Mega Millions Sales

Have you got your ticket? The Mega Millions jackpot is around $640 Million Dollars for tonight’s drawing. What causes all of the excitement? The chance of a huge payday. What does a huge payday create? A lot of people who take a gamble figuring what the heck, the odds are the same as a million dollar drawing. Does the same thing happen in sales? Absolutely, except…

At the end of the day, sales is about effort times deal size divided by odds equals payout. I have worked with a lot of elephant hunters. Salespeople with their eyes always looking for a huge score. They put in lots and lots of effort for a smaller percentage opportunity, rolling the dice for the big score. What is the one thing we only have a fixed amount of? Right, time.

If a salesperson is spending all their time hunting elephants, what aren’t they doing? Winning the smaller deals with a higher percentage of closing. Sales is not like the lotto. Lotto odds are the same regardless the size of the deal, Sales isn’t. Every deal is different. The odds of every deal are different. A smart salesperson has got to be able to do the math. Are you a smart salesperson?

Whether you are or you aren’t, at this point, you can get smarter. How? First, track your time on every deal, know how long it takes to close a deal.  You need to have an idea about the amount of time it takes for an average deal, and not just the time to close, but hours of effort. Next, have a really good needs analysis checklist. Knowing what they need verses what you can do is one part of generating the odds. The better the match, the better the odds. The other half of the odds are relationships, money, and magic… What is the deal size? Is it worth your effort? Any effort? A lot of effort? More effort than the other deals in your pipeline?

Now you can “play” your deals based on the best odds, not your lucky numbers.

What Caused the Collapse of Mayan Civilization?

Subtitled, why your business should dig a well.

I just read an article about what caused the Mayan civilization to collapse. While there may have been many additional reasons, the main one discussed in this article was climate change and lack of water.  

Due to the lack of rivers in the Yucatan, the Mayan relied on the seasonal rainfall to refill their fresh water storage. While these reductions amounted to only 25 to 40 percent in annual rainfall, they were large enough for evaporation to become dominant over rainfall.

Let’s just replace the words water and rainfall with money and cash flow. Are you too dependent on cash flow from one particular segment of your business? Would that 25 to 40 percent cut cause your extinction?

The rain of money that comes from cloud bursts are great, however you have to have a drought proof source as well. Grandma might have said don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

How does this fit with your business philosophy? Do you approach your market in a narrow focused vertical, gaining deep penetration, or a broad based approach doing a little of everything? There are ways to create different revenue streams in both of these models. Find recurring revenue, one time sales, and services revenue across all your business divisions.

So while the rain is falling, you may want to dig a well.

Fish Tank Sales Timer

I have a fish tank in my office, I have for years. I love the way the sound of the bubbles and water can help be de-stress my day. It is a great sales tool reminder too.

How is that you say? Well, it gets dirty. What do you have to do when a tank gets dirty? Clean it, right. Every time I clean my tank, I also clean my sales pipeline.

Having something that has to be done on a regular schedule that is right in front of my face every day, helps me. So think of my fish tank as a giant sales timer that helps me clean my deals on a regular basis.

Your fish tank might be golf, or bowling, or emptying the trash, or paying bills, but tying need to do tasks to want to do tasks makes sure everything gets done.

Time to feed my timers…

Backpack Sales

I’m just returning from my backpacking trip in the Northern Sierra Mountains. I know a perfect vacation involves forgetting about everything in the real world, but I started thinking how much a sales process is like backpacking.

In backpacking, what you can carry is all that you have. You can’t have an unlimited amount of clothes, or food. Everything is carried on your back. If you want more food, lose the jacket, or carry more weight up to the point you can’t move. Sales is the same. You can only carry so many “things” at a time.

Are you cold calling 8 hours a day? No time left for closing calls. Going to trade shows? Hard to prospect. So when is the last time you emptied your sales backpack out on the floor and looked at everything you are carrying on a daily basis?

After every backpacking trip I evaluate what I took with me. Did I use it? Was it helpful? Was it too heavy for its worth? Only by doing this evaluation can I use the items that work, and make way for new items that might work better.

You need to do the same in your sales process. Discover how much you can carry. Discover what items you are carrying actually work. Discover what new items you should be using, and when it is all said and done, take a hike!

Marketing Isn’t Sales

Whether you are in Sales or Marketing you have a primary job. Gain new business. But these two positions are not the same. Small companies often have the same people do both jobs, but the function is different.

Steve’s simple description. Marketing says “look at me”. Sales says “I see you”. Marketing’s job is to get people to raise their hands and say I’m interested. Sale’s job is to show those people why they were interested.

Sometimes marketing sells stuff. You see an ad for something, go to the store and buy it. Do not count on marketing to close any significant portion of your business. To do that, you need to have a marketing message that is explaining everything for everyone. That causes the message to get lost. Marketing messages should be clean and simple, let sales give the detail.

Sales Bloat

Ever have that feeling? No, the feeling of too many people trying to do too little work? It does happen in sales, especially in commission only sales. As a business owner you may want your sales team hit a certain number, but do you care if it is all from 1 salesperson, or 10? You should, and here is why.

Happy. You want your salespeople happy, and money makes them happy. Too many people sharing the pie equals less money per salesperson equals less happy salespeople. If they find more business, you think great, but can you deliver? Sales and service have to be in alignment.

Overhead. Everybody you have adds overhead. The more salespeople, the more overhead, you may need to add 10-15% to what you think you need, per additional resource. More work, more cost, same profit, bad deal.

Predictable. Being able to predict your business with a solid pipeline is a key part of your growth. Salespeople with small pipeline will try to expand their pipeline. This can be good, if it is good business, but often it is marginal out of market business with a small chance of closing. Inflated pipelines, loss of productive sales time and technical time can be the result.

Keep your team hungry, but streamlined and efficient. 

Mother’s Visit Sales

Mom is going to be here WHEN!?! Happens to all of us. We have known she is coming to visit for more than a month, yet it is always in the last couple of hours that sheets get changed and dishes get put away. So is your Mother the end of the month, quarter, or year?

To be blunt, it is on the calendar. It is coming, it is no surprise, why do we act like we are shocked? Generally it is lack of process. Most of us are good instinctive sales people. We get a lead, we see the need, we shoot, we score. Where is that next lead coming from? It should be coming from your process that says you need to make 20 calls a day to get 1 person to express interest, so you have 5 new deals in the pipeline a week. Your numbers may vary, but you know what I mean. Good sales process.

Knock knock, who’s there? Your Mother.

DB Cooper Sales Strategy

I'm sure you have heard this too, they have new evidence in the DB Cooper case. If you don't know who that is you can read about him HERE. We'll all just wait for you….OK, now that we are all up to speed, do you sell like DB hijacks? Let me explain, a hijacker has a couple important things to do. He has to have a target to get the ransom from, a plan to get the ransom, and a plan to get away, and then execute all of them.

DB knew who to get the ransom from, had a plan to get the ransom, had a plan to get away, even executed all three, but the execution was weak on the last couple of items. So what did he do right? (Note, I'm not saying what he did was right J)

1. First he had the guts to make the attempt. You need this for every deal too.
   
2. He came up with a plan to get to the money person. You have to do this on every deal too. You can sell all day to the rank and file, but if they can't sign it doesn't matter.
   
3. He had a plan to get away with the money. You need to do this too, this is called a signed contract.
   

So DB messed on the execution, but where?

1. He had no idea how big a package of $200,000.00 was in $20.00 bills. Poor planning on the size of the deal, he had to make some choices in the middle of the deal he didn't expect. Don't let this happen to you. Think through deal size issues.
   
2. He wasn't able to identify that that the parachute was a training chute. He didn't have the knowledge he needed to see issues that would prohibit him from getting away with the money. They threw him a curve ball. Do you know your product and solution well enough to avoid taking the defective chute?
   
3. He jumped too soon. Even if his defective chute opened, he was in the big woods, hard to get out of there with 22 lbs. of money. Stay with the deal until it is to your advantage to bail out. I mean, he had the money, he just had to exit smoothly.
   

So what are our lessons? Don't be a hijacker for one. The others are basic sales. Find your prospect, do your research, present your offer, get the money, and don't end up on one of my blogs.

PMS Symptoms

Do you suffer from PMS? Postponed Monthly Sales? You know, that irritable feeling you experience in the last week of the month when you haven’t hit quota and the pipeline is empty? There is no drug you can take to prevent it, but just like the other PMS, the best prevention is diet and exercise. A salesperson needs a steady diet of leads and a lot of exercise presenting solutions, this will prevent PMS.

In sales you are, or should be judged on one thing. Are you hitting your number? This is the one item you are responsible for. In order to be sure you can hit this number, you need to have a large enough pipeline to support this number. This should not be new to you, I am not explaining some brand new idea, never heard before. How does your pipeline look? I thought so.

A weak pipeline creates a weaker pipeline. As you have less and less deals, you have to give more and more concessions to get the smaller number of leads to close. The more you give, the less you have, so the more you have to close to hit your number. This is a sure way to drain the pipeline. So why do you do this? To hit your number. It is like eating chocolate covered potato chips to make you feel better about being overweight.

The best day to think about filling your pipeline was yesterday.