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.