’ll play the game.  As long as I have to depend on my commissions alone, there’s nothing team about it.”

Oh, how this group is despised by management (until the end of month numbers come in).  How they’d love to can these men and women—if only they could find a way to make up all the lost sales they’d have if they got rid of them.

Managers fret about how they can reign these folks in—how to get them to obey the rules, how their intransigence will negatively impact the other sellers on the team, how to either get them to conform or get rid of them.

They threaten, they bribe, they lie, they plead, they beg, they try to micromanage, they punish, they yell, they cry, they beat their head against a wall.

Nothing works.

So what’s a manager supposed to do?

Do you just let one or two or three snot-nosed salespeople flaunt the rules and do whatever they dang well want to do?

What about discipline?

What about being a team player?

What about the company sets the rules, not the inmates?

What about to hell with all that?  What’s wrong with a top salesperson selling their way as long as it is ethical and honest?  What’s wrong with allowing the best be themselves?

Is it really going to be a negative influence on the rest of the sales force?  It could be.  But it could also be an incentive—get your butt in gear and you can have the same freedom.

Will it encourage non stars to try to emulate the behavior?  It could—but I also said that those fiercely independent souls above took a big risk.  So does the Loner—if you try to act the part but you don’t produce, you’re gone in no time.  No manager is going to put up with that behavior unless there is a corresponding payoff in numbers.  No numbers, no job.

So what’s a manager to do? 

Turn the tables on the Loner.  When you see you’ve got a Loner on the team—one that is going to pay off with numbers and thus stick around, approach them and let them know that you’re giving them permission to stretch the rules.  Make it your decision—your rules, not theirs.  Give permission, not consent.  If you recognize what is about to happen and are proactive in giving permission, you still retain control of the situation.  If you wait until all you can do is concede, you’ve relinquished present and future control over the individual.

Working with a Loner doesn’t have to be a struggle of wills—you just have to turn their will into your will.  Semantics?  Partly—but it is also letting your Loner know that you understand them and are willing to work with them within reasonable bounds.  If the two of you have agreed on those bounds, both you and your Loner will be much happier together–and you’ll find that tension between you and your independent, hardheaded salesperson fading away.

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