MASTERING THE CONVERSATION

Selling is fundamentally about conversations.

Sometimes they happen in emails.  Sometimes on the phone.  Sometimes face-to-face.

But it all comes down to this:  what words are you using, and how are you using them?

When I was a lawyer (now fully recovered), words were everything.  Lawyers are careful about words because they affect outcomes.

Same thing with sales.

Your first ten to fifteen seconds on the phone with a prospect are important.  Get the words right.

Your email’s subject line matters.  The content matters.  Before you compose your email, follow the advice of my tax law professor:  “Think it through.”

Mastering conversations also requires good timing.  Reply immediately, or at the end of the day?  

Think about the best venue for your conversation.  Just because you received an email doesn’t mean it’s the best forum for your next communication.  Perhaps you should advance to a phone conversation, or an on-site meeting.  

Read carefully.  Emails can be misleading.  Without gestures, tone, and pitch, you may not understand what a prospect is truly thinking.   I’ve sometimes mistaken curt language for anger.  One of my maxims:  when in doubt, pick up the phone.

Lead qualification is all about words.  

Sales:        “Do you have budget for this?”  

Prospect:   “Absolutely!”

That’s an example of a poor initial qualifying question yielding a vague answer.  Choose your words differently, and you can do a better job of qualifying.

THE #1 PROBLEM WITH COLD CALLS

Reports of the death of the cold call are greatly exaggerated.

I received two of them lately.   But neither were very good.

After decades of books and seminars and in-house training, why are salespeople still so bad at making cold calls?

The key problem:  the salesperson doesn’t explain why they are calling.

Most cold calls I get begin under the ruse of a survey, such as, “I’m just wondering what CRM tool you are using,” as if I might leap at the chance to disclose this to a total stranger.

The call I received today also began with a question, something about whether I managed a certain type of team.

Please:  just start by telling me your name, your company, and what you do.  

Feel free to complete your first sentence with a question.  But don’t hide the fact that this is a sales call.  

“Hi I’m Dave calling from Appcelotron, we help companies share large files, I apologize for barging in on your day but I wondered if you might be interested in a better way to share large files?”

That pitch takes all of 12 seconds to deliver in a moderately-paced voice.

Feel free to take out the apology, or add some spice to the value proposition, but don’t leave out the most important part:  who you are and why you are calling.

IS THE SALE LOST, OR ARE THEY JUST BUSY?

Many times you’ve done a great job during your first call with a prospect.  You’ve identified a real need, and they’ve agreed on a date and time for a second call.  

Then the prospect fails to show up.

So an email goes out, and a follow up phone call, in hopes of rescheduling.  This was a buyer, not a tire kicker in need of brochures.  Sending them a whitepaper at this point is, well, pointless.

What do you do?

a) Persistent patience.  

   There are all kinds of reasons for a no-show.  Illness.  Vacation.  Week-long trainings.  Sudden change in priorities (your prospect is in a large company and has finally found a window to solve a nagging problem, but now his boss comes in and closes that window, reassigning him to a different task).

   Try reaching out at different times, using different methods.  Check with his colleagues, at the same level on the org chart; below that level; or if necessary, above.  And if that feels uncomfortable, enlist your manager as a wingman for this task.

    

   After several failed attempts, I’ve sometimes sent an email with this subject line:  Are We Done?  It regularly gets some kind of a reply.  

  The goal here is not to keep up appearances by sending this person relevant content every week.   You need to find out why the agreed next step is not happening, and whether this opportunity really exists, and what the real timeline is.  

b) Re-check your qualification

   Even though the prospect agreed to call #2, it could be that their actual timeline is far different than you thought.  Their disappearing act could be a version of “the check’s in the mail.”   Rather than rejecting you directly, they found it easier to talk at length and schedule a meeting they viewed as optional.  

  In some cultures, this is a way of “saving face.”   For example, in Japan, you may never hear “no”; you will simply hear a lot of “yes” that does not materialize.   

 When people don’t show up, you may have identified a serious need, but no real timeline, i.e,. the buyer has no commitment to do something about the need near-term.

Sometimes buyers will tell you this in the first call.  Just be sure you are listening!  Don’t let a screaming need cloud your other senses.

GET MEETING TWO DURING MEETING ONE

You’ve had a great first call with a prospect.  You asked about Need, Timeline and probably Budget and Buying Process.

   How should you end this call?

   a) Thank them profusely and promise to call them next week

   b) Send them the whitepaper they wanted, right after you hang up

   c) Invite them to join your LinkedIn network

   d) Schedule the next step

I hope you picked d).      

If you’ve determined they are a qualified buyer, the best next step is to get an agreement on the time and date for the next meeting.  Always leave sufficient time to do this at the end of your call.  

The best time to get someone to calendar something with you is right now, when you have them on the line.  Even if they need to invite colleagues whose calendars are unknown, pick a date and time as a placeholder.  

If they refuse to provide a date and time you are no worse off for asking, and you may have just gained some additional insight into their true needs and timeline.

VOLUME IS YOUR FRIEND

You will lose sales.

Get over it.

The best salespeople who ever lived lost sales.  Babe Ruth struck out, and so will you.

Stay focused on the volume and quality of your opportunities.  Or, in baseball parlance, quality at-bats.  

Feed the top of your pipeline, and qualify well.  Do those things, and you’ll have plenty of happy customers --- singles and home runs --- over time.   

P.S.  The same holds true for those of you responsible for named accounts.  You won’t have hundreds of those, but within each account, don’t get hung up on one individual.  Broaden the breadth and depth of your relationships within the account.      

I remember being focused on signing a key reseller in the legal industry.  There were only a handful of resellers in that vertical with the kind of installed customer base that could transform our sales velocity.   We simply had to sign them.  

The challenge was that their key decisionmaker seemed less than interested.  Even after I tracked him down at an event and introduced myself in person, he was very skeptical about partnering with us.

He agreed to give us a hearing, so we scheduled a phone conference that would be attended by at least a dozen of his consultants.  At the start of that meeting, he expressed his tentative decision:  no sale!

Fortunately, during the seven months prior to this conference, we’d slowly built up a base of fans among the consultants.   I’d met some in person.  Some had tried our product.  Many had asked their customers about us.

When the consultants around the room heard “no sale” they sprung into action, eagerly talking about how this was in fact the right product at the right time for their customer base.  Twenty minutes later, the principal had come around, and we had a new partner.    

Volume is your friend.

THE EFFECTIVE SALES EXECUTIVE

“The effective executives I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and their abilities, in what they do and how they do it, in their personalities, their knowledge, their interests --- in fact in almost everything that distinguishes human beings.  All they have in common is the ability to get the right things done. “

That’s Peter Drucker, back in 1966.  I didn’t read The Effective Executive until 2001, but when I did it changed my life.  

Much, if not all, of what Drucker writes applies to salespeople.  He outlines five habits that are required to be effective:

1.  Know where your time goes.

2.  Focus on results.

3.  Build on your strengths.

4.  Do first things first.

5.  Make good decisions.

A friend of mine once told me about a mantra she had received, which for me seemed to summarize Drucker perfectly:  “Focus, and Deliver.”

Some of Drucker’s gems:

“It is amazing how many things busy people are doing that never will be missed.”

“Meetings have to be the exception rather than the rule.”

”If I had a son or a daughter, would I be willing to have him or her work under this person?”

“The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.”

After reading the book, I began to ask myself, nearly every day:  what is the mission-critical inch of my business?   It was my way of running a daily Drucker diagnostic, to ensure that I was laser-focused on the most important thing I could contribute to my company that day.

I couldn’t possibly do justice to Drucker’s words, so I will simply say:  read the book.  And if that’s not enough, I’ll leave you with this:

“The [executive] who focuses on efforts and who stresses his downward authority is a subordinate no matter how exalted his title and rank.  But the [executive] who focuses on contribution and who takes responsibility for results, no matter how junior, is in the most literal sense of the phrase, “top management.”

HOW TO IDENTIFY BUYERS

It’s not an easy thing, parsing interest from need.  

If we can accurately parse, i.e., qualify, then we can spend more time with people who are ready to buy.   And allocating our time wisely is how salespeople make quota.   

Here’s a good self-diagnostic:  how many sales are you losing to the competition?  If the deals you lose are due to competition, congratulations!  you’ve been spending time with buyers.  

So how do you know if someone is just kicking the tires, or whether you are just in a really long sales cycle?

A buyer does these kinds of things:  

- identifies a real, meaningful, material pain or goal;

- indicates that, to some degree, time is of the essence;

- involves you with more than one person at their company;

- takes a test drive;

- reveals their full shopping list (perhaps an RFP); and/or

- has tried or at least fully investigated other solutions.

The first one is the most important.  An initial qualifying question to ask is, “how did you become interested in us?”  

If they just read an article about you in TechCrunch that’s nice, but it says nothing about whether they have the kind of toothache, or ambition, to buy anything from you.

Window shoppers look more like this:

- their primary (or sole) inquiry is regarding price;

- there is no driver for their inquiry:  no pain, no incident, no project, no RFP, nada;

- they demand information immediately, i.e., they are facing a deadline for filing a report, not in the process of making an informed purchase;

- only one person seems involved in the sale (most companies don’t buy in a vacuum); and/or

- they have not looked at any competitive solutions.

Making quota is not about forcing as many square pegs as you can into round holes.  It’s about qualifying prospects, and allocating more time to those who intend to buy.

SALES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

In Sales, who you know is much less important than it was ten years ago.  You no longer need a "rolodex" to reach prospective buyers.  Today, we're all reachable and knowable, through blogs, tweets, and profile pages (thank you LinkedIn).  A question that used to give salespeople a headache --- "Who is their IT Director, and how can I reach him?” --- is no longer a migraine.    

What you know is also less important.  Salespeople no longer own all the available information about their products/services.  Buyers don’t require brochures or on-site visits to get the ball rolling. Today, the buyer may know 75% of what you know by reading your website, whitepapers, third party reviews, and blogs.  And they may know quite a bit more than you, because a buyer can often get better access to competitive product data, including pricing.    

We are becoming a world in which all people are reachable and all data is available.  In that world, how can salespeople continue to add value?  

Here are a couple of answers.  

Salesperson as Catalyst  

The modern salesperson's task IMHO is not so much to "get in the door" as to get on the buyer’s To-Do list.    Regardless of their access to data, buyers still wrestle with priorities and decisions.    Salespeople need to understand that To-Do list, and try to find ways to help buyers overcome inertia (or to find reasons to  re-rank their top three initiatives).  

An example:  I have a long list of products and services that I am currently thinking about buying related to my home.  I will take action on very few.  But a polite, persistent stream of intelligent contact from a salesperson might get me off the dime on one of them, or at least get me to make a decision sooner.  

Salesperson as Advisor  

Buyers have more information, but can probably still benefit from advice on how to make sense of all that data.  Separating the wheat from the chaff is still a considerable task. This means that salespeople today need to deeply understand the competitive products, and to act as advisors and domain experts, as opposed to simply being an evangelist for their own offerings.   

5 WAYS TO GET PEOPLE ON THE PHONE

A big part of sales is making contact with prospective buyers, or with others needed to push the ball forward.  In most opportunities, there’s going to be at least one phone conversation before the PO arrives or the credit card is swiped.

So how do you figure out when someone is available to talk?   So much of a salesperson’s time is spent just trying to gauge availability.  

Here are five ways to increase the odds that you’ll actually reach your prospect by phone:   

1) Find out their schedule.  You can ask in your first email exchange:  “what is the best time to reach you?”  Or try something like this:  “is the best time to reach you early morning, or late in your day?

2) Use your CRM tool.  When you (timely) log your call attempts in a tool like Salesforce, it will record the time of your call.  Maybe your prospect is never there because you keep calling them at the same (bad) time.     

3) Try odd hours.  If you read enough Dilbert, you know that most corporate employees are in meetings most of the day, particularly between 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm.    

4) Mobile phones.  Many people use their office phone as a voicemail box, and won’t ever pick it up.  But when their mobile rings, they’ll at least give it a glance.  You can also send a text message asking about their availability for a conversation.  

5) Travel.  One of my reseller partners regularly told me when he’d be on the road, because it was easier for him to talk then (hands-free, of course).   An IT Director at a large cosmetics company asked me to call after 5pm, when he’d be commuting home. People will also have downtime while at airports.

A HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOR

Secretariat was a different horse.  He was red.  His early groom and trainer said he was clumsy and awkward.    

Watch him run the Belmont and be inspired.  He was doing what he loved.

Three Tips For Handling Discounts

At a Bosworth sales training in 2003, I was tasked with closing a deal without being able to provide a discount.  

I found this to be unrealistic.  A “no discounts” policy might work for a large, mature company with a unique product.  Or a company with such thin margins that any discount would materially affect the bottom line.  

But with many software or technology products, especially early-stage, margins are quite high, there are many competitors, and companies are fighting for market share, not for profitability.  There are also verticals (education, nonprofit) that are accustomed to discounts.  And some buyers are judged on their ability to reduce the price (particularly in certain markets outside the USA).

Here are three suggestions:  

1) Don’t Begin With A Discount.  Quote your price, proudly.  Explain why your solution is worth every penny.  Don’t lead with this:  “It’s $50/month but we can give you a discount.”

2) Reschedule The Discount Discussion:  When you are asked for a discount, take your time.  If you are early in the sales cycle, an appropriate response is something like, “I’d be willing to consider it after you’ve decided to select X as your solution.”   This is also a way to qualify the truly interested from the window shoppers.

3) Get Something In Return:  Never provide a discount of any kind without getting something in exchange.  Ask for their participation in a case study; a testimonial for use on your website; a statement in a press release; a referral to three colleagues; a multi-year commitment; or anything that would have value to your company.

Social Selling

I thought about buying LinkedIn stock when it went public, but not just because it’s a great recruiting tool.  

For me, LinkedIn was a great sales tool.  I found that I could use it to locate prospects, and research prospects in preparation for phone conferences.   I preached the use of LinkedIn to every salesperson I encountered.  

A recent Forbes article indicates others agree.  It refers to a report claiming that salespeople who use social media close more deals.

The article refers to the use of LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and blogs.  Each has its own dynamics, and possible pitfalls.  Like any tool, to quote EC, “it’s in the way that you use it.”

I will post regularly here about how I’ve used LinkedIn to greatly improve the quality of sales prospecting and sales conversations.  The key is to upgrade from the basic free account to one of the paid premium accounts.  

The paid accounts allow you to cold email (“Inmail”) any Linkedin user who is open to accepting Inmails.  The paid plans also show more profiles in your search results, and provide full profiles of more LinkedIn users.   The account fees are a nominal investment for access to valuable business data.   

For more on the use of Inmails, and finding the very-hard-to-find using LinkedIn, stay tuned....

Memorial Day

General John A. Logan designated May 30, 1868 as ”a day for strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, or hamlet churchyard in the land…It is the purpose of the commander-in-chief to inaugurate this observance with the hope that it will be kept from year to year while a survivor of the war remains to honor the memory of the departed.”

John Logan was beginning his second term as a Congressman from southern Illinois when the Civil War broke out.  He volunteered, and rose from colonel to major general.  He fought in eight major campaigns,and commanded the Union forces at the Battle of Atlanta.  He saved Raleigh, North Carolina from being burned by angry Union troops.

After the war, Logan returned to Congress.  In the 1870s he was twice elected to the U.S. Senate.  In 1884, he ran as Vice President with James G. Blaine.  

John A. Logan died at the age of 50 on December 26, 1886, in Washington D.C., where he lies buried in Soldier Cemetery.

Things Salespeople Say, Volume One

“Our product is really badass.”   

Hmmm.  Probably makes sense among college buddies.  But to a Fortune 1000 CIO?  Not so much.

“You’re going to love it.”   

Positive, optimistic statements are generally good.  This one is vague.  Stick to specific benefits.

“Gartner says we’re a Leader in their Magic Quadrant.”   

This is actually important to some prospective customers.  If I walk into a BMW dealership and the salesperson tells me Consumer Reports rated the 325i among the ten most reliable, that’s a fact that can positively influence me.   

Unless, of course, I’m really interested in the BMW because it looks great.  In that case, well, I kinda wish he’d told me  “This car is badass.”

So, first thing, seek to understand.  Then speak.  

The Three Things Sales Managers Should Do

I once read, and never forgot, that a manager only has to do three things for salespeople:  

Empower me.  Direct me.  Care about me.  

Let’s take them one at a time.

1) Empower me  

Give people the space and authority to do the job.  Managers should ask themselves:  am I letting the salesperson do the work?  Or am I stepping into his/her deals regularly, because if I don’t I’m afraid they will go south?

This can be more art than science.  And managers are ultimately responsible for the fate of a company’s sales opportunities.  But if you aren’t giving them a chance to fail, you aren’t giving them a chance.

(salespeople also need to ask prospective employers:  how much autonomy will I have, i.e. will you be calling all the pitches from the dugout?)

2) Direct me

Tell salespeople what you want.  Communicate your expectations.  This can be as simple as setting a quota, but if that’s all you ask for, that’s all you should get.  

If your direction is “just win baby,” you have no right to expect, for example, ethical play; teamwork; or any number of other possible deliverables.  

3) Care

Show your people that you care about them.  Don’t just say so (praise).  Do so.  Let me count the ways:  return emails promptly; take them to lunch; or just ask them how their weekend was.  

There’s no greater motivator than letting people know that you care about them.   Even the most financially rewarded, highest achievers want to feel valued.