Mowing Sales

As those of you who read my blog regularly know, my blog ideas can come from anywhere. Today it came from mowing the grass. I’m an efficient, conservative, effective worker. Some, like my wife, might say lazy. So I mow my yard in the easiest way for me, which is having the longest straight lines possible. That is diagonal in the front and horizontal in the back.

While paying attention to cutting the grass, I realized I like to sell like I like to mow. NO, not lazy… And they call me a smart aleck… I was thinking efficient. Taking the longest path possible before I have to stop or turn. That makes the process efficient with less stops and starts.

While this is fairly easy with your yard and the mower, how can you see the “grass” you have to cut in your sales process? Ask. When you are doing your evaluation, needs analysis, checklist, whatever you call it, ask about their process. Don’t be surprised if they lie or omit some of the truth. Based on what you have discovered about the prospect, based on what you know about customers who use the product or service you are selling, and based on your experience, you should be able to have a good idea on the long path.

Sometimes it is top down, sometimes bottom up, sometimes it starts with a demo, and sometimes never showing the product. Whatever the longest path to the nearest obstruction is, take it.

Self-propelled, push, riding, reel, rotary, mulching or bagging, take the longest path you can to get done the quickest you can. Oh, and watch out for the gnome…

The Sport of Sales

Is Sales a game? Is it a sport? If so, does it have rules? All major sports have 3 distinctive things. Opposing sides, rules, and referees. Oh, and as I learned later in life, a sport has to allow the other team to be able to prevent you from winning, otherwise it is a competition. Hockey has a goaltender to stop the other team from scoring (it is a sport), Golf does not have holetenders (it is a competition). So I ask you again, is sales a sport?

My answer is Yes, it is a sport.

There are competitors. Often more than one team at a time, but there is definitely competition.   

There are rules. These rules are set by the prospect (also the referee), most of the time. In the absence of these rules the game is governed by “common law rules”. Common law rules include things like being ethical and honest, you know, like the golden rule. Sell like you would like to be sold to. There is obviously a lot of gray area here as you know. Never be surprised if the referee, posing as a prospect, throws a flag when you get into the gray area.

If you present right, you can even block an opponent’s shot. By placing your solution between the opposition and the goal, you have the ability to block their attempt. Positioning can be everything.

If you are playing sales like a sport while others are playing like a competition, you have a huge advantage. However, if you play overly aggressive, break, or bend the rules, you may be penalized. 

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.

French is all Greek to Me

I never learned a foreign language. I wasn’t required to in high school or college. I did learn quite a bit of American sign language one summer with a girlfriend who had a deaf cousin. I have decided that I’m going to learn some French before a trip to Europe this spring.

I know I don’t really need to. Everyone speaks English, even the English..well sort of. I know I can download a hundred iPhone apps that will say phrases for me in any language. I’ll tell you why I really want to learn some conversational French.

On trips to Montreal I can almost understand, if not the words, the meaning of the conversations. It is like listening to the radio with the volume just low enough that you can’t quite make out the words. I can tell if the speakers are happy or sad, excited or reserved, serious or playful, speaking to me or about me, almost.

Almost understand, almost know, almost good enough.

So what is the foreign language in your business? What do you almost know? Almost understand? Almost grasp, and is it enough, or do you need to get the Rosetta Stone for your “language”?

Learn the language, get a translator, or don’t complain when they bring you snails for breakfast.

Super Bowl Sales

Ah, the Super Bowl. Good food. Good friends. Good teams? You always think the best teams will be in the championship game, but that isn't always the case. The same is true with sales, the best solutions don’t always get to the final. Here’s why.

In sales, like in sports, sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes the other team doesn’t show up. Sometimes you just really get up for the game. Sometimes you out hustle your competition. The bottom line is you have to win every engagement.

We could review the past football season and point out all of the could’ves and should’ves that would have had different teams in the Super Bowl. The fact is these teams did what they had to do when they had to do it.

So have a game plan, practice hard, and execute in every meeting and you may just have a shot at the prize. Even if you aren’t the favorite.

Marketing Up With The Joneses

We all know about keeping up with the Joneses. I don’t know if you have seen the movie, The Joneses. I linked to it if you haven’t.

It is all about creating demand by selling the dream. That, and staying true to yourself, but we’ll save that part for another blog. How do you market? How do you measure it? Are you tracking all of it?

Even the “ripple” effect? The intangible marketing that your employees do every time they meet with, talk to, or interact with anyone? Believe me, this does more than any radio ad you have ever run.

Sell the dream of whatever you sell, every time, everywhere, everyone.

The State of Your Business

Tonight the President will give the State of the Union Speech. Well, to be accurate he will give the State of the Union as he sees it Speech. Which begs the question, do you do the same with your business?

Objectivity is a hard thing to have when looking at yourself. For most of us, our business is us. So looking at our business is just as hard as looking at ourselves objectively. So hard in fact we spend lots and lots of money to join peer groups or hire consultants to be honest for us.

Believe me, I’m not saying not to do those things, in fact I encourage it. But before you spend a dime to get someone else’s honest opinion, give your own honest opinion.

Do you feel a little sick to your stomach hearing what you said? No? Go back and do it again, more honest. Think like your spouse. There, you got it. Now when you pay someone to give their opinion, you have something honest to compare it too.

Be sure to give the opposition their rebuttal as well.  

Inspecting Belly Buttons

The last couple of days my company has been doing our QBR (Quarterly Business Review). This is a great exercise for a company, and specifically a department to show and tell the good and the bad. The successes and failures and most importantly, lessons learned.

Do you do this in your business? No matter how big or how small your business, this should be a cornerstone of what you do. each member of the team should have individual goals that they should be accountable to to their team. The team should be accountable to the department, and the departments to the company as a whole.

Lessons learned is also a key part. Knowledge share in a company is a key way to grow success. Don’t make every department learn their own lessons. Share Failure to grow success.

Brand your Marketing and Marketing your Brand

Had a great discussion with my VP of marketing today. He helped me remember a key thing. A bunch of small unimpressive voices singing the same song is a choir, even a few world class singers singing different songs just sound like noise.

What does this mean? Stay on message. Pick your go to market brand message and stick to it. If you have too many different messages all your intended audience will hear is noise.

This doesn’t mean only have one person or one voice, but have one message. You may have an official Corp blog, but you may also have several additional personalities in your company blog as well. each in their own voice, each from their own point of view, all from their heart, but also all on message.

Merry Christmas Blog

I want to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas. For me, Christmas is a time of memories. Who doesn’t remember stories and memories from years past? I saw a picture of my brother and me from a Christmas many years ago, so long ago I don’t even remember. Even that picture triggered memory after memory.

Memories are an important part of life. We discount memories in business and think only in terms of process and performance. I am here to tell you, that memories will serve you better that data alone.

Data is cold, and Scrooge Liked it. Well, if not Scrooge, that is why business likes it. It is not emotional, it evokes no feelings. But if you are in sales, you know emotions drive you, teach you, keep you moving forward.

When you feel the ghost of lost deals past calling, do not shut them out. Take those feelings and emotions. Remember all the events, just like a Christmas past. Use those memories to make better decisions.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good deal!

The Perfect Drink

What is your perfect drink? If you said water, stop reading now. Imagine your favorite drink. Now tell me why.

That is hard isn’t it? We can start to list some things like sweet or tart, cold, refreshing, strong, but it all blends into some odd muttering that ends with the statement “you know?”

So the answer is it is everything that makes it our favorite. Even some things that aren’t in the drink make it special. The memory of a moonlit beach with that drink has a lot of power.

How do we expect to make or keep ourselves as our customer’s favorite drink? If they can’t tell us why it (we) are their favorite, how do we make sure we are doing what it takes?

Provide the right ingredients, mix it well, and provide the right kind of experience, and how could it go wrong? Every interaction you have with them builds the experience, whether it is a moonlit night or a typhoon.

Democratic Support

Do you treat your customers like Kim Jong Il treated North Korea? Well maybe that is harsh, but do you give them just enough to keep them happy and keep them in the dark?

I was watching the news stories showing film footage of distraught women sobbing over Kim Jong Il’s death. All I could think was if you only knew what we know you wouldn’t be shedding a tear.

If you went away from your customers lives, would they shed a tear or jump for joy when they discovered what they had been missing?

We cannot run our customers networks like a closed society. You cannot be a choke point of information. We should have the Voice of America attitude. More information. More choices. More work. Happier customers.

Democratic support works for everyone, when it is done right.

It Only Makes Sense In The Moment

I heard Joe Strummer say this in the documentary about his life. He said when you get an idea, write it down. Even if you have to knock people out of the way, just drop to the floor and write it.

What ideas did you have today that made a lot of sense when you thought them? Can you even remember them now? Of course not. Why? You didn’t write them down or keep track of them in any way.

I make a point to keep track of my ideas. I do this by either emailing myself, or using the voice memo feature on my phone. Some of these ideas even make sense the next day. So while the thought process only makes sense in the moment, the idea itself can live on.

It May be a million Dollar idea, or just an idea in a million. Either way it is something that made sense in and for at least a moment, maybe it is work thinking about again tomorrow.

Problem Solving verses Business Solving

I love engineers. Logical, straight forward problem solvers. That is really what I have been for many many years. Problem solvers look for solutions, get excited about a challenge, want to fix stuff, even if you shouldn’t.

Shouldn't might be harsh, maybe isn’t economically feasible is better. An Engineer’s time is valuable. Far to valuable to be spent on a problem solving excursion for a low probability prospect. Instead they should be Business solving. What is business solving you ask?

Business solving is monetizing your problem solving skills. In some circles it is call consulting. If you find yourself giving away your time and ideas and you are not charging for either, stop. You should be able to tell someone how you can help them fix their issue without giving it all away.

Give your engineers big juicy problems they can solve, but after the check has cleared.

The Power of Deciding

If the decisions weren’t hard, no one would pay you to make them. Make no mistake, you are paid to make decisions, not to pass the buck, form a committee, make a spreadsheet, hold a meeting, or be paralyzed by too much data.

No matter what your position is in your company, you must make decisions everyday that will determine the success or failure of yourself and the company. In fact, your entire life is a series of decisions. What is the only thing worse than a bad decision? Not making a decision at all.

I tell this to my kids all the time. Some decisions are easy. Should you steal something or not? Easy decision. But sometimes you have 2 or more crappy choices. Now you still have to choose, but there is no perfect choice. Sometimes there isn’t even a good choice, but that is all you have.

So after you make a choice, now what? You live with it and make it the best you can. So what is more important than the decision itself? How you deal with the decisions you have made. Don’t be afraid to make a decision because it might be the wrong one. Understand that any decision you make with any thought at all will be better than a random decision given to you.

Embrace the power of deciding.

Leverage Sales or Service?

Are you a sales company that fixes stuff, or a service company that sells stuff? Whatever your answer, you need the other one too. The question isn’t if you need to do the other, but how much and how well you need to do it.

Most salespeople who become business owners always believe they can sell their way out of any service issue. And service techs who start a business believe they can fix other peoples stuff forever. Both of them are wrong.

You should always leverage services to drive more sales, and leverage sales, to drive more services. In either case, you have done the hard part, getting the client to trust you. If the buy from you or call you for service, they trust you, at least a little.

If they trust your service, they should trust your opinion about buying. If they don’t, take a look at your style, you may need to step up the professionally. If they are buying from you, you should be able to grab those services dollars too. If you are not getting the services, take a look at your resources. you may be hiring cheap ahead of good.

balanced service and support, balanced clients, balanced checkbook.

Clean Spaces

I’m a piler. I make piles of stuff. It may shock you to know that this doesn’t go over well with my wife. She’s a shover. Anything she finds out of place, she shoves out of sight. My systems works because I know where I place everything. Her system works because she can see everything she wants to see. Our systems do not work so well together.

When she sees something out of place that I have piled, she shoves it. Now I don’t know where it is, I know where I left it, no idea where it is. This has turned out to be a good thing. It makes me not leave stuff in piles. Organization is hard to learn and a little shove discipline always helps.

If you had to describe your sales process, is it a pile or a silverware drawer? Both processes can work, but you have to know how your partners processes are as well. Shovers and pilers in one sales process will cause a wreak. This is never a good thing, unless your partner is as loving as my wife is to me as she is shoving my cables and connectors into another black hole.

Whatever style you have, own it. But don’t forget you are a team and everybody has got to give. a little to get a lot.

Early Snow

Mmmmmm.... Snow in October. You know what I hate about it? It always happens before I’m ready. Hoses not put away, leaves not all raked, garden gnomes peering out from under 3 inches of snow. So when is the sales snowstorm due to hit you?

More importantly, what do you need to get put away today while the sun is shining to keep it from getting buried under a ton of s....um.... snow. There is a reason your sales process should be on a timetable. First you need to know if it is dragging. Second, you need to close the deal before it gets snowed on.

Winter is coming. Whether your deals survive will be based on what you do before the storms hit. Clean up the debris. Get all of those nagging questions and details sewn up. don’t leave anything laying in the yard. Winterize, seal up the cracks and get plastic on those old windows. You have to foresee issues and be ready. Get the furnace serviced. Be ready to turn up the heat when needed. Get the resources ready to respond.

The storms will hit, and don’t get caught having to buy bread and milk.

Not Payton Him Enough

Not everyone is a football fan, but for those of you who are, you know what a horrible year the Indianapolis Colts are having this year without Payton Manning. Amazing how much one person can impact an organization. How is it he has such an impact?

Payton is able to do the three things you need to do to win, in any league. Read the defense, call the right play, and execute that play. While they maybe hundreds of quarterbacks who can read the defenses as well as Payton does, there are only tens of them who can also call the right play to exploit that defense, and there are only a couple who can then execute that play. Are you that type of salesperson?

Can you read the client’s needs? Their internal politics? Their purchasing process? These things are your defense. If you cannot see the traps, issues and problems, you are never going to be able to sell to them.

Once you understand the client’s defense, do you have a play in the books that you can call that “should” work? The old 42/split C level on 2, hut, hut! You have to have a plan to work with the client to get them sold, regardless of their “defense”.

You have seen the defense, you have called the right play now all you have to do is execute the plan. Can you do that? Should you call a timeout and get the right personnel on the field? This is not the time to drop the ball.

These are the three things that stand between you and the Hall of Fame.   

Demo Energy

I face this problem, if not everyday, every week. Low energy when doing a demo, just another demo, and another, and another, never changing, always the same. This is my problem, not the prospect, the demo is new to them. I need to make sure it is feeling new to me as well.

So we know the causes. Too many demos, too much the same. So what are the options? Less demos? Not likely. Less demos equals less opportunities equals less deals equals less money. Scratch that option. Less the same? Ah, now we are talking.

Most of us don’t do the demo the same way because we are lazy, we do it because it works, it is logical. Let’s face it, most of our prospects are the same, at least in their needs. So we have worked out a demo work flow that is effective. Then we do it over and over and over.

The key is having different entry points. Think of your demo as a story and those of us that remember English class remember stories have three parts. A beginning, a middle, and an end. You can start your demo in any of these parts.

Often it is good to show the end first. Ta da! Look what we can do, now let me show you how you got here. Or the middle, here we are doing X, let me show you how we got here, or where we can go. And the tried and true beginning to end. Three options, less boring, for us and them.