Sales and Sales Management Blog

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 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.

August 16, 2011

“Your Call Is Very Important to Us” and Other Lies

Filed under: Client Relationships,Customer Service,small business — Paul McCord @ 2:15 pm
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The automated call answering machine has certainly changed the nature of interacting with companies.  Whereas in the past when calling a company you might get a surly representative, now you often get an automated lie.

How often do you call a company and once given any option other than “sales” are immediately put on hold (funny how you can almost always get immediately through to the sales department isn’t it)?  If your calls are anything like mine, and I’m sure they are, you experience this on a far too regular basis. 

Once on hold you can predict with almost certainty what will come next—that all too familiar phrase, “Your call is very important to us.”  Of course after being on hold for a few minutes and having heard that message three or four times, you can’t help but think that your call is obviously not important enough to answer.

Our first contact with the company is a lie.  Nice going company.

Oh, but that is hardly the only lie we so often encounter before we even speak to a company representative.  Many times that initial lie assuring us our call is very important is followed up with another standard lie–that the company is currently experiencing unusually high call volume.  With many companies you’ll hear this message every time you call–no matter the time of day or night or the day of the week the call is made.

So our first contact with the company is greeted with two lies before we even speak with a human.

Do you feel wanted and appreciated yet?  Do you feel that your business is important and valued?  Do you feel that you are anything more to the company than a checking account?

And once we reach a human what happens?

In many cases the same type of standardized lie continues.

Have a complaint?  “We’ll investigate and get back to you.”  Often nothing but a stall hoping you’ll just go away.

Want to speak to a manager?  “I’m sorry, he/she is unavailable but if you’ll give me the details of what this is about I’ll have him/her return your call as soon as possible.”  Many times this is nothing but an attempt to keep you from speaking to a manager or is designed to give the manager the call details so they can decide whether they want to return your call or not.

My personal favorite, when asking for the name of a manager, an address to send a complaint to, or a phone number to the corporate office the response is, “I’m sorry, we are not allowed to give out that information.”  This may not be a lie—it may simply be company policy not to have actual lowly customers bothering those important people in the company who are far too busy and too important to be bothered with customers.

Of course it isn’t a lie every time we encounter these statements, but many times, probably more often than we care to know, these are simply lies designed to get rid of us or to block us from getting the resolution we desire.

It has gotten to the point that most of us expect to encounter some or all of this BS from many of the major companies we deal with.  We have come to accept the idea that many companies couldn’t care less about their customers despite their protestations and claims to the contrary.

I’m concerned that I’m noticing many of these same tactics that allow major companies to save big dollars by purposely under staffing or avoiding customer service issues being adopted by more and more small companies.

Large companies may be able to survive and even thrive based on sheer size and marketing ability, but small companies cannot afford to alienate and drive away their customer base.

Although virtually all of us will put up with automated answering machines, most of us prefer to speak to a human.  Few of us are willing to accept the impersonal and often downright rude behavior we get from major companies when dealing with smaller companies.  Many times we have chosen a small company specifically because we expect more personal and professional treatment.

Small can outwork, outperform, outsell, and out service big—but not by mimicking the most egregious mistakes and outrageous behavior large companies commit.

Many customers will stay on hold for 10, 20, even 30 minutes waiting to speak to someone at a big company while few would ever consider doing so when calling a small company.

Some will accept the response that the individual can’t give out the name of a manager or the address of the office when dealing with a major company but would never put up with that when dealing with a small company.

Many customers will resign themselves to having to invest large amounts of time and energy to resolve an issue with a large company but expect—demand—immediate resolution when dealing with a small company.

Selling small’s biggest asset is its ability to connect with prospects and clients on a truly personal level.  That is something that is very difficult for large companies to do because they usually have so many points within the company that touch the customer that it is very difficult to keep all of those touch points personal and in alignment with customer wants and needs. 

Add that difficulty with the large company’s desire to keep costs to a minimum by maintaining insufficient staff levels and you have a great opportunity for a small company to compete very successfully—as long as that small company avoids those large company mistakes and issues.

Personal relationships and service sells, and mega-company indifference is a perfect weak spot for small companies to capitalize on.

Are you taking advantage of the lies and indifference of your big competitors? 

Or are you one of the growing numbers of small companies mimicking those lies and the indifference, trying to cut a couple bucks of costs? If you are, you’re giving up one of your major advantages over your big competitors—and you probably won’t have to worry about saving those couple of bucks very long because your big competitors will drive you out of business.

Embrace your big advantage—your ability to get personal, to react quickly, to make the customer experience one they enjoy instead of one they just have to put up with.

July 26, 2011

Managing the Crisis of Time in Sales

Filed under: lead generation,management,marketing,prospecting,sales,selling,small business,time management — Paul McCord @ 4:04 pm
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Time is one of the most critical factors in sales and it is one of the most difficult to manage.  As I discussed a few days ago, salespeople often are saddled with conflicting demands by management—to sell while still dedicating a tremendous number of hours involved in non-sales activities such as meetings, filling out reports, taking care of internal company matters that could well be handled by someone else, and, of course, customer service issues.

In many organizations there is a virtual time management crisis with their sales teams as they try to figure out how to get their salespeople out into the field selling.

Whether you manage a giant sales force that covers multiple countries or a modest sales team that covers a city or small region, figuring out how to effectively keep your salespeople selling instead of engaged in non-income producing activities is—or certainly should be—a major concern.

For decades managers have tried to find ways to help their sales team members increase sales.  Unfortunately, so often instead of encouraging sales, management ends up hindering their team’s ability to sell by loading them up with non-income producing activities such as attending useless meetings, completing reports, and performing customer service and even collection duties that should be being dealt with by others.

One of the most common activities managers expect their sales team members to perform is that of lead generator.  Almost every company, no matter the size or industry, relies on its sales team members to find and connect with quality prospects on their own.  Many of these companies ask their sellers to simply supplement market’s efforts in terms of lead generation, while others—a great many others—leave lead generation entirely to their salespeople.

In those companies where lead generation is completely the responsibility of the individual salesperson, sellers are required to come up with potential prospect names, research them to determine if they are really suspects or not, contact them, qualify them, set up an appointment, and then, finally, make some kind of presentation.

How much time and effort is spent on generating, contacting, and qualifying the lead?  Depending upon the product or service a salesperson can invest not just hours on a single potential prospect but literally days of time invested in a single lead.

That single lead—that very often results in not only a no sale but turns out to be not even a qualified prospect—can cost hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars.

And we haven’t even begun to talk about all the time these same salespeople invest in developing their own marketing and sales materials, writing and sending prospecting letters, and spending huge amounts of time researching names that never make it to the “prospect” list..

The question then becomes are there realistic and cost effective strategies to significantly alleviate these costly activities? 

Fortunately there are some solutions that can make a great deal of sense no matter the size of the company.

Depending upon company size, hiring a small inside sales group whose function is to set appointments for the sales team can be very cost effective.  Having a staff that is paid on an hourly or percentage of closed sales basis can free up sellers to see more prospects and close more sales while decreasing the overall cost of the sale.  Many companies have very successfully created an inside sales team to supplement and support the outside team, significantly reducing the cost of each individual sale while increasing production.

For many companies who either don’t want to commitment to an inside sales team or who would like to ‘try out’ the concept before making the investment, outsourcing the lead generation and prospect qualification function to a call center outsourcing company is a perfect solution.  Outsourcing gives one the opportunity to free up the sales team without the long-term commitment an inside team would demand.

Another possibility would be to rely on marketing to more effectively qualify and nurture the leads they generate.  Often sellers reject leads generated by marketing because they believe them to be either of inferior quality or to be so far from sales ready that following up is a waste of time.  This isn’t to ignore that many times salespeople simply don’t follow-up on leads or they make a call and when they don’t connect they simply move on to another prospect.  But in many instances the quality of the leads are so poor that eventually sales rejects them out of hand.  Creating a more effective lead qualification and nurturing program can not only change sale’s view of company leads but can greatly reduce the cost of sales.

Whether you look to creating an inside team, outsourcing the function, or developing a more effective lead generation and nurturing program, finding a realistic solution to having salespeople act as lead generators, marketers, and salespeople will help to both increase production and reduce the cost of the individual sale.

July 22, 2011

Are Your Roadblocks to Success Really Real?

Filed under: attitude,career development,sales,Sales Failure,selling,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 12:10 pm
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Ray is a seller for a software company that I have been working with for a few weeks.  Although he is a strong seller, he wants to develop more effective prospecting strategies so he can bang on the phone a less while increasing his sales.  We’ve been working on increasing the quality and quantity of the referrals he gets from his clients.

We began by reviewing his then current method of trying to get referrals.  It was no surprise that he used the typical, “do a good job and ask for referrals” method.  It was also no surprise to learn that he didn’t get many high quality referrals.  Mostly he just got names and phone numbers of companies that were either poor prospects or not prospects at all.

He did get a referred sale here and there, just enough to keep him asking, but not enough to really make a difference in his production.

He agreed with me when I explained why the “process” he was using to get referrals didn’t work very well.  He recognized all the problems—clients uncomfortable with the request, clients not having time to think about who to refer, clients not knowing who to refer, him feeling uncomfortable asking as he knew he was making his clients uncomfortable by putting them on the spot.

He also agreed with me when I showed him a much more effective and natural way to work with his clients to generate high quality introductions to prospects that he knew he wanted to be introduced to.

We did some role playing.  We made a list of possible introductions he could get from his clients.  We reviewed all the steps he needed to take and all the potential issues and problems that could arise.

Ray was ready to begin talking to some clients and getting some quality introductions.

Off he went—and quickly back he came.

He had gone to talk to a client he had just finished selling and installing the software and training the staff.  The client was a plumbing company.  The software was a package of accounting and payroll modules.

The sale had gone well.  The software was doing exactly what it should.  The client and his staff were happy.

Ray had identified a great prospect who he really wanted his client to introduce him to—another plumbing company in town.  His identified prospect was one Ray had been trying to connect with for months but couldn’t get the owner to take his calls or acknowledge his letters or emails.  He was getting nowhere—but he also believed this was a great prospect for him.

His plumbing client was going to be the key to getting in.

That is until he went to see his client.

When Ray was visiting with his client, he thought about all the reasons his client wouldn’t give him an introduction to the other plumber—that other plumber was a competitor after all and that other plumber was bigger than Ray’s client; why would the client want to give the competitor anything that would help them?  In addition, Ray knew that his client was bidding on a big project and that other plumbing company was probably bidding on it too.  There were just too many reasons for his client to turn him down, Ray reasoned.

Knowing that he was off to get his first introduction commitment, I called Ray that afternoon to get a report.  I was dismayed with what I heard.

Why again, I asked, did Ray believe his client knew the other plumber and were friends?

Because there was a picture in the client’s office of the client and the other plumber each holding a huge Bass and were both smiling and obviously comparing them.

Ah, I reminded him, they really were friends.

Anything else?

Yes, Ray said, his client used to work for the other plumber.  In fact, they still do some jobs together where the other plumber will sub-contract Ray’s client when needed.

Ah, they’re friends and they work closely together.  In fact, Ray’s client makes money off the other company.  Sounds like cut throat competitors to me.

So why did he determine it would be useless to ask his client for an introduction to the other company?

Well, Ray said, they’re competitors.  Why would his client want to give a competitor an advantage?

What advantage, I asked?  Did his software package improve his client’s quality as a plumber?

Well, no, not really, Ray answered.

Did the package give him an advantage when competing for business?

Sorta, Ray said, in the sense that it made his company more efficient.

Efficient enough to blow his competition out of the water?

No.

If his competition had the same package would it blow Ray’s client out of the water?

No.

So, I asked, what’s the problem?  Give me one good reason why his client wouldn’t recommend to a friend and someone he works closely with something that might help him save time and money if the chances are that that something really isn’t going to hurt him?

Ray couldn’t, of course, come up with a good reason.

He went back, asked for and got the introduction—and eventually a new client

So often when they can’t find them out there naturally, sellers put roadblocks in their way themselves.

Ray was so concerned about getting a negative response that he thought of all kinds of reasons why his client would say ‘no’ instead of why the client would say ‘yes,’ and that predetermined ‘no’ almost cost him a sale.

How about you?  What are the predetermined reasons you can’t pick up the phone and call that great prospect?  What are the predetermined reasons you can’t close that sale?  What are the predetermined reasons you can’t get that job?

Don’t be Ray—don’t defeat yourself before you even try.  A great many of those roadblocks that keep us from success have been put there not by others but by ourselves.  What roadblocks have you created?  Find them and get rid of them.  Life is hard enough without you defeating yourself.

July 16, 2011

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Secret to Sales Success

Filed under: career development,lead generation,prospecting,sales,Sales Failure,selling,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 10:49 am
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A little over one hundred years ago the father of a young 8 year old girl named Virginia O’Hanlon encouraged her to write to a then leading New York newspaper, The Sun, and ask the question she’d just asked him—if there were in fact a Santa Claus, for all of her friends were telling her that he really didn’t exist and she wanted to know if they were correct.

The Sun answered Virginia in one of the most famous editorials ever published—Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus.  The reply was a resounding YES, there is a Santa Claus and the writer of the editorial laid out his proof.

Unfortunately, today all too many deny there is a real secret to sales success also.  Like Virginia’s friends, the claim is made that there really isn’t one single thing that if done can guarantee success in sales.  No, they say, you must become a master of every aspect of selling and then you’ll be prepared to become successful.  Oh, sure, they’ll admit, a few here and there appear to succeed by blind luck, but they’re the exception, not the rule.  Forget your silly search for the magic bullet of selling and resign yourself to learning the minutia of sales before seriously turning your eye to becoming truly successful.

Many, many others are all too eager to promote the idea of the sales secret—and to let you know that they are the sole keepers of the great secret that so few have known.  Better yet, they tell you, they’ll be happy to share the secret with you, but since it is such a valuable thing and should only be shared with those who are truly deserving of knowing, they must make sure you are worthy.  But since they really don’t have any other way of discerning who is and who isn’t worthy, they must charge an exorbitant fee to keep the riff-raff and undeserving from attaining it–and since you have the money to acquire it, you must be worthy and deserving of being given the great secret (as soon as your check clears, of course)..

Lucky for you I know this great secret and I’ll give it to you—and it won’t cost you $1,995.  Won’t even cost $995.  Heck, I’m not even going to charge you $9.95.  I’m simply going to give it to you—no charge.

Why in the world would I give such a tremendous secret away for nothing?  Because I know that once learned, the vast majority won’t put it into practice.  You see, the secret is simple, but it is far from easy.

Anyone can take this secret and become a successful seller—just how successful will depend on their commitment to implementing it.

So what is this secret?

Is it a super-duper sales process?  No.

Maybe a super special leads list?  Nope, not that.

How about some special words that will immediately connect with prospects?  Not that either.

Could it be a special super power like a super hero has?   Now we’re getting warm.

The secret is a super power of sorts–one that few are capable of acquiring.

This super power is tough-mindedness.  It’s the ability to out work and out prospect your competitors.  It’s the ability to take the rejection, the ‘no’s’, the frustration of making calls and not reaching anyone, of being stopped dead by a gatekeeper, by having the phone slammed down in your ear, of networking until you feel like you can’t network anymore–and to then do it again and again and again until you’ve reached your goals.

The secret is simple—if you have the determination and commitment to prospect longer and harder than anyone else, you will become successful.

I’ve seen this truth worked out time after time as new sellers enter the field and out work and outperform even the top sellers in their office. They know nothing–but work their tails off and sell like crazy. Unfortunately, many times after they “learn” that they’re not supposed to be having the success that they’re having their production craters. They’ve “learned” how to be average. Sometimes we simply learn the wrong things–such as there isn’t a secret to sales success.

This isn’t to say that all the other things in sales aren’t important.  They are.  You need a great sales process; you need to know how to probe and discover needs and wants; you need to know how to solve issues.  There is a great deal that every professional seller must learn.

But there is still one key to being successful in sales above all others—prospecting.

The better you become at qualifying suspects; the better you become at finding and solving real needs; the better you become at finding and connecting with your quality prospects; the easier success will be and the less time you’ll have to spend prospecting.

That being said, even if you know nothing about sales, have the world’s worst close ratio, have no discretion in who you spend time talking to. and haven’t the slightest idea of the difference between a closed-end and open-end question, if you outwork your competition in prospecting, you will reach a measure of success.

Don’t let anyone tell you there isn’t a simple secret to success in selling that alone can make you successful because there is.  It certainly isn’t complicated—but it is hard.  And it can be claimed and implemented by anyone. 

By all means, acquire a great sales process, learn the most sophisticated and effective prospecting strategies you can, learn to become great at identifying and solving prospect issues, learn all you can to make selling easier, but if you aren’t having the success you want, take heart—you now have the secret.

Take it, claim it as yours, implement it, and enjoy the rewards.

And know that even if your competitors know it too, few, if any, will claim it as their own because it simply costs too much for most.

June 22, 2011

Get Rid of Your Seagulls Before They Devour You

Filed under: business,Client Relationships,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 10:34 am
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My wife Debbie and I have an 18 month old grandson, Colton.  Knowing that we’ll soon be watching animated movies with him, we’ve been catching up on them every chance we get.  Not having watched them much in the last twenty years or so, I’m amazed at how many there are—and how good some of them are.

In Finding Nemo, as the action progresses toward Sydney Harbor, we witness a large group of Seagulls fighting for food.  The Seagulls know only one word which they repeat incessantly—“mine.”  Their dialog is a constant stream of “Mine, mine, mine, mine,” as they try to grab and fight for whatever food there might be.  And they’re not the least bit inhibited in how they go about getting it; nor are they concerned about how their actions might be impacting those around them.  Their only concern is for themselves and what’s in it for them.

Do they remind you of anyone?

If you said some salespeople, you’d be right, of course. 

But those aren’t the ones I’m thinking of.

Instead, I’m thinking of a group—hopefully a small group—that virtually every seller in the world knows all too well—some of their prospects, customers, and clients.

We all have them in our pipeline and in our client database.  They bleed us dry with their constant cry of “mine, mine, mine,’ with unreasonable demands and never-ending attempts to get lower and still lower prices.

This small set of prospects and clients take up far more time and energy than they are worth.  Yet most of us dutifully take care of them, even when we know it is to the determent of our other prospects and clients.

What should we be doing with this flock of self-centered Seagulls?

Get rid of them.  Turn them loose and let them suck the blood out of your competition.

There is no rule that says you can’t get rid of prospects and clients.  It’s your sales business; you can keep or get rid of anyone you like, and you must do some culling in order to maintain a healthy business.

If you have Seagulls as clients, get rid of them.  If when you prospect you come across a Seagull, eliminate them from your prospecting list

We all want and need sales, but prospects and clients who only know the word “mine” aren’t going to do anything for you except ultimately cost you business and money.  Shoo them away before they devour you.

June 11, 2011

Understand the Four Pillars of a Referral and You’ll Get More and Better Referrals

Filed under: business,lead generation,marketing,Personal Marketing,prospecting,Referral Selling,sales,selling,small business — Paul McCord @ 12:56 pm
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At first glance, a referral is a pretty simple thing.  For most salespeople, managers, and trainers, a referral is just a name and phone number that a client has given the salesperson once the salesperson has completed the sale and has done a good job for the client.

Once a salesperson has received a referral, contacting the referred party is just as simple.  The salesperson either will call the referred party mentioning to him or her that the client, which they know, referred the salesperson to them, or will ask the client to write a referral letter to the prospect and then the salesperson will call the prospect after they have received the letter.  A very simple, straightforward process.

Unfortunately, this process is totally and completely wrong, and has been proven by millions of salespeople to not work worth a darn. Nevertheless, this is what is taught in almost every sales course in the world.  And not only is it a waste of time and effort, it deceives the salespeople who don’t succeed with it into believing that the fault lies with them, not with a “system” that doesn’t work.

Generating a large number of high quality referrals requires far more than “doing a good job and asking for referrals.”  It requires a systematic process of planting referral seeds, watering them at every chance, weeding out problems and issues, and then reaping the rewards. 

If you want to generate a large number of high quality referrals from your clients, you must understand what a referral is based on.

A Referral is Based on a Foundation with Four Pillars-and you can control 3 of them:

The relationship between you and your client:  you can control this pillar of the foundation.  By instituting the full client relationship building process in detailed in Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income: Sales Success through Client Referrals (John Wiley and Sons, 2007), you can create a strong relationship with your client built on mutual trust.  Clients don’t give referrals because they like you or even because you did a good job.  Clients hate to give referrals and unless they have a deep trust that you will not embarrass them and that you’ll deal honestly with the prospect they refer, they won’t be willing to give quality referrals.

Your client’s purchasing experience: you can control this pillar of the foundation.  You must discover exactly what your client’s expectations and priorities are, then meet-, and hopefully exceed them.  You cannot afford to guess or “think” you know what these are-you must know exactly and you can only do that by discussing them with your client and then making sure you meet them or exceed them-nothing less will do.

The relationship between your client and the prospect: you have no control over this pillar.  Clients will refer you to people they have very strong, positive relationships with and people they have very negative relationships with.  If the prospect trusts and respects our client, some that trust and respect will be automatically imbued to you.  On the other hand, if the prospect distrusts or doesn’t respect your client, some of that distrust or disrespect will also be imbued to you.  Your job is to find out exactly what the relationship between client and prospect is and then plan you approach accordingly.

Your initial contact with the prospect: you control this pillar also.  If you have built your relationship with the client properly, your client will be happy to contact the prospect in whatever method you desire.  As outlined in Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income, there are a number of methods of contacting clients, each with their own pros and cons, depending on the strength or weakness of the client/prospect relationship.

As seen above, you have control of the majority of the pillars upon which a referral is based.  If any of the above is weak, your likelihood of generating quality referrals will decline and the weakness must be made up elsewhere.  In actuality, if one of the first two segments is weak, you will not be getting quality referrals-period.  However, you can mitigate the affects of the last two.

If the relationship between client and prospect is weak, use a stronger contact method.  Moreover, if the contact method is weak, convert the method into a stronger one.  For example, if your contact method is a phone call to a prospect who has a weak relationship with your client, try to bring in one or two other clients the prospect may know by reputation to build additional credibility.  Better yet, try to arrange a conference call between the prospect and your client.

Generating a large number of quality sales isn’t done by chance or luck, and neither is generating a large number of high quality referrals. Just as you need a well thought out process to consistently sell, you need a well thought out process to generate quality referrals.   You can significantly increase the volume and the success of your referrals if you understand the dynamics that generate quality referrals and then control those dynamics.

May 31, 2011

How to Take the Sting Out of the Price Question Early in the Sale

Filed under: Handling questions,Objections,small business,trust — Paul McCord @ 8:57 am
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“So, how much will it cost?”

“What would something like this run me?”

“We have a very limited budget.  I don’t want to waste my time.  What’s your fee?”

“Sounds to me like you’re talking about a lot of money.  Before we go any farther I need to know what kind of money we’re looking at.”

We’ve all heard these questions or a million other variations of them.

They always seem to come way too early in the conversation and always at an inopportune time.

The fact is that no matter what you’re selling, the price of your goods and services is always a primary concern to your prospects. Whether you like it or not, price is top of mind with the majority, if not all, of your prospects.  If it isn’t, you might need to question just how serious your prospect is since price is always an important part of the equation when contemplating a purchase.

The fact that prospects are concerned about price isn’t a surprise and it really shouldn’t be a big deal—except it so often comes up before you’ve had any opportunity to establish the value you bring to the table for the prospect, and price without value equals a no sale.

The price question presents you with a serious dilemma:  how do you honestly answer the question of price, yet at the same time save a detailed conversation about price until you have had the opportunity to build the value in your product and service that justifies its price?

The early introduction of the price question seems to put you in a position of having to choose between two rules of selling that appear to be antithetical to one another at this point-1) always answer your prospect’s questions honestly and directly, and 2) never discuss price until you’ve built value in your product or service.

Fortunately, you can honor both rules.

The key to addressing the price question is understanding why the question is asked in the first place.  Many salespeople see the price question as an objection; it isn’t.  It’s an honest question by the prospect who is trying to determine their interest level in your product or service. 

Just as you are trying to qualify your prospect, they’re trying to qualify your product or service, as well as qualifying you, and one of the major qualification questions they have is price.  They’re simply asking the question too early, before they have sufficient information to determine whether your product or service justifies the investment.

The easiest way to handle the question is to give the prospect a direct answer and then bridge back to your investigation of their wants and needs to build value.  Depending upon the product or service you’re selling, your answer to price may be specific-”This truck is twenty five six fifty four”-or general-”depending upon your specific needs we find when we do the needs analysis, the complete instillation of the software and training can range from a few thousand dollars on up into the low to mid five figures,” or, “Frankly, Jack, at this point I really don’t know because I don’t know what needs to be done, if anything, but I can tell you that the investment can range from just a few thousand dollars on up.  But it depends upon the scope of the work to be done and we’ve still to determine that.”

Your statement then needs to be immediately followed up with a question to bridge back to investigating their needs to help you build value.

In the truck example above you might then ask, “Will you be pulling a trailer often, or just on occasion?”  In this example your full statement would be, “This truck is twenty five six fifty four.  By the way, will you be pulling a trailer often or just on occasion?”  You’ve answered your prospect’s question, but you then lead them back into a discussion of their needs, which will help you determine what vehicle will best meet their needs, give you information to highlight the features of the truck that will meet those needs, and the benefits of those features that will give value to the price of the truck.

In the software example, the full statement might be something like:  “Well, Nancy, depending upon your specific needs we find when we do the needs analysis and the modules you need, the complete instillation and training of the software can be anywhere from a few thousand dollars on up to the low to mid five figures; by the way, what other applications do you run that our software will have to be integrated with?”  Again, you’ve given an honest answer to the price question since at this point you don’t know what the package will cost.  Instead of trying to answer an impossible question, you’ve given the typical cost range and then followed with a question that will put the conversation back on track of investigating your prospect’s needs, allowing you to gather the information you need to build value in your product before you get into a serious price discussion.

In the third, the consulting example, the full statement might be: “Frankly, Jack, at this point I really don’t know because I don’t know what needs to be done, if anything, but I can tell you that the investment can range from just a few thousand dollars on up.  But it depends on the scope of the work to be done and we’ve still to determine that.  What do you think has been the cost of the shipping department’s logjam that has extended shipping time by almost two days?”

Price questions need not create problems for you or for your prospect.  Price is a natural concern for the prospect, but knowing a price without understanding the real value of the product or service is meaningless.  Your job is to answer your prospect’s question and return the conversation to a point where you can build value for your prospect, so they can appreciate the price in context of value.

If you refuse to answer the price question you run the risk of insulting or angering your prospect-not to mention the damage you do to your credibility and trustworthiness.  But if you begin a serious discussion of price before you’ve had the opportunity to build value, you ask your prospect to make an investment without having a basis to determine whether the investment is justified.

May 22, 2011

How to Turn Referral Partnerships from Wishful Thinking into Business Producing Machines

Filed under: business,marketing,prospecting,sales,selling,small business — Paul McCord @ 9:07 am
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Are you like most sellers finding it more and more difficult to break through the noise and connect with quality prospects?  Are you finding prospects putting up more and more obsticles to keep you and your message out?  When you do finally get through to a prospect are you finding that you have less and less time to gain their attention and interest?

Whether you’re facing the above issues or not, aligning yourself with others who can expose you to new prospects, help set up the sale for you, and help make life more enjoyable is one of the most effective marketing methods you can employ.

Enlisting other sellers or companies who sell to the same prospects as you to help you find and connect with quality prospects has been a staple of marketing for top producers for decades—and unsuccessfully imitated by countless others.

Why have top producers found working with other professionals for referrals to work so well while so many others have failed to capitalize on them?

I often hear sellers and managers–and even some sales trainers–talk about seeking out ‘referral sources’ to help them find and connect with prospects.  These referral sources tend to be sellers or companies who are likely to deal with people or companies that would be great prospects for the seller and who might need or want their product or service.

These ‘referral sources’ discussions always interest me, so I’ll engage the seller in a conversation about their experience with them.  Typically my first question will be how much business they’ve closed through these referral sources.  A few will indicate they’ve done well, most indicate they’ve seen very little to no real business from their sources.

When I ask the seller I’m speaking with what the other seller gets out of making the referral, they mention that they are giving the referrer the assurance that they’ll take exceptional care of the client, allowing that seller to become more valuable to the client by becoming a trusted source of additional advice and services; or they’ll give the seller’s client a discount of some sort that only that seller’s clients get, or they’ll give the seller a cash incentive–in other words, nothing of value to the referrer.

When I assert that the other person is getting nothing of value, I often get a scornful look and verbal resistance.  Some of the responses I’ve received are:

•    From a mortgage loan officer: “Their client has to have a loan and I’ll make sure their client is well taken care of and gets a great deal—and that the loan will close on time.  That’s real value to that Realtor and their client.”
•    From an insurance agent: “She doesn’t offer insurance, just securities.  Her clients need insurance and she can be assured that I won’t try to steal her clients or infringe on her business in any way and if she doesn’t help her client through me, her client is likely to see an agent that will try to steal her business.”
•    From a seller for an IT service company: “I often find additional needs the client has and when I do, if he (the person who referred him to the client) sells that product, I’ll send the business to him.  I’ll be a source for additional sales for him to his client.”
•    From a specialized printing seller: “My referral sources are also in the printing business.  Their clients will on occasion need some things done that they can’t do and that I can.  My appeal to them is that by referring the business to me, they are assured that I’ll talk up just how good they are and it keeps their client from going to another company that might be able to not only do what I do but might be able to replace them as well.”
•    From a management consultant: “I focus exclusively on helping companies evaluate and hire more effective employees.  I look for other consultants who work in other areas who can recommend me to their clients who are having employee selection and retention issues.  By recommending me, they prevent the client from seeking help elsewhere which just might be from a company who could replace them in addition to helping with their hiring and retention issues.”

In each of these cases (and these responses are the norm, not the exception), the reason given for the referral source to send them referrals is that they are doing the referral source a favor.   “I’ll talk them up,” or “I’ll close the loan on time,” or “I won’t try to steal her business,” or “I’ll help them protect their relationship with their client.”  The worst part is these sellers are serious when they make these statements.

Lazy, delusional thinking at it’s finest.

Why do these “referral sources” need these sellers?  A promise of making them look good, or not trying to steal their business, or closing the loan on time is a dime a dozen.  Actually, they’re more like a penny a hundred.  There isn’t a mortgage loan officer, IT salesperson, consultant, or printing salesperson alive that isn’t likely to make the same promise.  If you think you’re doing your referral source a favor and that is going to earn you their business, you’re living in fantasyland with Unicorns and Hobbits.

The first rule in developing referral business from others is that they don’t need you.  They don’t need your promises, they don’t need you to make them look good, they don’t need you messin’ with their clients.

The second rule in developing referral business from others is they need business just like you.  They need referrals to quality prospects, just like you do.

The ‘secret’ the top producers have discovered when getting referrals from other sellers and companies is to forget about ‘referral sources’ and develop referral partnerships—real partnerships where the referrals go in both directions, not jut one.

Sellers and companies need the same thing you need—business.  If they need someone to make them look good or to help one of their clients, they have no problem finding dozens of sellers willing to help.  What they need are reciprocal relationships where the people they refer clients to also refer prospects back to them.  They need partners, not moochers.  And if you’re not giving back in kind, that’s exactly what you are—a moocher.

Setting up Referral Partnerships

1.  Identify Your Potential Partners: Look for other sellers or companies who deal with the same prospects as you.  Define your ideal prospect—you may have more than one ideal—and then look for others who target the same prospect.  You want to find sellers who are already established in the market; who have the reach and reputation you wish for yourself; and whose quality of products and services match yours.

There is no need to waste time and energy on low producing sellers as they won’t be able to feed you many prospects.  In addition, the quality and cost of your products and/or services should closely match your potential partner’s since you will be looking for the same prospect.  If your product is top of the line and expensive, don’t partner with a salesperson whose products are on the bargain end of the spectrum.  Likewise, if you are selling modestly priced products, don’t think you can partner with a premium priced company to enhance your image—their clients are more than likely not going to be interested in your company’s products.

2.  Know What You’re After: Once you’ve identified a number of potential partners, develop a plan of approach for each.  What are you looking for with each partner—joint marketing?  Maybe joint sales calls?  Simply referring clients back and forth?

Take a close look at the activities of each seller or company you’ve identified to get an idea of how they operate.  Do they do a lot of advertising?  Are they constantly running specials?  Are their sales materials high dollar—or maybe they don’t really use collateral material?  Are there gaps in their offerings that you can help fill?  Do they tend to sell mostly to existing customers or to new prospects?

How your proposed partner works will lead you to know what to propose to them.  If they do a great deal of advertising or direct mail, maybe a joint advertising campaign would be of interest to them.  If they work primarily with their existing client base, referring back and forth might be most appealing.  If they use a lot of high dollar collateral material, you better have material that is equally impressive.

3.  Set an Appointment with the Partner Prospect: Invite your partner prospect to lunch.  Your partnership discussion is important and shouldn’t be a viewed as a casual phone conversation.

Many of your potential partners will be men and women you either don’t know or have only met once or twice very casually.  Many will not know who you are.  Since the men and women you’ve identified as potential partners are the best in their industry in their local market, a very effective way to gain a lunch meeting is to acknowledge their success and superior reputation.  Just call them, introduce yourself, and then tell them that you know them via their reputation and the quality of their work and that you’d like to take them to lunch as you have found that it is always good practice to know top people in the business.  Most will accept—people like to be recognized for their work.  Seldom have I been turned down with this approach.  And best of all, it’s true.  I do want to know the best people in the business and they are among the best in the business in their area.

4.  Make Your Proposal: During your meeting, present your proposal.  Your proposal must focus on what the partnership will do for your potential partner, not what it will do for you.  Sellers are people, meaning their natural interest is ‘what’s in it for me.’  If you approach the conversation from a self-centered point of view, your proposal is dead before you even begin.

If you’ve done your homework well, you should be able to relate exactly why your potential partner would be interested in working with you, what type of working relationship it would be, and what the potential results for them will be.

Since there is a very good chance your potential partner doesn’t know who you are—and possibly they know little or nothing about your company—you’ll have to be able to quickly create a relationship with them and to provide credibility for yourself and your company.  Hopefully you have mutual clients or testimonials from individuals or companies your potential partner will recognize and respect.

Don’t expect a commitment during your initial meeting.  Most often if the person is interested, they’ll need time to do some due diligence, as well as additional discussions to develop the model for the partnership.

5.  The Monkey is on Your Back: The partnership was your idea, not theirs.  That means you’ll have to do the work to get the partnership going.  Even if you gain agreement from your potential partner, they won’t be committed until they see results.  You’ll have to take the lead in getting the partnership moving—and most importantly, you’ll have to provide them with real leads, referrals, and potential business before you can expect them to begin feeding you leads and referrals.

If you’re just looking for free, easy business, don’t bother with a partnership because it won’t do you any good.  However, if you’re willing to invest the time and effort, focusing on creating partnerships with the top sellers and companies in your area that work with your prime prospects can bring in business you would have had a very difficult if not impossible time reaching.

Partnerships are great door openers and business builders.  But they aren’t magical.  They take work.  They take time and effort.  And most of all, they require you to do what you say you’re going to do—be a source of new business for your partner, just as they are expected to be a source of new business for you.

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