Corporate Sales Guy

It was the early 90’s and I had recently started selling industrial chemicals for a chemical company in Maryland. I had always been interested in sales but I didn’t know squat about selling and I was having a hard time getting appointments and sales. I felt that I was just making my base salary and putting 50k miles on my car each year. There were many factors keeping me from hitting my monthly number other than not knowing what I was doing but of course I didn’t let the fact that no one had heard of our company before stop me from trying to meet with everyone. It was that unreasonableness that I think taught me more than the cautious, realistic approach I take to things now.

I had long known about the vast wealth that could be had on audio books on tape. There were the greats producing excellent material such as Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracey and others. The only problem is that of the 3-4 library branches in my area none of them had a reasonable selection of sales training on audio tape. In using the card catalog system (it was computerized, even in the early 90’s) I found one branch of the library systems had almost all the popular sales trainers. I instantly drove out to the branch and checked out at least 4 sets of audio books. For the next 5-8 years I listened to almost 0 talk radio, 0 music and made all my drive time my opportunity to learn and make all the sales I could possibly make. There was no better way to be pumped than getting out of the car after having listened to one of the greats and maybe applying a new method or technique to uncover pain with a prospect.

Long story short I would have to say my favorite from a content and delivery standpoint had to be Hank Trisler. Although I learned from many over those years I think the items that I most apply came from his “No Bull Selling” series which I will try to locate and purchase sometime soon. Here are the 2 points that still resonate with me today:

1. Speak plainly. Speak directly and never try to use jargon or big buzz words to show a client you know something. If you are an engineer and you are speaking to an engineer – forget I mentioned this but for the rest of us…..

2. Folks can be categorized in 4 major groups as far as their attitudes on buying. Hank puts them into a quadrant and helps you understand how to effectively understand the underlying issues with each of the buying types.

Hank has a cool story about him buying a Mercedes that will not only put you on the floor laughing but will illustrate everything that a sales person needs to do to make sales repeatedly while building the utmost amount of trust and confidence. The story also clearly outlines the characteristics held by the minority of salespeople that make the rest of us look bad.

Happy selling

-CSG

There are many products and services that businesses have to purchase. For instance all companies these days have internet access. This shouldn’t be a difficult sale as long as you can beat out your competition. The challenge comes from selling items that companies most likely need but don’t know they need it.

Let me paint a picture. (I am keeping this very simple)

You sell bookkeeping services to small business. The biggest obstacle here is that the owner of the company you have approached does this himself and views bookkeeping services as a $300 per month fee that he can keep in his own pocket.

A person trained using Sandler’s methods would ask simple questions like:

“have you ever paid a bill late?” “What types of fees did you have to pay for sending in a check late?” Is there anyway an employee can be taking cash for themselves without your knowledge? Do you feel that at this point your revenue should be higher? If you weren’t doing the bookkeeping after hours what would you be able to focus on that would increase your business?

Basically the method seeks to find pain, relates the pain in lost opportunities or money. After these steps a salesperson would be able to show that it’s more expensive NOT to purchase their product.

Here’s a cool story I always like to share. A long time ago, I went in to purchase a car. For those who don’t know me personally, I hate drawing attention to myself. Anyways, the sales person who showed me the car at dealership #1 told me, “your friends will be jealous of you if you purchase this car!” I literally walked out on the spot.

Dealership #2. I spoke with a sales rep about the vehicle (which was out of my budget) until he got tired of me and sent his sales manager over me. He started off by asking me what I did and we just talked. It was casual and friendly. He learned that I too was in sales. After establishing rapport (another Sandler item) He began to drill down as to why I wanted to trade in my car for a new one and I had explained to him that being in sales, I really needed a car with air conditioning. Long story short, about an hour later I was $30 higher per month than my budget would allow prompting the sales manager to ask me, “would it be worth $1 per day to show up to your clients office dry and without the back of your shirt being wet from the heat of a Virginia summer?” Needless to say, I drove home that night with the car – completely confident that I had made the right choice.

If you are serious about being an entrepreneur who is going to have to hit the road selling a product or a sales person who is looking to sell software I’d highly recommend you find a Sandler Sales training seminar.

-csg

I named my blog “corporate sales guy” and somehow I veered off track drastically and began to talk only about tools and gadgets. This is my 1st in a series of articles that will bring me back to good old fashioned sales. The tools and laptops are fun to me, but time to get back to selling.

I’ve learned a few things over the years as to what works when communicating with customers.

1. A phone call is (almost) always better than email

2. Face to face is (almost) always better than a phone call.

3. Never be long winded, communicate clearly and don’t preface things too often. (e.g. “this may sound crazy but….”) just spit it out.

4. Be brief in email and the spoken word.

5. Never interrupt a customer, never.

6. If a prospect has gone quiet on you, offer a meeting over lunch or coffee.

7. If a prospect has gone quiet on you, tell them plainly, “usually when someone gets a bit quiet, it’s usually bad news for me. Is that the case here?”

Note: this has been powerful for me. It’s a tough question but one that needs asking. It also gives the customer a chance to clear their chest. Lastly, you can move on to other qualified opportunities. Push hard on all deals but know when a deal is dead and move on.

8. Outlook calendar meeting invites are powerful ways to get a response. (thanks to Jason for this one)

9. Never lie, regardless of how furious a client will be with your response. If they ask something that you cannot answer due to confidentiality issues, tell them you cannot talk about it. They will understand, they are highly intelligent.

10. Never BS. If you don’t know let your prospect know that you’ll get back to them. If you find yourself saying “I don’t know” frequently, you may want to learn your product/service better.

-csg