Sales Blog with Professional Sales Tips

Welcome. If you like what you see, you can automatically receive these free semi-weekly posts by email or RSS feed. See the right side of the screen for instructions; it only takes 10 seconds. You will receive a verification email if you choose to receive by email. If you don't immediately receive this email, please check your spam folder. We will never sell or misuse your email address.

What follows is some sales advice about asking for special discounts from your sales manager for that prospect with lots of potential.

The not so effective request:

Salesperson to Sales Manager: “I have this great prospect who is going to yield us tons of future business if we can just get the first order. To be competitive they said we’ll have to discount our normal price by 38%.”
Sales Manager to Salesperson: “That’s below our cost! What do you know about them?”
Salesperson to Sales Manager: “All I know is that they need the stuff really badly and they promised us lots of future business. Oh, about our costs, they want 10,000 so we’ll cover the loss with volume. I know how to sell this prospect.”
Sales Manager to Salesperson: ???

The productive request:

Salesperson to Sales Manager: “The XYZ Company says they will buy from us if we can come off our price by 38%. Here is what I know about the decision makers, budget, competition and account potential [realistic and well prepared information provided here]. This is how I plan to demonstrate our added value in order to increase our odds of getting future higher margin business [more good information]. A realistic price quote would be 20% off our normal price. I need your approval for that discount.
Sales Manager to Salesperson: “Approved!”

When you go to your sales manager with reasonable and researched requests you’re much more likely to get a thumbs up. It will also allow you to show off your sales skills and a make for a happier sales manager. Your fellow sales pro’s are frequently going to your sales manager with a continuing chorus of “I need a big discount to get into this prospect that has tremendous future potential.” When asking for a big discount on a prospect, the sales manager needs to feel reasonably confident that the prospect will actually buy in the future and at higher margins. The key is information.

To receive this blog by email <click here> to receive by RSS <click here>. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

Fact: As sales professionals, we are ultimately in control of our sales career. This isn’t a good thing, this is a great thing! But it also requires us to take on certain responsibilities if we want to maximize this control.

The following are five truths about our sales career:

1. We are our own best sales career counselor. No one cares as much about our career as we do, not our
employer, our manager or anyone else.
2. We are responsible for our own development and training. This may mean getting our employer to train us or for us to seek training on our own.
3. We must think beyond our current sales job; we are in a career, not a job. As I’ve written in another post, Sales Staff Turnover, few sales jobs are permanent.
4. We are ultimately our own best motivators; no one else can motivate us over the long haul.
5. The most successful sales professionals are those that stick with it. I’ve never met a number one salesperson that got to that position in 3 months - it took years and usually spanned over several employers.

Do we have 100% control of our sales career at all times? Hardly. The “Divine Director of Sales” in His heavenly office can grab the wheel from time to time, but our individual actions, and inactions, will have a huge impact on our sales career.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

We all know the Pareto Principle, which broadly states that 80% of the effects comes from 20% of the causes. Countless sales organizations have gotten themselves into deep trouble by mindlessly applying this principle to their sales organizations. I call it the Pareto Protocol.

Sales management thinks something like the following, “We’ve done an analysis and find that 80% of our sales comes from only 20% of our sales force. We need to fire 80% of our salesforce, which will lower our overhead and increase our profits!”

They think that if they can increase the sales of the 20%-super-producers by just 25% they won’t see any decline in revenues, while simultaneously realizing an 80% reduction in their base sales payroll. It sounds too good to be true, because it is.

I’ve seen the results when the Pareto Protocol is applied to sales organizations and it is consistently a disaster. I am fully aware that every sales organization has salespersons that need to find another career, or at the least be encouraged to work for a competitor.

I am also fully aware that every sales organization has its high producing heavy lifters, but to think that they can and will do even more lifting, all the time, is an ill-advised sales strategy.

Before your sales organization is tempted to partially or fully implement the Pareto Protocol, please consider the following:

1. Your top producers are in that position because they are already working at high capacity. Do they really have an additional 25%+ of bandwidth to give you?
2. You have salespeople at differing levels of development. Firing 80% of the sales force will undoubtedly nip many future super stars in the bud.
3. After applying the Pareto Protocol your sales force is now theoretically comprised exclusively of superstars; you’ve unintentionally created headhunter heaven. Be prepared for your superstars to be rapidly and easily gobbled up by your competitors.
4. Sometimes sales management tends to put their heads in the sand and pretend that everyone on the sales force has exactly the same opportunities. Not true. Accounts, products, geography, experience, sales management, etc. are variables that have to be accounted for and leveraged for each salesperson.

There is a normal distribution of sales capabilities within all sales organizations. Please see Sales Managers, Invest in Your Average Performers.

Sales management needs to focus on improving/removing the bottom 15%, improving the middle 70% and rewarding the top 15%. Sales management also has to look at its own skill levels at managing the sales force most effectively, but that’s for another post.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

“It’s not about you.” That’s the first sentence in Rick Warren’s 2002 book, The Purpose Driven Life.

While that comment has profound implications for our lives in general, it is also a necessary frame of mind for a successful sales career. We can get so obsessed with earnings, sales budgets, reports, internal meetings, schedules, etc. that we sometimes take our eyes off the elements that are most important, our customers and support team members.

The need to be respected and elevated by others is a primary human need. If we focus on ourselves we can’t effectively meet this need and it will penalize us in the long run.

All of us have unfortunately seen salespeople that treat home office support employees like trash. These salespeople believe that they are the axis of their company. Without them, everyone starves.

When salespeople have an “it’s all about me” attitude with fellow team members they are guaranteeing themselves future problems. For starters, the home office people who support them will consciously or unconsciously put the needs of these prima donnas on the back burner.

These same salespeople who don’t have a clue how to work as a team are on a short leash with sales management too (and usually don’t know it). I’ve seen it a million times. When a sales manager has a problem child like this, he or she thinks, “Mark is really not able to work with the people here at headquarters and quite frankly he’s been a pain in the neck for me too. As long as he keeps his numbers at 100% or better we’ll put up with him, but the second he starts to falter we’ll get rid of him.”

The “it’s all about me” mindset doesn’t work too well with our customers either.

Customers are offended when their salesperson thinks that customers are not the most important person in the customer-salesperson relationship. Customers are never stupid; they pick up on “it’s all about me” cues such as being chronically late to appointments and a general lack of respect.

We honestly have to feel in our heart of hearts that we are subordinate to our fellow team members and our customers. Taking ourselves off the pedestal frees us to meet the needs of our customers and team members, who will then be more open to helping us further our own careers.

A classic win-win.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

Summary: We need to use the correct terminology when we are talking to sales management about companies in our sales funnel.

Hardly a day goes by without my overhearing someone use the wrong terminology regarding the status of a company in their sales funnel. It really does drive me crazy. Why? It makes them look unprofessional and makes it difficult for everyone to have a clear picture of their funnel activity, including their sales manager.

There are really only five categories of companies (not “customers”) that you deal with on a daily basis.

Name. This is simply, and literally, the name of a company that you need to look into in order to determine if they should move to the next level. If they don’t meet the basic definition of your company’s business target, then throw them out and move on. An example would be any of the names on a list of leads.

Suspect. This is a company that you have most likely not contacted, but have determined that they meet the basic guidelines of your company’s target market. They are worthy of more research. A customer referral could be an example here.

Prospect. A prospect is a company that you have personally contacted and have verified the information you have about them. They definitely fit in your company’s sweet-spot for business development.

Qualified Prospect. This is a prospect that you have communicated with directly and on more than one occasion. The information you gleaned answered all of the following questions in a way that tells you that there is a high probability of converting them into a customer: Do you have access to the decision maker(s)? Is there a good fit for your products/services? Do they have the budget? Are you coming in at the right time in their buying process? Does competitor presence verify the quality of this prospect, yet not preclude further inroads?

Customer. If they have bought goods or services from you in the not too distant past and paid for them, they are a customer, then and only then.

Are you using the right terminology in your office and with your sales manager? By doing so you can improve the accuracy of information you are sharing, as well as looking like the true sales professional you are.

To receive this sales tips blog by email <click here> to receive by RSS <click here>. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer