Sales Laundry

Archive for April 22nd, 2009

Note: This article was written by Chris Guillebeau.  I liked it, thought it was relevant to some of the experiences you have shared with me here,  so I am tacking it up for all to consume.

Regardless of what kind of work you do, it’s usually not difficult to set yourself apart by going beyond the status quo of being average.

All too many working environments are filled with all kinds of people who are just ambling through their jobs. Many don’t want to be there at all, and never miss a chance to let everyone know how much they’d rather be somewhere else.

Others are embarrassingly opportunistic, focused entirely on themselves and “what’s in it for them.” Their every move is built on pleasing the people they think will determine their future. Still others in most workplaces base their time and energy on the goal of just getting by. They do what they need to do, for the most part, but they rarely take risks and rarely excel.

Sadly, these characterizations are true even in a lot of “helping” professions– in academia, in non-profit organizations, in the clergy, and so on. Setting a goal of doing the least amount expected of you may have started in the corporate cubicle world, but the norms of mediocrity have since spread throughout most professions.

Fortunately, there is a clear alternative to ambling through your workday. The alternative is to be excellent, to make a huge difference in your working environment, help others do better, and increase your own workplace stock along the way.

Focus on these eight principles to become a superhero in pretty much any job:

Never turn down a project by saying, “That’s not in my job description.”

We’re often taught that high achievers carefully select the tasks and projects that they work on. This is true in the long run, but when you’re getting established somewhere, you shouldn’t be so selective. Instead, do the things that need to be done but that no one wants to do.

You can always point out later that you’ve done everything you’re supposed to do and a lot more, but don’t whine about your projects while they’re underway. If someone asks you to do something, it’s usually because they think you’ll do it well. Impress them and do it even better.

Focus externally and continually ask for feedback.

Ask your boss, your colleagues, and your subordinates the same question every couple of weeks: “What can I do better?” If they don’t give you a straight answer, they’re usually just being polite. Ask again.

Also ask all of these people, “How can I help you?” Spend time every day focusing on the people around you. Think about their needs and preemptively help them. Make it clear you’re not helping them so they can help you later; just make their lives easier and help them look good to others.

Build a strong team even if you’re not the boss, and be a leader no matter what your title is.

You don’t need to be in charge to be a team-builder. Just start doing it. Take notes at meetings and email them out to the participants. Begin asking follow-up questions: “Who will take responsibility for this? When will it be done?”

Leadership rarely involves telling people what to do. Instead, it’s usually about helping people and teams create synergy and accomplish great things by working together. You can do that without any title at all. When the time comes where you do need to tell someone what to do, they’ll listen to you if you have taken the time to build the team well.

You know you’ve been successful when people start looking to you for the answers even when more experienced or more senior people are around. If you’re not at a meeting and people notice your absence, that’s a good start. If they wait to begin the meeting until you can be located, that’s even better.

Propose and Support Amazing Ideas…

Think about how you can make your organization or your workgroup great. Think really big, but also think small—sometimes the most effective changes require relatively small shifts in behavior or perception. Ask others for ideas. Most people have them, but they often don’t know how to present them, or they feel shut down from a previous negative experience. Get the best ideas out of the best people, and start pitching for them.

…but don’t pitch your biggest ideas in a group meeting.

Your ideas will “travel” further if they have the support of others, and it’s much easier to get buy-in through individual meetings. This is why the “meeting before the meeting” is usually more important than the meeting. Test out your best ideas. Give them time to settle with others. Go to each key decision maker to share your idea before the real meeting starts.

Then at the meeting, introduce the idea by saying, “I mentioned this to a couple of people earlier…” Everyone you talked with earlier will feel validated that they were involved before the big meeting, so talk to as many people as possible.

After you’ve established some credibility, start a small but meaningful rebellion.

Make sure you pick something that is easy to win but still makes a positive difference for most of your colleagues. Good ideas are dress codes, mandatory but useless meetings, and any long-standing practices that don’t make sense. Start violating these norms, slowly but boldly. Because you’ve taken the time to establish credibility, your rebellion will be closely watched. And because you’ve picked something that’s easy to win but meaningful to others, you’ll have good support for it. After you achieve the change you were seeking, share the credit and plan your next rebellion.

Don’t get tangled up in long email threads.

Never be a slave to your Outlook folder. Check it twice a day, turn off the “ding” sound that alerts you to new mail, and set up an Action folder to process important items instead of continually looking through your Inbox. As an inexperienced leader who derived too much self-worth from my Outlook addiction, someone said to me once, “Chris, don’t try to be the fastest person to reply to these long email threads. Just take your time, listen to other people, and then contribute something meaningful.”

Work smarter and harder.

Yes, you should find ways to work smarter and avoid repetitive, monotonous tasks. But you should also work really hard. Show up early and leave late. After you’ve established some authority, you can get back to pacing yourself. It’s a lot better to have a reputation as a hard worker from the beginning. When you relax a little later, no one will notice.

If you feel threatened by someone, don’t show it.

Most people who lead by intimidation are quite insecure. Don’t reinforce their insecurity by pandering to it. Even when it’s working for them and you feel intimidated, never let them know. Instead, do your job, keep excelling, keep looking out for others, and eventually the tide will turn. You may even end up as their boss one day—it happens all the time.

***

These general tips below will also help:

Share Credit, Accept Blame. Many people try to pass the blame to others. It’s very different to say, it’s my fault. I’m sorry. Try sending an email with the subject “Hey everyone, I’m sorry” sometime and see what happens.

Compliment others every day. Do it by email, phone, notes, any way you can. Find out how people like to be complimented and do it the same way. Don’t make it trite. Most people know when you’re being genuine.

Go above and beyond. Deliver more than what’s expected. Don’t do it to be rewarded; do it because it really adds value.

***

Be excellent, and a remarkable thing will happen: by helping others look good and improving your overall environment, you’ll look good as well. You’ll do it without backstabbing and without doing stuff that has no real value. Instead, you’ll inspire others.

And then you’ll be a leader, just like John Quincy Adams said:

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

This is real leadership for any generation and any workplace. If you don’t yet know how you’ll change the world, this is a great way to start.

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How much time does your sales team spend on revenue producing activities?

 According to CSO Insights in their Optimization:2007 Survey Results and Analysis report the actual amount of time a sales person is actively engaged in selling averaged just under 36%.  My own experience would suggest that sales professionals’ time spent on revenue producing activities is closer to 30%.  The best run sales organizations that I have experience with engage in revenue producing activities, at best, no more than 50% of the time.

 If you don’t know where your sales team stacks up, it is time to measure.  If you find your sales team is engaged in revenue producing activities at or below 25% of the time, then there is a distinct possibility that you could almost double your revenue producing activities and lower your Cost of Sales considerably.

 If you find you have room for improvement, here are some of the most common things that eat a sales professional’s time.

 Building Proposals/Quotes – Look to offload this function to a non-sales role or to a low cost sales role where the proposal building experience could be used as a training tool.  If that does not make sense for your business, build common templates and boilerplate text to simplify the process as much as possible.  Think about your likelihood of winning a project vs. the amount of time you are going to spend on the RFP.

 Lead Generation – The same CSO Insights survey highlighted the fact that 18% of a sales professional’s time is spent generating leads.  This subtopic is worthy of several posts in and of itself.  If leads are being generated for sales within your organization, look at the quality and quantity of those leads.  A large quantity of poor leads is almost worse than no leads at all.

 Sales Meetings – Many sales meetings continue well beyond their expiration date. Is there a defined agenda for each meeting?  What items could be better communicated in a less time consuming way?  What items could be eliminated completely?  Eliminating four hours of meetings could give you 10% of your week back.

 Managing the Internal Sales Process – In the early days of my B2B sales career I spent as much as five hours a week walking a signed proposal through our internal processes, getting items ordered, following up on backordered items the order desk failed to tell me about, making sure all of the items arrived, setting up delivery, coordinating installation, making sure we invoiced for the correct items/amounts, making sure we had applied payments correctly to make sure my commission check would be correct and assisting with collections when it became necessary.

 Map your own internal processes and look for ways to streamline your workflow and get sales disengaged as much as possible from this process.

 CRM Software Data Entry/Retrieval – CRM software, when designed well CRM can be a fantastic tool.  Designed poorly, it can be an agony inducing, time sucking vortex that is worn like a boat anchor around the entire sales teams neck.  

 Work with your sales professionals and watch how valuable data is recorded and retrieved.  Look at the areas they use most frequently and the specific steps they go through to get to that data.  Does that process make sense?  If not, do your own ROI calculation on getting customizations done vs. the sales time lost.

 One Software-as-a-Service CRM package I have personal experience with could waste as much as five or ten seconds on every click as data moved back and forth across the web.  In my own pursuit of efficiency, I found that I was losing up to half an hour a day to those delays.

 Expense reports and other administrative paperwork – Look at all of the reports and paperwork you ask your sales professionals to create and ask yourself two questions.  Do we really need this report?  Does it make sense that our revenue producers are spending time on this as opposed to selling?  If it makes sense, great!  Carry on.  If not, look for ways to improve or eliminate the process.

 One more point before we wrap it up.  Finding, offloading or eliminating these non-revenue producing tasks is only half the battle.  Before you begin, establish a baseline of calls/meetings and other revenue producing events so you have a gauge on which to measure your progress. 

 Recovering five to ten hours a week for each sales professional to spend on revenue producing activities is only beneficial if they actually spend that time on revenue producing activities.  From my experience, you will need to break out your training hat and work with what could be up to 40% of your sales staff on the best ways to use the “extra” time.

 Every time I have done this exercise I have been amazed by some of the low value tasks that eat up enormous amounts of time and unnecessarily increasing my Cost of Sales.

 One more last, last point.  To maximize the benefits of this process, do not let this exercise turn into a micro management tool.  Remember your end objective is to increase “customer-facing revenue producing time” not “looking over my shoulder, wondering who is watching me time.”

 We have barely scratched the surface here but I hope this gets you thinking, measuring and doing.  If you have a “best practice” that helps you measure your revenue producing activity percentage or keeps you or your sales team engaged in revenue producing activities, I would love to hear about it.  As always, give me your thoughts and let’s get smarter together.

 Click here to learn more about CSOInsights and their annual studies.

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