Sales Laundry

Archive for the ‘Sales Stories’ Category

Getting ready for the Austin IT Symposium on Tuesday I made a few calls trying to find a 30” monitor for our table to loop a great video clip related to virtualization.  I was also on a mission to find something nice to raffle off as part of the event.

First stop, the AV company providing the equipment for the event, figuring this would be the easiest option with the least amount of work for me.  I was right, but I was not counting on the fact that $250 was the going rate to rent a monitor for 1 day.  That is the approximate price as a new TV/monitor.  Something is wrong with that model but that is a topic for another day.

Cut to Best Buy….

At Best Buy I admit I had high expectations and was not disappointed by the quantity and brands of televisions on display.  However, even with four+ Blue Shirts in the area and another guy trying to sell DirecTV systems, I could not get any assistance.

Cut to Sam’s Club…

At Sam’s Club, I was greeted in the TV section and asked if I needed any help.  He did a nice job of explaining the features and helping me figure out what feature/function trade-offs happen at different price points.

I asked him how he came to know so much about TVs and he said he did a little research on his own and asked the guys at Best Buy to explain the pieces he did not understand.  Sam’s guy got his TV education by walking down to Best Buy at the other end of the shopping center, but that is not the most interesting part.

A few more minutes of conversation revealed the guy did not even work for Sam’s Club.  He worked for DirecTV and was there to sell satellite systems.  Once I had my TV for the event he asked me if he could explain how DirecTV could give my new HD TV more HD channels, a lower monthly price and true 1080p HD quality that I was not getting from my cable provider.

I said yes.  Yes, because he earned it helping me.  Yes because he helped me solve a problem that many would say it was not in his best interest to do.

Through blind luck or careful planning, he discovered that helping me solve my problem of which TV to buy created an opportunity to talk about DirecTV.

Helping me solve my problem created a problem he could solve.

Contrast this guy with his counterpart at Best Buy selling Direct TV.  That guy was not interested in helping me buy a TV; he was only interested in selling DirecTV.

The lesson here is that even if you are the best and most knowledgeable sales professional on your particular product or service you are still going to miss opportunities if there are problems your customers need to solve before they can focus on your offering.  Get good at identifying the problems that keep your prospects from even considering your offering, learn how to help them solve those problems, and your sales efforts will be rewarded accordingly.

Last night I saw a small business owner hitch her business to a much larger cause and pull off an absolute rock star marketing strategy.

Forget how Kellogg’s tied breakfast cereal to our kid’s education, pardon the pun, but that is kid stuff by comparison.

I was watching America’s Got Talent (you can slap me later) with my two little girls when Pam Martin’s Top Dog act began.  The act was just as you would imagine; a routine with owner and dog doing tricks to music trying their best to be one of five acts out of twelve on the show to make it to the next round.

In real life Pam Martin runs a small pet obedience training business called Top Dog in what might as well be Dallas, Texas.  Pam branded her act on America’s Got Talent with the same name as her business, so every time Pam is on television her business gets a plug because at the bottom of the screen is “Pam Martin’s Top Dog.”

Now for the Rock Star Marketing Genius part.

By going on the show with her act, appropriately called “Pam Martin’s Top Dog” and showing off her training skills, Pam has successfully created and aired two commercials almost two minutes in length each showcasing her business to a national audience on prime time network television.

If Pam were paying for commercials on America’s Got Talent she would have paid $800,000+/- for that same air time, plus the cost of making the clips, not counting the 30 second human interest pieces that endear the performer (or business woman, in this case) to the audience. No matter the outcome,  Pam has already won $1,000,000 from America’s Got Talent and spent all of it advertising her business.

Consciously or not, Pam has tied her business to the number one television show on network television in its time slot, with 11.2 Million viewers that Tuesday night alone.  Pam has also benefited from NBC’s own marketing spend in all forms of media promoting America’s Got Talent for the price of a couple of costumes and stage props.

That beats the pants off of the marketing strategy and budget of every other pet obedience school in Dallas, TX.

Pam will also get to carry forward a little bit of celebrity to add to her business raising her exposure in her market and raising obedience training as a priority in the minds of her prospects.

Where else are you going to get to spend six weeks with a minor TV star for $100?  Call Pam.

I would bet Pam’s business is booming from the national exposure boosting her efforts to earn her next million on the back of that million+ advertising budget, regardless of what happens to the million the TV show is giving away.

Genius.

Pam tied her small business to a bigger business that could raise her exposure, add celebrity and other elements making her services a higher purchasing priority in her customers minds and managed to squeeze a million+ in free advertising out of the deal.

What can you do to think outside the box to become a top priority in your customers mind and start to work on your own million?

Image courtesy of http://topdogdallas.com

Through an odd set of circumstances I found myself touring the Lyndon B Johnson ranch outside of Johnson City, TX a while back trying to give my kids some perspective on history.

While looking at the hundreds of photos and exhibits across the three or four different sites I ran across a picture that gave me some perspective I was not expecting.

Under an otherwise typical picture in the exhibit of President Johnson shaking hands with an old gentleman with a bushy white beard was a crisp little quote that I almost missed.

“A five minute speech with fifteen minutes spent afterward is much more effective than a fifteen minute speech… that leaves only five minutes for handshaking.”

- Lyndon B. Johnson

As I thought about that statement my mind immediately jumped to the hours I have spent watching boring PowerPoint presentations wishing a hunk of ceiling would fall on my head so I would have a legitimate excuse to escape.

Then it hit me, (and not a piece of the ceiling, mind you) that spending hours writing and developing a presentation with little to no time spent developing a strategy to work the room post-presentation to communicate the important points face to face was just plain silly.

President Johnson figured out a long time ago that influencing the key individuals in the room that could be catalysts for the change he was advocating was a far more effective strategy than solely focusing on a big fat presentation.

Presentations are best used to lay out the facts as concisely as possible and not used as bully pulpits to agonizingly persuade an audience.  Face to face conversation, or “handshaking” as President Johnson put it, is where the deals really get done.

Long term success in sales is more determined by the network of prospects, customers, partners and friends you build than all of the killer 70 slide PowerPoint presentations you have spent all night cranking out.

Don’t get me wrong, a good speech or presentation can be essential to your eventual success but it does not have to last a lifetime in delivery.

The power in the room does not come from your presentation or your powers of persuasion but from the power of the prospects in the room and the strength of their desire to want to engage with you.

Presentations and speeches alike that are sharp, crisp, and to the point are, from my experience, much more effective than a gut-wrenching three-act opus that forces everyone to take a “bio-break” upon completion.

Use your speech to make them curious, use your handshake to make them customers, and that is a History lesson worth repeating.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Image courtesy of americandigest.org

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

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.

Have you identified all the areas where you create value for your customer?  Do you communicate all of the value you create? 

 Over the last few weeks I have been working with a sales professional struggling to figure out where he could create value for his customers.  His focus on creating value began and ended with his products and the problems his products solved for his customers. 

 I asked him to broaden his definition of “creating value” and with that we began to uncover some new exciting ways he could create some value for his customers.  As a bonus I got a few new ideas of my own.  Here is an absolutely incomplete list of ideas that might help you find some new ways to create some value during your own sales process. 

 NOTE: as a newly minted sales professional many years ago, I thought I determined where and when value was created for a customer and it took more than a few sales calls to slap that silly idea out of my head.  The customer is the ultimate judge on whether or not value has been created. 

Needs Identification Stage

 Help the customer identify what the problems are.  Some customers will have a clear understanding of the problems at hand, others may see a symptom or two, a few will have no idea there is a problem, let alone what to do about it.  In many instances you can create value by just knowing where to look. 

 Automaker Henry Ford asked electrical genius Charlie Steinmetz to build generators for his factory.  One day the generators ground to a halt, and the repairmen could not find the problem.  In desperation, Ford called Steinmetz, who tinkered with the machines for a few hours and then threw the switch.  Sure enough, the generators whirred to life and Steinmetz forwarded a bill to Ford a bill for $10,000.  Flabbergasted, the tightfisted carmaker inquired why the bill was so high. 

 Steinmetz sent Ford a new invoice. $10 – for tinkering with the generators.  $9,990 for knowing where to tinker.  Ford paid the bill.¹

Help establish a virtual meeting of influencers and decision makers to see a problem in 360 degrees and discover latent issues.  Very few organizations have a mechanism to allow multiple people across diverse but related parts of the company to take the time to sit around one table, identify and solve problems.  You can provide that mechanism by visiting with each member separately and sharing the results. 

Evaluation Stage

 Filtering information to find the right solution.  There are more products and more ways to go about solving a problem today than ever before.  Value can be created for a customer looking for an expert to help them map their needs to the right solution for them.  The less a customer knows the higher that value creation can become.

 Help fill gaps in your customer’s knowledge about the latest technology or solutions available.  For customers that make purchasing decisions every few years, expert knowledge amassed in 2005 may not serve them well when making a decision today.  Helping a customer catch up on current technology and/or helping them maintain their role of internal “expert” can create value.

 Build a solution based on the years of experience.  An honest expert opinion from someone specializing in solving just the sort of challenges a business is facing creates value.  

Purchase Stage  

 Make the process easy, convenient and as painless as possible.  For reoccurring transactional purchases driven by price in particular, a simplified purchasing process vs. your competitor can make a significant difference in which company gets the business.

 Helping customers get solutions they need but do not have the desire to fight for.  One of my customers needed to rebuild his company’s technology infrastructure, but he could not bring himself to wage the internal political battle necessary to accomplish this task.  I tried to create value by teaming up with him to help him achieve his objective.  He steered us through the necessary internal meetings I shot down the obstacles that got in our way.  I created value in this instance just by being willing to help and provide support where needed along the way.

 Establishing relationships in purchasing can help you help your client get projects pushed through or speed the approval process.  Having a good relationship with a customers purchasing department can be very beneficial.  In one odd circumstance I found myself creating value just by being the liaison between my customer and their internal purchasing department because there was such animosity between the two groups.

 Creative term structuring.  Having a customer that is ready to buy but short on the necessary budget can be an opportunity to create some significant value.  Creative terms worked out between vendors, distributors, manufacturers, and leasing companies have won some massive projects for me that otherwise would have been lost. 

—

“Creating Value” for a customer or prospect does not have to come from your product or service alone.  Value can come from anywhere and it is up to you to find it.  Anything from a strong familiar company name to the way a delivery person acts when facing end clients can create value for the customer.    

 This has by no means been an exhaustive list and I would like to get your input so we can add more ideas to make this a stronger tool.  Where do you “create value” for your customers?  Send me your ideas and I will add them to the list.