QUICK TIP - The Customer's Best Interest

In a campaign, always act in the best interest of your customer.  Doing that will make your sales efforts noble and you will get “help” and “energy” from places you could never imagine.  Do not act with the primary intention of harming your competitor.  This will bring negativity into the effort and in the end; the customer’s interests may not be best served. 

Good selling!

steve

The Power of Handwritten Notes

Last Spring I had dinner at the Barracuda Restaurant in St Julians harbor, Malta with about 25 customers, most of them Vice Presidents and CEOs. One of them was the Chairman of his company and a man that I had always wanted to meet and understand better. He was someone with whom I wanted to establish a relationship which would open more doors in the company enabling my team to better understand the strategy, establish needs, and ultimately propose a solution leading to a sale. Of course, this would also benefit the customer so it would be a Win-Win in the purest form.

We had a good chat over dinner. When we finished an espresso, he asked me to call him in a few weeks and we could fix a date for a proper call on his company.

Competition: There are no less then six companies that day were also trying to get a meeting and spend some time with this gentleman.

As soon as I returned to the office, I took out one of my simple but elegant white note cards with matching envelope. Our logo is subtly embossed on the card. I took out a nice pen and hand wrote this man a short simple note about our meeting and how I was looking forward to visiting him soon. I folded it over, slipped in my card, and gave it to my assistant to address and post.

Two weeks later, as we had agreed, I phoned him. His assistant answered and I told her my name and my company and asked if I could speak with the Chairman. Usually, when a salesman calls and gets the assistant, the reply is “I am sorry, could you repeat your name please? How do you spell the surname please? Thank you. What is the name of your firm again?”

But this time it was much different. She said, “Oh, yes, Mr. Aliment. I saw your note and your card on his credenza. He has kept it sitting there for a fortnight (laughter). Just one minute, let me put you through.”

Never underestimate the power of a simple hand written note. Why is it powerful? It is powerful mostly because very few sales professionals, or people period, do it anymore. We live in the email world now but email won’t cut it. Email is common. A hand written note is unique. It says I cared enough about you and your company to make an extra effort. The same extra effort I will put into our business relationship. I will look after the details. Meeting you, dear customer, made an impression on me. You are important.

Chairman, vice presidents, politicians, important people from all walks of life are overloaded with email and email has a short half-life if it has any life at all. It’s too easy to scan it, hit delete and poof, it’s gone for ever. A hand written note however always gets read, the business card gets filed, and maybe added to his or her address book. Never mind that you handed your customer a business card in person, that one, and the other 20 business cards he received was binned, that night or the next day.

Handwritten notes are powerful in business and in your personal relationships. They are a great selling tool. Why don’t more sales people do it?

The amateur salesman says “I know I should but I don’t have any note cards and it would take too long to order them let alone write them. By the time I had them designed and printed, it would be too late.”

The professional salesman has the cards printed, right in his desk and ready to go. Maybe he even carries a few in his briefcase to hasten the follow up. I am telling you, it’s one of those little things that mean a lot. Try it and see the difference.

Good selling!

Sales Campaigns Require Perpetual “Grip”

I have been reading Tony Blair’s book, A Journey. In the chapter on reaching peace in Northern Ireland, he gives a master class on conflict resolution. While a sales campaign is not a conflict per se, there are many parallels.

Blair’s quote goes like this: “…to proceed to resolution, the thing (the problem or conflict) needs to be gripped and focused on. Continually. Inexhaustibly. Relentlessly. Day by day by day by day. If the gripping is intermittent, intermittent won't do. It doesn't work. If it (is) gripped, it (will) be solved.”

What Blair is saying is that solving a complex problem requires focus and full time attention. In a major sale, a sales team is solving a problem for the customer (which is hard enough) but there are also multiple competitors trying to do you in along the way! Each of them had a different solution/product to sell. You have to out hustle the competition.

To win, a perpetual grip and full attention to detail is required. Here are some examples of GRIP.

• Spend time in many departments. Learn the account inside and out. Know the customer better then they know themselves
• Get to know the key people personally. Be their best friend and the one they want to spend time with …be part of the family. Make sure they are always happy to see you.
• “Hang around their in-box” when you can’t be physically present
• Put out any embers before they become raging brush fires (this is usually an arson job by one of your friendly competitors).
• Give much more then they expect…in everything you do for them
• If you are not there, your competition is! Monopolize their time, box-out the competition, but create value for the customer when you do.
• Remember birthdays, anniversaries, name days, etc. Amaze them with your memory for their personal details.

We had a Sales VP at Boeing, a legendary salesman named Larry Dickenson. Larry was a veteran of the Asian airplane wars, and was largely responsible for persuading Japan Airlines Corp. and All Nippon Airways Co. build their fleets around the 787, 777, and 737 airplanes. He was one guy that could play hardball with John Leahy and usually win. Larry was a quote machine and he used to tell us one thing that really stuck with me. “Overwhelm the competition”. Sound advice. Grip the campaign and never let go!

By the way, here are all the Tony Blair’s tips.

1. Find the core principles around which agreement and a framework can be built
2. Never loosen your GRIP
3. Don’t treat as small what is important to others (‘small things can be big things’)
4. Be creative
5. Conflict needs outside helpers
6. Conflict is a journey not an event
7. Disruptions are inevitable from those who see benefits in maintaining the conflict
8. Leaders matter but leadership can be tough and lonely
9. Success requires external conditions to favour peace
10. Never give up.


I like that last one!

Good selling!

Charting the Course - Ten things to ask your sales people about the 2010 Plan

Michelangelo said this about sand-bagging a sales plan: “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” I believe in stretch goals but sales people need to “own” their goals and their plan. Some sales managers set unrealistic or unachievable goals for their sales teams without enough discussion and dialogue. This is wrong. The salesman will be frustrated, unengaged and won’t “own it”.

A Better Way:

As with selling, better results come when you ask good questions. So it is with goal setting and sales plan coaching.

Ten things to ask your sales people about the 2010 Sales Plan:

1. What major trends and changes in our business environment might affect your sales plan?

2. (Drill down…). What new potential developments in customer demand, competition, disruptive technology, or in the regulatory environment could have enough impact on our industry to change the game and change the rules?

3. How and why is this sales plan different from your previous plans?

4. What were your forecasts for market growth and sales last year? Two years ago? Where you right? What did you learn?

5. (Stretch) What would it take to double your sales and increase your margin by 25% (deal quality)?

6. Where will growth come from: expansion (bigger pie) or gains in market share (take-a-ways), services, other?

7. If your plan is to take market share from competitors, how will you do it, and how will they respond? Are you counting on a clear product advantage, pricing advantage, new value levers, better account management or superior sales execution?

8. What are your distinctive competitive strengths, and how does the plan build on them? How do you communicate our value story?

9. How different is your sales plan and strategy from your competitor’s? Why?

10. What are you going to do to hone your sales and leadership skills and how will you strengthen your team?

After going through these ten questions, ask your salesman to reflect, maybe have a team meeting, and then come back again with some clear, measurable goals for the coming year. I think you will get a better result from a fully engaged salesman.

Other thoughts? I’d love to hear from you!

Happy 2010 and of course…Good selling!

Steve

Winging It

In the past, my enthusiasm to get in front of the customer often led me to think it was OK to spend little time planning a call and even less time writing down my plan. I was not alone. The percentage of sales and marketing pros that continue to wing it on calls is amazingly high. This is OK for transactional sales. But with the complex and expensive products, services and solutions, failure to plan will eventually cost you.

Old School: To maximize orders, sales and marketing must increase the number of customer visits we make and the number of proposals we generate. Less time spent preparing means more time for visits, more proposals, and with some God given capture rate percentage applied…more orders. Right? It doesn’t work that way. What does work is putting first things first and executing around priorities.

Success, for all professionals, is the natural outcome of consistently repeating some basic fundamentals. Preparation is key. To prepare properly, one must develop or adopt a selling system. Systems are not an unusual concept in professional disciplines. Who would ever suggest that pilots can fly an aircraft any way they wish. How about hospitals allowing surgeons to operate on patients with complete creative freedom? Of course not and neither should any sales professional. Taking the time to prepare a detailed sales call plan has to be part of ones daily work. “I’m too busy to plan” or “a call plan doesn’t make sense with this customer” is no excuse.

Success in complex sale is the result of tight and well planned team collaboration and execution. Don't wing it, plan it. Dig into preparation with intentness and you will attract more sales successes into your 2010 sales opportunities.

Good Selling!

steve

Implementation

Once the ink is dry on a contract, many sales people move on to pollinate the next flower. In doing so, one might be missing an opportunity to increase customer satisfaction and expand wallet share with the client. Smooth implementation opens the door to future business. The customer has placed its faith in your firm and the last thing they want is to encounter unexpected hassles with the product introduction.

Typical Customer Concerns in this Phase:

• Are we getting value from this decision?
• Are there going to be any surprises (risks)?
• How quickly will we see results?

Signs that this Phase is Over:

• New needs and dissatisfaction arise.

Common Strategic Errors:

• Failure to treat this phase as a sales opportunity.
• Failure to anticipate vulnerable implementation points.

Coaching Questions and Tips:

• What’s our value validation plan?
• What is the next up selling opportunity (complimentary or substitute products and services)?

Other Key Coaching Questions:

• Is the customer realizing the value we sold them?
• What risks exist if they don’t perceive value?
• How did the customer define success? Has this changed?
• Have we reinforced their decision criteria?

It is so important that the salesman is present, with the customer, as critical implementation milestones are achieved. For example, the first day of user training or the day the customer cuts over to using the new ERP system. Address problems quickly, document and celebrate the quick wins. Most importantly, remain alert for new problems that arise and that you may be able to solve. Then, you can start this process again and make another customer satisfying sale.

That closes out this five part series on tips you can use to help your salesman move the customer through Neil Rackham’s stages of the buying cycle. You can familiarize your self with these stages buy reading the SPIN Selling, or clicking here: http://www.huthwaite.com/go.cfm?do=Page.View&pid=28

Good selling!

Steve

This is It! - Sales Leadership Lessons from Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson’s This is It.
Sales Leadership Lessons from the King of Pop.

I came out of this movie not only impressed by MJ’s talent as a performer but also, his skill as a creative leader, coach, and mentor. Like show business, Sales is a high flying high risk profession with emotional highs and lows. We often perform without a net in risky and pressure packed circumstances. I often refer to what we do as “industrial showmanship”.

Sales leaders need their team’s delivering peak performances on a consistent basis. That’s a tall order. Sales people are creative, high self esteem, ego driven people - if I may generalize. They are not unlike show business people in many respects.

Here are the six lessons we can learn from MJ about how to lead and get the most from a team of sales professionals.

#1. Get the right people on the bus. The movie opens with MJ and Kenny Ortega (more on him later) hand picking the talent during a cattle call. The striking thing is how involved Michael is in this process and the geographic diversity of the talent pool. Don’t rely on HR. Get involved. Look with your own eyes for that petit je ne sais quoi. Seek out the best people and maybe even give an unknown a chance to really wow you and the customers.

#2. Surround yourself with good leaders. Kenny Ortega is the perfect compliment to MJ. Ortega has a great resume and is a triple threat talent (producer, director, and chorographer). Watching them work together and collaborate on ideas is a lesson in the power of mutual respect. Notice also how Ortega gently and respectfully gets Michael open up to new/alternate ideas. It is example in masterful communication. Behind every great leader is another great leader and that respectful give-and-take makes a good team great.

#3. Be a supportive and nurturing coach. There are several examples where when something goes wrong or is not perfect, Michael uses the phrase “That’s why we rehearse”, with emphasis on the WE. He never calls anyone out or embarrasses anyone in front of the team. He knows how to get the best out of each performer.

#4. Straight talk is sometimes required. There are times when Michael has to take charge and be very direct about what he wants. There is one section where MJ has a “straight talk” exchange with keyboardist and Musical Director Michael Bearden over a very subtle change he wants for the tempo of the song “The Way You Make Me Feel”. Bearden tries to defend a bit by saying he can’t predict how MJ will want certain songs to sound. MJ then lays down the law. “I want it like I wrote it”. In other words…Thanks for the input, now here is what we are going to do.

#5. Show the way and be into the details. Michael dances and sings as hard as anyone in the cast. Here he is, 50 years old throwing himself on the floor during “Beat It,” (several times to get it right). Imagine the inspiration to those young performers! There is a great scene where he is coaching Orianthi Panagaris on how to play Eddie Van Halen’s solo on “Beat It” and another where Jackson is coaching his band and production team on how he wants a certain breakdown to work. “Let it simmer…let the music simmer". MJ shows the way and doesn’t ask them to do anything he would not do himself.

#6. Take yourself seriously…but not too seriously. Michael has fun while getting the serious business done. He rides the cherry picker in rehearsal like he’s a kid on an amusement park ride at Neverland. On the rare occasion where he messes up, he pokes fun at himself. He is not afraid to be vulnerable in front of the team. At one point he complains about his ear monitors by joking with the sound technicians. In another, he has a fun exchange with his dancers and band for encouraging him to sing in full voice when he should be saving his vocal cords for the real performances. “I shouldn’t be singing out, I am trying to warm up…why are you doing this to me?”

In any profession, there are lessons to be learned from observing great people at work. It could be sports, politics, war or the entertainment industry. This movie shows the unglamorous hard work and team collaboration that is required to succeed when the curtain goes up or the conference room door closes. Show time baby!

Good Selling!