Sales Laundry

Archive for June, 2009

Today I was volunteered to help a relative move some stuff from storage and was otherwise minding my own business when I got smacked in the head by a sales lesson.

Mid morning, as I was driving over to the storage facility, I passed a guy on the side of the road holding a small sign that read Car Wash.  Glancing behind him, sure enough there was a small charity car wash in the parking lot well underway.

The people washing the cars were smiling and visibly having fun, but the guy that was chief in charge of advertising and converting prospects into car wash customers, otherwise know as the guy holding the car wash sign, looked unhappy and was clearly not making much of an effort.

I was surprised the car wash was making any money but did not think much about it as I was on my own mission.

When I got to the storage facility it quickly became obvious that this was not going to be a one trip job.  So much for “just having a few things to move.”

I loaded up and made my first run.  After unloading, I headed back for the next load.  Sure enough, the charity car wash was still underway, but by now the cranky guy had been replaced with a guy that was smiling, dancing and having fun with the cars trying to coax them into the car wash.

Clearly his efforts were having more of an impact because there were more cars being washed and a few lined up waiting their turn.

I was still on my mission, so once again I ignored the car wash guy and stopped by the storage facility to try to squeeze everything into one final load.

Nope.  That was not going to happen, there was so… much… stuff.

Fortunately I was able to get it all on the third run and headed home.  Once again, I saw a guy holding up a car wash sign.  This was a new guy.  He was holding the sign up high, smiling like he was thrilled to be spending his afternoon attracting customers and helping out this charity.

There was something wrong, though.  The sign he was holding up with a big smile, beaming with great pride was upside down.  People driving by were clearly disturbed by this and tried to wave at him or yell at him.  Some even stopped to let him know.

Sitting at a traffic light observing this up ahead, I was surprised by the quantity of cars jamming that parking lot, in all stages of getting clean.  I found myself really wanting to know what they were doing to quadruple their business from just a few hours before.

As I got closer to the car wash sign guy, he was trying to make contact with me, smiling bigger and waving his sign, still upside down.  Getting closer still, but strategically not too late for me to slow down and turn into the car wash, he flipped the sign over the right way, smiled even bigger and politely tried to gesture the cars into the car wash, and it was working.

I immediately got the message.

If you are just going through the motions like the first guy, you might get lucky enough to attract a few customers.  Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut, as the saying goes.

If you engage your prospects directly in a positive high energy way, you will attract more customers and be more successful, as the second guy demonstrated.

However, to experience maximum success, you need to figure out a way to get your prospects seeking to engage you.  One upside down car wash sign compelled prospects to want to engage with the car wash sign guy to help him correct his mistake.

My guess is that once the people driving went to the trouble to engage the car wash sign guy on their own, trying to be helpful, it was a short step to continue being helpful and getting their car washed for charity.  Maybe they felt better about participating in the charity car wash on their own terms instead of being coaxed into it.

What I find more remarkable is the upside down car wash sign guy expended 10% of the effort of the high energy second guy, but was 4x-10X more successful than those that were there before him.

10X the conversions, mind you, with the same cost of sales.

How expensive was it to flip a cardboard sign upside down?  Yet it was effective.  What can you do to compel your prospects to want to engage you?  How can you change your one way marketing message to a two way conversation with your prospects and clients?

I was recently asked in short interview if I could close a sale.  After 20+ years of direct sales or sales management experience and building companies through sales, I responded with a confident “yes.”

“What proof do you have to show for it?” was the gist of the follow up question, to which I responded with my historic close ratios and my historic sales rankings.

After completing the conversation and looking back upon it, I think that was a miserable way to answer that question.  Thinking about it a little more, I came up with the right answer for me.

Can I close a sale?

My proof?

• I have friends.  Friends I met through a cold call and a willingness to listen, understand and offer a solution that made some aspect of their lives and businesses better that I can still call today even though our paths have long since moved in different directions.
• A large charitable organization serving families that would otherwise fall through the cracks has been able to save money and reallocate thousands of dollars from operating costs directly to their aid programs, increasing their reach and giving them the ability to help more people in their community.
• A government entity mandated to change their technology infrastructure without any budget dollars to so, successfully met that mandate without impacting their users scattered across the nation or disrupting the systems responsible for generating pay checks for some of our soldiers.
• A vice president client had such confidence in his ability to manage his organization from anywhere that he was able to go on humanitarian missions around the world building houses and improving lives where running water and electricity are considered luxuries.
• Several small businesses have been able to open and serve their community and begin to rebuild a warzone neighborhood with loans made to them by a new bank that manages risk and responds to customer needs through infrastructure and security programs I helped design and put in place.

What the “proof” question made me think about, and what I have never really stopped to consider before, is what happens downstream once our work is complete and the sales deal gets done.

Can you close a sale?  What proof do you have?  How would you answer that question?

Take a look downstream from your own sales efforts and look for your own proof.  If you feel like sharing with the rest of us, I would be glad to hear your story.

Image courtesy of Isrealli.org

Companies looking to hire key sales personnel in this recession should be excited about being able to pick up exceptional sales talent that would otherwise be unavailable in a better market.  However, what I am hearing from my friends and contacts is just the opposite.  They are telling me great sales professionals are just as difficult to find if not more difficult to find than ever.

Is your company facing a similar hiring dilemma?  Is your growth being hindered by your ability to find great sales people?

Then I will tell you the same little secret I told them.

Strategically I have always enjoyed selling into down markets as long as I was confident my number of sales professionals or department headcount would at least hold steady through the difficult times.

In down economic times I set a policy of continuous forward progress in the face of competitors buckling, retreating, cutting their sales force or taking other defensive steps.  Ideally when my competitors are pulling back I like to raise my sales headcount, increase our visibility and target key clients in a bid to gain marketshare from otherwise formidable competitors that have been temporarily knocked off their game.

If I am not in a position to bump my sales head count moving into a difficult economic period then I work through/replace my habitually poor performing sales team members (if I have any) with sales superstars that have found themselves unemployed for one reason or another and netting a stronger sales team as a result.  The key is knowing where to find them, and that, thankfully, takes me back to the point of this article.

The secret is that I do not place too much emphasis on requiring deep industry knowledge.  I find the exceptional senior sales guys in the market that already have the sales skills I am looking for, sans the bad habits, and teach them what they need to know to function.

From my experience it is much easier to convey product and industry knowledge to a smart, skilled salesperson than it is to convey the subtleties of sales to a “newbee sales toad” as one of my engineers used to refer to them.

There is no reason to shy away from older/experienced or out of industry sales reps.  As long as they still have that hunger to sell and have not been ruined by too many years of poor sales management, these guys are gold mines.

Ease your “must have” requirements for new candidates.  Requiring new candidates come to you with an established contact list, precise industry experience, a specific number of years of experience and exceptional selling skills is a tall order under any market condition and severly limits the candidate pool to the point of being too restrictive to allow you the flexibility to build your headcount and mentor them to take advantage of favorable market conditions when they present themselves.

Hire for the right character, sales training and ability to listen/learn and ignore the grey hair and non-industry experience.  I think you will find, like I have, that your industry/business is not that hard to learn and that a good hungry sales professional that can find the right contacts and get in the door can sell just about anything.

Image courtesy of uberreview.com

Remote sales offices are established typically with the single purpose of growing new markets and revenue sources for the company.  Anything that hinders that mission is by definition hindering company growth and impeding efforts to grow revenues.

With that in mind I have put together a list of common mistakes I have seen repeated many times so you can at least recognize and correct them or at best avoid them.

Mistake 1:  Not enough support resources.

This mistake is almost always preceded in a sales meeting by the phrase “You sell it and we will figure out how to deliver it/get you the resources to get it done.”

As an employee in this situation a giant flashing light and klaxon should go off in your head warning you of the impending danger.  Negotiate for specific technical resources with timeline commitments before you accept the position or ask and understand how your sales efforts will be supported.  If it does not pass the smell test in explanation, you should never expect it to pass the smell test in execution.

As a company, you risk damaging your reputation, losing customers, destroying your remote sales teams integrity in the market, and doing irreparable damage to the remote teams morale by failing to execute all post sales responsibilities.

If a company cannot truly support a remote sales team that is going to need company resources to deliver the products and services they are selling, the company is better off not opening/closing that field location and terminating/relocating that sales resource to a market the company can support with certainty.

You cannot fight a war to win revenues without establishing clear lines of support.

Mistake 2:  Treating every office the way you treat the home office sales team.

Remote offices are almost always setup to expand the corporate empire based on the success of the home office.  It is a massive mistake to manage a new office in a new remote city the same way you manage your home office sales team.

In your home city it is likely that your company has established a certain momentum aiding ongoing sales efforts.  This momentum is often a compilation of several factors including having an established local brand, a number of years in business, culture, established customer base, local references, local advertising and publicity, tradition, and typically, local ownership ties.

It is a fundamental mistake to set across the board sales targets and objectives for the sales teams facing radically different established momentum.  This is not a matter of simply waiting for a new market sales resource to ramp up, it requires a fundamental change in how you attack that market.  (See Mistake 3.)

Mistake 3:  Not understanding the unique requirements of new markets or of markets in different stages of development and managing them all the same.

In establishing a remote office, a company is typically:

Expanding into a new market where their services have not been offered before.

Opening a remote office around a key client.

Opening a remote office to manage some existing accounts with hopes for growth.

Making a tactical decision to rapidly expand, block a competitor, arrive in a market ahead of a competitor or grab a key location.

The strategy for every office needs to be unique to its individual market situation.  Even McDonalds, with world wide name recognition and a reputation for producing a consistent product makes adjustments to their menu and process based on the unique qualities of the market they are entering.  Want to see how McDonalds has adapted?

In a new territory where there is no name recognition, I focus on territory planning, earning core anchor accounts that can be used as references, and deploying heavy support resources to make sure the first few engagements are successful ones to make sure the first few steps in a new market are solid ones as we begin to build our name.  That is radically different than my market approach with the home office.

Match management focus to individual market needs to establish remote offices in new territories.

Mistake 4:  Expecting remote office staff to be able to generate the same volume of reports/ admin/paperwork as the home office.

Where there are sales professionals there is paperwork.  Expense reports, pipeline reports, call reports, travel logs, presentations, proposals, RFPs, etc.

While there may be a standard procedure for preparing and completing necessary paperwork don’t automatically assume that what works for the home office is even necessary or will work for smaller remote offices.  In many cases there are additional official or unofficial support resources that assist in keeping the sales machine running in the home office.  Burdening a remote office with excessive admin requirements can destroy morale and limit their time/ability to do what the office was established to do, sell.

Mistake 5:  Micro manage remote resources.

In retrospect, I probably should have put this one first because this has been the death of so many remote sales organizations and the HQ based managers that are tasked with managing them.  Micro management has no place in managing remote sales teams.

Yes, the remote sales team is going to be out of the daily purview of management but that does not mean there needs to be any extra controls put in place to make sure they are doing their job.

In fact, there should be far fewer controls on them than there are on the sales team at HQ.  If you want the specifics of why, send me an email and I will break it down for you.  Pick four or five metrics preferably built into existing sales reporting tools to use to manage your sales team.

It makes no sense to try and manage where the remote sales team is and what they are doing every minute of the day.  If your sales team is making their numbers legally and ethically, who cares where they are.

If some team members are not making their numbers, use activity metrics and their call ratios as a comparison to determine where/why they are struggling.

—

I have managed remote offices, opened remote offices and carved up new territories and can tell you from personal experience that there seems to be a tendency to treat remote sales offices as somehow of lesser importance than HQ.  Perhaps that is because of the revenue disparity between the established home office and the developing remote office or the lack of daily interaction, I am not sure.

Remote offices are your growth strategy.  Remote teams should get at least the same amount of attention as the home office sales staff, but in truth I think that a remote office team needs more ongoing attention to run at its peak.

We nurture babies more than adults.  We tend to the needs of puppies more than the adult dogs they become.  We pay more attention to young plants than we do old established trees they grow to be.  That same methodology should be applied to growing and managing remote offices.

Bonus:  Mistake 6:  Putting inferior equipment in the remote office.

At home when you buy a new television for the living room, what happens?  The old living room television moves to the game room/ master bedroom, the old TV there moves to the kids room, the old TV there moves down to the garage and anything left over goes to a garage sale or charity.

While this works at home, this is not a successful strategy for equipping a remote office.  While giving your remote sales representatives the older laptops and cranky office equipment replaced at HQ might seem like a good strategy to reduce the cost of establishing a new office and extend the life of assets that have long since been fully depreciated, it is really a strategy that can limit your new revenues by far more than any initial savings.

When one of those cranky pieces of equipment breaks, the impact to the remote office can be significant because often the people/time/money resources are not there to bring the equipment back online again in a timely manner.

At the home office there is, in many cases, a non-sales resource that can manage the repair process.  You would never think of having your best sales resource spend the day at the office waiting for the copier repair guy, so why relegate remote sales resources to that fate?

There is so much more to say on this subject, but if I could only say one more thing, it would be this.  View your remote facilities through the lens of trying to unburden them of the functions, procedures and paperwork that get in the way of their ability to deliver on their intended mission and you will watch a struggling cost center become a flourishing source of profit.

Then, turn that same lens on every aspect of your sales organization.

Image courtesy of artzy via

Q&A’s are excerpts of questions I have answered as part of Sales Laundry or other forums that I am apart of.  If there is a relevant sales message for the masses I post it here to share, gather feedback and discuss.

Q: How do you sell technology at the C-level?

A: Selling technology to C-level executives is about understanding their business and, in particular, the specific problems they are facing well enough to be able to translate your technology into a compelling business case for the executive that they can readily understand and get behind.

Anything less or more complicated that leaves an executive feeling you are talking about things they don’t care about or are out of their area of expertise will earn you a one way ticket out or down the organization to make your case to a perceived subject matter expert.

If you don’t have that understanding about a company then you typically have to wade into lower levels of the organization to figure out what their specific problems are and how your brand of technology can address those issues and work your way up.

No one cares about the technology itself except for the gadget geeks and the guys that have to implement and support it for the most part.

The solution is what is being sold. The solution presented in company specific line of business terms is what is being sold at C-level.

I could always understand it, even if I did not like it, when I heard a solid “no” after the customer had a complete grasp of the problem and solution being proposed, but the ones that always intrigued me were the “no’s” that came before the prospect had any idea what I was talking about or why I even bothered to visit or call.

It just seems to play out like an old Star Trek episode or something.

—

“Sir, our sensors are picking up an incoming sales call!  My sensors indicate that a Sales-Klingon has entered our sector traveling at ½ repulsive power.”

“Shields up!  Arm the surly torpedoes.  Turn those smiles upside down, people.  Brace for impact.”

“Sir, the Sales-Klingon is hailing us.  He is asking to speak to the Captain.”

“General quarters!  Engage stealth mode.  Hide in your offices.  Sue, duck behind that coffee pot!  Wendy, get behind the Fichus tree!”

“Sir, he has established orbit around our lobby.”

“I was afraid of this.  Reception, fire frowns at will!  Get grumpy!”

“Sir, he says he has time to wait for you to get out of your ‘meeting’.  Do you want me to open hailing frequencies?”

“Launch Grouchy Dave in Purchasing to the Lobby, he will handle this situation!”

“Sir, Grouchy Dave reported to Sick Bay yesterday and is out today.”

“Fire all Surly Torpedoes.”

“Sir!  They are bouncing off the Sales-Klingons forehead and he is still smiling!”

“Time to go nuclear, people.  Fire the ‘Not Interested’ Nuke!”

“But sir that could do just as much damage to us!  He might be selling something we really need that could give us a significant cost savings or competitive advantage!”

“No time for that, I have to figure out ways we can save money and get an edge on our competition!  He COULD be selling office machines, or even worse, magazines!  FIRE!”

“Yes sir.  Those magazines are always a rip off!  Firing ‘Not Interested’ Nuke.  Sales-Klingon threat neutralized.  Conditions normal.”

“Good work, people.  Now back to work!  Find ways to cut costs.  X Romulan Company is selling cheaper than we can and attacking us on every front!”

“Sir.  Wendy, behind the Fichus tree over there used to work for X Romulan.  She said they saved a lot of money and really cut their costs after buying something from that Sales-Klingon you just nuked!”

“Alert!  A rental car just pulled into the parking lot!  It could be another Sales-Klingon!  Accounting!  Keep looking for ways to cut our costs.”

Accounting: “We’ve given ya all she’s got, Captain!  We are refilling ink jet cartridges as we speak, but they just keep leaking!”

“Shields up!  Arm torpedoes.”

“Be ready people, we may have to go nuclear.  Our very survival could be at stake.”

—

We only have ourselves to blame, the crusty Sales-Klingons that came before us, and those that still reside in our sales offices, for those reactions.

If the only sales professionals that ever showed up were ones with good solutions, never wasted their time or were less than honest and ethical, sale people would probably get a different greeting, but that is not going to happen on this planet, Federation or no Federation.

If you hear “Not Interested” before you get much past your name, here is what that “Not Interested” might really mean.

“This is a scam.  I am not sure how it is a scam and I do not have time to stop and figure it out.  Not Interested.”

“I don’t understand and I don’t want to give you the time it would take to listen and understand.  Not Interested.”

“I am too busy to want to listen to you.  Not Interested.”

“What I am doing right now is far more important than anything you could possibly say.  Not Interested.”

“You don’t sound like you know what you are talking about.  Not Interested.”

“Things are not that bad with what I have.  I know I can deal with the current problems, what you are talking about is change and that brings with it a whole new set of unknowns that I am not prepared to deal with right now.  Not interested.”

Listen to their tone and the words they are thinking or watch their mannerisms to learn what they are really saying.

Once you know why your prospects are shutting you down you have completed the first step in limiting how often it happens to you in the future.

Change your approach to disengage the “not interested” nuke before it is ever fired.  Ask a question that makes them think, or present what you do in a short, concise and compelling way that makes them want to engage you instead of send you packing for deep space.

Fine tune your message with practice in the field and track your success and failures.  No, really, track the responses.  From my experience, there will be plenty of both until you finally get everything dialed in, but the results can be very rewarding.

For the last few months I have been working via mobile office so I thought I would take the time to tell you about the tools I am using and give you field sales types a real life review of the stuff I am using and hopefully get a great idea or two from you.

My mobile office consists of:

• Blackberry Curve
• Toshiba Satellite L300 series laptop
• AT&T USBConnect Mercury Aircard
• Skype
• NeatReceipts software/scanner
• HP H470 mobile printer
• 300W power inverter
• USB drive
• Sales binder
• Rolling bag
• Filebox
• 3 Drawer box containing:
  • Printer paper
  • General office supplies
  • Aspirin and other basics
  • Button repair kit and other things it seems silly to mention but glad that I have when I need them.
• Honda Accord

With this setup I am completely autonomous with ready access to anything I need, wherever I am.

My tether back to the office and society at large consists of my Blackberry and my AT&T Aircard. In those rare instances where I am out of range, I can go all analog but I have not faced that issue yet.

There are a few enhancements and equipment changes I would make now that I have practical experience which I will share as I go.

Toshiba Satellite L300 series laptop.

PROS: Good looking laptop, 15.4” screen is easy to work with on the road, built in camera works well for field Skype video calls with the AT&T Aircard.  Microsoft Vista is well behaved for me, the wireless connectivity is simple and less cranky than what I am used to.

Was able to record a video (Sony Handycam), download it, edit it, add sound from iTunes and burn it to DVD for a last minute project. It was not Hollywood quality, but the end result was far easier and more professional than I expected being in the middle of nowhere with only the raw footage and the built in tools the laptop came with.

CONS: The battery life is  not so good. If it was not for my power inverter and being able to recharge on the fly, many times I would have been dead in the water.

Packed in my bag, the laptop screen keeps getting squeezed to the point the keys were leaving light marks on the screen.  The solution is to either not pack the bag so full or buy a piece of felt and cut it to the dimensions of the laptop and place the felt between the keyboard and screen for an added level of protection.

The plastic case is so shiny that everytime you touch the thing it leaves fingerprints. Not a big deal rolling around a territory, but it has to be cleaned up before customer presentations. I eventually just started packing electronics cleaning wipes in the bag to keep the thing clean which is not something I have had to do or would have even thought about in the past.

The touchpad is touchy.  At one point the pointer was moving around following my finger as my finger hovered ABOVE the touchpad. I was not even touching the thing! After a few adjustments I got it under control. Everyone else I know just breaks out the wireless/portable mouse and avoids the whole touchpad issue.

AS A SALES TOOL: I would really look for a laptop with a longer battery life or work out how you are going to address the need for power in the field.

The sales process for what I am doing at present requires that three or more documents get filled out and signed, typically at our first meeting for our process to begin and docs to be signed at completion.

Buy an extra power adaptor so you are not perpetually spending the first and last ten minutes anywhere finding cords, wrapping and unwrapping them and trying to keep them all sorted out.

In retrospect I would get a touch screen model and fill out the documents electronically and submit them via Aircard back to the office.

AT&T USBConnect Mercury Aircard

In my end of the world the AT&T Aircard has great coverage and gets the job done. Easy to install in 10 minutes or so. Good download speeds. It has a built in Micro SD slot that I never have used.

Skype

With the built in webcam I found I use Skype more than I have in the past. It comes in very handy for communications back to the office but I get the most enjoyment out of doing Skype video calls with my family when I am on the road and connected to the hotel wireless LAN.

Neat Receipts Software/Scanner

This, surprising to me, is one of my favorite tools in my bag. Sometimes my Toshiba laptop does not recognize the scanner when I plug it in which I fix with a reboot. I am sure there is a better way to solve the problem but the Toshiba is still new and quick so a reboot is fast. This tools plays nice with both Mac and PC hardware.

The scanner is great for capturing paper versions of documents you need to email/fax, but the software brings a lot more to the table. Neat Receipts uses standard OCR or optical character recognition software and then some sort of secret sauce that makes it much more efficient to use than a standard flatbed scanner. The software lets you scan in your receipts as the name implies, business cards and documents for filing, synchronization with Outlook, exporting to a searchable pdf format, other Office applications, Quicken QuickBooks, TurboTax or in text format. The instructions say the database can hold up to 1.5 million receipts.

It connects via USB and is powered off of the USB port.

The scanner captures all of the data on the receipt and does a pretty good job of determining the restaurant and other details that can be annoying to deal with. It also lets you tag the receipts for reimbursement or tax planning purpose cutting expense report time down from several hours to just a few minutes. I am a big fan.

The business card scanner is solid. It uses the same type of technology the receipt capture software does and does a good job of capturing the data and giving you a color or black and white copy of the card as well. Once the data is captured it can be synchronized with Outlook to create a contact for you.

The documents tab does just what it says. It lets you scan single or multi page documents in, index them and save them to your preferred location, manipulate the file type or send them to another application.

I have used this tool to capture original customer docs where copies were not available so I did not have to request originals or hit Kinko’s.  I can also scan in signed documents so my pricing desk can begin work immediately or get contracts in and processed before they expired. Great tool.

I would buy Neat Receipts just for the time it saves me on expense reports, the other functions are just a bonus as far as I am concerned though not having to manage piles of business cards is a nice secondary perk.

HP H470 Mobile Printer

I have not used this printer much, but when it is needed it is invaluable.

The printer is Bluetooth capable but the model you buy at the store will most likely not come with the Bluetooth adaptor. The adaptor is $60 when ordered from HP, but it is cheaper to buy the printer with the adaptor already, better known as the HP H470wbt model. That model also comes with an extended life Lithium-ion battery and a protective printer sleeve. It works with PC and Macs as well.

my printer, the base printer has no case or cover.  You can buy a simple cover for $40 from HP.  At least Neat Receipts came with a small velvet bag for the scanner. So, you are going to need to have a bag big enough bag to hold the printer and keep it safe and secure or deal with the logistics of toting around a five pound black box the size of a loaf of bread everywhere you go.  HP has a bag that they will sell you for $85 that will do the job, of course.

I would also recommend having a plastic storage case for the ink cartridges when not in use if you do not use it a lot.  Of course it does not come with one but HP will be happy to sell you one ($15).  I would also recommend packing extra ink cartridges. Nothing worse than having everything you need in the field to do your job but ink. It does come with a rechargeable battery, cords and software.

The paper tray holds 50 pages, but I have never loaded it with more than 10 and it prints up to 18-22 pages per minute according to HP.  There is no duplexing or automatic stapling, but they have to leave a feature or two out for future models, right?

The printer uses the same dual cartridge configuration of desktop inkjet printers (cartridges 94, 95,97 and 98 fit it plus a photo cartridge, etc.)

Fully setup with the laptop, scanner and printer with wires everywhere in some cases, I see the value of having the Bluetooth connectivity.

That is my rolling office.

I keep the laptop, scanner and printer in my rolling bag. My sales binder won’t fit in the bag with the printer, but that is not a big issue for me unless I am flying somewhere. I keep the file box and the 3 drawer plastic box stuck to the floor of the trunk with Velcro. I use a stretching cable with hooks to keep the drawers in place and strapped down.

If I am working out of a rental car I take my rolling bag and sales binder with a few empty folders and print and scan what I need on the fly.

It is easy to find yourself spending too much time managing cords and battery life. Plan ahead and go Bluetooth wireless where possible, buy extra power adaptors for places you frequent and keep USB cords around with standard and mini connections to recharge your phone or other accessories off of your laptop in a pinch. Leaching electricity off of my laptop for my phone kept me from going radio silent at a critical juncture in France last year when Air France gave my luggage an all expense paid trip to Nice without me.

Now, tell me how you roll.

Illustration courtesy of http://www.jesperdeleuran.dk