What the hell is wrong with the sales dolt? In short he fails to comprehend the intensity of the need that you have for a new driver. There is pure unadulterated emotion oozing out of your mouth. One could almost see the weight of the emotion and the need! Our positively dull-minded salesperson only sees a potential sale of a driver; he never thinks even for a moment that there might be something really irritating that’s bothering the prospect. On top of that the sales dolt says c’mon I’ll fix you up with a low-budget club!

Do you know how many times this is played out in every industry by thousands and thousands of salespeople? The sales gods are bent over retching their disgust! PROSPECTS BUY FOR EMOTIONAL REASONS. Who knows what those emotional reasons are? Sometimes even the buyer isn’t completely sure of what those reasons are. You can look at practically every product on the market and find some emotional reason why it appeals to specific buyers. Picture this #2. When I buy a yellow lined pad I only want one specific kind. Know why? Because it tears evenly at the top. I hate pads where there are scraps still attached to the top of the pad after the tear. As insane as that is it is an emotional need.

Suffice to say there are many levels of emotional need. The golfer described above has lost 3 strokes off his handicap because he’s begun to slice every tee shot. (Along with being emotional the golfer is dumb because it isn’t the club that’s the problem.) A buyer at a two billion dollar company bought the wrong color of raw materials which threw off production by three weeks. His emotional need? He loses his job if it happens again.

Tip: When you hear a prospect say something like “We’ve been looking for someone to provide packaging for a new product line we’re introducing” don’t glide by that statement with a dumb ass statement like “Well you’re talking to the right person”. Don’t ever assume that you have all the information because nine times out of ten there is a hidden pearl of emotion that is driving the prospect.

Just for the sake of really believing this go back to several people who recently bought whatever you sell. Ask them if there was something else driving them to buy your product, determine if there was something emotional driving the process.

Poor dumb clutz! Can you imagine how many managers there are that don’t have a clue how to answer the basic question-what is my role? Ah, I’m guessing somewhere in the vicinity of half. Ok, here’s the answer. Job number one for a sales manager is develop the skills of your salespeople. That’s it! If it’s Wednesday in Omaha and you’re traveling with Sam you had better focus on whether this cobber understands the mechanics of selling. And if he doesn’t then your job is to mentor Sam on selling skills.

This is not as easy as it sounds. Where do you start this process? How do you tell ole Sam that maybe he should back off the toothy grin, the break cartilage hand shake, and the latest one-liner about Nebraska football? Let’s face facts, Sam is on the brink of being a sales statistic. He’s getting by only by the thinnest of margins. Moving Sam from social butterfly to skilled sales professional requires base knowledge on specific techniques that apply to specific parts of the sales call. These are repeatable techniques, which means that the sales call on Wednesday in Omaha will be similar to the one made in Lincoln on Thursday. How simple is this? So simple that most managers don’t get it.

This is where I decide whether the post is going to have a 1,500 word count or 550 word count. I’ll stick with the latter. Regardless of whether you’re on day two of your management career or day five hundred you need to dissect the sales process for your company and your product. How do you start the sales call to a new prospect? How do you start the call to a regular customer? How do you probe for needs? How do you discover if there are multiple decision makers? How do you disqualify prospects? How do you cross sell? Wanna make a bet that you can break down the sales process into at least 50 or more components?

Here’s another way to look at this? Hasn’t your VP of manufacturing broken down the manufacturing process into definable steps? I guarantee that he or she has. Your mission as a sales manager is to do the same thing for how your product gets sold. Once that is defined then you can create the techniques to use during each step of the sales process and then make sure your salespeople use these techniques on their sales calls. If all of that sounds like a monumentally difficult task then ask for your sales job back.

Underneath though I’m wondering about a few things:

1. How many sales calls have you been on in X amount of time?
2. How many closes do you now have YTD?
3. What percentage of your sales calls turn into business?
4. How many sales calls does it take on the same prospect before business is closed?
5. How near to making target are you in terms of dollars and percentage?
6. How many closes do you need for the fiscal year?

Sales is not completely a numbers game but certainly success on a continued basis has a lot to do with repeatable processes. Statistics are part of that. Why does the NFL have a combine in the Spring to evaluate college players? Baseball coaches evaluate potential fielders based on 5 key tools. There are statistics woven into both these sport situations. So why do salespeople blithely wander through their lives hardly ever thinking of a closing rate? Chances are pretty good that no one ever taught them the value of ratios. Nor have salespeople figured out that making significant money depends on performance, which will always tie into how many appointments, presentations, phone calls, connects, closes, average revenue of each close etc. are accomplished. And the coup de grace is how do sales calls relate to closes.

100 Proof Software even figured this out via the app Sales 2 Target. It’s not perfect but future iterations will improve the concept. I’ll make this wager. If you track your sales behaviors and create meaningful relationships between the behaviors (How many sales calls do you need to be on in order to close one sale as an example) you will increase your income by a minimum of 50%.

Have fun out there!

Let me bring this back into the perspective of the title. I strongly believe that salespeople will never generate 6-figure incomes unless they use a sales process during their sales calls. Will my breakfast buddy make more than $55K with a sales process? If he doesn’t want more than fifty-five then I doubt it. Salespeople (everyone for that matter) need to create a goal income. Without it people have a lower sense of what they are worth, they will be satisfied just taking a job, they will have no sense for reaching lofty goals.

Would you hire a lawyer who knew law but didn’t really understand legal proceedings or jurisprudence? How comfortable would you be with a plumber if he or she showed up with a 6 inch thick book on common household plumbing repairs? Every individual attached to a profession has been schooled in the steps, processes, techniques that provide the professional with the knowledge to deliver the service to their client or customer. Then why wouldn’t a salesperson, sales manager, company owner want the same thing for the sales organization? This is a Duh!

I’ve worked with salespeople who make a sales call like they’re shopping for groceries without a list. Strolling down the aisle picking up items that look good, making impulse buys based on nothing more than emotion. Yet companies hire these kinds of salespeople. Don’t ask me why. Maybe they’re cheap, who knows.

Opening a face-to-face sales call, responding to a Request for Quote, handling objections, qualifying a prospect can be orchestrated based on specific principles that apply to those situations. Good salespeople don’t just “wing it” when they are faced with objections. They call to mind a method that deals with how to handle an objection and then implement a technique. When salespeople do this they are using a process!!! If this makes so much sense why don’t salespeople adopt a process? I’d give one month social security for the right answer!

Companies assume that the newly hired salesperson knows how to sell; they are OK with turnover if the first three reps don’t work out; they figure that they can survive with a “cheap” comp plan. CEO’s, company presidents, sales managers do not understand that investing in a sales methodology or process nets more sales. (The caveat here is that whatever training is done needs constant reinforcement. No reinforcement equals waste of money.)

Do you have the feeling that I am passionate about this? Salespeople need to be that passionate! Learn a sales process!

The best sales call I ever went on was with “Jim”. We came face to face with a prospect most salespeople have nightmares about. This guy made a corpse look animated! He was the antithesis of “chatty Kathy”. If the room was silent enough you could hear the synapses clicking in his brain. There were times in the call that were honestly unnerving. It brought a whole new meaning to the phrase  “silence is deadly”.

Faced with a prospect like this most salespeople go into talk overdrive. Not ole Jim. This guy had mastered the ability to adapt to prospects. He let people dictate to him how he should act during the sales call. Do you know how hard that is to do? All of us tend to act as if we have one gear. You’ve seen most of them in sales. The person who always has a smile, the glib word smith, the technical genius, the hard closer, the joke teller, mister shifty. These are the gears and God help anyone who gets in the way.

During the sales call Jim’s prospect mulled every statement over like his life depended on it. Through all this Jim sat and waited for the prospect to make a statement. There were situations where minutes passed between interchanges. Try going 180 seconds without uttering something! Jim did. What happened was extraordinary. About 30 minutes into the call the prospect opened up. Hold onto your hats, folks, there was an actual dialogue taking place! Why? The prospect bought into Jim. There was trust!

Jim and the prospect were on the same communication page. The prospect had found a comfort level with Jim. In essence the prospect made a decision that Jim was like him and therefore he could let down his guarded method of communication. Both had reached a point where there was a bond between them and that bond allowed an openness that did not exist at the beginning of the call.

Mastering this takes time and the ability to accept being uncomfortable with people who are different styles. Enormous amounts of knowledge does not built trust; a sales methodology does not alone build trust; the ability to maneuver through a company’s decision hierarchy does not build trust; being mentally quick does not build trust.

Bonding happens for those people who have the gift of reading people quickly and adapting their style to the style of the other person.

I am not a proponent of sales managers learning their trade through “assmosis”. If you’re thinking that’s the gig don’t apply for the job. If you are wondering about the job here are some ideas:

1. Set expectations early with your salespeople. What do you want them doing everyday? What don’t you want them doing? How much time should they spend prospecting new customers vs. farming existing accounts? How do you expect the salespeople to interact with inside customer service, marketing, manufacturing personnel?
2. Document how you want the salespeople to sell. If you have 8 salespeople each of them will have their own selling methodology. Some will ask questions, some will present the product first, some will wing it. Ask yourself this question: How do I want my salespeople to sell? There are plenty of sales methodologies to choose from. Pick one and adapt it to your company, product, and marketplace.
3. Evaluate your salespeople to determine their strengths and weaknesses. Use the tools available. Google assessments and you can take your pick. If you have an HR department they might already use one. Review the completed assessments with each salesperson.
4. Work in the field with each of your salespeople as soon as it is feasible to do so. Tell them what your goals are for the trip. People respond better when they know what to expect. Before making calls or at the end of the first day tell the salesperson what you expect of them and ask them what they want from you. (You’ll get major points here, believe me.)
5. When you’re done working with a rep give them some verbal feedback on how they performed during the week beginning with the positives. When you get back to the office document this and send it to the rep with specific items they need to work on.

This is a minimum action list. The more you try to do in the first six weeks the less effective you will be at specific items. You’re in this for the long haul.

Almost forgot. If you’re gong to travel fifty to seventy-five percent of the time make sure your significant other knows this ahead of time. Promotions are great but they’re better when your partner or spouse understand this.

Why do leaders of companies cap incomes? Couple of reasons. They’re naive about sales realities. To many leaders it just seems ludicrous to have a salesperson make more than they do. Some leaders are shallow-they are perfectly willing to ride the wave of sales all the while basking in their income numbers. No doubt there are more reasons but that isn’t the focus of the post.

What happens to salespeople when their incomes are capped? (When I say capped I mean that salespeople won’t make over X amount of income annually.) The obvious result is “demotivation”. Imagine sitting in your cubelet in September looking at your YTD sales knowing that no matter how much more you sold before the end of the year you weren’t going to make any more than $90K. Dust off the golf clubs boys, we can get 30 rounds in before the snow flies!

If you don’t think that doesn’t happen you are naive. I know very few salespeople who are so altruistic that they will continue working their butts off when they know that more sales won’t result in more income. If you think about capping and you believe what I wrote in the last sentence don’t you wonder why leaders do this? They actually hurt the  company’s bottom line by not letting the salespeople earn as much as they can.

There is an interesting flip side to this. If you’re a company owner/CEO and you have capped salespeople’s income and you have had little or no turnover guess what’s happening? You have a group of salespeople on your payroll who are essentially lazy. They are making enough to pay the bills but they don’t have the drive to earn more. In short they are satisfied! Satisfied is not a word you want to see attached to a salesperson or sales organization. That smacks of complacency.

One more little bit of wisdom on commission structures. Some companies in theory have an “uncapped” commission plan but upon further review the plan is really capped. Here’s how that little sleight of mind works. Prior to a large commission percentage kicking in (usually toward the end of the fiscal year) the salesperson needs to reach a certain plateau in sales. If that plateau is not reached then the larger commission percentage does not kick in. A company can set that plateau at artificially high levels so either the higher rate is never reached or it’s reached in December with limited time left to make larger commission dollars. And when is the plateau number introduced? Why January of course at the national sales meeting when everyone is optimistic, there are no back orders, new products are on the horizon, and the sales manager says that the numbers are a lock this year!

Since I flunked retirement in 2010 it dawned on me that I needed to be productive during my remaining X number of years. One of the things I always wanted to do was share a list of common sense rules covering sales, salespeople, sales managers, family, and life. I very definitely do not want these CSR’s to be heavy and humorless. Good Lord, there’s enough of that crap emanating from D.C. and the media. I don’t need to add more negativity. So here goes. There’s about 100 of them so, well, enjoy ‘em.

If you can’t accept “NO” then get out of sales. The answer no starts early in life. No touching the stove, cookie jar, drugs, cigarettes (I wasn’t listening that day). I mean really, aren’t we programmed from an early age to “not do” certain things? Don’t bother me, I’m busy. Don’t hang around with….he’s not a nice boy.

Wilbur and Orville Wright really didn’t pay any attention to people who laughed at them. The candle manufacturer’s were having a good belly laugh when Edison talked about electric lights. Successful people do not take the word ‘No” seriously! There is something in their gene pool that dreams louder than the spoken “no”.

So why do salespeople have problems with the word No? One, they take it personally. Two, they have been programmed since diapers that the word “No” was bad, bad, bad! They don’t prepare an initial message that may yield a yes; instead they go into many sales calls on a wing and a prayer. Not enough people reinforced the concept that a no today did not mean a no for all time. And last. With the volume of potential prospects that most salespeople have what difference do nos make in the scheme of things?

If the word No truly makes you sweat through your freshly starched shirt then don’t go into sales! It’s not worth it and you won’t make enough moolah to keep the bank from foreclosing. Do you really want to wake up everyday to fear that someone will say no to you? There is no shame in admitting that a career in sales isn’t the right career path for you.

But like so many of these sayings I run across it needs to be altered a bit. It could just as well read “Adversity Is The Forge Of Success.” How many times has adversity affected you? And how many times has something good come from it? Adversity is defined as a condition marked by misfortune, calamity, or distress. Doesn’t adversity forge many of the best characteristics in people-leadership, knowledge, experience, achievement, fortitude, patience, mental toughness etc.? Working through misfortune or any other obstacle builds toughness.

Do you ever know how really good you are without some version of adversity? Prior to going into the army in 1968 I had experienced little in the way of adversity, other than flunking out of a couple of schools. Did I have the right stuff to survive? Basic training, advanced infantry training, OCS, airborne, Ranger schools, and a year in southeast Asia did the job of “forging” an individual who understood how adversity prepares you to not just survive but grow! I was able to learn about leadership, thinking on your feet, risking, examining options, preparation, courage and much more.

I learned perhaps the most significant lessons low crawling through the red clay of Fort Benning, Georgia. What is a mistake other than choosing the wrong option? So you fail? Making bad decisions can lead to adversity but people can survive adversity. What’s worse than adversity? Never putting yourself under the gun making important decisions or executing tough business decisions. How will anyone know what they’re made of if they don’t put themselves in the way of adversity?

I want to take just a minute to thank all of the people who serve our country, many of whom are in harm’s way. Recently a Chinook helicopter went down in Afghanistan with 30 soldiers aboard. Their deaths left a trail of sorrow across the country. The men and women in the armed services are true heroes. Often times their version of adversity will leave them mentally or physically challenged or dead! Keep them and their families in your prayers. Thanks!

A lot of these “sound givers” wind up in leadership positions, often managing salespeople. More often than not these managers are into control. They think, and wrongly so, that their mission is to constantly suggest, change, dominate, mentor, coach, tell, fix the salespeople who report to them. This need to inject themselves into others is part of their DNA strand. They see themselves as the coach calling in plays from the sideline. These managers are on a constant lookout for something they can alter.

The problem with these cats is that after a while other people tune them out. The advice becomes more noise than meaningful comments. Maybe the word advice needs to change. Doesn’t advice carry with it an almost negative connotation? Advice is defined as an opinion or recommendation offered as a guide to action or conduct. Doesn’t sound bad does it? Unfortunately most advice is not offered or recommended nor is it a guide. Advice winds up more as a directive than an offering. It comes across in these types of comments: “Here’s what you need to do.” Or, “If I were you I would….” Or my favorite. “Look, if you want to succeed, close, achieve goals (whatever the end point) do it this way.”

Recommending a different approach (advice alternative) doesn’t have to be subtle or vague. Too subtle and people won’t get it. Any recommendation to change should begin with a question about the goal of the activity that needs correction. A manager who assumes that he or she knows why the salesperson chose a specific approach may be missing key information that could be part of the solution.

More about this in my next post.