Sales and Sales Management Blog

May 30, 2012

Four Hours a Day Guaranteed to Make You a Successful Seller

Filed under: career development,prospecting,sales,selling,success — Paul McCord @ 10:17 am
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 There have been hundreds of millions—billions and billions if not trillions and trillions—of words written about how to become a successful seller.  Who knows how many tens of thousands of books and millions of articles have been written in the sales area? In my 30 plus years of selling I’ve read hundreds of the books and thousands of the articles.  I’ve even written three books myself and written hundreds of articles.  All of it designed to deal with one simply action—making a sale.

Some of these books and articles are quite profound with wonderful charts and diagrams designed to show the flow of a sale or the relationship between different parts of the sale or to expound and clarify how buyers and sellers interact.  Others are less complex and more immediately applicable, usually dealing with specific segments of selling.

Whether the work is simple or complex, a short article or a tome rivaling War and Peace, the supposed goal is the same—help the reader sell more.

We’ve broken the sales process into miniscule pieces and then put back together again.  We’ve developed numerous theories of the sales process.  We’ve analyzed how buyers buy, how sellers sell, and how sellers shouldn’t sell but instead help buyer’s buy.

We’ve done so much talking and writing that at this point 99% that is said and written is nothing more than a rehash of what has already been said and written.  I honestly don’t know if I’ve read an original thought in any book or article I’ve ever read.  In fact, it is highly likely I haven’t.

All of this is not to condemn the thousands of books and millions of articles.  I personally think they are needed as they not only appeal to different men and women, the same message in one book or article may not resonate with a reader whereas the same message in a bit different format in another book might really communicate.

But in the end, as much as we sometimes like to intellectualize our profession, we’re not dealing with rocket science.

And in the end, there are still a few actions that if done and done religiously will virtually guarantee success.

Let me suggest a four hour daily routine that if carried out will produce a pipeline bursting with top prospects—and sales.

In fact, if you implement this four hour daily routine you’ll soon find yourself trying to figure out how to maintain it as you’ll be so busy with the business of selling that you’ll struggle to keep feeding the pipeline.

Hour One: Research
Spend one hour a day researching prospects.  Most sellers know little to nothing about the prospects they contact.  They don’t know much about the prospect company or its niche, much less much about the prospect himself or herself.  Most of the time, they don’t even know if the targeted prospect is really the individual they need to be speaking with.

The more you know about your prospect, the better chance you have of making a meaningful contact.  When connecting with a prospect you have only a few seconds to make an impression and to capture their interest.  If you can’t do that within a few seconds, your chances of moving them along to an eventual sale are cut by more than half.

Know your prospect.  Know who they are, what they do, what’s important to them, what their successes have been—and their failures.  Know where they are going and where they’ve been.  Know what kinds of companies they work with.  Know who they are and who they want to be.

To do this takes research.  Fortunately there are wonderful research tools on the internet and a great many of them are free starting with Google and Bing and then moving on to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and many other sites that can provide a massive amount of pertinent information.

Hours Two and Three: Make Calls
Two hours a day of speaking to new prospects is far more than most sellers spend—but in reality still barely enough.

Let’s clarify the word “calls.”  By calls I don’t necessarily mean cold calls or even phone calls.  Calls can be calls to referred prospects or could be cold walking or could be warm calls to people you’ve met in a social setting.  Calls are simply contacts with prospects, no matter how you find those prospects or how you connect with them.

Even though the how of connecting isn’t important, how the two hours are spent is extremely important.  Sitting at your desk and dialing the phone every 7 to 10 minutes with lots of shuffling of prospect cards or flipping through CRM records in-between doesn’t qualify as two hours of making calls.

Two hours is exactly that—a solid two hours of making contact.  You make a call and don’t get anyone, don’t put the phone down but instead make the next dial.  You walk into an office and there’s no one to talk to, walk out the door and right into the next door.

Many of us fool ourselves into thinking we spent time prospecting because we were at the desk for two or three hours when in fact we only made a few dials and only spoke to two people. 

That’s not prospecting, that’s wasting a morning or an afternoon.

Hour Four: Follow-up
What do you do with all those people you’ve spoken to but who aren’t really moving along the pipeline?  You don’t do what most sellers do—you don’t drop them and let them die from inactivity.  You follow up.

During your initial conversation with a prospect, try to find an area or reason for follow-up.  Maybe you need to supply more information, find an answer to a question, or research a competitor.  Maybe there has been a recent trigger event that provides for a follow-up call.  Maybe your research uncovers new information that your prospect should know about.

Spend at least one hour a day following up with those prospects in your database that are good prospects that you haven’t been able to move along.  Every prospect should be contacted at least quarterly if possible.

Spending four hours a day prospecting will fill your pipeline.  Yes, for many it isn’t the most pleasant four hours of the day–but it is the most important four hours.  You cannot make a sale without prospects and since they aren’t beating your door down to talk to you they won’t become clients unless you take the initiative and contact them and then make the follow-up contacts to eventually bring them into the fold.

I encourage you to buy and read all the great books on selling (and, of course, in particular my books), as well as the many tremendous articles that are published daily.  But in the end, remember that your success is really based on finding and connecting with great prospects—and you have to invest daily in doing exactly that. 

Take four hours a day to build your business and you’ll find that magically you’ll be successful.

April 2, 2012

The Bittersweet Necessity of Tension and Conflict in Your Organization

Filed under: business,small business,success,team development — Paul McCord @ 2:10 pm
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“Donna, I’ve sat through three of your team’s executive meetings, one board meeting, and a couple of regional meetings.  One of your company’s biggest problems is there’s no conflict.  No one is challenging anything in the company.  Everyone gets along just fine, but it seems that everyone has taken getting along to the point that your team and your company are stagnant.  If you really want to see your team and your company grow, get some tension and conflict going.”

I believe that at first Donna, the CEO of a mid-sized financial services company was so surprised and disturbed by my statement that I thought she was going to throw me out of her office.

Then she slowly said, “Paul, I trust you so I’m assuming you have a good reason for saying something that I’d take as a pretty stupid thing to say normally.  Before I determine you’re not the consultant for us that I thought you were, explain that statement to me.”

I did–and now her company is happily engulfed in conflict.

If you want your company or sales team to grow, mature, and become strong, encourage conflict.  In fact, if you want to develop a company or sales team that dominates its market you’ll go out of your way to nurture and fan the flames of conflict whenever they arise.

Now, what comes to mind when you hear the word “conflict?”  Do you think anger?  Do you think arguments about personal territory and personal preferences?  Do you think jealousy, suspicion, and resentment?  Do you think of toes getting stepped on and egos getting smashed?

Those are certainly some things that are rightfully referred to as conflict.  And unfortunately those things arise in every business organizations—and those things have and will continue to destroy organizations.

But those aren’t the conflicts I’m talking about that are good, necessary, and helpful to your organization.

What conflict is good?  That which brings about strong, enduring, positive change to the organization and the members of the team.

Not to get religious on you, but let me begin by quoting a section of Proverbs 27: “just as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”  Iron sharpens iron through conflict and tension, through one piece of iron striking another.  And as with iron, tension and conflict can and will sharpen our organization and team members.

How does conflict bring about positive change?  Positive change comes from challenging the status quo and tradition; it comes when men and women have the courage to question how the organization is conducting its business and how it is treating its customers, employees, and vendors; and when the lower ranks within the organization challenge the decisions from on high based on the reality they encounter in the real world that is often far removed from the executive suite.

For an organization to grow and mature there must be tension and that tension must be generated by conflict—the conflict of honest men and women seeking to improve the organization as a whole.

“Seeking to improve the organization” is the rub—most conflict tends to be “me” oriented in some fashion and, thus, destructive.  Consequently many organizations try desperately to eliminate all conflict.  They have conflict resolution specialists come in and present seminars and maybe even do one-on-one counseling.  They put up posters exhorting everyone to put aside differences.  Like Rodney King, the theme is “can’t we all just get along?”

Yes, on a petty, personal level conflict and its accompanying tension is very undesirable and destructive.  But in regards to business and organizational growth there must be some constructive tension and conflict.  Unfortunately that constructive conflict can easily get discouraged in the general atmosphere of trying to eliminate personal conflict and to generate harmony with the hope that everyone will sit around toasting marshmallows and singing Kumbaya. 

Yet the reality is that if no one is questioning no change or improvement is possible.  When people question, there will be others defending the status quo and tradition, and that is when significant growth and maturity can take place.

When policies, procedures, rules, regulations, old ways of doing things, and traditional perspectives are questioned good things happen.  Sometimes those existing items are determined to be right and good; at other times they are determined to be in need of change, whether just a mild adjustment or a radical tearing down and rebuilding.

Whether or not change is needed, the very act of questioning, of arguing, or looking at alternatives is constructive and profitable for forces the organization to evaluate who it is, what it does, and how it does it. 

Frankly sometimes the tension and conflict is uncomfortable.  And on top of as unfortunate as it is, with human nature being what it is, there will be times when egos and feelings get in the way and complicate matters even more.

As regrettable as it may be that people get the ego or feeling stepped on, you cannot afford to let that possibility stop the organization from benefiting from tension and conflict.

How can destructive ego and personal feeling issues be avoided?  There really is no way to keep them out of the mix entirely.  However, there are courses, seminars, and coaches that can help teach team members how to keep the conflict on a professional level, seeking the best for the company, and keeping their personal feelings and ego out—or at least to a minimum.

There is no way around the fact that tension and conflict is bittersweet.  Few actually like conflict and the tension that naturally comes with it; but the tremendous positive results that come from good, positive, constructive conflict are worth stretching the team and getting out of the company comfort zone.

I’m not advocating that your organization become a corporate version of the Golden Gloves, but if your organization doesn’t have some tension and conflict going on, then your stagnating and soon you’ll get left behind by competitors who are willing to raise, discuss, and argue those uncomfortable questions.

 

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March 26, 2012

Four Common Destructive Sales Management Styles

Filed under: career development,management,Sales Management,success — Paul McCord @ 1:42 pm
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I’ve had the privilege of working with many new managers whose company hired me to help them transition from seller to manager or to work with existing managers to become more effective.  One of the recurring issues I’ve discovered is a misunderstanding of what a sales manager is.

Whether I’m working with a newly promoted seller into a frontline sales management position or an established sales leader, I often find someone with a warped and destructive idea of what a sales manager’s work is. 

Generally I find these misguided managers have adopted one of these four destructive management styles :

The Clone Coach:  A common tendency of great salespeople when promoted to manager is to believe that if they could just train all of their salespeople to be mini-me’s of themselves then everything will be great—the salespeople will be happy, they’ll make their numbers, management will be thrilled, customers will be loyal forever, and the new manager will be promoted again in no time.  Thus, the new manager sets out to coach every seller on his or her team to do exactly what they did to be successful without regard to the individual salesperson’s experience level, knowledge, personality, or skills. 

Typically the harder the manager tries to “coach” each of their salespeople to mimic the way they sold, the more frustrated each seller becomes and the more resistant to being “coached.”

Although the manager may succeed in creating one or two clones, they will alienate the majority of their team and eventually there will be a breakdown of trust and cooperation.

The Super Seller:  The Super Seller is the star salesperson who when promoted to manager tells his or her salespeople to forget about selling, “you get the prospects, I’ll sell ‘em” is the crux of their management style.  They haven’t the slightest interest in seeing their salespeople grow as sellers; their only interest is making THEIR numbers because it’s all about them.

Salespeople languish and eventually wither and die under a Super Seller for they not only have no chance to grow, if they do decide to exercise selling skills they are typically scolded for the perceived sin of costing the manager potential scalps on his or her lodge pole.

Although the manager may appear successful to upper management if judged only by the numbers, she is judged a complete failure and is resented by her team which typically suffers large turnover and discontent.

The Disciplinarian:  Less prevalent that the two previous management styles but equally dangerous is the manager who comes in with the attitude of “I’m going to whip these lazy good for nothings into shape if it kills me.”  Most typically it does kill—both the team members and the manager.

The Disciplinarian usually has a chip on their shoulder and disrespect for those they “manage.”  This manager views himself as being not only a superior seller to his team members but also more dedicated to the company and his job than they are. 

Sales teams under the thumb of the Disciplinarian suffer from morale issues that eventually result in high turnover and often outright rebellion. 

The Pal:  The Pal manager has most often been promoted from within the team and is friends with the majority of team members.  The Pal’s transition from peer to manager changes virtually nothing in the team’s relationships as the salespeople have a difficult time making the transition to viewing their old friend as their manager and the new manager has a difficult time now having to hold her former team peers accountable for their actions.

Instead of making the transition from peer to manager, the new manager makes a transition from peer to Super Friend, becoming the advocate extraordinaire for her team mates, protecting them and covering for them no matter what.  The Pal is committed to her friends and is most concerned about how they feel about her rather than managing them. 

Unfortunately for most managers who take on the role of The Pal, the lack of discipline and accountability results in the team members taking gross advantage of them—to the point that often their tenure as manager is very short lived.  . 

The common denominator that binds all four of these management styles together is a focus by the manager on themselves and their wants and needs.

Certainly managing entails coaching, and disciplining when necessary, as well as helping close a sale here and there; and needless to say making the numbers is important.  But managing involves far more than these few traits and it becomes destructive when the manager becomes completely focused on their own needs and their perceived success rather than their team’s growth and performance.

One of the keys to being a successful sales manager is having a solid understanding of human nature and in particular understanding what makes each team member tick.  More than anything else, sales management is about leadership, not about control or being the big shot or even just making the numbers.

Manager, if you see yourself locked into any of these management styles, by all means seek out a quality coach or find a quality management training company and start the process of becoming a strong manager.

Seller, if you find that you are working for one of the above managers, consider your situation carefully and make a conscious decision as to whether you want to continue in such a situation where your growth as a salesperson may be stymied and you may live in a constant state of frustration.

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March 23, 2012

Can It Get Any Stranger?

Filed under: business,career development,marketing,Personal Marketing,sales,Sales Failure,selling,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 11:37 am
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We humans are funny animals.  We tend to do the same things over and over, no matter what the consequences.  Although we are admonished to learn from our mistakes, more often than not we continue to make the same mistakes time after time.  Maybe not the big obvious mistakes, but the little ones that we don’t notice we keep doing and doing.

Doesn’t it seem reasonable that if we’re doing something that has a negative outcome that we’d stop doing it?  Even more fundamental, doesn’t it seem reasonable that we’d notice that what we’re doing isn’t working?

Seems reasonable. 

But strange as it seems, our lives are full of things that have negative consequences yet we continue to do them. 

Some of these negative things we may be aware of and consciously choose to do anyway with such as smoking, overeating, or taking a tad too many nips of the juice.. 

Nevertheless, there are whole hosts of actions we take that have negative consequences of which we are completely ignorant.  We’re ignorant of these negative consequence actions not because we’re blind, or stupid, or too lazy to see them.  We’re ignorant because we have never examined them to see what the consequences of those actions really are.  We do them because we’re ‘supposed’ to do them or because that’s the way we’ve always done it.  We do them out of ignorance.

Unfortunately, that same ignorance that invests other parts of our lives, worms its way into our sales careers as well.  We do the things we’ve been told are the right things to do or we do them in the way we were told was the right way to do them.  And when the outcome of those actions isn’t what it’s supposed to be, we blame ourselves or chalk it up to bad luck or bad timing.  Worse, we decide the answer is to do more of those actions believing that if we do them more often and with more conviction, the outcome will definitely be better, right?  After all, weren’t we told that those were the right actions, so then the problem must be we simply aren’t doing them long enough or hard enough, never examining them to see if the problem might be with them, not with us.

So our solution is to do more of what doesn’t work.

Can it get any stranger? 

Yet, that is how the vast majority of salespeople run their sales careers.

Cold calling not working?  Make more cold calls.  Not closing enough sales?  Push for the sale harder.  Not meeting enough prospects at the networking events you go to?  Go to more events.  The direct mail piece you sent not producing results?  Send out more. 

The answer is always more of the same.  Do more of what’s not working and it’ll work. 

What a strange business we’re in.  What other business is there whose answer to the things that aren’t producing results is to do more of it?

Do you think that if the owner of a restaurant decided he wasn’t selling enough fish the answer would be to cook more fish?  Or, if the radiology treatment a physician has prescribed isn’t working they would just prescribe a larger dose without first examining why it isn’t working?  Of course not.  The restaurateur would want to know why he wasn’t selling more fish and he would figure out how to generate more customers who order fish or he would change his menu to reflect the tastes of his customers because if he tries to continue to force fish on his customers, he’ll be out of business.  Likewise, instead of just prescribing a bigger dose of the same radiology treatment, the physician will seek to discover why the treatment isn’t working and change her prescription accordingly. 

Neither the restaurateur nor the physician is just going to say, “oh, well.  What I’m doing isn’t working so I’ll just do lots more of it.”  We’d think they were nuts if that were their answer.

Yet, that’s the answer most salespeople come up with when their sales career isn’t progressing in the direction they want.  And the strange thing is few of their associates or their manager thinks they’re crazy for simply doing more of what doesn’t work.  In fact, they are often the salesperson’s biggest cheerleaders egging them on to do exactly those things.

Can it get any stranger?    

Why would a rational person decide the answer to correcting something that isn’t working is to do more of what isn’t working? 

Although there are a number of reasons such as the advice they are getting from their sales manager, many of the sales books they read, and their associates, all assuring them that all they need to do is make more calls, push harder for the sale, send out more direct mail pieces, often the real culprit is that they have no idea what they are doing that is working and what they are doing that isn’t working.

Salespeople for the most part tend to work off gut feeling.  “I feel that my cold calling isn’t producing the desired results.”  “I feel that my closing skills are really good, I just don’t feel that I’m getting to make enough presentations.”  “I feel that I’m getting a lot of referrals, they’re just not very good.” 

Working off gut feeling is a surefire way to feel–and be–broke. 

The problem is few salespeople take the time and put in the effort to examine their sales business in detail to discover what they are doing that is really producing the results they want—and what they are doing that isn’t.  Few salespeople know exactly:

  • What activities they are investing the majority of their time in
  • The characteristics of the prospects they really connect with
  • Where their sales–not their prospects but their sales–are coming from
  • What prospecting and marketing methods are actually producing sales and not just bodies
  • What they are doing in the sales process that is working and what isn’t, furthermore, most have no real idea of what their sales process is
  • Or know exactly how many qualified prospects they talk to, how many of those prospects bought, what specific products or services they bought, why the prospects bought—or didn’t buy

In order to run a business, the business owner must have a thorough knowledge and understanding of their income statement and their balance sheet.  Those two documents tell the business owner what’s really going on in their business.  They tell them not only how well they are doing, but where to invest more time and money, they warn of potential problems, and they reveal new potential opportunities the business owner might not otherwise have seen.  The balance sheet and income statement are the history of the business and the business’s history tells the business owner what’s going to happen in the future—good and bad–unless the business owner makes changes to the business.

Salespeople need the same roadmap as any other business owner.  Salespeople are not employees—despite getting a W2.  Every salesperson is self-employed.  They run their own sales company.  For those salespeople who are W2’d, it just happens they have only one client—the company they are currently selling for.  Like any business owner, they must have a historical document that alerts them to problems–as well as opportunities.

Rather than having a balance sheet and income statement, salespeople must take the time and invest the effort to reconstruct their sales and marketing history in numerical form.  They must create a document that informs them of not what they think or feel has happened in the past, but tells them exactly what has happened.  Such a document will tell them in no uncertain terms where they have really spent their time; what they have really done in terms of prospecting and marketing; who their ideal prospect really is; what prospecting and marketing methods are really working; what their closing ratio really is; and a great deal more.  And it tells them that if they continue doing what they’re doing, exactly what will happen in the future.  On the other hand, it will also tell them exactly what changes must be made in order to change their future.

If a sales history document is so powerful, why do only a handful of salespeople have one?  Although one of the most powerful tools any salesperson—and their manager—can have, reconstructing one’s sales and marketing history is tedious, takes a good deal of effort, and for many the results are very uncomfortable. 

If you are serious about changing your sales business, you must learn to run it like a business and to take full responsibility for what you do, why you do it, and how you do it.  You can’t do that unless you know–and you can’t know by guessing or going on gut feeling.  You can’t change your career if you simply continue to do what you’re doing. 

For salespeople, finding and selling quality prospects is how they make a living.  Yet, most leave their success or failure up to chance and gut feeling.  Can it get any stranger than that?  You don’t have to be like 85% of all other salespeople who meander along with no real idea of what to do to be successful. 

Sit down and do a thorough review of your prospecting, marketing, and selling activities for a reasonable period, say a year.  Dig out your records of what you did and exactly what activity produced what business.  Figure out what produces business and why.  Likewise, figure out what you’re investing time in that isn’t producing business—and why. 

Once you know those two things you can begin to put together a solid plan to exploit those things that are producing for you and take corrective action on those things that aren’t.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll be in control of your sales business and you’ll no longer have to wonder where your business will come from—or if it will come.

follow me on Twitter at: @paul_mccord

March 14, 2012

Act the Part to Become the Part

Filed under: attitude,career development,success — Paul McCord @ 4:13 pm
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I often hear complaints from both new and experienced sellers that they don’t know how to become successful. 

The key questions is always, “what do I need to do to become successful?”

When I ask, most say that they have some very successful sellers in their company, while others indicate that although they may not have any high production sellers in their office, they still know at least one highly successful seller that they are in regular contact with regularly.

My answer  to them is simple:”Act the part to become the part;” that is, do the things successful salespeople do and act the way successful salespeople act and you’ll stand a very good chance of becoming successful also.

Seldom do I run into a seller that is satisfied with that answer.  Rather than getting a simple “OK,” I get a ton of reasons why that is a stupid answer. 

As soon as I make that statement I know what I’ll hear:

“How am I supposed to act like that when I’m new and just started?”

“I can’t act like that because I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“That’s crazy.  I can’t act like I’m successful when I’m just barely getting along.”

“If I act like I’m successful I wouldn’t be being genuine.”

Now, of course, these reactions aren’t always stated exactly as those above, but the bottom-line is always the same—they can’t do the things successful salespeople do because they aren’t currently successful.

Well, if they’re not doing the things successful salespeople are doing, then they must be doing the things unsuccessful sales people are doing. 

And they wonder why they’re not successful?

If you really want to become successful as a seller, find a successful seller that you admire and respect and begin closely observing what they do and how they act.  More than likely you’ll notice a few thing such as confidence, a thorough knowledge of their products and services, a commitment to gain all the sales and product training and coaching they can possibly get, a willingness to admit when they don’t know something along with a promise to find out, and a desire to help their prospects and clients solve issues and meet needs.

You’ll also more than likely not find a few other things, such as being self-centered, a fear of rejection, a single minded focus on money, or a know-it-all attitude.  Unfortunately, much of the time these negatives are easily found in those very sellers wanting to know how to become successful.

It really isn’t that hard to figure out that if you do what the successful sellers are doing you’ll probably have a great chance at being successful. 

If, however, you’re doing what the unsuccessful sellers are doing, you’ll have an even better chance of continuing to be unsuccessful

If you’re not reaching the level of success you want, you can continue doing the things you’re doing that aren’t getting you where you want to be, or you can simply act the part to become the part, that is, act like a successful seller and you’ll become a successful seller.

So, rather than continuing as you are, find someone you respect, observe them carefully and then do the things they do and act the way they act.  Over time you’ll find that it’s a whole lot more fun acting—and becoming—successful than it is watching the successful sellers leave you behind.

Connect with me on Twitter:  @paul_mccord

February 26, 2012

In Praise of Failure

Filed under: career development,success — Paul McCord @ 12:44 pm
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In today’s politically correct world the idea there’s no such thing as failure has become so popular that it’s a staple of motivational speakers; sports leagues make sure that every kid feels like a success by giving each a participation trophy; schools teach kids that they didn’t fail, they just weren’t as successful as some other students; and some companies even make sure that every employee, even the biggest screw up, gets a reward for something.

Failure has become a forbidden, four-letter word; one that some think should be purged from the English language, for failure, they believe, destroys ego and can permanently damage the fragile psyche of a kid—or salesperson.  The very word destroys lives.

As a result we have today people entering the workforce who have never failed because they’ve been told that by simply showing up and breathing they’ve succeeded.  Many of these new members of the workforce rudely discover that failure is very much a reality—but instead of taking responsibility for their failure and learning from it, they find a million reasons why it was someone or something else’s fault.

Worse, society reinforces the idea that we cannot fail; we are told it isn’t our fault, instead we are victims of circumstance beyond our control.  We didn’t fail; we were victims.

Teaching the non-existence of failure is one of the most despicable things we can do to someone, as we are setting them up to be devastated when they are eventually confronted with the reality of the consequences of their failure.

The reality is, to put a little twist on a Gordon Gekko line: Failure is Good.

Failure only becomes negative when one accepts it as an end in itself, for there is a huge difference between failure and being a failure—one teaches, the other destroys.

Only through failure can we understand and appreciate success.

Only through failure can we grow.

Only through failure can we be molded into the success we want to be.

Failure is our teacher, our disciplinarian, our coach, and our goal setter.

Although training and coaching combined with time and effort are keys to obtaining the skills needed to become successful, they are in and of themselves insufficient to create a successful person.

If we think of training and coaching as the anvil that the hammer of time and effort beats us against to shape us, the hammering would be useless without the fire of failure to heat us to the point that we can be molded into a success.

If you want to become a success, get to know failure well and gladly take responsibility for it and accept its lessons.  Forget the silly PC denial of reality that failure doesn’t exist.  Instead embrace it as a key ingredient in your current and future success.

Follow Paul on Twitter @paul_mccord

February 24, 2012

Guest Article: To Excel in Selling, by Jerry Acuff

Filed under: career development,sales,selling,success — Paul McCord @ 2:57 pm
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To Excel in Selling
by Jerry Acuff

To excel in selling, you need to continue to sharpen your skills, to learn more about the art of selling and to continue to hone your craft. The truth is that the vast majority of people in any organization, including sales people, do what the company tells them to do in terms of continuous learning and development. So if the company does not provide continual training or opportunities to learn more about selling, most sales people will wind up not working on how to improve.

If you don’t spend the time and effort in improving, then what will happen? Your selling skills will actually decrease over time. Skills are similar to muscles–they will atrophy if they are not exercised continually. If you are not trying to improve, to learn more and to challenge yourself, then it would be difficult if not impossible to maintain the status quo.

If you are truly interested in becoming better—at selling, at engaging your customers, at asking questions, at gaining commitment, then you need to devote time and energy to doing so. That’s probably why blogs and other sources of information are so popular. You don’t need to devote hours to studying each day. But you do need to expose yourself to what the experts are saying, what new tools are available, what researchers are learning about people, how they think and react.  Life is a challenge—there will always be more that you can learn about—and you can always improve. That’s how the top people in any industry—whether it is sports or business or entertainment, stay on top. They are not satisfied with what they have done and accomplished—but know to excel they need to continue to challenge themselves to do better.

So the question to ask yourself is, “Am I satisfied with the opportunities my company provides for advancement?” If you are, then you will likely develop no further than your colleagues that take the same courses for improvement. To truly develop and become the best in your field, stretch yourself. Take courses outside the ones offered by your company, attend seminars in your field of interest, read books and learn what knowledge the experts impart. Not only will you benefit from your learnings and additional expertise, so will your customers. And you will see the results in your sales numbers and by exceeding your sales quota.

 

Jerry Acuff, CEO and founder of Delta Point, has over twenty years of experience in speaking and consulting extensively on the issues of sales and marketing excellence. Jerry’s breadth and depth of experience and expertise has led to his position as Executive in Residence at the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Jerry has been featured in numerous business magazines (Fortune, Fast Company, Selling Power, etc.) and on MSNBC. Jerry is the author of three best-selling business books: The Relationship Edge, The Relationship Edge in Business, and Stop Acting Like a Seller and Start Thinking Like a Buyer.

January 24, 2012

Guest Article: Avoiding the Activity Trap, by Jeb Brooks

Filed under: career development,success,time management — Paul McCord @ 11:01 am
Tags: , , ,

Avoiding the Activity Trap
by Jeb Brooks

Many salespeople make the assumption that activity leads to results. “As long as I’m doing something,” they argue, “results will come.”

This is a mistake. It’s the best way to get stuck in the activity trap. The activity trap occurs when you begin working too hard to make the sale. Sales is much more simple than a lot of salespeople make it out to be.

Above all, your interactions must be meaningful. If all you’re doing on a call with a prospect is saying ‘hello,’ all you’ll hear is ‘hell no.’ Instead, your activities need to fall into one of these four productive buckets:

  1. They educate your prospects.
  2. They uncover essential information about your prospect.
  3. They reveal pivotal information about your solution to your prospect.
  4. They close opportunities (for the good or bad).

First, Educational activities provide information to your prospects that make them more receptive to your messaging. These kinds of activities help them understand the business impact you can have on their operation. They help them understand that you have something meaningful to say to them. Examples include:

  • Sending useful content (e.g., articles, whitepapers, etc.) to them
  • Sponsoring roundtable discussions for your prospects to meet your happy customers
  • Publishing pamphlets about your solution
  • Providing well-documented case studies to your prospects

Activities that allow you to uncover essential information about your prospects are some of the most important. The most common is the face-to-face (or phone-to-phone) meeting. These probing meetings allow you to ask meaningful questions that help (1) demonstrate your expertise in their field and (2) gather information you need to make a meaningful recommendation to them. They include:

  • Surveys
  • Interviews
  • Focus Groups
  • Sales Interviews

Revealing your recommended solution to your prospect is — obviously — essential. Doing it, though, requires more than just activity. Instead, meaningful sales presentations are carefully targeted to your prospects particular situation. This can be done in any number of ways, but is dependent on effectively uncovering practical information in your probing meeting.

  • Webinars
  • Formal Presentations
  • Demonstrations
  • Tours

Finally, the most directly meaningful of all sales activities are those that close business. This is typically in some kind of interaction between a salesperson and a prospect-turned-customer. Alternatively, you might discover that a particular prospect isn’t a good fit for your solution. This, too, can be good because it allows you to move on.

If your “activity” doesn’t fall into one of those four buckets, it’s probably wasteful. Many outside reps believe that activity begets results. With one slight change, the statement becomes true:

The Right Activity Begets Meaningful Results.

Jeb Brooks is Executive Vice President of The Brooks Group, one of the world’s Top Ten Sales Training Firms as ranked by Selling Power Magazine. He’s a sought-after commentator on sales and sales management issues, having appeared in numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal. Jeb authored the second edition of the book “Perfect Phrases for the Sales Call.” He regularly writes for The Brooks Group’s popular Sales Blog <http://www.brooksgroup.com/blog>. Follow him on Twitter: @JebBrooks

January 4, 2012

Having a Tough Time Getting Started? You Need a Ritual

Filed under: attitude,career development,motivation,sales,selling,success — Paul McCord @ 3:47 pm
Tags: ,

Do you, like many others, have a difficult time getting yourself mentally, emotionally, and physically prepared to begin certain tasks?  Some have a hard time getting “in the mood” to make cold calls while others have trouble getting themselves geared up for a face-to-face meeting.

Certainly we can force ourselves to make the cold call even though we’re not prepared or we can make ourselves go through the motions of the job interview or sales presentation even though we know we’re neither mentally or emotionally in the right frame of mind.

And what usually happens when we simply go through the motions in order to fulfill an obligation or check off a task to be done?

Most of the time the cold call is crap, we don’t get a second interview, or the sales call was a total bust.

Many a cold caller confronts the phone every day with the same lack of focus, the same mental and emotional dread of what is about to happen.  And they fail time after time.

Many a job seeker goes into job interview after job interview unfocused, stomach churning, brow sweating—and comes out feeling that they couldn’t have made a worse impression if they had tried.

Thousands of sellers hit the streets to make presentations and go into them with nerves on end, thoughts blurred, tongue tied and they know they’ve lost the sale before they’re half way through.

These are not incompetent or lazy folks.  These are not cold callers who have no idea of what they going to say, or job applicants that are in over their head, or sellers who don’t know their products and markets.

Most of the time these are simply men and women who haven’t learned how to slow the process down, to de-stress themselves before the event, to create some action that signals their mind and body to focus for a very specific purpose.

Simply, these are men and women who haven’t learned the power of ritual.

What is a ritual?  Put simply a ritual is a specific action that when performed prior to an event has a calming effect on the individual and helps them focus for the task at hand.

Let me give a couple of examples:

Mike Adams is a pitcher for the Texas Rangers.  Pitching is a high stress occupation that demands a great deal of mental and emotional focus and control.  During a game a pitcher will have to find a way to be able to control his emotions and focus his undivided attention on throwing a baseball accurately anywhere from a few to over 100 times a game.  To make things a bit more difficult, after every pitch there is a break in the pitcher’s action as the ball is fielded, thrown back to the pitcher, and the team gets set for the next pitch.  You focus 100% of your mental and emotional energy on making a great pitch, then you have nothing of consequence going on for a minute or two, and then once again you have to find a way to focus 100% of your mental and emotional energy on making a great pitch.  Try to do that time after time without losing your focus every now and then.

Any way you look at it, that’s a tough, tough job.

How does Adams maintain his high level of focus over an extended period of time?  He does it by using a simple ritual to get his mind and body ready to focus only on making the next pitch.  Mike’s ritual is that after each pitch, after the catcher or an infielder has thrown him the ball, he lifts his cap off and then perches it lightly on top of his head.  He leaves the cap that way while he is waiting for the batter and the fielders to get ready.  Once things are settled and it is time for him to make his next pitch he will lift the cap up and adjust it on his head in its final position.  That adjustment is his ritual signal to his mind and body to focus, to concentrate on the job at hand, to block out everything else and focus only on making the pitch.

Such a simple action, but one that he has practiced to the point that the action alone automatically puts him in the frame of mind and prepares his body to give attention to only making the best pitch possible.

Now Mike is not alone.  If you pay attention during the baseball season you’ll find that many pitchers use their cap in one way or another as a ritual action to settle their mind and body into the work at hand.  Likewise, many batters will use the bat or their batting gloves to do the same.

But it isn’t only athletes that use rituals.  Back many years ago, when smoking wasn’t yet a social criminal offense, I had a salesperson, Wes, who was a heavy smoker.  On occasion I’d do ride alongs with him and I eventually came to recognize the ritual he went through before going in to meet with a prospect or client.

As we were pulling up to the office building where Wes’ sales prospect was located, he’d inevitably light a cigarette.  He would take two or three puffs of the cigarette, open his door and get out, close the door, take one final puff and then forcefully throw the cigarette down, take the toe of his shoe and smash the cigarette butt into the ground putting it out.  That forceful grinding of the cigarette butt was his ritual action telling his mind and body what was about to happen and to get ready.  Like Mike’s adjusting of the cap, Wes’ action was very simple, so simple that it could be easily ignored by an observer.  But it was there—and was important for Wes to go through that motion to prepare himself for the minutes ahead.

I’ve known a great many sellers who had some form of ritual action they performed, whether in preparation for hitting the phones, making presentations, giving large group presentations and speeches, or putting sales proposals together.  For that matter, I’ve known a couple of salespeople who seemed to have to go through some kind of ritual before doing anything,

I’ve also noticed that humans aren’t the only ones who rely on ritual behavior.  Our Golden Retriever, Lola, goes through a ritual every time she is greeted by someone.  When she approaches someone or when someone approaches her, before she allows herself to be touched she must reach her front legs out as far as she can and she then bends down and out in a huge stretch.  Once she has stretched, she’s ready to greet the person and get petted.  If anyone else walks up, before they touch her, she has to go through her stretch once more.  I’m not really sure what her stretch does for her, but it is certainly a ritual she has to go through before she’s ready to be greeted.

Although simple, rituals really work.  If you’re having a difficult time with a particular task such as cold calling, conducting face to face meetings, public speaking, or any other task that you do often and need to find a way to help you really relax and focus, try creating a ritual that once ingrained will automatically put you in the right mental and emotional frame to perform at your peak.

December 28, 2011

Focus Your Time on Selling, Not on Busy Work

Filed under: career development,sales,selling,success,time management — Paul McCord @ 11:06 am
Tags: , , ,

Like many salespeople and small business owners, I find staying focused during prime selling hours to be difficult. As a sales trainer, coach, and consultant, my days are filled with activities that try to pull me away from selling. Yet, like every other company, selling is the life blood of my business—its what keeps the doors open and the company healthy and growing.

Interruptions, minor emergencies, emails, phone calls, and a myriad of other issues and concerns are constantly trying to draw my attention away from my primary business activity—selling.

Listen, I have only certain hours during the day that are my prime selling hours. If I lose those hours, I lose revenue; I lose precious time that no matter how hard I work, I can never regain. Consequently, it is important I keep my focus on true sales activities between 8am and 5pm.

Nevertheless, there are things that must be done and some of those things simply won’t wait until non-selling hours.

So what did I do?

My solution has been to set aside four ½-hour times during the day when I will address non-selling issues. Twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon I set aside my selling and marketing activities in order to return calls, handle ‘emergencies,’ and the other ‘busy’ work of my business.

Of course, if a real emergency arises, it takes precedence over all else. But real emergencies are rare.

This process has allowed me to concentrate on selling and prospecting without worrying that other aspects of my business will suffer. Anything that comes up will be addressed shortly—but without interrupting my selling time.

It takes discipline to get into the habit of leaving things lie for a little while. But those things that used to find ways to cut my selling time in half—or more–are now much controllable.

Follow Paul on Twitter @paul_mccord

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