Sales Blog with Professional Sales Tips

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I’ll never forget. It was probably one of my worst sales calls. It was my first year in sales. Rookie mistake.

I had arranged an appointment with “Bill” who was the VP of Operations at a large electronics manufacturer. Even though I had confirmed the appointment that morning, he seemed startled by my presence when he met me in the lobby.

“Watching Bill “rush” his cigarette was not an enjoyable experience.”

The “Appointment”
When we arrived at his office, he told me he only had about ten minutes to talk instead of the hour I had requested. Something had “come up.” How did I respond? Not too well. I crammed a one-hour prospect call into ten minutes. I may have left a few parts of my presentation out, but I can talk fast so I think I got most of them in.

While I was talking, and stupidly not doing any listening, he lit up a cigarette and proceeded to inhale/exhale as if he were in a high-speed smoking contest. Have you ever seen someone “rush” a cigarette? That’s what he was doing and it was really annoying to observe.

Here’s the visual. I’m talking a million miles a second and he’s sucking down a cigarette as if he were in the Marlboro high-speed smoking Olympics.

Back out at the car I did a little self-debriefing of the call I just concluded. Do you ever do that? You sit in your car and think about what just happened. It’s one of the simplest sales tips you’ll ever get, but a good one. However, don’t spend all afternoon in a prospect’s parking lot or they’ll call the police. I’m talking just a minute or two here.

Sales Tips from the Parking Lot

• We’ve all had prospects schedule appointments with us when we feel they are hoping we don’t show up. I think that was what happened to me in the story above. However, rushing through my sales presentation didn’t help my case. It probably only reinforced what Bill didn’t like about salespeople in the first place (i.e., we do all the talking and we’re frantic when doing it).
• Watching Bill “rush” his cigarette was not an enjoyable experience. Prospects most likely feel the same way when they watch us go supersonic in order to cram in a sales pitch. Neither of these habits is very pretty.
• When we find that we aren’t going to have as much time as we thought with a prospect, we need to introduce ourselves, ask a few questions and schedule another meeting. If they really didn’t want to see us in the first place, they’re unlikely to schedule another appointment. This is a good thing; we can move on. If they actually had an emergency that kept the appointment short, then they will have no issue with rescheduling.  That’s a win-win to me.

Sales Blog Wrap-Up
Slowing down and changing our game plan in this kind of situation will make us appear more professional and less frenzied. It can also provide an opportunity to get back in front of the prospect when he or she can and will give us an adequate amount of time.

Further reading:

• Stop Making Customer Appointments for a Second
• Slow Down and Pay Attention During Customer Appointments and Presentations

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

I took a walk with my best friend in the world yesterday. His name is Fred. I love Fred. He’s my German Shepherd dog. My wife hates when I talk about Fred like this…jealousy.

“…if this guy kept at it long enough he would eventually catch a fish.”

What’s Going on Here?
While we were walking, Fred got very interested in a neighbor, named Joe, that appeared to be fishing in his front lawn. You read that right. And when I say “fishing,” I mean casting a lure in all directions and reeling it in. Over and over and over. And fast. He must have been casting once every 10 seconds.

The problem is that we have no water within about 37 miles of our neighborhood. Sales tips are what I write about in this sales blog; I was hoping that he wasn’t the author of a fishing tips blog. Seemed like ol’ Joe was a bit misdirected.

Fred was about ready to come off his leash because he found all of this so fascinating…we were both in agreement on that. As I got closer, I realized this dry-land angler was actually practicing his casting skills. He was using a rubber lure with no hooks.

He Might Actually Catch a Fish
It occurred to me as Fred and I walked by that if this guy kept at it long enough he would eventually catch a fish. I’m serious. Think about it. If Joe stood on his front lawn long enough, someday there would be a flood that would provide enough water for some fish-like thing to end up on his front lawn. If he relentlessly kept casting that hook-less rubber lure at that fish-like thing, it would eventually get tangled in the line and he could reel it in. Bingo. He just “caught” a fish.

Sales Blog Wrap-Up
If we’re honest with ourselves, we sometimes prospect like Joe. We will eventually land a new customer now and then, but the return on our time and effort can be abysmal because of how we go about it.

• When we take a pure selling-is-just-a-numbers game approach to sales this can happen.
• If we just go through the motions of prospecting, aren’t we making “rubber lure” sales calls?
• Making no effort to qualify prospects can make us dry-land anglers.
• Carelessly throwing cast after cast in the wrong places wastes our time.

Imagine the difference in results and satisfaction if Joe were to put a real lure on his line and carefully cast into water where his research indicated the fish were biting. It’s a much more enjoyable and productive way to prospect for customers too.

Fred was very pleased to contribute some sales tips to his best friend’s sales blog.

Further reading:

• Contrary to popular opinion, sales is NOT just a numbers game.

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

We’ve all done it. We’ve sold to the wrong person. We end up spending weeks or even months developing a relationship with someone who doesn’t have the authority to buy from us.

I’m going to share two sales tips below that represent very strong techniques for discovering who you should be selling to.

“Powerful…questions in your hip pocket can mean lasering in on the right person…”

Sales Tips - One
There is no better indicator of the future than what? The past, of course. We can take advantage of that morsel of wisdom by applying it to discover who we should be selling to in an organization (i.e., the decision maker).

Ask the following question and you’ll not only identify decision makers but you’ll most likely also get a heap of valuable additional information not related to decision makers.

“How have these items (services, etc.) been purchased in the past?”

Don’t you love that question? Open ended. To the point. Non-threatening. Be ready to take notes when the prospect starts talking. Gold is forthcoming.

Sales Tips - Two
There’s not much that I’ve come to rely on in this world. There is one thing, however, that we can all count on. People’s egos. Keep the next ego-avoiding question in your arsenal in order to discover who the decision makers are.

“Besides yourself, who else would be involved in this purchase?”

Another great question. First, if the person you’re talking with has absolutely no buying authority, he or she normally won’t admit it (the ego thing). Go ahead and act like they do anyway. This takes them off the hook and frees them to tell you who really is making the buying decisions.

What you’re hoping for in this instance is for the prospect to say something like, “No one else is involved; I am responsible for buying this item.” If instead the prospect says, “Debbie will have to approve this first” then we know we’re not dealing with the decision maker at this point. It’s time to make an appointment with Debbie.

Sales Blog Wrap-Up
Powerful prepared questions in your hip pocket can mean the difference between months of wasted time selling to the wrong person versus lasering in on the right person and writing an order quickly.

Further reading:

• Is Barack Obama a Lone Decision Maker?
• The Three Stooges can teach us about decision makers
• Decision Makers, Vertical vs. Horizontal

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

Answer 1: He was fired two years ago.
Answer 2: She died almost five years ago.
Answer 3: He was demoted about three years ago and is no longer a decision maker for your products and services at that company.

In the spirit of networking, a sales pro called me recently and wanted some sales tips on three employees at a company I had worked with recently. He was prospecting and had three names he had identified as decision makers. As he read their names I responded with the answers enumerated above.

“…asking for a dead person is not the way to start.”

Clearly he had the right intent. He was doing research before making an initial contact with a prospect. He had found some names and was calling me to get more data. But how could he have been so far off base? Can you imagine how warmly he would have been received if he had contacted the prospect asking for these people before I was able to set him straight?

Sales Tips: What Went Wrong?
The problem was that he had used one of the old-school lead databases to get names of decision makers. It has been my experience that the data we get from these sources can be outdated and inaccurate. I’m being too generous - make that virtually worthless at times. My networking friend had provided yet another example of how unreliable these information sources can be.

I believe we can do better than these old-school lead databases that employ highly disinterested and low paid call center employees to retrieve information and sell it to you or your company.

Sales Newsletter: There are Better Ways
Prospects are demanding that we know more about them when we contact them. We need our information to be current and accurate. There are some great tools available to us that can provide current and high quality lead information. These tools have been covered in this sales tips blog before. Please see “Further reading” below. The costs for the leads they provide can range from very reasonable to zero.

Business Networking: Ryze, LinkedIn, Plaxo
Directories of Companies and Business Professionals: Jigsaw, NetProspex

Sales Blog Wrap-Up
Calling a prospect and asking for a dead person is not the way to start. We can do better.

Further reading:

• Jigsaw CEO Tells Me Why You Need His Website
• Interview with Gary Halliwell, CEO of NetProspex
• Tips for Sales: The Business Social Networking Landscape is Changing Radically

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

Janus was a Roman mythological god that would understand our struggles as sales professionals today. He had a unique attribute that symbolizes one of our biggest sales skills challenges. This attribute allowed him to play two major roles simultaneously. Just like Janus, we also must play two notable roles. We are responsible for two specific job functions that are challenging and often in conflict with one another.

“If we sometimes feel like we’re being overwhelmed in our sales jobs, there’s a reason.”

Who Exactly Was Janus?
Janus was a Roman mythological god who had two faces on the same head looking in opposite directions. He could look both forwards and backwards at the same time. He had the capability to concurrently manage what had already occurred while planning for coming events. He was on the leading edge of multi-tasking, one could say.

How Are We Like Janus?
We perform two primary functions as sales professionals. We need Janus-like sales skills to pull this off because we have to perform both skills simultaneously. Our ability to do this is why sales professionals are often referred to as the elite athletes of the business world.  What are these functions?

1. We manage our existing accounts. Unless we have a sales job where we do nothing but missionary work, we have a group of customers that we must tend. This means keeping them happy and increasing the amount of business we do with them. This is not easy. Customers tend to be messy sometimes as we see from the sales tips, posts and comments throughout this sales blog.

2. We must find new business. Our customers leave us for a million reasons, frequently for reasons that have nothing to do with our sales skills. We are always on the lookout for new business from all quadrants in order to meet our ever-growing sales budget, to replace lost business and to find more profitable customers to displace less profitable ones.

Sales Tip Wrap Up
Simply stated, we have to manage a demanding account base while constantly looking under every rock for new business. Meeting that challenge means we must have:

1. Great time management skills.
2. Ability to work in confusing and unclear environments (both at our customers and at our employer).
3. Innate multi-tasking skills.

If we sometimes feel like we’re being overwhelmed in our sales jobs, there’s a reason. We have to be Janus, but with only one face.

Further reading: A reader asks why prospecting is such a big deal.

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