Please, Seller, Cut Out The Lies

What does partnering mean to you?  Is a partner someone who you join with to accomplish a common goal or is a partner someone you use to accomplish your goal?

According to The Free Dictionary, a partner is “one that is united with another or others in an activity or sphere of common interest.”  Synonyms are “colleague,” “ally,” and “confederate.”

Notice anything about that definition and the implication of the synonyms?  None of them imply that one of the partners is a customer of the other.  They imply an equal position; a unified objective; a shared responsibility and shared beneficial return (or loss).

If I am to partner with you I expect that you and I will be working together to achieve some common end.  That implies that we have a shared workload of some sort.  It implies that if I gain, you gain.  If I lose, you lose.  It implies that we march together to the same fate, whatever that fate may be.

That’s what partnering means to me.  I’m old fashioned.  I have a tendency to think words mean what they’ve meant in the past.

I obviously need to catch up to today’s marketing and sales language because partner has now become a manipulative synonym for customer.

I receive at least one—and usually multiple—emails each week asking for a phone meeting to discuss how the salesperson or company can partner with McCord Training.

Sounds nice don’t it?  Getting a request from a company that I’m not familiar with or that I’m not currently engaged with to partner with me?  Why that could be a tremendous opportunity to expand my reach and to significantly increase my sales potential.  Who knows what fabulous opportunity I might be given?  That’s certainly an email I should respond to immediately isn’t it?

But, alas, to my disappointment, it isn’t a tremendous opportunity.  In fact, it isn’t an opportunity at all.  It’s nothing but a salesperson or marketer trying to trick me into giving them an appointment. 

It is nothing more than a cynical use of language to garner an opportunity to try to sell me something. 

It is nothing more than an updated play on traditional manipulative selling techniques grounded in a belief that the goal is to get an appointment and to hell with ethics.

Whenever I get an email requesting a partnership discussion, it immediately gets trashed—or on occasion I’ll respond to the sender asking them whether their intent is to discuss a true partnership or to set a sales appointment.  To date, I’ve yet to receive a reply. 

I know the game and I’m not playing it.  So, seller, if you want to sell me your products or services, cut out the lies and then maybe we can talk.

Guest Article: “So you Say You Have a Sales Process?”, by Rick Page

So You Say You Have a Sales Process? By Rick Page

The Second-Best Process Finishes Second – and Sometimes Doesn’t Finish at All. We talk to many sales executives about sales effectiveness and of course we do discovery with prospects to see where their needs are. Many of them say that they already have a sales process for opportunities and it is true that many companies invested in the funny sales processes of the last dozen years or so. But when we drill down and examine what they call a sales process refund that many of them are lacking the components that it takes to win. Just having a process is no longer enough you have to have the best sales process — a complete process. Some of what sales managers call a sales methodology is actually a forecasting process. I sat with one sales executive to review what they were doing and he showed me a spreadsheet with the faces of his sales cycle as the columns in the names of his reps in the rows. He was focused on moving or his numbers from one column to the next. I asked him, “But about the individual deals that make up those numbers?” He didn’t know because he was more focused on counting the business than winning business. This is called flogging the forecast for how much and when. Just defining the phases in your sales cycle is not really a sales process because it doesn’t show you how to win. Another client, a consulting firm and a very elaborate flowchart with many steps and who was responsible for each one. This is certainly a necessary element but it’s not a strategy either. Since the birth of consultative selling in the early 70’s many companies have invested in training that teaches their people how to: 1.  Discover and listen for customer needs 2.  Link solutions to requirements and needs 3.    Present back to the customer their vision of a solution These fundamental skills and process are certainly necessary to any sales process – they define your solution strategy and your value proposition – but they are no longer enough to win a complex sale. Unfortunately this where many sales processes stop. In last year’s survey by CSO Insights, (we recommend you subscribe) respondents said that of forecasted deals only 49.3% actually closed. Respondents said that 27.2% were lost to competition and the remaining 23.5% stalled out and bought nothing from anyone. This is directly related, in my opinion, to our finding that many sales methodologies fail to address competition and politics, and closing on a source of urgency that is emotional and political rather than just financial. The closer you are to winning, the closer you are also to losing. That is because of the upheaval of the buying process at the decision-making point of the buying committee — the place we call the crucible. This is where the committee realizes that they are not going to reach consensus, they disagree on their priorities, the issues change, and often a power struggle breaks out. This is where multimillion dollar deals turnaround in a day. Without a sales strategy process that addresses the political reality that not all buyers are equal or have unequal pains, your sales rep will lose control of the deal at this point. You have to identify all the potential stakeholders, their needs, their preference for you, their power and then identify a strategy for each individual to really get their vote or live without it. You can win without a strategy, it’s called luck. You also need another dimension to your sales process if you are to win against competition. You must anticipate how they plan to win, predict their tactics, and defeat their strategy. The earlier you do this, the better. Great salespeople that we know win they’re deals during the discovery phase long before any presentation. Their competitive strategies include developing inside informants who prefer you, planting questions that expose their weaknesses, suggesting changes to the buying process that favor you, and of course getting to the executives with your messaging first. One of the reasons that so many forecasted deals are lost to competition is that salespeople fail to anticipate any competitive counterattack in the crucible. Once a competitor figures out that they are not winning, you should anticipate and predict that they will slash price and try to go over the project team’s head. The first thing great salespeople do after they get the good news is to immediately prepare these defenses. Finally, good sales process should address getting the deal closed — especially since 23.5% of forecasted deals stall out. And in this economy, RO I alone will not close a deal because most CFOs have several proposals in front of them, all with good ROI’s, but only so much cash to invest. Without connecting your solution to a source of urgency that is emotional and political two powerful sponsors, your deal will sit on the forecast for a long time. The customer will not change until the pain of not changing exceeds the pain of changing. And a lost opportunity to save money may not be politically painful. In addition, this is when procurement and legal become involved in your deal and a process called commoditization begins. After months of demonstrating differentiating value they suddenly can’t seem to remember any of it. That’s because these people are trained to ignore it. Some procurement people would buy a pacemaker from the lowest bidder. They just know your price is too high. No matter what it is, it’s too high. While procurement may try to isolate you at this point from the end-users, you should have negotiated earlier for their assistance at this point. Only they understand the true value of your solution and the relative risk of the legal issues. If they are powerful enough they can help push it through procurement or legal. In this economy, it often takes as long to close a deal as it does to win it. In complex sales, you either win or you don’t. They either close or they don’t. A partial sales process and strategy won’t produce a partial sale. Outcomes are binary. The worst outcome is to finish second, late. Without a complete opportunity sales process including: 1.  Solution and value strategy 2.  Competitive strategy 3.  Political strategy 4.    Closing strategy you are basically going to a gunfight with a knife.

A recognized authority in the complex sale arena, Rick Page, Founder and CEO of The Complex Sale, Inc., has trained salespeople from more than 50 countries during his long and distinguished career. One of the foremost experts on sales management and selling, Rick continues to develop innovative sales programs and is the author of Hope Is Not A Strategy – The 6 Keys to Winning The Complex Sale and Make Winning A Habit – 20 Best Practices of the World’s Greatest Sales Forces.  Visit his website

Are You Ready to Master the World of Selling?

I want to take just a couple minutes to let you in on something special…
…something that could easily make this your BEST YEAR of sales EVER!

 Eric Taylor and David Riklan, the Creators of the “Mastering the World” book series, are releasing their newest masterpiece…

It’s an INCREDIBLY valuable resource for ANYONE working in Sales.

( The complete details are here)

One look and you’ll quickly see why I call this “the best of the best”.

Because whether it’s the classic wisdom of Napoleon Hill, Robert Cialdini, and Zig Ziglar … or up-to-the-minute advice on using the power of “Sales 2.0” technologies…

You can take absolutely ANY nugget from within this book’s 385 pages, and IMMEDIATELY apply it to solving your most pressing real-life sales challenges.

Eric and David have taken the sales wisdom of the 89 of the top trainers and training companies in the world and put them between two covers.  I should know—I’m honored that they have seen fit to imclude me as one of the top 89 trainers.

Look, I’m not even going to TRY listing all the topics covered, and all the experts contributing. Even on the webpage, they don’t list quite everything But here is just a taste of whos wisdom you’ll find in the book:

Jeffrey Gitomer                                   Neil Rackham
Tony Alessandra                                 Sandler Training
Dale Carnegie                                       Mike Bosworth
Jim Cathcart                                        CustomerCentric Selling
Chet Holmes                                         FranklinCovey Sales Performance
Tom Hopkins                                        Huthwaite
Tony Jeary                                            Patricia Fripp
Jill Konrath                                          Chris Lytle
Colleen Francis                                   Miller Heiman
Rick Page                                               The Brooks Group
Anthony Perinello                             Wilson Learning
Tom Sant                                               ValueSelling Associates

And that’s only 24 of them.  This is truly a collection of the BEST of the BEST—and only the BEST.  You should know each and every trainer and company listed—and be reading everything you can get your hands on by them.

And no, I didn’t stack the list above with every big name I could—unless you think

Brian Tracy
Linda Richardson
Frank Rumbauskas
Stephen Schiffman
Action Selling
Barry Farber
Dr. Ivan Misner
and many, many more aren’t big names. 

Like I said, this is simply the wisdom of the BEST of the BEST and nothing but the BEST all under one cover.

Jeffrey Gitomer, author of “The Little Red Book of Selling”, says:
“This book is all about what is working NOW [in] business, sales, service, and personal development for the second decade of the twenty-first century.”

I guarantee you’ll be well-impressed when you see what they CREATED!

David and Eric are also celebrating the book’s release date with an incredible, exclusive give-away of $2,686.00 worth of hand-picked FREE Gifts. (You’ll have to visit their webpage to get all the details, and see how you can qualify.)

I know anyone purchasing this book who doesn’t experience a major boost to their bottom line … hasn’t actually USED it.

It’s that well-written … and that powerful!

Look – go to the book’s website, and see for yourself what all the fuss, and all the excitement is about!

To Your Best Sales Year Ever,

Paul McCord

PS – I should mention: All those thousands of dollars worth of gifts David and Eric have set aside for you will be offered to someone else – someone perhaps a bit more motivated – if you don’t grab yours by Midnight Tonight. Go there right NOW

On Being an Optimistic Realist

Pessimists.  I don’t understand them.  My wife is a pessimist.  At times she drives me crazy.  I get calls and emails from far too many sellers and sales leaders who are pessimists.  I don’t understand why they persist in selling, a vocation that will drive an optimist nuts, much a pessimist. 

I’m an optimist—an unadulterated, unapologetic optimist.  But I’m also a realist.   

That realism part sometimes comes across as pessimism to some.  As I was speaking to a sales leader of a mid-size wholesale company last week, I pointed out that his sales team was failing to take advantage of one of their company’s primary strengths and even though they were on target to chalk up a nice increase in year over year, they were leaving far too much money on the table..

Instead of trying to figure out how his team could take advantage of a significant competitive strength, my sales manager friend became defensive.  He accused me of discounting the achievement he and his team had made. There was no way he said, that he would let my “negative” point of view poison his team members.

I’ve run across many a seller who either accepted personal responsibility for everything that happened to them or refused to accept any responsibility for anything negative that happened in their life.  One group’s attitude is, “I must have complete control of my life.  If I don’t close the sale it must have been my fault; that way I can correct it and guarantee it won’t happen again.” 

The other group’s attitude is, “I’m a winner and if I lose it’s because something out of my control prevented me from winning.  If it weren’t for that, I’d have closed the sale.”

I believe both of these attitudes are attempts to maintain optimism.  I also believe they are unhealthy and detrimental to success.

In fact, I’ve had more than one seller tell me that what I call reality, they call pessimism.  If I point out a potential danger or issue that a client must look out for, to some I’m being pessimistic.  If I include a warning that a particular strategy or tactic might not be appropriate for all or in a given situation, to some I’m being pessimistic.  If I reprimand, to some I’m being pessimistic.  If I point out failure, I may as well have just shot them.

In other words, for some sellers and sales leaders, those of us who don’t wear rose colored glasses or live in la la land are pessimists, bringing them down, stifling their enthusiasm.  There is no room in their life for anything that isn’t upbeat and “positive,” including reality.

Of course, the opposite is also true.  True pessimists have little or no room in their life for reality either.  For them, if it isn’t doom and gloom, they want no part of it.  They simply aren’t happy unless miserable.  If I point out opportunity, they counter with the obstacles to achieving success.  If I give encouragement, they complain about yesterday’s rejection.  If I suggest a new strategy, they point out the failure of their last strategy.

For one group there is no such thing as failure; for the other, nothing but failure.  For one group, hope is the strategy; for the other, there’s never hope.  For both groups, reality is the enemy.

In my world there are positives and negatives.  There is hope and expectation—based on preparation and training.  There is success and failure.

I expect good things to happen, but take proper precautions to deal with the possibility that the results won’t be everything I hope for.

I acknowledge and learn from my failures (yes, there is such a thing as failure). 

I rejoice in and learn from my successes.

I recognize danger—and opportunity.

I control what I can—and acknowledge what I can’t.

I know my limits—and reach beyond them—and willingly and knowingly accept the risk.

Unfortunately, I know of some managers and trainers who wear rose colored glasses; who refuse to acknowledge to themselves or others that reality exits; who are doing a terrible disservice to the sellers they train, coach, and mentor by intentionally or unintentionally teaching them that optimism is a denial of anything negative or not “positive.”

These rose colored glasses optimists tend to be poor to average producers—but always “on the verge” of a big month.  They just need a little more time.  They always have a prospect who is about to make the giant purchase.  Their big deal is always just around the corner.

They aren’t very teachable (after all, there are no problems to be overcome).  They aren’t well prepared (they’re already prepared, everything’s great). Many don’t work very hard (don’t worry, I got everything under control).

Although I’m sure this perverted view of optimism has been with humans since time immemorial, I do wonder if the “there is no such thing as failure, “everyone’s a winner and gets a trophy,” and “I’m OK, you’re OK” attitude of the past three or four decades has infected more than in past generations?

Although you might not be able to eliminate this perversion from your existing sales staff that has it, I’d certainly advise any sales leader to actively seek to avoid hiring salespeople in the future who have a perverted sense of optimism.  It may seem gung-ho during the interview, but it won’t produce the results you want in the end.

Guest Article: “Sales Prospecting: 5 Tips for Using Linkedin to Sell,” by Nigel Edelshain

Sales Prospecting: 5 Tips for Using Linkedin to Sell by Nigel Edelshain I went to speak to my friend and New York master sales trainer, David Leaver of Opus Partners, on this one. (You may have noticed a trend in my last two blogs posts that I am interviewing other experts. This is because I don’t know everything). David has been at this sales training game for a while and as such is not easily impressed by gimmicks or gadgets that are “all flash and no cash.” So it’s notable that David has taken to LinkedIn like the proverbial mallard. That should tell all you Sales 2.0 doubters that there’s something here – my opinion. Nigel: David what are the primary ways you use LinkedIn to sell? David: I have a discipline each day to go into LinkedIn and spend 15-30 minutes there – no more. That’s important as social networking platforms and social media in general can suck you in and burn up all your selling time. During my 15-30 minutes on LinkedIn each day I address the following things in order: My LinkedIn Inbox New Connections my 1st degree contacts have made New Recommendations my 1st degree contacts have given to people Questions I might be able to answer in the groups I belong to Who viewed my profile Nigel: OK that’s very structured. Can we go through each one? David: sure. So the first one is looking at my LinkedIn Inbox. This is pretty obvious but a good place to start. I check if there are any direct requests in there for my help, new contacts etc. Very basic LinkedIn usage. The second thing I do is not obvious to most people. I check what new connections my new connections have today. This comes up on your LinkedIn home page if you have your LinkedIn settings set to display this (the default setting will show this).   The reason I look at this is that when one of the people I know makes a new connection with someone their relationship is quite active. It’s a great time for me to request an introduction to that new person too. It’s most likely my direct connection and the new 2nd degree connection have been talking or emailing and they feel a certain level of connectivity at this time. Because of this it’s more likely than normal that my request to connect will be accepted. Nigel: OK that’s not something I’d though of. What about new recommendations? What’s that about? David: Nigel it’s a similar principle. When one of my direct (1st degree connections) gives a recommendation to someone – or someone gives a recommendation to them – it signals to me that their relationship is strong. Hence it gives me a good clue that I can ask for an introduction to that person I don’t yet know. A recommendation is usually only given when people know each other well. Nigel: Right, got it. Not obvious stuff from just looking at LinkedIn. And item #4 groups. What do you do there? David: I belong to several LinkedIn groups that are sales-related and also to groups that my customers/prospects belong to. What I do is look for questions that I can answer in those groups. I make sure I only answer questions when I can really add value. It’s a great way to start a conversation. Of course, if the person I’m talking to is a potential client or partner I will try to move the conversation offline so that it becomes “real.” As you know I believe real conversations happen offline on the phone or in-person. Social media platforms like LinkedIn are just good tools for STARTING a relationship. Nigel: Yup, agree that real relationships get formed offline. And the last one – looking at who viewed your profile? David: I look at who viewed my profile recently (you need to be on the paid LinkedIn to do this, so it will cost you $24.95 a month). I don’t do this very often but sometimes when I see someone whose profile looks interesting to me I will email them through LinkedIn and say “I see you looked at my profile. Is there anything I can help you with?” Nigel: OK got it. Some great stuff. I knew about some of those techniques but many of them I would not have though of. Super. Thanks David!

Nigel Edelshain is CEO of Sales 2.0 LLC. Companies that work with Sales 2.0 improve their sales results 2-3 times. They achieve these results by combining the use of Web 2.0 tools and social media with well-thought-out sales processes.  Visit his website

Guest Article: “If Your Sales Training Department Ran Your Church,” by Charles H. Green

While doing a bit of reading, I ran across this older article by my friend Charlie Green that addresses the same subject I wrote about yesterday but more elegantly—and with humor too–than my post.

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If Your Sales Training Department Ran Your Church
by Charles H. Green

What if your sales training department ran your church? (Or synagogue, or mosque; this is meant to be an equal-opportunity religious metaphor).

Suppose you move into a new community, and are looking for a place of worship. The minister (I’m just going to use the one metaphor from now on, please infer your preferred tradition) meets you, and says:

“Welcome. First we’d like you to fill out this spiritual needs-assessment instrument, so we can appropriately benchmark you for your level of sinfulness and spirituality potential.

“Part I evaluates your sinfulness; we prefer the so-called “Ten Commandments” instrument; Part II measures your level of mastery of the behaviors and habits of Highly Spiritual People (HSPs).

“You can fill it out over there in the cubicle; be sure to use only the Number 2 pencils provided.”

You do so. You take it back to the minister.

“Well, let’s see what we’ve got here, let’s pull the quick-scoring answer template. Hmm, only 5 out of 10 on the commandments. Well at least you go the biggies right, didn’t kill anyone lately, am I right, heh heh, sorry my little joke there…”

“You’re also scoring at a “meets expectations” level on your HSP. You probably know the Golden Rule, that sort of thing; but you probably don’t give alms to the poor, right? And tithing, fuggedaboudit! Am I right? Heh heh heh thought so, yup.

“OK, your achievement levels put you into the AIS group; Advanced Intermediate Spirituality. It’ll be a bit of a stretch, but we have some remedial online CBT programs that you can study up on. They meet at 11AM.

You sign up. Your kids are admitted to their own appropriate Sunday school classes. Embarrassingly, at higher levels than you.

You show up Sunday early, to be greeted at the door by a deacon.

“Please fill out this expectations document for today’s service. You can write in your own expectations if you want, but the multiple choice checkboxes are enough for most people.

You go in. You listen to the sermon.

“Today I’ll talk about Daniel and the lions. You will learn the skills and behaviors associated with Advanced Intermediate Spirituality with respect to faith. On leaving, you will be able to recognize faith when you hear it, identify the three main levels of faith, and to be reasonably faithful yourself. And we’ll do some faith role-plays (what we like to call “praying”) to make it realistic. So now let’s get started, shall we?

You sit through the sermon. It concludes with:

“The sermon today has been about Daniel and the lions. You should have learned the skills and behaviors associated with Advanced Intermediate Spirituality with respect to faith. You should now be able to recognize faith when you hear it, identify the three main types of faith, and to be reasonably faithful. And, you’ve experienced the behaviors of faith through role-play (“praying”).

“Please take a moment now to complete your evaluation document that the deacon handed you on the way in.

You read the document. It asks:

“The sermon for today met my expectations” (1 definitely, 2 mostly, 3 sort of, 4 not really, 5 not at all)

“I am now able to recognize basic faith” (1 definitely, 2 mostly, 3 sort of, 4 not really, 5 not at all)

“I now have a moderately high faith level” (1 definitely, 2 mostly, 3 sort of, 4 not really, 5 not at all)

“The minister trained well today” (1 definitely, 2 mostly, 3 sort of, 4 not really, 5 not at all)

You leave the church; the minister greets you on the way out the door. “How’d you like the service?” he asks, sneaking a glance at your evaluation document.

“Well, I’m still not sure I feel like I really have faith,” you say apologetically.

“That’s OK,” says the minister. “Just fake it ‘til you make it. You’ll get the hang of it. Continue to meet your metrics, and everything will work out—just have faith in the process.”

————

Hopefully you enjoyed that. In case it’s not clear, I’m trying to suggest that when it comes to certain “soft” subjects, the traditional management-by-numbers and train-by-behaviors can feel inadequate to the task.

How is this relevant? In training, I hope it’s clear. Different techniques suit different subjects.

But I think it speaks to issues of management and leadership too. Do you believe in values, missions and belief systems? If you’re trying to manage a values-based organization, what approaches work?

Managing through behavioral metrics doesn’t quite do the job when it comes to motivating people to higher-order beliefs.

Or, to put it nakedly, if still metaphorically: what’s the ROI on believing in a God? And what’s wrong with that question?

Charles H. Green is founder and CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates LLC; read more about Charlie at http://trustedadvisor.com/cgreen/

Mark Twain Was Right–Numbers Lie

I’m a numbers guy.  I break everything in sales and management down to numbers.  I know my numbers backwards and forwards, as I do those of my coaching clients.  I firmly believe that if you don’t know your numbers you can’t possibly make sound decisions about how to spend your time, where to find new business, where to invest your marketing dollars; and if you’re a sales leader, who to hire.

Even though I am a firm believer in numbers, I’ve noticed something of a distressing trend over the past couple of years—an emphasis on numbers to the point that intangibles are virtually ignored.  I see more and more books and hear more and more presentations arguing that numbers should determine every decision, that management and sales can be broken down to a numerical formula. 

I believe that is a huge mistake. 

Numbers are extremely important.  They can tell us a great deal about our company, our customers, our market, our product, and our selves.  They can point out strengths and weaknesses.  They can give us direction.  They can reveal great opportunities and help us avoid great pitfalls.

But as helpful as numbers can be, they ignore one critical factor about management and sales—we are selling to and managing human beings, not machines.  Unlike a machine, humans do things they’re not supposed to.  They don’t always act according to the numbers. 

I can think of no better example of numbers lying than the NFL draft.

Almost all football players are human (there are a few that I really do wonder about).  All the players who are considered for the NFL draft have a long history of playing the game—generally from grade school through at least a couple of years of college ball.  That history can span as many as 12 or more years.  That’s a long time, a lot of football games.

Over that span of years each player has developed habits and expectations.  Some have learned how to win; others how to lose.  Some have learned how to work within a team; others how to perform despite the team.  Some have learned their limitations; others have learned they have no limitations.

Almost all of the players who make the grade to be considered by the NFL come from winning teams.  They all are used to winning, but not all know how to win.  They all enjoy the perks of winning, but not all know the sacrifice required to be a winner.  They all expect to win, but not all are willing to pay the price to win.

They all have a set of numbers.

Those numbers become critical when they show up for the NFL Combine.  The combine is where numbers come to the forefront.  There are numbers for everything: height, weight, speed, agility, vertical jump, quickness.  The NFL has managed to quantify everything.  There are the numbers from the physical evaluations and the numbers from the mental and intelligence evaluation.  Everything is evaluated and every evaluation is put into a number.

The Combine has a tremendous influence on whether one gets drafted or not—and if they are drafted, in what round.  The difference is between tens of millions of dollars and zero dollars; between a career as a professional football player and just an ex-college football star.

Every year teams invest huge sums of money drafting players who blew out the numbers at the Combine; players that had the perfect combination of physical and mental scores, who outperformed all of their competition.  These are players who came from winning teams, who were stars in high school and college, who put fantastic numbers up at the Combine.  And who failed miserably in the NFL.  Who never started a game.  Who were out of the league within three or four years. Nevertheless, they are the ones who made tens of millions of dollars because they had good numbers.

Contrast that with the men who were drafted in a low round—or who weren’t drafted at all but were invited to someone’s training camp for a tryout—and ended up in the Hall of Fame.  These are men who came from winning college teams, who were stars in high school and college, who put up average or worse numbers at the Combine.  Indeed, these are the Combine also rans; the ones who made the early round draftees look good.

Every year the numbers lie.  Every year there are a ton of big number guys who bomb and a number of also rans who become NFL stars.

Sound familiar?  Recognize the same thing in your sales team?  If you’re like most sales leaders, you do.

What’s missing in the Combine evaluation of players?  The intangible.  How do you measure a winner?  How do you differentiate the players who play on a winning team from the player who is a winner? 

How do we recognize the intangible in a seller?  Will an assessment do it?  Can we spot it in a resume? 

We can certainly say what it isn’t. 

It isn’t personality or charisma.  We all have hired charismatic salespeople who flopped—and shy people who have become stars. 

Is it a commitment to hard work?  Nope.  We’ve all hired sellers who work hard all the way to the day we have to let them go.

Is it a sharp intellect?  Not at all.  We’ve all hired incredibly intelligent men and women who didn’t make it.

Is it a hunger for success?  I don’t think so.  Again, we’ve all hired people who desired success more than anything; yet failed.

Is it luck?  Again, no.  I know of some unbelievably “lucky” people who failed at every sales job they had.

Is it being at the right place at the right time?  Naw, it isn’t that either, as we’ve all seen two “equal” sellers go in different directions—one skyrockets while the other dies on the vine, both in the same “right place at the right time” market.

So, what is the intangible that takes the least likely to the top and leaves the shoo-in in the ditch?

I don’t know.  I do know I’m not going to find it in the numbers.

I’m still a numbers guy.  I’m still going to boil everything I can down to numbers.  I’m still going to be using numbers to help make decisions.  But I’m not going to take numbers as Gospel because I know they lie, they’re unreliable on their own. 

I’m looking for that intangible.  I know it exists because I see its reflection in too many salespeople.  If you find a way to discover its existence prior to hiring someone, please let me know.

Guest Article: “When Bad Needs Analysis Happens to Good Sales Reps! by Paul Castain

When Bad Needs Analysis Happens To Good Sales Reps!
by Paul Castain

The Needs Analysis is no doubt, a critical step of the sales process. Execute properly and and you pave the way for a higher probability sale. Execute poorly and you disconnect!

Here are several of the mistakes I see sales professionals make. I’ve included several tips on how you can ace your next needs analysis.

1)    Failure to have the proper selling environment. This includes everything from not having enough time, to allowing people to tell you “we know exactly what we want so you don’t have to ask us those questions” etc. Let’s be clear. We need to be respectful and control the meeting without being controlling (there’ s a huge difference) but by the same token, would you go to a Doctor’s office and say “Put away that Stethoscope Doc. It’s my bladder so I just need you to work up a quote on surgery?” Selling should never be different. If someone is rushing your due diligence to the point that you know that this will be a “screw you” down the line, get the screw you today instead and insist (respectfully) that they allow you to be the professional you are.

2)    Allowing Your Needs Analysis To Take On A “20 Questions Guessing Game” Vibe. Maybe it’s the impatient New Yorker in me coming out, but why get into this “Is it animal or mineral” BS? I like to cut to the chase and ask a question at the start of my needs analysis that goes like this “Granted I called you . . . what prompted you to take this meeting today?” It gives me a direction to go in 9 out of 10 times and saves everyone the annoyance of questions that have nothing to do with “where it hurts”.

3)    Asking a lame question. This includes everything from questions that you could have answered yourself by taking a time to research (How many locations do you have? etc) to weak questions that don’t serve you or the prospect. So how does one ask a better question? By mentally firing yourself from your industry and rehiring yourself in theirs! If you were the dude/dudette buying what you sell, what would piss you off? I would imagine it could be things like quality, deadlines, surprise costs, communication, managing multiple vendor relationships, internal customers, dealing with sales people, navigating around internal external buying policies, how to sell a change to the internal team, cost containment etc. On a more positive note, there are things all businesses want such as more customers, more market share, more profit, happy customers, employees and shareholders, lower turnover, better image and brand awareness, increased efficiencies, quicker to market turn times, innovation etc. What questions can you ask to get them thinking about this? This is the stuff they want fixed! Want to take this over the top? Think of one killer, “knock you on your hiney” question. I’m talking about one question that flaws the prospect and makes them think “Holy schnikees. Nobody ever asked me that before. The insurance industry has the ultimate “If something were to happen to you, could your family meet its financial needs?” Whoa! Way to stun me long enough to make me listen to you dude!

4)    Asking a good question at the wrong time: When we jump right in with a more intimate question, a prospect might think “Who the heck is the person to ask me that? I don’t know them or trust them” and then they shut down on you. Personally, I like to ease into my questions by starting with more situational types of questions and then increasing the intensity at a pace dictated by my read of the prospect.

5)    Answering your own question. Don’t laugh. It happens more than you think!

6)    Asking a clichéd question: Example “What keeps you up at night?  “On a scale from 1-10 how is your present service?” “What would it take to make them a 10?” Don’t get me wrong, I could think of worse things to ask a prospect, but why sound like every other sales person who sits in the hot seat? I know this is harsh, but when someone asks me cliched, used and abused questions I immediately think “is that all you got?”

7)    Asking a set up or “salesy” question: These are the questions that they see coming from like a hundred miles away. My favorite “If I could show you a way to blah, blah, would you seriously consider blah?” I think the 80’s called and wants their monkey style kung fu  back!

8)    Being so attached to your questions on paper that you don’t follow up on the answer or allow the conversation to “go there”. My best suggestion here (aside from being flexible enough to allow a “discussion” to occur) is to memorize by the topics your questions fall under. This way when a conversation goes from something that’s a deadline issue to a communication issue, you know how the questions execute out of sequence.

9)    Not asking continuation questions and racing to your next question. The best information you can get is usually when a prospect is encouraged to continue or expand. You can facilitate that by simply following up their answer with: “Tell me more” “can you give me an example of that?” “what happened as a result?” and even using some strategically placed (get this) silence. People have an innate need to fill silence. Let it be your prospect. One disclaimer: If you wait too long you might get  a “Bless your heart” and a pat on the head.

10) Making “I wasn’t listening statements” after they answer your question. Examples: “Fair enough” “Interesting” First of all, what the hell are you saying to me? When someone says “Interesting” I feel like you are doing some amateur psychoanalysis and you just concluded I was a bed wetter or something. Are you judging me? “Fair enough” WTF is that? Is that you feeling I was defending an opinion that you don’t agree with? Was that your reentry back into our conversation after an outer body experience and it came down to either saying that or shouting out some other random word like “DAISEYS”  Either way, congrats, you are conditioning me to not give you so much on the next question. Gold star, Rain Man! Here’s an idea. Don’t know what to say after someone responds, thank them for their answer and move on.

11) Asking questions that are so full of prefacing and tangents that they confuse the prospect. I’ve witnessed a bunch of those in my career. The best was when the prospect just stared at the sales rep when he finished and said “I have no clue of what you said, or where you are going with that last question. Was it a question?”

12) Making the Needs Analysis an interrogation instead of a conversation. I offered to help someone the other day with a challenge they were having. I came prepared with a page and a half of ideas. I didn’t get a chance to help this person because they just kept peppering me with questions. At one point I resisted the urge to ask her if I should get my attorney. The cure (in my opinion) is to use different types of questions and to make the exchange conversational and collaborative. Otherwise you are encouraging the prospect to shut down on you.

13) Failure to validate feelings. When someone tells you about a challenge or an incident, don’t race to the next question, acknowledge and validate. This goes back to something I say all the time in this blog “Everyone has a story and wants to be heard” How about a little “I give a damn? How about an “I’m sorry to hear that” or “that would bother me too, and what a testimonial to your professionalism that you kept a cool head” Remember: race to your next question too quickly and you might brand yourself as insensitive and cold. The best part, is that they might not even be able to articulate that. It may hit them as more of a “gut feeling”. When that happens, classic fight or flight kicks in and we simply avoid.

14) Asking a closed question. Under this same category (I’m too lazy to make another category) are questions that make it easier to default to a nice safe “no” Instead of asking closed questions, try focusing on “Experiential” questions. That is, questions that bring a prospect back to a time when they experienced a less than favorable result that you can impact with your solution.  The topic of experiential questions deserves its own future post so stay tuned!

15) Recycling Questions (asking the same question multiple ways) Unless you have a really good reason for this and you are really good at disguising repetition, don’t go there girlfriend!

16)  Conclusive Questions (aka putting words in the other dude’s mouth) Example “Tell me about the challenges you are having with your current vendor” Meanwhile, nobody said anything about challenges.

17)  Allowing Unproductive Tangents. Part of your responsibility as the professional is to facilitate a process without being controlling. If the conversation is going in a direction that isn’t beneficial, then you need to get things back on course.

18)  Failure to Customize Your Questions based on your Pre Call Planning findings: Don’t be this creature of habit who must ask the questions they always asked. Better to have your arsenal, and choose your weapon and even create your weapon based on the situation at hand. Besides, doesn’t asking a very specific set of questions, that demonstrates that you did your homework help out in the rapport department?

19)  Committing Any Combination of the 4 deadly sins: Interrupting, talking over, finishing thoughts, rushing the prospect’s answer.   I know someone who has this annoying habit of saying “right, right, right” when you are answering their question or just making a statement they want you to cut to the chase on. Don’t ever do that to your prospect or you will be (once again) conditioning them to not give you the details you need. The best way for you to avoid interrupting or talking over is to simply pause after they answer the question. Done!

20)  Disrespecting the word “Why”. The word “why” can serve you, and in many cases it can hurt you in that it might make the other person feel they have to defend their position. Try changing “why” to “what” as in “what prompted you to take that position” or “what were the events that led to those feelings”  The “what” question gets you into mechanics and processes which can be far more productive. Don’t get me wrong, I love to get to the emotions and the feelings. That’s why I phrased this one “Disrespecting the word “why”.  I can’t emphasize it enough that if we aren’t careful, we literally condition prospects to be guarded! Not a good place to be hombre!

21)  Considering a Needs Analysis A One Time Thing: I hope you highlight this one. I see so many people who conduct a brilliant needs analysis, win the account and then never do it again. Things change my friend. Statistically speaking, just in the time you spent reading this post, something has changed somewhere. Immediate Action Item: Starting thinking of a needs analysis as the annual check up at the Dr. Schedule a check up with your clients and every prospect that you haven’t done a needs analysis in the last year. Some will argue that it should be 6 months. That’s your call to make, not mine.

I won’t lie to you, there’s a lot here to digest. My suggestion is that you print this out, and commit to “owning” these tips.

Your closing ratio will go up dramatically when you do!

He who asks is a fool for 5 minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever

Chinese Proverb

Paul Castain is the Vice President of Sales Development for Consolidated Graphics (CGX) one of North America’s leading general commercial printing companies. Paul has over 25 years of sales and sales leadership experience. He has trained, mentored and coached over 3,000 sales and sales leadership professionals.  Visit his blog: Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook

Guest Article: “Managing Your Most Valuable Asset . . . And You’ll Be Surprised At What It Is!”, by The Brooks Group

Managing Your Most Valuable Asset… And You’ll Be Surprised At What It Is!
by The Brooks Group

Did you know that the chances of making a sale to an existing customer are seven times greater than the chances of making a sale to a new prospect?  This issue, we’ll give you the tools you need to help your sales team manage and maximize this most valuable asset.

After watching some of the hard-fought races in the recent midterm election, it’s easy to forget that the real work of a politician begins after the votes are counted. It’s not the campaigning that’s most difficult – it’s delivering what you say you’ll deliver after the election. It’s one thing to crank out campaign ads and stump speeches, but as Lyndon Johnson once pointed out, “It’s easier to throw a grenade than to catch it.”

The same can be said of sales. In many cases, the most grueling and demanding part of dealing with customers is not in the sales process. It’s after the sale is made. And that’s when the hard work really begins.

How do you and your sales team manage accounts after they’re sold? Let’s take a look at some fundamental ideas that are essential to maintaining your accounts for the long haul. First of all, why do you need to do it in the first place? The answer to that is simple and straightforward:

• Selling more to existing customers is easier than always having to find new ones.
• Selling to existing customers is less expensive than constantly finding new ones.
• Selling to existing customers creates more predictable income, known margins and cash flow.

Again, the analogy of the politician is helpful here. Generally speaking, the effort and resources that incumbents need to win an election are a fraction of what challengers need – especially if the incumbent has delivered on their promises while in office.

It’s the same in sales. In fact, according to Peter Drucker:

• Your chances of making a sale to a new prospect are 1 in 14
• Your chances of making a sale to someone who’s not currently a customer, but has bought from you in the past, are 1 in 4
• Your chances of making a sale to a current customer are 1 in 2

Clearly for your sales team, customers are the absolute best prospects. It only makes sense to ensure your sales team does their best to hold onto them. let’s take a look at some strategies to help successfully maintain the customers you earn.

Here are 10 Principles for Managing and Maximizing Your Existing Customers:

1. Fully buy into the concept that the hard work begins after the sale is made. Celebrating a sale is great – but execution and implementation are ultimately more essential than celebration.
2. Work to establish an expectation that is reasonable to achieve and possible to surpass. Failing to meet your new customer’s expectations will probably kill your relationship quickly. Failing to exceed them could be detrimental down the road – especially when competitors are doing their best to lure your customers away from you.
3. Never take any customer for granted. Go the extra mile and work to understand their dynamics, needs and demands. let them know they matter… they are important to you no matter who they are or the size of their account.
4. Manage the details. These are the issues that, if not handled correctly, can first disrupt and then totally destroy the entire account.
5. Master an understanding of how things really work within the account. Who are the power players? Are you being relegated to lower levels? How do you ensure that you and your organization continue to receive “top billing?”
6. Anticipate issues. You should never be blind-sided in an account. There should be no surprises. If you have delivery or quality problems, you should know about them and deal with them before they ever have a chance to become an issue.
7. Be proactive but not pushy. Look for opportunities and additional ways to make life easier, solve more problems or create more value for your customer.
8. Stay on top of billing. Work with your accounts receivable department to ensure invoices are correct and forwarded on a timely basis. Check to ensure your customer is paying on time. Anticipate payment problems and solve them.
9. Understand that things do change. Your relationship, value, profitability and long-term viability with the account can be enhanced or diminished by personnel or organizational change within the account. Anticipate it and do your best to position yourself as solidly and deeply as you can within the account.
10. Make sure your assets don’t become detriments. Don’t fall prey to bending too much for the customer. Remember that providing extra free service or discounted products only establishes an expectation that will continue to spiral downward to the point that the entire account may be unprofitable and not worth pursuing. Try to identify opportunities within the account that either better position you or generate more revenue for you.

What’s the bottom line? Prospecting is short term. The sales process is longer. But maintaining the account, continually meeting your commitments and exceeding expectations is the long-haul way to limitless success.

This is the area where there is a fine line between selling and servicing. the most successful sales organizations understand that selling and servicing are not independent variables or strict “one or the other” situations. Instead, they are two sides of the same coin — one drives the other and each is of equal importance.

Remember this: your sales team has to work hard to earn the right to sell to their customers. Then they have to continue to work hard to earn the right to sell them more and ultimately use them as positive, productive referral sources. How valuable are they? They’re clearly the most valuable commodity that your organization has. So treat them right.

The Brooks Group is a leading sales and sales management training firm, home of the IMPACT Selling System, offers public workshops as well as in-house training for your team.  Visit their website.

Great, You’re Dealing with Your Self-limiting Beliefs; What About Your Self-destructive Habits?

We’re all familiar with the destructive nature of self-limiting beliefs.  We’ve been warned about them; scolded about them; shown how to eradicate them.  But what we don’t hear much about are the equally—if not more—dangerous self-limiting habits that we all have.

Most sales trainers, managers, and motivational speakers preach to no end about the evils of self-limiting beliefs and give a plethora of positive thinking exercises to counteract them.  The core belief is that what we believe—what we really in our heart-of-hearts believe—must manifest itself in our actions.  So if we believe that we are lousy at prospecting, we’ll find a way to guarantee that we are lousy at prospecting—we sabotage ourselves in order to verify one of our basic beliefs about ourself as a salesperson, i.e., that we’re lousy at prospecting.

The idea behind recognizing and changing our self-limiting beliefs is that when we change our belief from a negative (we’re lousy at prospecting) to positive (we’re an effective, productive, skilled prospector), our actions will also change to reflect our new found belief—instead of sabotaging our prospecting efforts, our positive beliefs will force us to find ways to succeed at prospecting.

In theory that’s a pretty fair philosophy.  Except it’s shortsighted because it only addresses part of our problem—our actions are influenced by our beliefs but the actions that hinder or prevent our success are more than just reactions to what we believe about ourselves as salespeople and sales leaders. 

Need an example?

Well, let me first give an example of an action that MAY be a direct response to our belief that we are lousy at prospecting.  Since we are lousy at prospecting, we decide that before we start cold calling we’ll take a few minutes and surf the Internet in order to “relax” and get “ready.”  We start by spending four or five minutes surfing around a couple of news and sports sites.  After a few minutes we make a couple of cold calls and discover that we hadn’t relaxed enough.  As the days pass, without noticing, we’re spending more and more time trying to relax in order to get mentally prepared to cold call.  Before we know it, our relaxation exercise is our prospecting time.  Did we develop this habit simply because it’s easier to surf than make cold calls or did we fall into the habit as an unconscious response to our belief that we’re lousy at cold calling—and besides, it’s a waste of time anyway?

Does it really matter since either way the habit is killing us?

Well, how about an example of a habit that will also kill us but is very definitively not a result of our self-limiting beliefs about ourselves as a salesperson?  From our earliest age we’ve been late for everything.  In fact, we’re one of those preverbal people whom people claim will be late to our own funeral.  At work we’re always rushing to get to our appointments but no matter what, we always seem to walk into our prospect’s office two, three, five, sometimes ten minutes late.  We never have enough time to put our presentations together.  We have to slap something together at the last minute and never have time to practice before we have to meet the prospect.  Surely this isn’t a self-limiting habit developed in order to validate our belief that we’re a lousy presenter or lousy salesperson.  Maybe it just says we’re crappy at time management or that we’re arrogantly self-centered or that we are just plain sloppy about everything we do.

Again, does it matter?  Wherever the habit comes from, it’s killing us and must be dealt with if we want to succeed.

Although we hardly ever hear about identifying and eradicating our self-limiting behavior–our destructive habits—it is just as important as changing our belief system.

How, then, do we eradicate our self-limiting beliefs?

Let me quickly give four steps to identifying and eliminating self-destructive behaviors that I’ve used with dozens of sellers and sales leaders—and myself—that have proven to work:

1. Replace Negative Beliefs:  I’m not going to go into this in any detail as all you need do is Google “self-limiting beliefs” and you’ll get over 217,000 links to articles, books, ebooks, seminars, workshops, and anything else you can imagine about dealing with your self-limiting beliefs.  Simply let me say that positive self-talk, positive affirmations and other techniques to deal with negative beliefs do work and should be incorporated into any effort to deal with negative habits.
2. Identify Your Self-limiting Habits:  Of course, this goes without saying.  The hard part is how do you do it? My experience has been that we can discover a number of our self-limiting habits ourselves by simply becoming attuned to what we do, especially what we do just prior to things that we dislike or are uncomfortable doing.  Over the next few weeks pay close attention to what you do.  Since habits are most often unconscious behaviors, you’ll probably have better luck if you keep a log of those things you catch yourself doing over and over.  It could be something as simple as stopping for a cup of coffee every morning on the way to the office or as complex as creating a personal emergency that must be attended to every time you’re asked to work late or retorting with a smart remark anytime someone questions something you say. 

   Unfortunately, we usually can’t find all of our negative habits on our own.  We need help.  Enlist assistance from those close to you: spouse, manager, coach, mentor, or close friends.  More than one observer is ideal.  Observers must be people who know you well and who you trust.  Explain what you’re doing and ask them to observe you over the next weeks and give you feedback on the habits—good, bad, or indifferent–they notice, as well as any habits they are already aware of.  You may not like what you learn, but if your observers are really trying to help, the information you get will be valuable.

   Simply recording the habitual activity isn’t quite enough.  Can you figure out what the action is attached to?  For instance, stopping and getting a cup of coffee is associated with going to the office.  Discovering an emergency that must be attended to is associated with being asked to work late.

   What might be the reason for the action?  Getting a cup of coffee might just be something pleasant—or it might be a way to delay going to the office.  Creating a personal emergency is a way of getting out of staying late.

   Ultimately, you have to decide if the action is negative, positive or neutral—and whether it is a habit that you need or want to change.  I’ve found that if you’re not really committed to eradicating a self-limiting habit you won’t succeed.  If you’re not committed, move on to another habit that you will be committed to eliminating because

   if you only half way try to break a habit and fail, all you’ll be doing is reinforcing your self-limiting belief system.  Instead of gaining on your belief problems, you’ll be feeding them.

    

3. Replace a Negative Habit with a Positive Habit:  Instead of simply trying to eradicate a negative habit, proactively work to replace it with one that will help you advance toward your goal.  Trying to eliminate a behavior leaves a space, a void where the action used to be.  If you’re like me, if I have a time void I’ll find something to fill it and often that something is something negative. Why put yourself in a position where you’re consciously trying to create a void that could easily create stress and anxiety?  Instead of creating a void, change the negative behavior with a predetermined positive behavior.For example, instead of wasting time surfing the net in order to “relax,” purposely set aside two or three minutes prior to cold calling to sit quietly with eyes closed and envision yourself making three successful cold calls.  Or instead of waiting until the last second to create your next presentation, schedule your presentation creating time several days prior to the scheduled presentation date and then give yourself a reward if you finish the presentation X days prior to the presentation date.  Move from chaos to proactively managing your time and reward yourself for successfully doing so.
4. Don’t Accept Failure:  Allow yourself the freedom to backslide without becoming discouraged and giving up.  Habits, no matter what their origin, weren’t created overnight and they won’t be changed overnight.  You’ll probably find yourself slipping back into old habits.  That’s fine.  It’ll happen.  But just because it happened doesn’t mean you’ve lost the war.  You just lost a single battle.  If you give up you’ll be guaranteeing you’ll have that much more to overcome to reach your goals—and reinforcing a self-limiting habit of giving in when things get tough.

It’s been said that we humans are creatures of habit.  So we are.  The great thing is we get to decide if our habits are going to be positive or negative.  No one else can make   that decision for us.  Let’s make them habits that work to fulfill our wants and needs rather than ones designed to sabotage us.