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Does Your Best Salesrep Behave Badly?

25 Nov

I’ve recently been catching up on the medical TV show, House. He’s a brilliant doctor who’s interested in diagnosing the diseases but not interested in his patients. He’s arrogant, condescending and a royal PITA*. He’s also one of the top doctors in the U.S. So his behavior is tolerated and even encouraged by his boss when a really tough case comes along.

Don’t we know sales reps like that? They bring in the big deals, save the company’s quarter on more than one occasion and earn more money than their boss. But they’re also rogues who don’t play by the rules, couldn’t be bothered to keep the SFA system up to date and generally ignore the rules without consequences. Their boss has a love/hate relationship with them, with love being highest at the end of the quarter.

What does your company do? Do they tolerate these reps? Embrace them? Fire them? Try to find more of them?

What would you do if you were their boss?

* PITA - Pain in the A**

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Face to Face Networking Revival?

22 Nov

Maybe it’s the recession. Maybe it’s learning first-hand the difference between a friend and a “Facebook friend.” Maybe you’re noticing that the phone’s not ringing and the thought of cold calls is making you take a coffee break. Or maybe it’s just the narrow selection of blogs that I read, but it seems that there’s a plethora of recent blog postings on how to network effectively in the real world.

Adrian Miller, author of The Blatant Truth, is offering a quick primer on improving your networking skills. His key point, “You need to know how to effectively communicate with others, build strong relationships, and make the most out of online and in-person networking opportunities. No, it’s not easy, and it’s certainly time consuming, too. But, the benefits of successful networking can be instrumental in growing your business.” Of his tips, the ones I find people forget about most are “Be Appreciative” and “Follow-up and Follow Through”

Then Erica Stritch of RainToday.com just posted a guide, “Face-To-Face Networking for Professional Services: A Primer for Relationship Building.” You can read an excerpt of it although you need to pay for the full download.

And one of my favorite recent titles is a book from Susan RoAne entitled, “FACE TO FACE: How to Reclaim the Personal Touch in a Digital World” Amazing that people might have forgotten the personal touch when online is so prevalent and easy.

Bottom Line – Successful Networking requires WORK and requires both an ON-LINE and IN-PERSON presence. Do all 3 successfully and you’ll be successful. Drop one and you won’t.

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They did it and did it big, so can you

21 Nov

I’m already tired of reading about the doom and gloom in the marketplace. How fear is the new driving factor in this recession. So it was very refreshing to read an article about 14 companies that were started during a recession and made it BIG.

You’ll recognize the names, like Hyatt, BurgerKing, FedEx and even Microsoft. Better yet, the article lists Google, PayPal and salesforce.com as recent success stories that thrived during the dot com bubble burst.

So if you’re looking for the silver lining or even a nudge to start your own company during these trying times, then read this article and be motivated!

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Even the Post Office wants to use email

12 Nov

I received a telemarketing call today.  When will telemarketers ever learn?  I first get the silence as their auto-dialing software realizes I picked up the line so it transfers me to a call center rep.  Then he mispronounces my last name and company name.  That’s 3 strikes right there.  But I’m usually interested in the pitches of others, especially cold callers, so I told him to continue.  He was pitching mailing machines.  I told him we do everything electronically and weren’t interested.  So he looked at his script and asked, “Can I send you an email about our services?”  To his credit, he laughed with me after realizing how absurd his question was.  If they don’t use their own service how can they expect their customers to?

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More than just Rock Stars need publicists on the Web

29 Oct

Ever want to be so famous that you need a publicist to ensure your name is in the papers and TV? Ever wish you had a publicist to help keep your name out of the press?

Forget George Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother watching you, it’s “little brother” on the web watching you. If your goal is to be found on the web then you need to manage your reputation carefully. It’s so hard to build a good reputation online but unfortunately its very easy to get a bad reputation.

As Maxine Winer, who leads the Reputation Management practice at PR agency Edelman, reminded me, “…one of the top 10 rules of blogging is to always get permission to use someone else’s material…. in the blogosphere, transparency reigns supreme and people are judged (often harshly) based on their authenticity or lack thereof.”

Many of the sales author bloggers I’ve been reading have turned in another sales author/speaker because they’ve found their content published on his website under his name. I first saw Dave Stein mention it in his blog. Then Geoffrey James of Selling Power posted on his blog. Next I saw Jill Konrath’s blog saying that this same author was plagiarizing her content.

When you read the trail of blog postings and comment, what do you think? Maxine and I think this is plagiarism, pure and simple. Maxine told me, “It’s bad behavior in any form–not to mention illegal if the material is copyrighted. In this case, it’s just plain foolish (or perhaps arrogant) to publish on his blog and represent as his own work that was written by others. And word spreads like wildfire online. Repairing a tarnished reputation isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible either.”

After reading these sales author blog postings and talking to Maxine, I suggest:

  • Don’t plagiarize. Duh! It’s unethical and way way too easy to get caught
  • Keep tabs on your own content. Use a service like Google Alerts to search the web for your published content being used without your permission

So what should this sales author do about the plagiarism charges? I asked that question of Maxine and her response was that what he needs to do is admit what he did, acknowledge that it was wrong, apologize (both to those whose material he used and to his readers) and promise to never again use other people’s work without their permission. What do YOU think?

PS - Thank you to The Pandemic Blog for the picuture, where I found another post by an author complaining of plagiarizing.

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The Incompetence Tax

27 Oct

At a company I worked for, we (the sales reps) called bringing in the CxO level people to our accounts the “Incompetence Tax.”  It was a small technology company and we sold to the Fortune 1000.  Yet the CEO, CFO, CTO and Chief Legal Officer invariably thought that these big companies would bend over backwards to buy our stuff.  The rep would have the deal almost closed when Legal would insist on red-lining the customer’s contract with so many changes that the resulting contract looked like ours.  Or the CEO would talk down to a young Managing Director who controlled a bigger budget than our annual sales.  Or the CTO would tell the customer that their existing architecture was “…not well thought out.”  Or the CFO would insist on “value-based” pricing when our competitors’ products were marginally inferior to ours but priced 2-5 times less.  The sales reps learned to put deals thru our partners so that the deal was on someone else’s paper with someone else’s pricing.  Of course, we then got less money on the deal but it was better than losing the deal all together.  Thus, the Incompetence Tax!

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Get in the Door – Be Assumptive not Consultative

16 Oct

I attended the “Winning Big Company Clients” event in NYC earlier this week.  The event was hosted by Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0 with a panel discussion led by Jill Konrath, author of “Selling to Big Companies” and Razi Imam, CEO of Landslide Technologies.

Jill’s discussion was very interesting.  While she admitted that much of what she wanted to talk about was in her book, it was beneficial to get the synopsis.

Her main point is that the corporate decision makers use the delete key first.  When listening to your voice mail, their finger is on the *3 or whatever key combination they use to delete your voice mail and email.  Their preference is to delete, not listen.  So if you are not relevant, your message is deleted immediately.

That means that you don’t have 30 or even 10 seconds to get your point across.  You have 5 seconds to be relevant.  Her studies have shown that corporate decision makers also believe that it’s your responsibility as the sales rep to call them back.  Jill says that you’re their conscience.

Being relevant means you can’t be consultative.  No more, “Hi, this is Jill and I’d like to understand more about your business issues so that we can find a solution for you.”  Corporate decision makers don’t have the time or desire to educate you.  Jill says that you must be assumptive in your belief that they have a pressing problem and that you can solve it.

Jill says that the corporate decision makers will review 3 things in their head as their finger is poised over the delete key.

  • Are you relevant?
  • Is this an urgent problem?
  • Are you credible, ie are you the one to solve this problem?

I found what she said very timely and very interesting.  Thanks, Jill for your insight.  And thanks to Nigel for hosting!

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NYC Event – "Winning Big Company Clients"

3 Oct

Jill Konrath, author of “Selling to Big Companies” and Razi Imam, CEO of Landslide Technologies are discussing new Sales 2.0 technologies for helping salespeople win big corporate accounts. The event is being moderated by Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0.

I will be there as a guest of Nigel.  Will you join us there?

DATE:
Tuesday, October 14, 2008

LOCATION:
The Penn Club
30 West 44th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues)
New York, NY 10036

AGENDA:
6.00PM – 6:45PM Networking and Hors d’oeuvres
6:45PM – 7:45PM Presentation and Interactive Discussion
7:45PM – 8:00PM Wrap-up & Networking

Register here for this event. I look forward to meeting you there.

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Is the customer always right when they're wrong?

25 Sep

Many companies have the mantra that the customer is always right. I personally don’t subscribe to that sentiment although I do believe the customer should always be treated as if they are right. But what about prospects, ie future customers?

I had a one-on-one web presentation scheduled with a prospect. I spoke to them on the phone where we confirmed the date, time and agenda. Then they accepted my Outlook meeting request.

And then never showed up! Never cancelled either, just did not show up. Is that rude? Acceptable behavior? Common but unfortunate behavior?

My admin gets the prospect on the phone and reschedules the call. Again, the prospect accepts the meeting request. Want to guess what happened next? NO SHOW! No excuse, no phone call, no flowers, nada.

Well, they’re not a prospect any longer. But what would you do next?

  • grab a drink and forget about them
  • call and berate their boss for hiring inconsiderate jerks
  • call their boss and continue selling

What would you do?

PS - thanks to techsupporthell for the picture

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Cup of Joe and Great Monday Postings

22 Sep

Wow, some of my favorite bloggers all wrote great articles over the weekend and posted them this morning for me to read over my afternoon coffee.

Brian Carroll wrote about top performers building relationships with the right people BEFORE they’re ready to buy. These top performers become trusted advisors.

Paul McCord wrote about why decision makers hate cold calls. He looks at answering a cold call from their point of view. And it’s not pretty.

Geoffrey James says that if you must cold call, try these 7 ways to make it easier. Maybe you can have some of your colleagues cold call your boss to get them to understand how effective (or not) cold calling is.

EyesOnSales has a great post from Lee Salz on why expecting a purchasing decision to be rubber-stamped by the boss is a bad idea.

And for another way to look at cold calling fun, take a look at this video by the HubSpot guys.

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