Then one day my brilliant friend Billy explained leverage to me with a single gesture.  He pointed to a radio tower on top of a huge hill near our neighborhood. 

 Sitting atop the hill, looking down the road as it curved out of sight near the bottom, I still remember being excited as I got ready to fly down the hill in a speedy white blur achieving my goal of reaching Evel Knievel speeds.  We never quite got around to working out the details as to how I was going to slow down from the Speed of Light before smashing into the dead end at the bottom.  My mother would have been horrified.

 With a grin and a degree of terror I started peddling.  Very shortly the leverage provided by the downhill slope pushed the speed of my bicycle beyond my ability to peddle any faster.  I simply could not keep up.  I was no longer the engine for my bicycle, I was merely a passenger experiencing a fantastic white knuckle ride.

 I am not sure if it was the blazing speed or the sheer terror of the thrill ride, but somehow I failed to make the curve in the road half way down the hill and went zooming down a rocky cactus filled trail, straight through the trees, eating pine needles and small branches until I hit a very large rock which separated me from my bicycle seat and turned me into a rolling human boulder for the last 50 yards or so as my bicycle somehow managed to pass me, stay on two wheels and smash into the back of a house at the bottom of the hill.

 Needless to say I lived.  That was my second lesson in leverage.  Lose focus for even a second and all that leverage you built will throw you in the bushes (scare a Chihuahua and smash a potted plant or two.)   

 My third lesson came later as I learned how to Sell Down Hill and multiply my own sales efforts to reach sales numbers I could not reach on ability alone.

 What is “Sales Leverage” or “Selling Down Hill?”

 Sales Leverage is art of making every subsequent sale easier than the last at an ever increasing rate of speed.

 How do you “Sell Down Hill,” or use “Sales Leverage?”

 Sales Leverage is accomplished by selling a product and using any or all “multipliers” like the buyer himself, his reputation, his influence in the market, his reference, publicity or message to sell the next product in that same market a little bit easier.

 Sell a product into two different silos of customers and the two sales can’t help one another.  Sell a product to two people in the same market with the same problem and you can leverage those sales to help you find the third.  The recognition from the first two sales, used correctly, can act as a small multiplier for the third sale in the same group, solving a similar problem. 

 Simple Example of Leverage:  Say you are selling paint.  You sell a can of paint to a local portrait artist and a second artist, seeing the beautiful work of the artist that bought the paint, comes to you to buy a can of his own.  You have established some leverage.

 Example of a Sale with No Leverage:  You sell a can of paint to a local portrait artist.  Later you sell a can of paint to a house painter.  You get no leverage because the reputations and opinions of the respective customers do not matter to one another.

 Staying tightly focused in one niche will provide additional benefits that can also act as business multipliers in their own right.  Achieve dominance in a niche and your margins improve and you establish an expertise gap between yourself and your competitors that do not share your focus.  Your expertise in one niche will allow you to expand organically into new markets as customers flock to your expertise, and eventually your name will become synonymous with your niche in your market.

 It only makes sense to have your past sales helping you make new ones, especially at a time when sales can be hard to come by.

 As always, I look forward to your own thoughts.

Image courtesy of gettyimages

 It has been my job from time to time over the years to identify sales issues, diagnose sales health and return these sales organizations to top form.  As a result, I have learned where to look for the signs of decay.  Here is a rough version of the roadmap I use to find the problems.

Sales Metrics

 How are the Sales Managers measuring their existing sales team’s performance?  More often than not, I find that the sales organization as a whole is only using one sales metric consistently, final sales numbers. 

You can’t steer a dog by its tail and if you try you will eventually end up stepping in it.  The same is true of the Sales department.

 The final sales numbers should not be a measurement tool because it is too late at that point to do anything about it.  Final sales numbers are only a gauge, measuring your sales success for one moment in time.  No different than a customer survey or comment card after a sale measures overall customer service on a single sales transaction.

 A good sign would be to see multiple sales metrics in place and Sales Managers actually use them to manage their business.  (CRM packages setup and used properly are a great source of information assuming the stored information is current, complete and accurate.)

The Sales Managers

 If the metrics are out of whack or missing I look for the Sales Manager to understand how he is managing his team and how he reviews his sales pipeline.

 Typically I find that a struggling sales department has a Sales Manager that is spending too much time looking at the bottom of the sales funnel or has never been trained how to  measure his team’s performance.

The Forecast

 The next stop is the individual forecasts of the sales team, present and past if available.  I want to understand how leads are collected and the process determining how a lead is converted to an opportunity and how it moves its way through the system toward a close.  I want to know what specific information a sales representative used to rank every opportunity on his or her forecast.

Usually this will tell me there is no consistent process for converting leads in place and the present standard is a combination of guess work and wishful thinking.

 I also want to understand what they are selling and equally important, what they are not selling and why.  This helps me understand what other departments outside of sales I need to visit.

Sales Training Process

 A look at sales training is next on my list.  How are the sales representatives being trained?  What methodology are they using?  How do they get trained on new offerings?  How have they been trained to manage opportunities through the pipeline?

The Services, Support & Systems Engineers

 Next I want to meet with the services manager. I want to understand how he decides what he will train his staff on, how they maintain certifications, how skill sets are allotted to the various offerings the company sells, and if there is communication with Sales to keep them in lock step with what Sales is actually selling. 

The Marketing Department

 The marketing department, if there is one, is next.  I want to compare the message Sales is sending with the message Marketing is sending.  I also want to understand how they coordinate their efforts in the end goal of bringing in more business.

C-Level Executives

 I want to understand the overall company direction.  What are the company objectives?  What are the company commitments to vendors and distribution relationships?  What is the company sales message? Etc.

Summary

 Decay in a sales organization can come all the way from the top, manifested in bad policies or poor communication that puts various departments in isolated silos.  From my experience it is the well connected CEO, or oddly enough the lowly Sales Manager that is in the best place to diagnose these problems internally.

 In the early days I only looked at the Sales department but as I worked through the challenges I began to expand my scope because many of the problems manifesting themselves in Sales I found were created by seeming innocuous decisions made in other parts of the company.

 If your sales department is inconsistent, struggling or darn near dead, look at the quality and quantity of your leads, analyze your forecast, focus on managing the top of the sales funnel and take this list and use it to find the root cause of your problem, don’t get caught up treating symptoms.

Q&A’s are excerpts of questions I have answered as part of Sales Laundry or other forums that I am apart of.  If there is a relevant sales message for the masses I post it here to share, gather feedback and discuss.

Q:  How important are relationships in selling? Are they the only reason people buy, a prerequisite or not that big of a deal?  I understand that some customer’s do make a buying decision in our favor, but is it the 80/20 rule or relationships?

A:  A relationship could be critical to your success or of absolutely no value.  In my opinion it depends on where the customer places value in a given situation.

For example, I have bought products from sales professionals that brought a lot of knowledge I valued, but did not like them or care to see them again.  The value of their knowledge drove the transaction, not the relationship.

 I have bought products from sales professionals that I had a great relationship with where the product was average to not as good, in retrospect, I suppose because I placed more value on extending the relationship than I did the product.

 I have also bought products that I was enamored with and placed so much value in having that I bought them regardless of the sales process/relationship or the professional.

 So, speaking just for myself, a strong enough desire for the product, or the value I place in that product, can render a relationship unimportant to me.  (Unless I think I am going to need support or handholding to get the full value out of the product.)

 Otherwise, the importance I place on a relationship is directly proportional to my perceived need for that relationship in finding, acquiring and implementing the end product or service.

 Hope that makes sense.  It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

 I had some time to spare so I just listened until finally she took a deep breath, blinked, looked up at me and said “Sorry about that.”

 Two years ago her company decided to gut their technology infrastructure and start over with a major ERP software package.  The plan was to completely integrate their organization in one mass of technology and human efficiency.  Unfortunately, two years later it was still a work in progress, and missed milestones were being measured in quarters, not days or weeks.

 I am certain the account management team thought they had struck gold landing this marquis account, and were already looking for ways to leverage this win into their next opportunity.  In actuality, all they have really struck is one big fat nerve that has an entire organization throwing them under the bus at every opportunity. 

 So what turned a fantastic win for the sales team and the entire company into a life sucking vortex?

In a word, implementation.

 When the implementation team began mapping the existing processes in the organization to mirror in the software they made one fundamental mistake that derailed the entire project on day 1. 

 They built their process map primarily from the information collected from executive and departmental management not the actual people doing the work.  The only input from the front line users came by way of survey forms.

 If they would have interviewed the front line team members and mapped their work processes then confirmed with management and integrated new efficiencies, moving to pilot phase and final implementation would have been a much simpler affair.

 So what is the lesson?  Account Managers, stay engaged until deployment is complete because you have a vested interest in things going well as a hunter or farmer.  What should have been a great sales win leading to many more for this team is instead a disaster they cannot shovel dirt over fast enough.  The next big mistake would be to bury this, you should parade this “loss” and the lessons learned, but that is a different post.

 Sales Managers, the impact of this cluster will never show up directly on a forecast, but it can be an invisible force working against your team morale, your ability to leverage future sales, and your reputation.  Watch for the signs as you performance manage your sales team, evaluate their forecasts and committed numbers for the next few quarters.  I would advise pushing for bigger committed numbers over the next several quarters to counter any fallout or delays this black eye might introduce.

 For the implementation side?  Simple analogy.  Design the new wrench based on what the guy who actually uses the wrench says he needs, not what his manager, a guy that will never use the wrench, says he needs. 

Image courtesy of http://www.all4humor.com

For everyone older than three, if you realize it is cold outside you can think ahead and grab your coat before you head out the door. The three year old, however, has a different mental process. The three year old HAS to run outside, experience the cold, retrieve the memory of where his coat is, and then go get it.

As I continued to think, though, the article gave me a potential explanation for some curious customer interactions I have seen over the years.

I have seen clients trust their Account Managers recommendation enough to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of hardware and software, but then slash the recommended implementation and training budget thus hobbling the deployment before it even begins.

Curiously, what were two of the top 5 things customers were most unhappy about after their deployments?  Perceived poor implementation and insufficient end user training.

Why does your customer “hear” you and order the hardware and software but then selectively ignore you on the topics of implementation and training?

In short, because the customer, like the three year old, either can’t register what you are saying,  does not have the frame of reference on which to fully comprehend the question, let alone make an informed decision or just does not trust your recommendation in this area. He may very well have to experience the pain, then seek the remedy.  

More specifically in these instances, I see two possibilities.

Your client does not take your recommendation because you have not established an unwavering trust in the areas of implementation and training to override his lack of understanding of the potential ramifications.

Or.

Because you are perceived as an expert in hardware and software, an area where the client acknowledges he has little knowledge, but are also perceived as less than an expert, or worse yet, a corporate shill, in implementation and training, where the client may feel he has some relevant expertise.

The resolution is similar for both.

Put the same level of planning and forethought into discussing the training and implementation as you put into the discussion about your core offering. When you do discuss training and implementation, discuss hard numbers from other similar implementations, with references if necessary, to build the same level of trust you built on your core offering.

Give me your thoughts on this “Theory of 3.”

Image courtesy of http://seo2.0.onreact.com/

Discussion boards are rife with comments from business owners lamenting the problems they have experienced on their quest to find an exceptional sales professional.  Arguably, a person that is exceptional should, by definition, be hard to find.

 So how DO you find the right sales guy for your company?  Begin by defining your sales process and the role you need this new sales professional to fill.

 This is ONE aspect, mind you.  Future posts will define other aspects selecting and building a solid sales team for your business.

 I use the terms “hunter” and “farmer” in this post, I assume most are familiar with the terms, but just in case, here is a brief definition:

 Hunter – a sales person engaged in finding new opportunities with new clients.

Farmer – a sales person engaged in managing existing client relationships.

Sales Intern – Free to low paid position, the primary reward for this position being the resume worthy experience and references the position can provide.

 Hire for:  sales lead data entry, basic sales contact management, assist with proposal development, general support host for in office lunch meeting, answer the phones, take some messages, general sales gopher.

Telemarketer – Typical entry level position with higher than average turn over and typically the lowest rung on the sales job ladder.  Could be home based, office based or outsourced to a 3^rd party call center.

Role:  Sometimes Farmer; Rarely Hunter/Farmer; Typical Hunter

 Hire for:  Hire a telemarketer if you have plenty of leads, you just need someone to call them.  Hire this person to do simple product driven sales, call to set appointment, research, sales or service add-on’s, follow up or act in a supporting sales role or layer of marketing for a larger sales organization.

Inside Sales – Home based or office based sales professional of entry or mid-level career experience.

Role:  Typically Farmer; Sometimes Hunter/Farmer; Rarely Hunter

 Hire for:  Hire a person for this role as a training ground to develop future outside sales professionals.  Hire a person in this role to assist an outside sales team, cold call, develop leads, manage an existing client base, develop proposals, do sales follow up calls, or as your primary selling organization if you do not need to build strong client relations or an outside sales presence.  In many instances this role is blended with aspects of telemarketing.

Account Manager/Executive – Like the Inside Sales Representative, typically home based or office based sales professional of entry or mid-level career experience with minimal to no activities supporting other sales teams.

 Role:  Typically Farmer; Sometimes Hunter/Farmer; Sometimes Hunter

  Hire for:  Hire for this role if you need someone to manage all aspects of the sales process that can be accomplished bound to a desk.  A person in this role can work in support of an outside account manager(s), or be your primary sales weapon if you product or services can be sold without the need for an outside sales presence.

Account Manager/Executive – Outside Sales – Like the Account Manager, except working a defined territory, visiting a prospects place of business.  Typically mid to senior level experience.

 Role:  Sometimes Farmer; Sometimes Hunter/Farmer; Often Hunter

 Hire for:  Hire for this role if you need someone to engage with your client at their place of business, at networking events, seminars, trade shows or other external promotional events.  The person engaged in this role is typically a hunter.  In many cases these individuals are responsible for finding their own leads, sometimes this role is supported by an Inside Account Manager or Inside Sales person.  Sometimes leads for this individual are driven by Telemarketers as well.

 Business Development Executive – Can be another name for an Inside/Outside Account Manager but is a title typically reserved for those engaged in activities beyond selling a set product to a set market.  Typically mid career to senior level experience.

 Role:  Rarely Farmer; Sometimes Hunter/Farmer; Often Hunter 

Hire for:  Hire for this role if you need someone to create new lines of business, new markets for existing products, new applications for existing products or new partnership opportunities.  As with an Outside Account Manager, in many cases these individuals are responsible for finding their own leads and are sometimes supported by an inside sales staff. 

Sales Overlay/Subject Matter Expert – Role typically defined as a single product champion within a multi- product sales organization.  Typically mid to senior level experience.

 Role:  Specialist; Supporting Hunter/Farmer

 Hire for:  Hire for this role if you need to focus attention on one product line, if one product line is vastly more complex or difficult to sell than other offerings, or if there are too many products for your primary sales organization to promote consistently.

Sales Engineer/Subject Matter Technical Expert – Role

 Role:  Specialist; Supporting Hunter/Farmer 

Hire for:  Hire someone for this position if your sales cycle involves engaging with customer side technical teams to discuss technical aspects that are beyond the depth of what you expect your traditional sales team to address.

Sales Manager – Role responsible for managing single or multiple teams of the sales professionals comprised of one or multiple sales roles.

 Role:  Primarily Manager, Sometimes Farmer; Sometimes Hunter/Farmer; Rarely Hunter

 Hire for:  Hire someone for this role to manage an existing sales team, hire, train, develop, coach, motivate, teach, possibly set compensation models, manage forecasts and pipeline activity, possibly set strategy and marketing direction.

 Director of Sales – Role responsible for managing multiple sales managers within an organization.  Can set overall strategy and tactics 

Role:  Manager

 VP of Sales/Business Development – Title is in some cases interchangeable with Director of Sales.  Can manage multiple business units, sales directors, and sales management teams. 

 Role:  Manager

 Hire for:  Executive level position providing front line sales experiences with executive management team.  Sets overall sales strategy and company targets for the entire sales organization.

—

The title or role of the sales professional is only one aspect you need to keep in mind when hiring the right sales professional for your organization.  Just make sure you understand the sales role you need to fill so you can identify the sales qualities you need to look for in your interview process.

 If you have a question, ask.  If you need a little more assistance, email me at val @ saleslaundry.com

Image courtesy of  http://stillhiring.ie

When sales are difficult to come by, there is, I believe, a natural gut instinct to nudge a company toward broadening its services in hopes of reaching a wider swath of potential customers.  You typically have to look no further than the existing Sales Managers and Account Executives to find the source of this internal “Scope Creep.”

 While this idea may sound good bouncing around your head, in practical application this seemingly small leap in logic can very well destroy a company.

In electing to follow this strategy you are in essence trading some of your market depth for market breadth, and your competitors will love you for it. 

 Lose some focus on what you are best at and you run the risk of alienating some of your current customer base.  Experience any reduction in quality or service while your eye is off the ball and you just make it that much more difficult for a prospective customer to differentiate between you and a close competitor.

 Lacking depth and experience in you new expanded area of focus, you risk never establishing a customer base.

Lacking a specialization or something to hang your hat on, it is very easy for a company to succumb to “death by being average.”  Look no further than the recent death of Circuit City.

This is not to say a company cannot expand successfully.  They can and do every day with planning and new infrastructure to support the growth.

 In most instances, the better answer is to narrow your focus to what you are absolutely best at and where you hold the maximum competitive advantage.  Mine existing sales, established relationships and references to build sales leverage, making each new sale easier than the last.

If you are not known for something you will be known for nothing.

 Then I decided to pull it back out and see if I could improve on the efforts of the original sales person and make a sales lesson out of it.  I am ignoring the spelling/gramatical mistakes as I am not an English teacher, I am a VP of Business Development.  The names have been changed to protect the sales or marketing knucklehead that wrote it. 

The Original – feel free to skip ahead as I could not get past the first 3 lines of this email on my first pass.

 HEADLINE: For Possible Business Collaboration / Oppurtunities

 Dear Mr.Val, 

I represent ABC Company, an offshore based services outsourcing Organization. We help our world-wide clients with our outsourced services such as;

Global HR Services – All Technologies, All Business Domains, All Business skills, At all levels of expertise & Knowledge.
– Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO),
– Worldwide Contractor staffing – Offshore/Remotely working resources/Onsite resources
– Online/Remote/Onsite Training & Development -Technology & non Technology training, e-learning courses development & Administration, Monitoring & Managing Training needs etc.
– Payroll Processing
– Employee records maintenance, & verifications
– Travel &, Accommodation
– HR policies & strategies
– Market /Competitor research
– Employees Compensation & Benefits
– Performance Appraisals processing, Administration & Management.

In addition, ABC Company helps worldwide organizations in the following areas;
1. Information Technology services (IT solutions development, customization, integration, Migration, upgrading, Implementation, Maintenance, Support etc. – All Technologies & Business Domains

2. Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO services – (a) Engineering – Mechanical, Civil, Architectural, structural b) Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO – all skills) c) Technical Writing & Communications d) Remote infrastructure Management (RIM – Monitoring & Managing any IT resources remotely, Technical Help desk, Systems & Database Administration, support, e) Animation, 2D, 3D modeling etc.)

3. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO – Document processing, Data entry, help desk, Data analytics, Data/market/IP research, Billing, verifications, Transcriptions etc, Outbound/Inbound Calling services etc – All Business domains and skills)

4. Bioinformatics (Contract/Collaborative Research & Development, Consulting, Life Sciences Software Applications & Tools, Data Mining/Data Analysis, Data & Applications Integration. Clinical Trial I/Medical informatics, LIMS, Internet/Intranet Applications, Multimedia & Virtual Reality Applications, Education & Training)

We have seen the following benefits accruing to our clients from our services;

1. We have a large team of highly qualified, experienced, talented, efficient, young and enthusiastic resources to support your organization in any of the areas shown above.
2. Our teams work as an extended team of onsite teams of our customers, thereby adding more strength and bandwidth and increase your teams’ skills and servicing capabilities.
3. Our resources can work on a 24x7x365 basis; our turn-around time for our service is very short. In most cases, the output will be in your inbox when you reach office the next day morning
4. We help our customers in cost savings of as much as 30-60% on case to case basis
5. We can provide our resources in good numbers at a short notice, and quickly ramp-up to meet your business needs.
6. Our clients save the hassles of constantly searching around for resources, every time, a task needs to be accomplished.
7. Our teams bring to the table, a very strong technical & English Communication (verbal & written) skills, highly professional & helping attitude, business ethics, services delivery expertise & commitment

I would be very glad to know, if ABC Company can be of any help and support to your organization or any of your client organizations, in any of the areas shown above please. I appreciate your time.

My Version

HEADLINE:  Are You Running Your Business or is Your Business Burying You?

 ABC Company helped me save my business!  ABC helped me identify why my operations costs were increasing even as our sales were slowing down.  ABC handles the backend of my operation so I can focus on bringing in new sales.

 Jay Richards, JR Enterprises (VIDEO CLIP:  Jay talks about ABC Company)

 Val,

Imagine I gave you a magic wand that let you eliminate every aspect of your business that you don’t enjoy, or that just seems to take your focus away from the things you feel you need to be doing.

 How much better would your business be if you enjoyed everything you did and had the time to focus on growing your business?

 What could you do if all of that extra weight was lifted off your shoulders?

 My name is Val King and I specialize in helping guys like you offload all the excessive weight that keeps your business from soaring.

 It is not magic, though, it’s our business. 

 Here are the Top 5 things our customers typically ask us to offload for them.

 Human Resources.

Payroll.

Insurance & Benefits Programs.

IT Services & Help Desk.

Billing & Collections.

Call me at 800-xxx-xxxx and let’s identify the Top 5 things weighing down your business.

If it makes sense, I will offload your Top 5 list for Free for a few weeks so you can experience our brand of magic and experience the impact you can have on your business once that excess weight is gone.

Val 

 ABC Company manages all of the time consuming aspects of my business that I hated.  Our business is growing again and I spend my days doing what I love.  Thanks ABC.

 Dave Johnson, Johnson Medical (VIDEO CLIP:  Dave talks about ABC Company)

LESSONS LEARNED

The original email reads like a laundry list, these guys are into everything from 3d animation to Life Sciences and Bioinformatics.  They list a lot of capabilities but this sales guy has no idea what my problems are, so he just lists everything they do in this email to make sure they cover every sales base possible.

LESSON:  Research your customer and avoid firing a shotgun email like this one.  Narrow your focus to what you are absolutely best at. 

The intent of this extensive list of services is to show me that they can help me in many different areas of my business with a huge stack of sales offerings and services.  However, I read this feeling that they could not possibly do all of this well.  I have no way of knowing which sales offering is their strongest, nor do I want to take the necessary time it would take to figure it out, so my instinct is to hit the delete key.

LESSON:  Avoid the temptation to send out a laundry list disguised as a marketing email.  It weakens your message and erodes some of your credibility.

The original email establishes no credibility for this company.  I have never heard of them and the only person telling me how great they are is the sales guy.

LESSON:  If the only person saying your company is good is the sales person then no one is saying anything good about your company as far as I am concerned as a customer.  Use legitimate references I can call or for a bigger bang for the buck, use video references I can watch.

There is no tie to what any of these services do for me, the guy that is supposed to pay for this fabulous service.  The sales professional should paint some sort of picture of how my life as the business owner or how my company might be better if I just offload this stuff to them.

LESSON:  It is your job as the salesperson or as the organization sending the email to explain to me how I will benefit from your product.  If you don’t make that connection, don’t expect me to respond.

There is too much text in this flippin’ email (and probably this post.)  The text is small, there are acronyms all over the place (RPO, KPO, LPO, RIM, and LIMS.)

LESSON:  Be as short and concise as possible as you are imposing on my time with your email and use language that is plain and free from industry jargon.

They use the work “all” eight times in the email.  Example:  “Global HR – ALL Technologies, ALL Business Skills, at ALL levels of experience and knowledge”

LESSON:  Horsefeathers.  I don’t believe it.  I will delete it.  

There are 7 stated benefits for me the customer.  Some are ridiculous adjective fests…

Benefit 1:  Large team that is highly qualified, experienced, talented, effiecient, enthusiastic and as if that was not enough they are also described as being young.  I don’t know about you, but I feel better already. 

Some are not benefits to me at all; they are minimum standards like…

Benefit 7:  Our teams bring very strong technical and English communication skills.  

LESSON:  It is only a benefit if it benefits me.  Write your email as if you are standing in my shoes, not trying to talk me out of them.

This was the closing line.  “I would be very glad to know if ABC Company can be of any help and support to your organization…in any of the areas shown above…  I appreciate your time.”

When I read this closing line what I get out of this email and what the salesman wants me to get out of this email are clearly two different things.  I am sure the salesman would like me to look at the list like some sort of ala carte menu, make a few selections and get back to him so he can work up a quote.

What I read is that the salesman at ABC Company is too lazy to figure out what my business is or what I do all day.  He has effectively hit me with a list of SIC codes and a Scan-Tron asking me to color in the little circle next to my selection with a #2 pencil and get back to him.

LESSON:  Figure out what I need to buy before you try to sell me something.  It seems to work better that way.  If you are going to be lazy and not do the research then don’t send the email at all.

Got a suggestion of your own to improve on my improvement?  See another lesson here worth covering?  Add a comment.

“Cleaverly disguided” photo – courtesy of  http://rlv.zcache.com

“English photo” courtesy of – http://www.flickr.com/photos/40741986@N00/399082864

“2 shoes” photo – courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/conqenator/2952567054/ 

My 8 year old daughter has some basic responsibilities around the house.  One of which is to keep the bathroom she uses cleaned up  (i.e. cleaning up the toothpaste that gets loose from a wild night of bedtime brushing, rounding up rowdy bath toys, swapping clean towels for the dirty ones, etc.)

One day, with inspired motivation, my daughter decided it was time to give the bathroom a serious cleaning to the standard set by her mother and well beyond the mundane challenges of wrestling with escaped toothpaste.

Once she completed the task to her satisfaction she flew through the house, rattling the stairs on her descent like a herd of stampeding cattle on her way to tell us of her accomplishment.

She was grinning ear to ear, beaming with pride and self satisfaction as she talked about how she cleaned the bathroom the way Mommy did it, not just the kid way.

At my daughter’s announcement, my wife was off like a herd of equally shocked and stampeding cattle, make that graceful gazelles, to survey the damage in the upstairs bathroom.

I knew what was coming next.  Ten seconds later, with precision matched only by the Master Clock at the U.S. Naval Observatory, I heard it.

My daughters name was called with a stern tone and frequency formally set aside by the FCC for the exclusive use of angry mothers.  When I was a boy this broadcast typically originated from my front porch and could be heard for blocks in all directions.

I watched my daughters face, beaming with pride mere seconds ago, register a look of shock and horror, as if she had just watched me punt Fluffy the cat over the back fence. 

We resolved the issue and restored order, but suffice to say my daughter would have rather been airborne with Fluffy than make the death march to her mother upstairs.

Given some time to think and laugh about the situation I began to draw some parallels to managing sales professionals. 

We continually reinforce the idea that our daughter should stretch herself; try new things and new foods for that matter.  We tell her don’t be afraid to fail, that is how you learn. 

We tell our sales representatives the same thing and have for years, give or take the “try new foods” part.

My daughter took our direction.  My daughter felt she had mastered the basics and was ready to stretch.  She felt she could do more and had the desire to prove it even if it meant breaking a rule or two in the process.

Was she rewarded for her attempt to stretch herself and hit the higher standard?  No, just the opposite in fact, being blasted for the final result somewhere shortly after I heard my wife exclaim “You put bleach, where???”

In trying to do more she found herself in more trouble than she would have been in for doing nothing or just meeting the standard set before her that she found unacceptably low.

A great opportunity to reinforce her positive behaviors (even if the end result was wildly off target,) show some appreciation for the effort and initiative, and coach her on some specifics to help her improve next time were lost.

Instead, she could have walked away with an attitude of “My work is not appreciated.  I tried my best.  Fine, from now on I am just doing the basics, it is not worth it to do anything more.”

I am not suggesting that the final results are unimportant.  What I am stating is that the final result, while being very important, is not the only measurement that counts in developing a sales organization.

Handled correctly, these opportunities can truly help you develop the middle 60% of your sales team and help some middle performers move to top performer status. 

Handled poorly, the same sales professional that dared to stretch himself to achieve can become an uninspired team member doing the minimum, working themselves out of your organization, and increasing churn.

Look beyond the end result.  Reinforce the right behaviors even if they deliver the wrong result.

After being whacked upside the head by my daughters misguided initiative the lesson seems clear, minus the small stars floating in a circle above my head.

 As a manager you can make a huge impact in your sales organization by taking a step back, recognizing not just the end result, but the behaviors that led to that end result and carefully selecting the tools and response that will help you develop your sales organization without gutting personal initiative or weeding out their desire for growth.

Image courtesy of cutiepie-photography.com

Q&A’s are excerpts of questions I have answered as part of Sales Laundry or other forums that I am apart of.  If there is a relevant sales message for the masses I post it here to share, gather feedback and discuss.

Q:  What is the best way to keep a (commercial printing) salesperson engaged and motivated during these tough times?

  A:  A small dose of Progress taken daily can wipe out a whole room full of “it’s hopeless.” Retreat as needed.

I approach it like the old adage “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” 

I don’t want my team focused on the big picture Armageddon talk with all of the accompanying noise. Quite the opposite, I want them focused, and therefore engaged on what they need to do each day to keep methodically working toward their goal. 

One other thought.  How about creating some of your own print business?

I don’t know what objections your sales guys are getting, but I assume one of them is “we don’t have the money right now.”

 If you have several small businesses that don’t have the budget to print flyers or marketing materials, but need the exposure, maybe you can bring a different value add.

 Maybe you can solve a larger problem for your customer that will allow them to take advantage of your services.

 Maybe your sales guys, with a database full of local contacts, can help out the small business community by developing a single marketing piece that features a few companies that are not direct competitors and have a similar target market. 

 The result could be that the small business gets the marketing they need, at a price they can afford, you have a new unique product, your guys get paid, and you can keep the presses running.