Sales Laundry

Archive for the ‘Sales Stories’ Category

Tonight I was at an elementary school talent show watching children do their absolute best to entertain us with singing, gymnastics, karate, piano, jump rope and much much more.

Six singers performed, one with a truly beautiful voice, but she is not the one anyone is going to remember.

Everyone will remember contestant number 7.

Contestant number 7 was a six year old little girl in the first grade with black bouncy pigtails.

She walked out from behind the curtain to center stage standing close to the front edge under a single spotlight in an otherwise dark auditorium.

It took a while for her music to start so she just stood very still, holding her microphone against her chest, waiting and staring out into the black.  In the silence you could hear her nervous shaky breathing until finally her music began.

Within five notes it was obvious this six year old did not have a singer’s voice.

Within fifteen notes no one in the room cared.

What she might of lacked in natural ability she more than made up for in her self-confidence and heart, putting everything she had into her performance.  She belted out her song like it was the final encore of a two hour sold out stadium concert.  It was a huge, powerful sound coming out of such a small person.

When she finished, the audience roared with emotion punctuated by whistles and shouts that did not end until the emcee called for calm.

In a room of a few hundred people, this very nervous little girl, lacking both natural talent and professional training sang on pure heart and confidence, doing her absolute best with the talent she had been given.  She gave us every ounce of energy and emotion her little body could muster and everyone forgot about that whole not singing so good part, and she was rewarded like she was a star.

There will be times when you have to take the stage against people that have more talent, training and skill than you possess.  There will be times when you are at a competitive disadvantage for one reason or another.  There will be times when your friends or co-workers will tell you that you have no chance and that you should not even bother showing up.

Sometimes they will be right, but almost always, finding the courage to do your absolute best regardless of the odds will be a more rewarding experience than not having taken the journey at all.

When you reach one of those circumstances that you think you cannot win, summon the confidence to at least be the one who will be remembered.

“Eighty percent of success is just showing up.”

Woody Allen

Image courtesy of Corbis

Reading the book The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership, by James Hunter this past weekend, I ran across two simple company organization charts that brought me back to a previous post on customer service and posed an interesting question I want to get your thoughts on.

Who do we really serve in our businesses?

A current trend in sales organization design is to be customer centric.  The customer centric sales model puts the customer at the center of the sales process in an effort to align customers’ needs and buying preferences with the way we design our sales tools and create value.

Add this to our “quality customer service” initiatives, “the customer is always right” statements, and customer service surveys that were once rare, but now seem to have attached themselves via URL to the bottom of every major grocer, retailer and restaurant chain’s receipts in recent memory.

All of this makes sense to me, especially today when it has become clear the power of knowledge once wielded by sales teams has shifted decidedly in favor of the customer researching via the Internet.  Coupled with that, customers continue to benefit from splintered product categories offering more product choices, wider selections, and more competitors fighting for dollars.

On this information alone I would have declared the customer “King”, but then I saw this:

It looks to me like to a large extent our Employees are serving our Supervisors who are serving our Middle Managers who are serving our Vice Presidents, who are serving the CEO, who is presumably serving the Board and the shareholders/investors.  The remarkable part is, by design, either everyone has their back to the customer or the customer is actually supposed to serve the company!

If customers are truly our focus, or as a corollary, if we should focus on serving our employees so that they will serve our customers, shouldn’t the model look more like this?

With this model, the CEO serves his customers, the Vice Presidents, who are in turn serving the Middle Managers, serving Supervisors who are focused on the health and wellbeing of the Employees so they can give their undivided attention to serving the Customer.

 It was wisely said a long time ago that a man cannot serve two masters.  So who do you serve?

 Are we serving the management team that writes our checks or the people that give the management team the money to make sure our checks don’t bounce?

Opportunities pop up from time to time to make small seemingly unperceivable cuts in product quality that will bring more profit to the bottom line.

 The problem with that strategy is that in the “everyone connected to everyone” information age we live in today, we notice these things and we tell others.

1937 Disney created a masterpiece in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs .

1959 Disney released Sleeping Beauty. 

1967 Disney released the Jungle Book.

1970 Disney released Aristocats , their first release after Walt Disney died.

1973 Disney released Robin Hood.  

1991 Disney released Beauty and the Beast 

…and in 2009 someone noticed something odd, built a video clip to capture it, and we all began to talk about it.

A global brand made a decision to cut a few corners many years ago that today seems a bit unbelievable and more than a little disappointing.  Will we still go to the theme parks?  Yes, because for most of us, the value of watching our children immerse themselves in the “Disney experience” means more to us than knowing our own childhood experiences were a little more smoke and mirrors than even the adult in us could have predicted.

While the cut in quality may not result in significant sales loss or lower than expected revenues, it will certainly move at least a few Mousekateers to lower their opinion of Disney and hang up their mouse ears. 

This week I have been doing some consulting with an east coast firm trying to help them out of a death spiral brought on by a perfect storm-like set of circumstances.

Reviewing the company data, this company built a high quality sales force that frankly I would love to have working for me. This company has amazing reference stories and some raving fans as customers that are more than happy to share their stories on the company’s behalf. While not a major household brand, this company has been involved in building some major sales initiatives and major technology deployments for some instantly recognizable brands.

So what happened?

This company lost some of its swagger and part of its identity over the past year as the economic downturn forced some key clients to close. Some projects lost funding, some account losses were a surprise, and everything negatively impacted cash flow. Compounding the issues are a handful of slow and no-pay accounts that are eating up cash reserves.

But none of those issues were the big problem, only symptoms leading to the problem they have today.

The real underlying problem is that the events that occurred put management in unfamiliar territory, second guessing every decision to the point of making no definitive decisions, and the lack of decisions degraded the situation into one of chaos.

There is nothing wrong with the fundamentals of the business that their existing sales team and customer base cannot help them work through, but they have to make the decision to move forward.

The company reached a point where it could not get out of its own way.

The more I thought about this company and their problem, the more I thought that there was a message here worth sharing with all of you.

When things go wrong we can get caught up in self-analysis that leads to paralysis, trying to figure out what we did wrong or what went wrong with the business model that shook the very foundations of the company.

Stop looking at the storm surrounding you and start looking at the vehicle that is going to get you out of it.

If you find a hole in your boat, fix the hole, don’t sink while trying to figure out how to build a whole new boat while at sea, in a storm. Have some faith in what you have built, have faith in the preparation you have put in, and in the proven processes that you have in place.

Assess problems for what they are, not the horrors that they might become.

Focus on your training. Focus on your experience. Focus on what’s right about what you are doing. I meet so many amazing people running great little companies that have taken for granted how talented they really are.

Are the times real scary for some? Yes. Are these challenges going to kill you? Only if you let them.

Inspire your team and stay focused. Don’t let a short term crisis force you to take your eye off your objectives. Set the vision. Choose a course of action, then do something really crazy like actually taking that course of action and begin building the momentum you will need to overcome every set of obstacles between you and your objectives.

A related story about Thomas Edison¹

1914 could have been called a difficult year for Thomas Edison.

 With the onset of World War One, Edison found himself in danger of being compelled to close his phonograph record factory.  Edison needed carbolic acid to make the records, and was the largest user of carbolic acid in the United States.  Edison’s primary supply was imported from England and Germany, and both countries had placed an embargo on carbolic acid because it was in great demand for making explosives.

 With no other sufficient supply available, Edison was faced with one of two choices.  Close the factory or invent something that could solve the problem.

 Edison chose the latter and invented an alternative method for making carbolic acid synthetically and put crews to work twenty four hours a day to build a carbolic acid production facility.  By the eighteenth day the factory was producing carbolic acid, within four weeks it was turning out a ton of it per day.

 Crisis averted, but the year was not yet over.

On December 9, 1914, a sixty-seven year old Edison watched as fire fighters fought a blaze that destroyed Edison Industries with a total loss exceeding $2 million and most of Edison’s life’s work.  Edison was only insured for $238 because the buildings were constructed of concrete and at the time were thought fireproof.  

Charles Edison, former Governor of New Jersey, tells of his concern as he looked for his father during the blaze.  “My heart ached for him, no longer a young man, everything being destroyed.”  Then he says, “My father spotted me and he called out, ‘Charles, Charles, run get your mother.  She will never see anything as beautiful as this fire as long as she lives.”

The next morning, Edison surveyed his charred dreams and crushed hopes.  As he stood amid the disaster, Edison was quoted as saying, “There is great value in disaster.  All our mistakes are burned up.  Thank God we can start anew.”

Edison followed up that statement with a decision to move forward, and a vision of what needed to be done.  Three weeks after the fire Edison Industries was manufacturing phonographs.  By December 31st of the following year, 1915, Edison had sold 95,889 phonographs on his way to what would become 845,228 phonographs sold and over 48,000,000 records.²

1.Thomas Edison story from Van Ekeren, Glenn The Speaker’s Sourcebook. New Jersey. Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1988.

2. Edison Industries sales figures from Meadowcroft, W.H. “Quantity of Disc Phonographs and Disc Records Sold.”

Radio-Phonograph Division Accounting Department Report (April 9, 1929) reprinted in The Edison Discography (1926-1929) available from Mainspringpress.com.

—

“The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.”

Theodore Rubin

“The man who makes no mistake does not usually make anything.”

Edward Phelps

“Lead, follow, or get out of the way”

Ted Turner

Image courtesy of jonwashburn.com

Before a decision to purchase is made, be it a newspaper or multi-million dollar project, a buyer has to evaluate the risks of making that purchase.

The basic types of risk are:

1. Physical Risk – The risk of injury by using the product or making the purchase.

2.Financial Risk – The chance you could lose money, or have to repair or replace an item.
3. Functional/Time Risk – The risk the item will not perform as expected or deliver the benefits promised or risk related to the passage of time and the possibility of rapid obsolescence.
4. Social Risk – The risk associated with what friends, co-workers, the boss, a spouse will think and do if a purchasing decision is made, including the risk of being fired from a job based on a purchasing decision. Hence the old tagline “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.”
5. Psychological Risk –The risk of experiencing “buyer’s remorse,” feeling bad, feeling guilty or other negative emotions for making a purchase decision.

All five of these risks are part of every purchasing decision. How you build your case to offset these risks for your buyer will determine how likely and how successful you are at closing the sale.

Bob Taska, a world class customer service driven car dealer, in his book “You Will Be Satisfied” took an interesting approach to eliminate some or all of all five risks when the quality of cars coming from Lincoln-Mercury were showing up on his lot with more than a few defects attributed to poor assembly from 1967 through the early 1980′s. He began a practice of what he called “blueprinting” the new cars, or rebuilding each car to the manufacturers design specifications. He advertised and sold his “blueprinted” cars at a 5% premium to cover his costs, developed a unique product, eliminated the risks associated with buying a Lincoln-Mercury at the time, developed a loyal following, and earned enough credibility to sell his cars from that point forward without the typical haggling associated with a car purchase.

Assess the Risks of Doing Business with You

Take a step back and look at your company, your brand, your products, your service, sales team, your overall reputation and what your customers are saying, accurate or not, identifying your strengths and weaknesses in each risk category from your perspective. Then repeat the exercise from a customer or likely prospects perspective.

Depending upon your sales cycle, you may want to look deeper than just the prospect you are meeting with. Will your prospect need additional risk mitigating information to defend his or her purchasing decision or materials they can use to help sell your solutions internally to people you may or may not have access to?

It would be a mistake to lump your company, your staff and your products together as you make your assessment. Weigh each one (Company, Product Category, Team, Product) separately to get a more honest assessment as strengths in one area may offset weaknesses in other areas.

Example 1: The strength of the IBM brand could offset some of the risk associated with a new, never heard of computer product. On the other hand, the IBM name would not carry much weight if that new product was a loaf of bread.

Example 2: A trusted sales professional could add credibility to a product with his long term clients by putting his/her stamp of approval on the product just as a less-than-reputable sales professional could add so much risk for a potential prospect that they would not even want to hear about the product.

Example 3: Toyota’s strength in building quality cars and being dominate in the electric/hybrid car category, thanks to the Prius, would most likely offset some risk associated with a brand new electric/hybrid car.

Example 4: The (social) risk I place on buying a $10 toy for my daughter is medium because I am concerned about buying something she will like, that will not be a waste of money (financial risk – medium.) The risk my 8 year old daughter places on buying a $10 toy is high, because it takes her a while to earn $10 (financial risk – high) and she has few opportunities to go to the store and shop (psychological risk – medium to high, functional/time risk – high,) and her friends might make fun of her when they hear about it (social risk – high) so it takes her a long time to make a buying decision. If there is a Pogo stick or Rollerblades involved, now there is physical risk to contend with as well.

How Risky is it to do Business with You?

Risk is part of life and certainly part of the purchasing decision. Take the time to make an honest assessment of the risks of doing business with your company from the prospects perspective and uncover the areas where you might be vulnerable.

What can you do to eliminate the risks associated with your products or services? How can you add enough “credibility” to your new company to outweigh the risks of doing business with you vs. a name brand leader in your field?

I would really like to hear what you come up with. Need some ideas? I am just a quick email away val {at} saleslaundry.com.

Image courtesy of thesituationalist.wordpress.com

NOTE:  This article was written by Alex Kjerulf on his site PositiveSharing.com.  It is a point of view you don’t hear very often and worth the read so I tacked it on the wall here.  

When the customer isn’t right – for your business

One woman who frequently flew on Southwest, was constantly disappointed with every aspect of the company’s operation. In fact, she became known as the “Pen Pal” because after every flight she wrote in with a complaint.

She didn’t like the fact that the company didn’t assign seats; she didn’t like the absence of a first-class section; she didn’t like not having a meal in flight; she didn’t like Southwest’s boarding procedure; she didn’t like the flight attendants’ sporty uniforms and the casual atmosphere.

Her last letter, reciting a litany of complaints, momentarily stumped Southwest’s customer relations people. They bumped it up to Herb’s [Kelleher, CEO of Southwest] desk, with a note: ‘This one’s yours.’

In sixty seconds, Kelleher wrote back and said, ‘Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you. Love, Herb.’

The phrase “The customer is always right” was originally coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London in 1909, and is typically used by businesses to:

1. Convince customers that they will get good service at this company
2. Convince employees to give customers good service

Fortunately more and more businesses are abandoning this maxim – ironically because it leads to bad customer service.

Here are the top five reasons why “The customer is always right” is wrong.

1: It makes employees unhappy

Gordon Bethune is a brash Texan (as is Herb Kelleher, coincidentally) who is best known for turning Continental Airlines around “From Worst to First,” a story told in his book of the same title from 1998. He wanted to make sure that both customers and employees liked the way Continental treated them, so he made it very clear that the maxim “the customer is always right” didn’t hold sway at Continental.

In conflicts between employees and unruly customers he would consistently side with his people. Here’s how he puts it:

When we run into customers that we can’t reel back in, our loyalty is with our employees. They have to put up with this stuff every day. Just because you buy a ticket does not give you the right to abuse our employees . . .

We run more than 3 million people through our books every month. One or two of those people are going to be unreasonable, demanding jerks. When it’s a choice between supporting your employees, who work with you every day and make your product what it is, or some irate jerk who demands a free ticket to Paris because you ran out of peanuts, whose side are you going to be on?

You can’t treat your employees like serfs. You have to value them . . . If they think that you won’t support them when a customer is out of line, even the smallest problem can cause resentment.

So Bethune trusts his people over unreasonable customers. What I like about this attitude is that it balances employees and customers, where the “always right” maxim squarely favors the customer – which is not a good idea, because, as Bethune says, it causes resentment among employees.

Of course there are plenty of examples of bad employees giving lousy customer service. But trying to solve this by declaring the customer “always right” is counter-productive.

2: It gives abrasive customers an unfair advantage

Using the slogan “The customer is always right” abusive customers can demand just about anything – they’re right by definition, aren’t they? This makes the employees’ job that much harder, when trying to rein them in.

Also, it means that abusive people get better treatment and conditions than nice people. That always seemed wrong to me, and it makes much more sense to be nice to the nice customers to keepthem coming back.

3: Some customers are bad for business

Most businesses think that “the more customers the better”. But some customers are quite simply bad for business.

Danish IT service provider ServiceGruppen proudly tell this story:

One of our service technicians arrived at a customer’s site for a maintenance task, and to his great shock was treated very rudely by the customer.

When he’d finished the task and returned to the office, he told management about his experience. They promptly cancelled the customer’s contract.

Just like Kelleher dismissed the irate lady who kept complaining (but somehow also kept flying on Southwest), ServiceGruppen fired a bad customer. Note that it was not even a matter of a financial calculation – not a question of whether either company would make or lose money on that customer in the long run. It was a simple matter of respect and dignity and of treating their employees right.

4: It results in worse customer service

Rosenbluth International, a corporate travel agency, took it even further. CEO Hal Rosenbluth wrote an excellent book about their approach called Put The Customer Second – Put your people first and watch’em kick butt.

Rosenbluth argues that when you put the employees first, they put the customers first. Put employees first, and they will be happy at work. Employees who are happy at work give better customer service because:

• They care more about other people, including customers
• They have more energy
• They are happy, meaning they are more fun to talk to and interact with
• They are more motivated

On the other hand, when the company and management consistently side with customers instead of with employees, it sends a clear message that:

• Employees are not valued
• That treating employees fairly is not important
• That employees have no right to respect from customers
• That employees have to put up with everything from customers

When this attitude prevails, employees stop caring about service. At that point, real good service is almost impossible – the best customers can hope for is fake good service. You know the kind I mean: corteous on the surface only.

5: Some customers are just plain wrong

Herb Kelleher agrees, as this passage From Nuts! the excellent book about Southwest Airlines shows:

Herb Kelleher [...] makes it clear that his employees come first — even if it means dismissing customers. But aren’t customers always right? “No, they are not,” Kelleher snaps. “And I think that’s one of the biggest betrayals of employees a boss can possibly commit. The customer is sometimes wrong. We don’t carry those sorts of customers. We write to them and say, ‘Fly somebody else. Don’t abuse our people.’”

If you still think that the customer is always right, read this story from Bethune’s book “From Worst to First”:

A Continental flight attendant once was offended by a passenger’s child wearing a hat with Nazi and KKK emblems on it. It was pretty offensive stuff, so the attendant went to the kid’s father and asked him to put away the hat. “No,” the guy said. “My kid can wear what he wants, and I don’t care who likes it.”

The flight attendant went into the cockpit and got the first officer, who explained to the passenger the FAA regulation that makes it a crime to interfere with the duties of a crew member. The hat was causing other passengers and the crew discomfort, and that interfered with the flight attendant’s duties. The guy better put away the hat.

He did, but he didn’t like it. He wrote many nasty letters. We made every effort to explain our policy and the federal air regulations, but he wasn’t hearing it. He even showed up in our executive suite to discuss the matter with me. I let him sit out there. I didn’t want to see him and I didn’t want to listen to him. He bought a ticket on our airplane, and that means we’ll take him where he wants to go. But if he’s going to be rude and offensive, he’s welcome to fly another airline.

The fact is that some customers are just plain wrong, that businesses are better of without them, and that managers siding with unreasonable customers over employees is a very bad idea, that results in worse customer service.

So put your people first. And watch them put the customers first.

Early into my sales career I found myself working in a regional electronics and appliance store trying to figure out how to sell the stuff I was surrounded by but had ignored my whole life growing up, appliances.

The #1 reason I wanted to know how to sell appliances was not for the noble purpose of being a knowledgeable source of information for customers; it was for a far more selfish reason, I wanted to beat Davis.

Even on my first day as a trusty new representative, I could see Davis was not a man to be trusted. He had shifty eyes, a smirk like he knew something you didn’t, and a good decade of experience on the rest of us. Picture Snidely Whiplash without the top hat.

Davis was the number one sales rep my first month at the store. He was also number one each and every month he had ever worked there. He was a selling machine and was being paid stupid money compared to the rest of the sales team.

How could a guy that looked about as trustworthy as a snake in a cage full of furry mice continually outsell every other guy on the floor? Why didn’t the customers see right through that stupid grin?

Trying to figure it out, I asked each and every other rep what they thought his secret was before my first two months was at an end.

“He just lies and tells them stuff to get the sale.”

“He has been here so long he has repeat customers that wait for him.”

“He steals sales on your day off.”

“The owner throws extra special customers his way.”

“Customers just don’t understand what a shyster he is.”

“He has good product knowledge.”

And finally…

“He is just good.”

It seemed easy to believe the repeat customer part, or that he had built up a client base that would come back to see him, but that did not make sense if he was lying to every customer he sold to.

The only thing I could see as a tangible difference was his product knowledge, so I set about learning about every item in the store. Anytime a manufacturer’s rep would come in the store I would quiz him about every feature and benefit to every box in the building that we carried.

I studied owner’s manuals (this was long before the Internet) and product sales literature. I watched the TV commercials to see how they were pitching the products. I even went to other appliance stores to watch reps, ask questions, and in general try to be an information sponge.

Finally, after six months of careful painstaking study I knew the story and feature set behind every product in the building and I thought for certain the very next month would spell the end of Davis’ streak of consecutive months at being number one.

I beamed with pride the first day of the month because I crushed Davis’ totals. I sold $2000 worth of merchandise, Davis sold $359 worth. Of course, it was a hollow victory, as that had been Davis’ day off and his one sale was a customer coming back with his card to buy a TV.

Day two, though, I was ready. I had a two pronged attack planned. I had massive product knowledge and I was fast, so I could out run Davis to the customers. I was certain with knowledge and speed combined, Davis would be doomed.

Davis crushed me.

Day 3. Davis crushed me.

Day 4. I was off. Davis crushed me.

Day 5. I was working. Davis crushed me.

With few moments of triumph, which I had already accomplished a time or two before I set my new strategy in play, that is how the entire month played out.

Finally, I decided Davis must have access to product knowledge through his experience I just did not know, so I decided to ask him how to sell Maytag washing machines, because Davis sold them better than anybody and they were expensive compared to the other brands for the most part.

What Davis said that day changed my perception of sales every subsequent day for the rest of my sales life.

He said “When a customer likes the Maytag’s, I sell them a Maytag. When a customer likes the Kitchenaid, I sell them a Kitchenaid.”

Don’t worry; it took me a bit of thinking to unlock the brilliance of that statement as well, so I followed up his statement with a very succinct question.

“Huh?” David laughed at me, looking at me like I was a little boy playing a game for the grownups.

“When the customer likes the Maytag, I tell them about how the small agitator in the Maytag washer is easy on their cloths, because friction with the agitator makes the cloths wear out more quickly. Maytag moves the water through the cloths, not the clothes through the water. Plus they are easy to repair yourself with front access and pieces that are user serviceable.” He said. “When a customer likes the Kitchenaids, I explain how the large agitator in the washer does a fantastic job of churning the cloths and scrubbing them clean as Kitchenaids move the cloths through the water and there are no belts that need replacing like there are on the Maytag’s. Get it?”

“Yes.” I said. I lied. It took even more thinking that night to figure out what he just said then it hit me like, like, like a truckload of Maytag washing machines.

I realized I had done all the research; from Consumer Reports to vendor reps and manuals, etc. and I had decided, based on my expert opinion, which products were the best and those were the ones I tried to sell everyone. If they did not see the brilliance of my logic, I would continue to whack them over the head with facts demonstrating why I was smarter than them and why they should pick the product I was recommending.

As a result I only sold customers I could shoehorn into what I thought was best, and I was taking way too long with the ones that were not listening, meaning Davis was selling more and getting to more customers.

Davis would steal a sale or two on your day off if you would let him, but he never tried to swim upstream with a customer unnecessarily to get them to buy what he thought was best. To his credit, the one the customer bought was the best one because that was the one that got him paid, not the guy at the appliance store across the street.

If you are selling multiple brands of essentially the same basic product, try to understand what each individual brand of that product type is trying to hang their hat on, so to speak.

There will be products selling on no other value than being the lowest price in the category, there will be products that try to offer a unique feature or service that they will try to differentiate themselves with and there will be the top of the line, feature rich models.

Which one should you sell? All of them. Ask your qualifying questions and listen to the answers. Let their needs and wants drive what you sell, not some preconceived notion of what you think is best.

Listen then educate, never dictate or pontificate.

I love cheesy sales one liners.

Image courtesy of newsday.com