Sales Blog with Professional Sales Tips

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This is part three of a three part series with sales tips on our personal characteristics and priorities and how they are inseparable from our sales careers. I hope these three sales blog posts have been meaningful to you as we end one year and start another.

This Really Offends Me
One of the sales management sales tips that makes me want to punch the person saying it is, “Salespeople are nothing more than coin operated employees. They’re just interested in the money.” The reality says something quite different.

“One of the most important sales tips…is that you are not a coin operated person.”

There’s More To This Than Money
Virtually every survey that has been conducted with sales professionals indicates that money is not their primary motivator. Surprised? Read many sales blog posts and sales articles and you’ll find sales tips that are mistaken when it comes to this area. Let me be clear, I’m not arguing for lower pay for sales professionals. However, I am pointing out that our sales careers mean more to us than just a paycheck.

I know that most of us are justifiably proud of the money we can make in sales. It can be a big motivator. I also know that my personal observations and reader feedback from this sales blog indicate there are other motivators that can be more important in making us great and satisfied sales professionals. If you can’t look deep down and see some of the following non-money motivators in yourself, you may be in the wrong profession.

Helping People. The best sales professionals I have ever worked with really get a buzz out of connecting their customers with the right product/service. They get a great feeling of accomplishment out of helping another person get their job done.

Social Interaction. If you don’t like people, then you need to change careers. May I suggest a future in purchasing (just kidding)? We love, no, we need human communication. We thrive on it. The best part is that the customers of super star sales professionals love their account manager.

Positive Energy. Have you ever been in a room when someone walks in and it’s as if someone just flooded the room with additional light? The energy of the room is transformed. People perk up and become more engaging. Those sales professionals who are in love with their jobs carry this kind of charisma. They can’t help it. It’s intoxicating and their customers enjoy it. They routinely contact me through this sales blog and even their written words fire me up.

Personal Priorities
Let’s recall the wise sales trainer who stood in front of my new hire training class years ago. He wrote out these personal priorities for all of us to see:

1. Spiritual
2. Family/Friends
3. Work

Think about it. These three priorities in our life also mirror the attributes we can have as sales professionals when we love our work.

1. Helping People - Spiritual
2. Social Interaction - Family/Friends
3. Work - Positive Energy

Our spirituality is the glue that holds everything together and is the most important priority in our sales career. This is seen in our desire to help people. Our family and friends represent an immediate support system for us and we express this in our affinity for people. Finally, the positive energy that we bring to people is how we show our customers that we are passionate about our careers, and about serving them.

One of the most important sales tips I’ll ever give you is that you are not a coin operated person. You’re much more than that.

Further reading:

• Sales Tips From The Roman God Janus
• Wrestling With Fear in Sales
• The good news, we’re in charge of our sales careers.

To receive this sales tips blog by email <click here> to receive by RSS <click here>. ©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

This is part two of a three part sales blog series with sales tips on our personal priorities and how it is impossible to separate them from our sales career.

Sales Tips From My First Boss
I had just started my first job out of college. I was 22 years old and thought my 38-year-old boss was ancient. Not worth listening to. He once told me that, “People who are going through a divorce have trouble selling for almost a year. Family and friendships can impact you more positively or negatively than people know.” I found little reason to listen. What did he know? Why did I care about this little tidbit of non-information? I wasn’t even married.

I didn’t realize this morsel of wisdom would help me manage people in the future and help me through my own difficult times down the road. Your family and friends are everything in your life. This was another of the important sales tips an experienced sales professional would give me when I was still just a sales newbie.

“Know what a camera tripod is? Our family and friends are one of the legs.”

Lessons Learned By A Rookie Sales Manager
About ten years later I was working for a different company and had been promoted to my first sales management position. I knew I could sell, but I had no idea how to be a sales manager. I was scared to death. One of the people that worked for me had recently lost a child. How do you handle that? What do you say? What should I expect? Would this affect their sales?

Then I remembered what my first boss told me. If it applied to divorce, it had to apply to this tragedy as well. I knew this sales professional’s sales levels would almost certainly decline and I should plan accordingly. I did, and we worked through things together. Ultimately everything normalized and I saw the importance and applicability of what my first boss had told me years ago.

Sales Tips That Dig Deeper
Remember the wise and articulate sales training instructor I wrote about in my first post in this series?  Recall how he quietly stood in front of our new hire class and wrote these words on the whiteboard:

1. Spiritual
2. Family/Friends
3. Work

Over time, I have seen how events, both good and bad, regarding family and friends can affect people (e.g., divorce/marriage, death/birth, illness/health, separation/union). I understand why family and friends made the number two spot on his list. Our family and friends provide an immediate support system for us. Take that away from someone, or damage it significantly, and every part of that person’s life will be affected. Make it strong, and the individual will be fortified and buttressed in every area of their life.

Know what a camera tripod is?  Our family and friends are one of the legs.  Remove this leg and the camera will crash to the ground.

Sales Blog Epilogue
My many years since then have taught me that point two of what this instructor said was right on target regarding the importance of family and friends to our sales career.  I want to  apologize to my first boss for acting like such a know-it-all.  I also want to thank him for planting a seed of wisdom that I have never stopped using.  I now understand that our family and friends are critical to effectively navigating through the turbulence of our life and sales career.  They’re inseparable.

In part three in my sales blog series, I’ll introduce you to how our sales career is impacted by how we view work.

Further reading:

• Do you think your sales manager is competent?
• Can Sales Management Make Us or Break Us?

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

This is part one of a three part series with sales tips on life’s priorities and how they can’t be separated from our sales career.

Sales Tips From An Old Sales Fool
“Make sure you go to church. This will keep your sales strong.” This was one of the sales tips that an older sales professional, named Luke, gave me when I was just a young sales pup. To me he was just an old fool making useless comments. I was too young and inexperienced to realize that he was teaching me profound truths about sales that I would only fully understand years later.

“Sales professionals who have their divine house in order sell more. Period.”

A New Kind of Sales Training?
Fast forward a few years in my career and I found myself sitting in new hire training at a Fortune 500 company. Their training facility was the size of a college campus with dorms, cafeterias, etc. This was a Really-Big-Company.

One of the training sessions I attended was on how to prioritize our work. Yawn. Haven’t we all had this class about 473 times? Well, I was in for a big surprise. This particular training session helped bring what Luke told me years earlier into focus.

Sales Tips That Dig Deeper
The well-respected and articulate instructor silently stood in front of our large new hire class and slowly wrote these words on the whiteboard:

1. Spiritual
2. Family/Friends
3. Work

I immediately knew this wasn’t going to be your typical training on how to prioritize. What he said after writing those words won’t be found in too many sales articles, or in another sales blog either. Politically incorrect, I guess. Too close to home, maybe. Asks some questions that we’d rather not deal with, possibly.

“These are your three priorities in life. Get them out of order and not only will your personal life suffer, but so will your sales. Our corporation is not a church, but we do know that when someone ignores the spiritual side of their life, the other two areas will decay.”

“We are not out to promote one type of religion, faith, belief system, etc. over another. To pretend we don’t have a spiritual dimension is to pretend we don’t have a head or a torso. Even corporations have a heart and a soul. You’re much more than a corporation.”

“We know that the spiritual side of a person is the glue that holds family, friends and work together. We are talking about your spirituality today because, frankly, we as a corporation are selfish. We know that if you have this part of your life in order, you’ll find satisfaction in other important areas of your life too. Namely, work.”

“We are here to earn money. Sales professionals who have their divine house in order sell more. Period.”

Sales Blog Epilogue
My many years since then have taught me that what this instructor said was accurate. And Luke, thanks for at least trying to introduce me to a truth that I was too immature to understand at the time.

In part two of three in my sales blog series, I’ll introduce the importance of family and friends in your selling career.

Further reading:

• There are no atheists in sales.
• A real health issue in the sales profession.

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

If we’re not careful, we can let our sales careers get into the same shape that GM, Ford and Chrysler find themselves today. Simply by not paying attention to their customers and their industry, these three companies are edging ever closer to irrelevance and elimination.

Let’s list some of their transgressions in this sales blog post and see how similar thinking could suffocate our sales careers. Remember, these three companies never thought they’d be in this situation today.

“The average person’s tolerance for bad service…is much lower today than it was ten years ago.”

Detroit Sin Number 1
This seems almost comical now, but the big-three have been relying on pickup and mega-SUV sales for the majority of their revenue for the last ten years. How long did they think that was going to last? Apparently a very long time because their R&D for everything else has gone to almost zero.

While Toyota was rolling out the Prius, Ford was focusing on another iteration of their F-150 pickup that weighs 6,000 pounds and gets 14 MPG.  We make the same mistake when we think we can live forever on one or two big customers.

Sales Tips Rule #1: You will eventually lose all of your customers for one reason or another if you don’t leave them first. Never stop prospecting.

Detroit Sin Number 2
Detroit has had their eyes shut, and blindfolded to boot, when it came to their competitors. They never believed that Toyota would become the biggest car company in the world. “We’re an American car company and Americans will never buy Toyotas in large quantities.” We do, and the rest of the world does too. Toyota is number one and is continuing to distance itself from the big-three.

Sales Tips Rule #2: Keep your eye on your competitors and never underestimate their ability or tenacity.

Sales Tips Rule #3: Your customers, even your very best, will leave you when properly motivated. None of your customers are superglued to you.

Detroit Sin Number 3
GM, Ford and Chrysler have made improvements in their quality and service over the last 20 years, but they are still inferior to most of their foreign competitors. Detroit forgot they were chasing moving targets. People don’t like poor service or products that break. The average person’s tolerance for bad service and second-rate products is much lower today than it was ten years ago.

Sales Tips Rule #4: If you give your customer poor quality or service long enough, they’ll find another supplier.

Sales Tips Rule #5: If your competitor’s quality and service are great, and yours are just good, your customers will gravitate to your competitor. Everything is relative.

Sales Blog Epilogue
My sales blog wrap-up today is simple. The big-three were asleep when it came to managing their business; don’t make the same mistake with your customers.

Further reading:

• Your customers are cheating on you.
• A reader asks why prospecting is such a big deal.
• The Platinum Rule vs. The Golden Rule for Sales Representatives

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

I’m going to tell you two words that are killing sales professionals and we need to stop using them right now. I’ll then provide two sales tips that you can use to take their place.

The Killer Words
The two words that are sabotaging our sales efforts are “the economy.” I hear those two words strung together dozens of times each day and it’s starting to make me sick.

“My commission check is going to be smaller because of the economy.”
“The economy is causing my customers not to return my calls.”
“With the economy the way it is, I’m not going to waste my time prospecting.”

“As sales professionals, we will always have to manage ourselves in either growing or shrinking economies.”

Have you noticed there are legions of articles, podcasts and a sales blog around every corner telling you how to sell in our current economic climate? Everyone seems to have a mystical and complicated answer. I’ll give you two simple sales tips that cover everything you need to know about selling in the economy. This is more straightforward than you have been led to believe.

Two Sales Tips for The Economy
1. Every time a professional sports team is in trouble and recruits a new coach, what is the first thing the new coach always wants to focus on? Basics. “This team needs to get back to basics because that’s 95% of the game.”

We must do the same. Focus on the sales basics that we know and that also appear in this sales blog. Planning, prospecting, follow-up, cross-selling, up-selling, networking, relationships, information gathering. These are pillars of sales and they are more important today than they were yesterday. We all know that working hard is a basic too.

2.There is an expression airplane pilots use that applies to sales professionals. “When one of the engines quits, don’t forget to keep flying.” That’s powerful. If a pilot fixates on the mechanical problems he or she is having with a plane, they could easily get so distracted that they fly the plane right into the ground. If the pilot keeps his or her hands on the controls, the chance for a successful outcome is greatly improved.

This principle applies to us. When our selling environment changes we must keep selling. Allowing ourselves to be completely sidetracked by the economy can unconsciously cause us to pilot our sales career into the side of a mountain.

Sales Blog Epilogue
Economies are just like climates. They are always changing and are unpredictable. As sales professionals, we will always have to manage ourselves in either growing or shrinking economies. Stay with the sales basics you know and remain focused on selling.  Keep flying.

Further reading:

• Direct Sales Tips: What the media does to ruin your sales career.
• How Drano Can Help Us Deal with the Economy

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