Asking for Help

In my experience, employees often do not ask for help because they consider the issue is not important enough or are afraid they would display lack of product knowledge.  I found this blog post today and it is entirely accurate and should be read by all:

Today's blog post is by Christine Harrington, The Savvy Sales Lady. She is a facilitator for Peak Performance Mindset Workshop and a personal sales coach. Christine helps sales professionals develop their beliefs to improve their sales performance.

“Did you ask for help?”

A long pause ensued over the phone. Then I heard a sigh. “No, I never ask for help,” came the weak reply.

“Really? Why?” I asked.

“Well….” Another pause. “It’s a sign of weakness.”

“How did you come up with that belief?”

“I suppose as a child. My father always said, ‘Never ask for help.’ If you don’t know how to do something, then don’t do it.’”

Sadly, this sentiment seems common among clients in my sales coaching practice. This particular client was new on the job, new to sales, and had not been properly trained. The client acknowledged she needed help, but felt she was disappointing her boss by asking.

Is asking for help a sign of weakness or is it a strength? What’s your belief?

If you struggle with asking for help on the job, chances are your belief system is saying

• Asking for help makes you look vulnerable.
• People feel put out when you ask for help.
• Successful people never ask for help.
• You like helping others, but you don’t like it when others help you.

However, not asking for help can keep you stuck and can wreck your career."

Ms. Harrington is exactly correct.  Asking for help shows strength and a willingness to learn from people who have been around the corner and have made mistakes.  Asking for help should be a positive experience.  The most frustrating thing for me is for my salespeople to make the same mistakes I did--which could have been prevented by Asking for Help!

"Owning" the Agenda

First and foremost, I believe that every single meeting or activity, whether it's a sales call, or a sales meeting, or a board meeting, or even a daily activity like writing a blog, should have an agenda.
And every agenda should have a "mission" or purpose.  And every item in the agenda should have its mission or purpose as well.
And why such a big deal about the agenda? 
The person with the agenda is the person who controls the meeting.  If you, as a salesperson, go on a sales call with an agenda and present the agenda to the customer, you "own" the meeting.
And this is true for any meeting.  Every meeting should have a mission or purpose and that purpose is the title of the agenda; and every item on the agenda should have a purpose: to achieve the mission.
This is a fact: the person with the agenda OWNS the meeting and taking control of the meeting gives everyone in the room confidence that you know what you're talking about.
One warning, however:  make sure you anticipate all the issues that your agenda will raise and be able to answer questions related to the agenda.
In summary:
1. Make an agenda for every meeting;
2. Make sure every item on the agenda focuses on the mission of the meeting;
3. Make sure everyone at the meeting has a copy of your agenda--even ahead of time so they know you are in control;
4. Stay focused on the agenda.  If the meeting moves away, get back to the items as soon as reasonable;
5. Summarize the meeting before everyone leaves;
6. Send an email summary to everyone in attendance as soon as possible after the meeting ("minutes").
OWN THE AGENDA; OWN THE MEETING; GET THE ORDER.

Focus Focus Focus

Julan Edelman's Superbowl Catch

112 million people watched the "Catch" by Julian Edelman.  It was amazing; and no matter who you were rooting for, it was still amazing.  But what is the lesson that we can learn from this great catch?
The lesson is that there is an absolute requirement to focus completely on the task at hand.  There is no room in the sales cycle for distraction.  The customer deserves your complete 100% attention. 
It is easy to get distracted from the task on hand in this age of emails and texts.  Your customer deserves your focus, your boss deserves your focus. 
And what is the major downside of loss of focus:
1. Mistakes.  If you're not focused on the project at hand, you make mistakes.  Mistakes are costly.
2. Opening the door to your competitor.  There is always someone else who is after the same order you're after.  Once you lose focus, you give a chance for the other salesperson to get in the door.
Focus won the superbowl; focus will win the order.  Get all distractions off the table; turn off things that are taking your attention away from the task at hand. Make the "catch"--focus on the order; focus on the customer.  Don't lose sight of the football and don't let the competitors steal the ball away!

Give Something, Get Something

The idea of "give something, get something" is a sales technique that I have mentioned in a previous blog post.  Sales leads are GOLD.   Leads can come in from several sources--some good and some not so good.  The absolutely best source of leads is someone you've just sold your product to.  And every single salesperson can use this method:Ask your customer if there is someone he knows who can use the product you just sold.
Referrals, referrals, referrals in sales is like location, location, location in real estate.
Happy customers are the best sources of leads.  Do NOT be embarrassed to ask. You ask for the order and you ask for a referral--this is a one-two punch that needs to be in every salesperson's bag.  It should be automatic.
However, it is very easily forgotten in the excitement of getting the order. The absolute first thought when you get an order should be: "where is the next order coming from?"  And the answer is:  "from the customer who just gave you the last order."
Don't be afraid to ask for a referral.  Make it an integral part of thanking the customer:  "Thank you for the order.  Can you suggest someone else who may be in the market for my product?"
Ask.

HUNGER!!!

Millionaire Motivator Tony Robbins

From millionaire motivator Tony Robbins:  "When people ask what it takes to succeed, the one answer I give them is 'hunger,'" Robbins says in an interview with Alexandra Middleton. "Hunger is that part of you that says, 'I will not stop. I will not give up,'" Robbins says.
Robbins is absolutely correct.  When I look back on my sales career, the little voice that said, every day, "don't stop", "don't give up" is what kept me on top of my game.

How do you get there--how do you achieve that drive that makes you keep going and doesn't allow you to give up even when the odds are not in your favor?
A true salesperson is not driven by money.  A true salesperson is driven by the need to close the sale.  The goal line is the purchase order and every bone and fiber of a good salesperson's body is focused on the goal line--closing the order.  Getting that order is no different than sinking a three-pointer at the buzzer or kicking a field goal to win the game.  If you have that hunger, then you will succeed.  If you don't, then you really need to dig deep inside yourself to find it. 
NASA flight director, Gene Kranz, famously stated (in the movie Apollo 13) "Failure is not an option." 
You need to take that same attitude into your sales life every single day: "don't stop, don't give up, failure is not an option". 

Prospecting For New Business

Ever since starting this blog, I have been using primarily my own ideas generated from 42 years of selling.  Today I read a sales blog that I thought was right on the mark and decided to share it. It really makes sense:

01/25/2017

Ten Keys to Prospecting Success

Today’s post is by Mark Hunter, CSP, “The Sales Hunter.” Mark is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results and High-Profit Selling: Win the Sale Without Compromising on Price.

Ask salespeople what their number one issue is and they’ll say, “getting good prospects.” It’s simple fact – you can’t close a sale until you have someone to sell to.  
So what does it take to prospect successfully? Having worked with thousands of salespeople and written the book High-Profit Prospecting, I boiled it down to what I call the Ten Keys to Prospecting:

1. Have a dedicated time on your calendar to prospect and don’t allow interruptions. This is absolutely essential! The most successful salespeople are those who commit time to prospecting and stick to it. Saying you’ll start prospecting as soon as you’ve taken care of everything else is not a strategy – it’s an escape tactic to avoid prospecting!
   
2. Don’t start what you can’t finish. Prospecting is about following up. Reaching out to a bunch of people and not following up with repeat contacts is never going to result in any type of success.
   
3. Believe 110 percent you can help others. If you don’t believe in you, why should anyone else believe in you? Top performing salespeople are successful regardless of what they sell. They know their objective is to help others, and what they sell is merely the means to do that.
   
4. Qualify quickly. Nothing is worse than having “prospects” in your pipeline that are taking up your time but never become customers. I’m a firm believer in having a prospecting pipeline that is fast moving, allowing you to spend more time with fewer prospects. Yes, that’s the exact opposite of what many sales managers are pushing. We have to think quality, not quantity!
   
5. Have a prospecting process and stick to it. My rule is you won’t know if your process works unless you’ve executed it for a period of time that is two times the length of your average buying cycle. For example, if it takes three months to move someone from a lead to a customer, then you need to run your process for at least six months before you’ll know if it is working. Too many salespeople give up on their plan far too soon.
   
6. Don’t rely on social media as your primary means to generate leads. Social media is great, but don’t over-rely on it. Use it as one of your sources. Social media has a long lead time, and too many salespeople starve to death because they’ve put too much emphasis into social media, thinking it’s all they have to do. Use it to create awareness and confidence. The leads you get are purely a bonus.
   
7. Follow up promptly. Sounds simple, but more opportunities are lost due to the failure of the salesperson to follow up fast when leads/prospects give an indication of wanting to move forward. Countless opportunities are lost because the salesperson is afraid they’ll be seen as a stalker. If stalking helps me close more deals, sign me up!
   
8. Use the telephone. Don’t fall for the myth, “The telephone doesn’t work because nobody answers it.” Sure, the telephone isn’t as effective as it used to be, but don’t give up on it. The telephone allows you to have conversations with leads and prospects, allowing you to qualify them more quickly and ultimately help them far beyond what they initially expected.
   
9. Don’t rely only on the marketing department for leads. It’s always great to have leads supplied, but top performers know they have an obligation to get leads and prospects. Relying on the marketing department is merely an excuse for not taking control of yourself.
   
10. Make the prospecting process about the other person. It’s not what you sell; it’s the outcome you can help the prospect with that will get you the high-value prospects you need. If all you’re doing is telling others what you do and what your product features are, you’ll be doomed to failure.

Have you bought my new book High-Profit Prospecting? You need to, as it’s full of proven strategies to help you succeed.

Walking in Someone Else's Shoes

Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck): To Kill a Mockingbird

 Harper Lee, in her book "To Kill a Mockingbird" wrote a line for Atticus Finch the lawyer: "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." 
This idea has been worked and overworked.  "You don't know someone until you walk a mile in his shoes" is another way to put it.
But this is more than a phrase--it's a deeply deeply true statement.  You can't understand your customers' motivations, you can't understand your manager's motivations, you can't understand what your boss is looking for--nothing makes sense unless you can truly get out of your skin and get into the other person's skin.  This is a very demanding idea.
Salespeople are typically driven by their egos--by necessity since we have to take so much rejection. 
But ego is something we have to let go of because it stands in the way of getting into our customer's mind.
What are your customer's needs, personally and corporately.  How does he "sell" your product to his bosses and make himself look valuable in their eyes.  Selling should not be transactional--it should be solutional--a solution for the customer, for his company, for you, the salesperson.  Leave your ego (and your cell phone) at the door and try to truly understand what the customer, what your customer's boss, what your boss, and what the people around you, want.
Walk a mile in their shoes.

Networking and Interacting

I just returned from a national sales meeting and something that jumped out at me regarding the younger breed of sales people was the fact that groups of folks from different divisions and different companies stuck together: ate together, drank together; talked together.
The problem with that is that you never find out what's going on in other parts of the company or the other parts of the world or even another division of the company you work for.
The purpose of a sales meeting to network with other divisions and other geographies.  Knowledge is power and the knowledge you gain from talking to people from other places or other companies or other parts of the same company is invaluable.
And this goes for sales people working within one company--the sales people selling refrigerators need to talk to the tool people or the clothing people in a department store.  
Networking is critical to sales success.  And that means networking within your department, within your company, within your division and within your industry.
Get out from your little circle, meet people in your industry and other industries because you can learn a lot if you do.
Sales can be a lonely job, but by building a network of people who are not your competitors in your market can be very very valuable.  There is more to be learned in the sales job than just your product; you need to see how other people do things and apply them to your area.  Talk to people and ask them what they do and how they do it.  Never stop learning.

The Word For 2017: FOCUS

Momentary distractions can lose an order

A couple of years ago, there was a psychological study of distraction.  They "investigated the effect of short interruptions on performance of a task that required participants to maintain their place in a sequence of steps each with their own performance requirements. Interruptions averaging 4.4 s long tripled the rate of sequence errors on post-interruption trials relative to baseline trials. Interruptions averaging 2.8 s long--about the time to perform a step in the interrupted task--doubled the rate of sequence errors. " (Journal of Experimental Psychology, February, 2014)
We are living in an age of constant distraction.  We all know (although we don't practice) that a glance down at our phone, or responding to a text while driving, can have fatal consequences.  But what does this have to do with a blog on sales?
Since I started this blog, I have been preaching about Listening Deeply.  This post is about the inverse of listening deeply.
Any distraction can have consequences--can result in a loss of an order.You glance down at your phone--2.8 seconds--and you've lost the string of thought your customer is laying on you. 
Many people think they can "multi-task".  They're not multitasking.  They're doing many tasks badly.
If you can't put your phone aside, and put your computer aside, and listen deeply to what your customer is saying, what he is asking, then you're not a good salesperson.  It's that simple. 
If you're in a sales meeting and you feel that you need to answer emails while a product presentation is being made, then you're failing your company and your customer. 
The key word for 2017 is FOCUS--focus on the task at hand and put the things that cause distraction aside.

New Year's Resolution: First Impressions Matter a LOT

Or not

 

Make a Great First Impression

From Inc. Magazine: "Science has just discovered exactly how long first impressions linger.... To test the durability of quick first impressions, a team of researchers at Cornell University had 55 volunteers view pictures of a woman they had never met before.  In some photos she was smiling, in others she was serious-faced.  After viewing the picture the subjects rated her personality for qualities like extraversion and friendliness.  Then these same volunteers actually met the woman in real life between one and six months later. ... The impression of the woman's personality the subjects received from the photograph still heavily colored their face to face conversation."

So, what can constitute a bad first impression:  not paying attention; having your head buried in your computer or cell phone during the meeting; not smiling; not asking intelligent questions that show your interest in what is being discussed; sitting with a frown on your face and your arms folded.

And what makes a good first impression: smiling; firm handshake; listening deeply to the conversation; asking questions that further the discussion; putting your computer and cell phone away; good posture.

A good first impression is a lasting impression; make your first impression a great one.

Details, Details, Details

We go through our sales day not really thinking about the details--the little things--about the customer's issues and personality, about his business, about little things in his office that display his personality, etc.  Let's take a lesson from Bill Belichick, New England Patriots coach.  This is from an article by Kevin Duffy, published on MassLive.com December 16, 2016  (emphasis is mine):
"Its essence: Entry-level coaching assistants are responsible for weekly breakdowns of the upcoming opponent, handed in to Belichick more than a week in advance of the game so he can use them as reference points as he conceives a strategy. Offensive assistants focus on the opponent's defense. Defensive assistants focus on the offense. Both focus on details so insignificant that you'd think Belichick was playing a prank on these kids. 

Phil Savage, who worked as a coaching assistant in Cleveland under Belichick, remembers logging the direction in which the quarterback turned his head prior to each snap.
Between the identification of scheme and detail, each play could take as long 20 minutes to diagram in full. Each game had 50-70 plays on each side of the ball. Each coaching assistant had three breakdowns per week....
In this job, McDaniels said, 'you learned the most valuable lesson that you keep to this day: everything is important.'"

We love to watch football--without realizing the preparations that these teams make for each game.  If we prepared for sales calls the way coaches prepare for games, we'd get every order.  Keep a pad, make notes on what you see in your customer's office or facility--details are important.  They are the key to understanding your customer's needs and understanding his needs can get you the order! We recently got an order for a product because our color scheme fit in with the customer's requirements.  You just never know, and if you're not attentive to the details, you could lose the order--even with a better price.

Strategy and Tactics in Selling

Hannibal Crossing the Alps into Battle 206 BC

From Wikipedia: "A tactic is a conceptual action aiming at the achievement of a goal. This action can be implemented as one or more specific tasks. The term is commonly used in business, protest and military contexts, as well as in chess, sports or other competitive activities.

Strategy is undertaken before the battle. Tactics are implemented during battle. These two concepts must work in tandem, without doing so, one cannot efficiently achieve goals."

In many ways, sales is, indeed, a battle and your enemies are your competitors. The prize is the order--planting your flag on your customer's desk.

I want to stress strategy in this post.  Your strategy is to bring all your forces to bear in order to win the order.  And what are these forces?
1.  Product knowledge.  This is the absolute foundation for success in sales.  Your customer will see right through you if you don't know your product thoroughly.  I can't stress this enough--know every little detail of your product; understand why every component of the product is used and what its function is. Do not go forth into battle until you do.
2.  Knowledge of your competitors' products.  You need to know your competitors, not in order to belittle them, but in order to address the questions your customer may have regarding those products.  Remember, your competitor is the enemy in this war and you need to know and understand your enemy.
3.  Know your customer.  This is the third leg of the strategy stool.  If you don't understand your customer and his needs, then you don't know how to present your product in such a way that you will win the order--win the battle.  Understanding your customer is more tactical than strategic and we will discuss this in the next post.

If you go into battle with knowledge of your product, knowledge of your competitors' product and knowledge of your customer and his needs, then the battle is yours to win!

Etrategy is undertaken before the battle. Tactics are implemented during battle. These two concepts must work in tandem, without doing so one cannot efficiently achieve goals.^[1]

The Welcome Mat: Getting Customers to Like You

Back in "the day", there was an elderly salesman on our staff.  He used to love to tell stories when he went in to see customers--often the same stories over and over again.  It got so that, when he got out of his car and the customer saw him coming, they would head out the back door.  This is not recipe for success in sales.

What is the trick to being welcomed when you visit customers:  

Always have an agenda--know what you're going to talk about before you get there, and be prepared with the proper information.  OK, that gets you the appointment; what gets you welcomed back:

1.  Know your customer's interests and be prepared to talk about it for a minute or two.  (Sports is always a good way to start.)  Or you may want to bring up a good book that you've just read; or a good movie that you may have seen.  These are conversation openers.  But keep it short; respect your customer's time constraints.

2.  Know your customer's industry.  Understand what's going on in business news that affects your customer.  Have a handle on personnel changes in the business.  LinkedIn is a great source for this kind of information.  Get on LinkedIn and use it.

3.  Bring your customer a lead or an idea that he can use to enhance his business.

Make yourself a valued and welcomed vendor; learn the art of small talk:

whatever your profession, you are in sales.