Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

Unsuccessful Webinars & Demonstrations: when you lose, get a win!

If you do online demonstrations and webinars, you know very well that in spite of your great product offering, superior questioning skills, and good delivery, you sometimes come away with a promise for future business, or a flat “no.” In other words, no order. You can still get a “win” out of it, though. 

To preface the rest of this post, ensure that you’ve read my whitepaper on conducting a successful sales webinar, so that you haven’t left any bases uncovered when you did your due diligence and made your presentation. It’s free, and I’ve gotten some very good responses on how it’s helped sales reps to get closer to making a sale. 

Today, I’d like you to consider taking one more step after you’ve finished your unsuccessful demo or webinar, a technique that comes right out of my inside sales training courses. Your contact, in most cases, appreciates the time you’ve taken, and knows that because he or she hasn’t given you the business, it’s a loss for you. That’s a great time to invite him or her to be a LinkedIn contact for you. A great way to approach this is to say “John, I’ve had a great time showing you what we can do for you, and even if we can’t move forward today, I’m going to invite you on LinkedIn so we can stay in touch.” 

As soon as you’ve gotten off the phone, send the invitation. Don’t wait a day, do it now, and the prospect will probably LinkIn to you. Now you have an additional contact that likes you, appreciated your professionalism, and knows your company. And thus, when you check your new prospects’ LinkedIn profiles before calling them (you do that, right?) you’ll be able to warm up your cold calls by referencing people you both know. Within a relatively short amount of time, you should have a pretty good network of prospect contacts. In a given vertical, the world is very small. These people attend the same conferences, and know each other professionally, and sometimes socially, too. 

Here’s a caveat: be sure you know why your webinar or demo prospect didn’t buy. It could be money, timing, changed requirements, anything. But if the prospect didn’t buy because he or she thought your solution offering was decidedly sub-par, he or she is probably not going to want to LinkIn to you. So again, take my approach when your prospect loved you and your solution, but decided not to buy for unrelated reasons. 

Some of you may be thinking “why don’t I just ask for a reference to someone at another company that might need my product, instead?”  Good question, I’m glad you asked. Many people are reticent to give out names, that’s why, and if you get a “no, I don’t feel comfortable giving you other names” that’s two losses. Asking for other references is always easier after the prospect becomes your customer. On the other hand, using a LinkedIn invitation is easy, especially immediately after you’ve taken the time to work with the prospect. 

So go ahead and get yourself a “win,” even when you walk away without an order. And add this technique to your Best Practices Playbook.

How to Prepare for a Sales Job Interview – Not exactly like a date, but close!

Today's post wasn't written by me. It was written by an individual that has just landed herself an outstanding six-figure inside sales job. I know her, because she took one of my inside sales training courses. More than one company was bidding for her, so she was able to choose from among several. How was she able to accomplish this? She gave outstanding employment interviews, and I know, because I got feedback from more than one company. She "wowed" everyone, so I asked her what the heck she did to gain all this traction. She told me, and I asked her to put it in writing for the blog. She wants to remain anonymous, but we'll call her Allison for the record. What she says below should be adopted by everyone looking for an inside sales or qualification job, and most of it actually applies to just about any job. It's 4 pages long, but trust me, it's worth it.

Here's what Allison says:

How to Prepare for a Sales Job Interview – Not exactly like a date, but close!

When you get asked out for a date, wouldn’t you want to know who you’re dating, what the person is like and how much fun you think you’ll have?  With the internet as your tool, you can easily find the answers to these questions on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Podcasts and Google searches.  It is no different for a job interview.  You can use these sites to mine company and personnel information.  Knowing the answers to these questions about a company and the people you will be interviewing with will have you prepared and possibly  close the interview as well.  Do your homework!

When I receive that wonderful call about scheduling an interview, there are several steps I take to prepare.  Most importantly, I treat my interview from my first point of contact to the last as a sales call which has a beginning, middle and end structure to it.  I also set my intention of getting the close (the job) by being prepared with the knowledge of “who, what and how” (homework).

In the Beginning - Before the Interview

Before I find the office on MapQuest and park my car to get to the interview on time, I need to know “who am I talking to?”  The company’s website has loads of information to answer this question.  Most company websites have an “about us” tab.  This information will tell you what the company does and usually has a marketing tag line in the likes of answering “…we create an efficient way to save money and time with our software product…”  It’s a compelling, succinct and simple message that the company wants its potential customers to understand and is known as “branding.”  Knowing a company’s branding message is very important in understanding the product and what problems it can solve for their client.  If you get the job, you will need to know this to meet your quota.

In addition to knowing a company’s branding message, it’s important to know about the company in its competitive market.  Who are their competitors?  What is the differentiation of their product in comparison? It’s good to know whether the company has recently been acquired, are currently active in acquiring other companies, its financial strength and whether it is a national or global company. I use Hoovers.com to get a brief overview of the company.  You don’t need to pay for their in-depth service.  If the company is a publicly traded company, information about the company is readily available.  You can also search for a company in LinkedIn.com for the same purpose.

Another component to “who am I talking to?”  Are the Executive Team (E.T.) and most importantly, whom you will be interviewing with.  Again, the company website will have a tab to view the E.T. with their previous job experiences, which will tell you if you have any connections to their past companies.  Most of the time, the people you will interview with, although important enough to hire you,  will not be on the website under the E.T. and you will have to dig further.  It is why it is critical to know the correct spelling of the names of the people and their job titles of whom you will be meeting so that you can review their profiles on LinkedIn.com.  I use LinkedIn.com to get a sense of the person/people I will be talking to in an effort to create a connection in the interview.  If you find an interesting tidbit about the person, he/she will recognize that you searched their profile in LinkedIn.  This information alone, can give you a lead in building rapport during the interview (more on that later).  In addition, you should have your own LinkedIn profile as it is now the business standard.

What does the company do?  Read the “Press Releases.”  Press Releases are a company’s pitch of putting their best foot forward.  Select one or two that peak your interest.  It will give you something you can talk about during the interview.  Knowing whether the company has received recent venture capital support, current business partnerships, won industry awards, or launched a new product or version.  This information will ignite your enthusiasm and ability to articulate that you did your homework about the company.  This will also tell you if you like the company, where it’s going and answer if you want to work for them.

How does the product solve a client’s problem?  Read a “Success Story.”  You’ll need to know this to meet your sales quota.  Does this solve a problem for one person, SMB (small/medium businesses), Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 or other?  Does this solve a problem on a national or global scale?  You’ll need to know this if you have a geographic territory and whether or not you have the experience to call a variety of markets.  This will also tell you about the vertical markets the company is attempting to reach.

Review the job description.  This will tell you how the company believes the client’s problems will be solved.  The job description will tell you what you will be responsible for and what type of work experience they are looking for.  You will need this information to build your compelling stories of WHY you are the right person for the job.

In the Middle - During the Interview

In real estate, the mantra is “location, location, location.”  Location is all that matters.  The best locations are usually where the best deals are to be had.  In sales, whether it is doing your job or going on an interview for a job, my mantra is “connect, connect, connect.”  In sales, if you cannot quickly connect with the prospect be it a warm or cold lead, you won’t have a close.  People buy from people.  In the case of job interviews, the interviewers are the “buyers.”  You are the “seller,” selling the goods i.e. YOU. 

You must have compelling stories to tell aside from your resume about how you are the perfect person to fill their needs in the job opportunity available.  Understand that your resume gets you to the interview or in some cases; helps recruiters get you in the door.  Your connection of stories between what you (the seller) can do for them (the buyer) is what is critical to a successful interview.

Actively listen.  There is a saying in sales, that “the first person to speak loses the sale.” When you are actively listening, you are taking mental notes on how to respond to the interviewer’s interest in you and how you can help the company with your skill set.  You will spend a good amount of time listening to the interviewers talk about the company, where it’s going and what they would like to accomplish with filling in this job.  This is a good time to ask each  interviewer’s job title and responsibilities so that you can understand the reporting relationship and what’s at stake for hiring you, a highly qualified sales person.

Build a rapport.  Remember, this interview is a two-way street.  Build a rapport with each person interviewing you.  You need to create dialog to show interest and ability to articulate that you can do the job.   Asking questions is the best way to create conversation.  Sometimes you will meet on a one-to-one basis and other times the interview is a group interview.  The sole purpose for you in an interview is to build a relationship (connect, connect, connect) to create a dialog (compelling stories) about how you can solve their need to increase sales.  It’s up to you to create an on-going articulate conversation.

Some questions to ask:

What is the most challenging objection to purchasing this product?  How do you overcome the objection?  What do you like about the company? Where do you see yourself and the company in 5 years?  Who are your competitors?  How do you differentiate your product? 

You’ll need to know this if you get the job.  Why not know what’s in store for selling the product? Know the hurdles the company is against in improving sales growth.

Know your numbers.  In sales, it’s a numbers game.  All sales people know their numbers: quotas, KPI’s (e.g. 40-60 calls a day) and percent of outcomes of prospects to close.  You should be able to quote from memory what you have accomplished in numbers.  

Top Skills.  Have a list of your Top 20 Skills (I got this great recommendation from a VP of Sales) and another list of five specific skills in detail related to the job to have for yourself in the interview to remember and discuss while in conversation.  You can craft a generic list of your own or use the job description for listing necessary skills.  At the end of the interview hand this copy to your interviewer.  Handing this list to the interviewer shows that you have confidence in yourself and helps the interviewer position you in the company’s organizational chart.  The fact that you crafted a list and gave it to the interviewer will leave a lasting impression. 

Be positive.  Nobody wants to work with a stick in the mud.  How would you feel if your date was negative and complained about past relationships?  What would you think if you had to listen to boring stories?  Wouldn’t that tell you that this date isn’t going to work?  All your worries about not having a job, needing money, the “what ifs” about not getting this job, etc, leave these at home before you drive in the car to the interview.  Be positive about your compelling stories, your abilities, your past work experience, people that you have worked with and other hobbies you might have.

Be passionate.  Have a passion that has nothing to do with work.  I’m a baseball fan and I am passionate about the game, the score and the players.  For others, cooking, art, sailing, collecting and traveling are other passions.  Wouldn’t you rather work with someone who has a passion than not?

The end - The Close of the Interview

When you sense that the interview is coming to a close, you can ask:

What is your time frame for hiring? In your opinion, how do I (you) rate against the other candidates at this time? What are the next steps? 

Be thankful.  Make sure you get a business card of those you meet.  It will give you their email addresses.   Thank all the interviewers with a strong handshake and nice smile.  Write an email within 24 hours to thank them for their time.  Understand that you both spent time out of your day to meet while other things were boiling on the stove.  As long as you can show respect for them it shows that you have respect for yourself as well.  Look at this as a possible beginning rather than a means to an end.  Your paths might cross again.

Reply and Stay Active.  Once you have sent your thank you email, return any emails and calls from them as promptly as you would any sales call.  Your response shows how you are an active sales person by treating the interviewer as a prospect.

In summary

Preparing for a Sales Job Interview is not exactly like a date, but close in knowing the “who, what and how” elements it takes to understand why you are there in the first place.  It has been my experience that no interviewer wants to see a candidate fail.  For some interviewers, it’s just as uncomfortable for them to interview you as it is for you to be interviewed.   As long as you know that you have done your best in doing your homework and creating a connection, it is the most you can ask of yourself.
- Warm regards, and Play Ball!

Geoff here again: I can't add anything, except take Allison's great advice whenever you're applying for an inside sales or qualification job, and add it to your Best Practices Playbook.

A brutal sales territory: as challenging as yours is, this one’s probably worse

Today I'm flying over the Kamchatka Peninsula. It's completely covered in snow, with huge Mt. Fuji-shaped volcanic peaks thrusting out of the landscape. Relatively few extol the beauty of Kamchatka because it's not exactly a tourist destination, remote and uncompromising. It looks cold down there, and it reminds me that no matter how bad a grim sales day can be, there are many jobs that are worse than sales. Just ask those miners working 30,000 feet below me.

But then again there are a few really bad sales jobs, too. The story I'm going to tell you is one I sometimes tell in my telesales training classes, to illustrate how good the people I'm training really have it. They say every bad sales territory is salvageable. I'm not sure about this one. You tell me:

My dad's great with people, a natural story teller, and a real nice guy. Despite the fact that he had no college, he was hired as a sales rep for a significant building supplies company. He soon blew out the numbers in his territory, and the president rewarded him by giving him the largest territory in the company, one that had been underperforming for years. With the same success he'd achieved in the smaller territory, he was bound to be successful, right?

That territory was indeed huge, running from Monterey to Santa Barbara, at a time when California's Central Coast was on an unbelievable building boom. Highway 101 was, at that time, 2 lanes wide, one running in each direction. Dad was in the right place at the right time. But guess what? Nobody bought anything. Nobody wanted to talk to him either. He sometimes visited 6 hardware stores per day. No sales. Then he discovered the reason. Before my dad's sales predecessor in the territory had been fired, he'd been stealing significant amounts of supplies from the company warehouse, loading them into his car, taking to the road, then undercutting all competitors by selling his goods for pennies on the dollar. Not only could my honest dad not match the prices, but the buyers knew they'd been receiving stolen goods, so they didn't even want to see him walk in the door. His territory was, in the old military parlance, FUBAR (look it up, families read this blog). He gave it 3 more months, but finally quit the sales business entirely and went into the food business, which he felt was a lot cleaner. Dad was never told, going into the territory, that his customers had been sold stolen goods at barebottom prices, and once the previous rep had been fired, they were probably afraid of crime investigations as well. He had to find out on his own after his "promotion."

So what can we learn and take away from this crazy story of a territory gone bad?

When we're having a bad day, it's sometimes really motivating to get a sense of good things really are. Sure your CRM is slow. Sure marketing could get you more leads. And yes, you may feel your KPIs are unfair. That's when you want to brace up and get back to work, knowing that as bad as things seem, they're probably not bad to the magnitude that my dad's situation was. You're also not a miner in Kamchatka. We all have different ways of motivating ourselves, but reflecting for a moment on people that have things worse than we do is a damn good motivator if you're searching for one. Whatever your situation, you'll have an occasional bad day. So use that bad day to find new ways of thinking out of the box to find new opportunities, make more effective presentations, and do a better job of doing your own marketing to get you some better leads. Creativity is born out of frustration, so use those occasional frustrating days as springboards to thinking of new ways to make your territory more successful. The best salespeople always do.

A toast to a past job

Every time I teach one of my insides sales courses, one of the first things I do is ask what the folks in the room did prior to becoming inside sales people. Not only does this help me to know them better, but when we get to the part of the course where we talk about the importance of knowing the prospect's business, I can link it back to some expertise in business areas that the reps, in many cases, had forgotten they had. We're all experts in something related to business, and the kinds of questions I ask the reps, they can in turn ask to their prospects. Asking great business questions is often as simple as simply being interested.

A few of my past jobs generally surface as part of the class, too. I thought about one of them this week, because I read Brother Korte's obituary in the newspaper. I worked for Brother Korte at the Novitiate Winery in Los Gatos, CA one summer. He was a marketing genius that took the Jesuit's altar wine business, evolved it to the next step, and began winning awards at wine festivals. Brother Korte made ads for the winery's Ruby Cabernet, showing him in his priest's garb with the tag line "a devilishly good wine."

This was the early 1980s. I had just cooked up a deal with the military where I would be inducted as an officer to run a radio station in Europe (I'd done a lot of radio, and it was a good fit). But this was June, and induction would take place in August, so I'd need a summer job. I wanted a manual labor job to beef up before boot camp, so signed on at the Novitiate to work on the bottling line, which consisted of dumping empty bottles on the conveyor belt on one end, then sealing full boxes of wine and stacking a pallet with them on the other. At the end of each shift, every worker got a bottle of what was bottled that day. It was idyllic. The winery was in an old building in the mountains, and my co-workers and the priests for whom we worked were terrific. We had lunch at a picnic table overlooking all of Santa Clara Valley. A few years later, the Novitiate went out of the wine business, so it's all history now.

So I took an afternoon off last week to pay my respects to Brother Korte. None of the people I remembered from my days on the bottling line were at the memorial, so I drove up the mountain for the first time since the 80s, to visit what was left of the winery. A new concern has taken over, but the tasting room host walked me back to where I'd worked. Fresh bottles were coming off the new bottling line, but the old tanks were still there, still being used, and the place smelled wonderful, just like it had when I'd worked there.

As a young man working on a bottling line, I couldn't have guessed that a couple of decades later, I'd have achieved a lot of success in the business of inside sales. Inside sales is a career to which no one aspires in high school. We end up there by accident. For many, it's a way stop, then all of a sudden, it becomes fun, we make a good amount of money, and we realize we didn't find a career, it found us.

Although it was only a summer job, it stuck with me, and most months, I still think of it once or twice, because I do think that it contributed in its own way to what I was able to accomplish in inside sales, in terms of the value of doing one's job as perfectly as possible. And whenever I made an inside sales call to a company in the wine business, I mentioned my time on the bottling line, and it really broke the ice. Most wine execs have worked on the bottling line at one time too, as it turned out.

I'll bet you have one or two of those jobs in your past, too. When you're making a high level call to an exec in a field in which you've worked, mentioning it will turn a cold call into a warm one, I assure you. As I said before, engaging in business discussions with your prospects is critically important, particularly in enterprise sales where ROI is invariably a big part of the decision and sign-off process. It's as simple as simply being interested.

World’s most challenging telesales environment? Bet you can’t top this!

Part of what makes delivering inside sales training courses interesting is discussing the tough challenges with which each team is faced. Sometimes the working environment itself is an issue, but if you think your working conditions are challenging, you'll love today's post.

Last week I visited a client in Bangkok, and his office is near the corner of Rama IV and Silom roads. If you've been reading or seeing the world press reports, you've heard about the huge protests and Thai military deployment. This is all happening outside my client's door. On Thursday, three M79 grenades were launched from an adjacent area. All of them exploded, one of them no more than 100 feet from my client's front door. Those are tough working conditions!

My client's building has been shuttered, the Sala Daeng skytrain station which most of my client's employees access when coming to work has been damaged by a grenade and is now occupied by government troops. Public transportation to and from that station does not currently exist. Telesales people are working from their homes using a duplicate CRM, but now there's a concern that because the building's power was shut off during these 95 degree-plus days, internal IT systems may not be found to be operable when the power returns.

So my client gets my vote for having the most challenging telesales working environment I've seen this year. Would you agree? People from many countries read my telesales tips blog, so if any of you have an unusually challenging inside sales working environment story, write back and tell us about it!

Commission paid once per year? That’s a new one on me!

In my telesales training classes, reps tend to crab a bit sometimes about company policies. Often, these are about how Marketing could do a better job getting them leads, or how cumbersome the CRM is to use. I tell them that I've yet to see a company whose sales reps didn't have the same concerns, and these generally are the result of a red hot company growing real fast, fast enough to easily outgrow systems that would have been adequate if the company were not growing at all. In other words, hot companies have growth challenges, while failing companies don't. My recommendations are to do a better job with the leads you have, and leave the CRM headaches to someone else (I remember the days of keeping prospect info on 3x5 cards, so any CRM is a joy, compared with that). And, as just about all of us in high tech telesales know, change is constant, and embracing change is a big part of what makes superior reps superior.

Last year, several pay practices that drew complaints did cause me to raise an eyebrow, although these came from companies outside my customer base. One concern was the practice of paying reps commissions quarterly instead of monthly, and I blogged about this, because it has the opposite effect of motivating sales people to close sales fast, which is one reason I'd like companies adhering to this practice to rethink it.

Recently a blog subscriber of mine encountered a new one that I hadn't yet heard of, and it's being offered to Managers who are interviewing for sales management jobs. If you're a rep, it's worth reading this as well, because payment packages do have a way of eventually filtering down to the rep level. This individual was offered a decent yearly base, but would have to wait a year to collect the accrued commission. The benefit to the individual would be a huge commission check at the end of the year. What are some of the drawbacks? Here are the first few that come to mind:

1) If the individual leaves the company before a year elapses, he or she gets zero commission.
2) The individual can only leave the company within 30 days or so after haven received the commission check, in any subsequent year. Otherwise, again, any accrued commission will be forfeited.
3) And therefore, the individual sacrifices career mobility, unless he or she chooses to stay in that particular company, and somehow negotiates a pro rata commission if moving to another position within that company.

I can see what's in it for the company. People won't want to leave "prematurely." When people do leave, the company can just about predict the month he or she will be leaving. And overall, this practice locks in solid performers for years. Great for the company, but not so great for the individual.

One of the characteristics of the high tech world is that startups are always introducing fascinating new technologies, progressive companies are improving the ones they already have, and this environment of continual and rapid change tends to benefit everyone down to the consumer level. So when you're interviewing, do a thorough job of reading your offer letter, and don't be afraid to question elements of the employment contract that may have an impact on any potential career moves you may eventually want to make.

5 questions to ask before considering sales training as a solution to substandard performance

First in a 3 part series on sales training theory

In the 20 or so years we've been in the telesales training business, we've turned down a significant number of potential training situations. The main reason? We didn't think training was the solution for the client's problem, and we knew it just wouldn't work, because other things needed to be fixed first. Today's post is about saving you money if you're thinking of hiring any company to train your team, or doing it yourself with internal resources. Lack of superior performance can be a training issue, but not always. So before you consider sales training as a solution to poor performance, ask yourself the following questions to determine if you've correctly analyzed your sales situation:

1) Product. Do you have a significant underperforming product issue? If so, it's probably all over the web, and prospects love to talk. This "bad rap" will stop calls from being taken by prospects, and voicemails and emails being ineffective. Possible solutions: fix the product or consider dropping it from your product mix.

2) Compensation. Are your reps being compensated for the wrong behavior? For example, dual commission structures, in which reps are paid better on some products than others will virtually guarantee less activity on lesser compensated solutions. A common case is when inside salespeople are paid less for turning over a lead to the field than when selling it themselves, which will result in fewer leads going to the field. Another situation commonly found is when business development teams are being comped for the number of raw leads being sent to the field, qualified or not! For salespeople, compensation drives behavior, so consider changing your comp plan if they're being paid for behaviors not conducive to your company's profit picture.

3) Business processes. Is your inside team burdened with unnecessary paperwork or non telesales-related duties? If so, this could be affecting their efficiency. We see this mostly in non-centralized sales environments where individual sales reps report to Regional managers and work away from headquarters.  Sometimes these reps are charged with generating proposals for the entire regional team, which is one issue we commonly find that takes telephone time away from inside sales reps. Solutions to this vary depending on the company and situation. If you think this may be the case, consider asking each of your reps to log their duties for one week, then compile your answers to see if there's a common thread.

4) Intra-company conflict. Is your team getting "mixed messages?" Calling high is a prime example. You want your inside team to feel comfortable talking to upper level executives at major accounts, but if they're being told by others in the sales organization to avoid calling into accounts beyond a certain size for no intelligent sales-related reason, you're losing business, and your inside team's sales numbers will suffer. This is just one example of an internal roadblock that can damage the efficiency of an inside sales group.

5) Motivation and Personnel Churn. Does your team really want to work in your company and be in sales? One classic example is when a company converted their customer service reps to salespeople. The problem? They didn't want to be in sales and found it distasteful to ask for the order. They really wanted to be customer service people again, and their ears were not open to sales training. We've seen many situations where people converted to sales jobs and loved it, but it's not always the case. In the case of poor performance, it's always a great idea to ask the rep if he or she really embraces Sales as a career. Some companies have a terrible problem with inside sales personnel continually leaving the company, and they're rightly concerned with having to deliver the same training over and over throughout the year for replacement reps. Personnel churn sometimes results from underpaying reps, but often results from individual motivational issues as well. These are best covered by superior interviewing processes, but beware of "personality tests," which have little value in determining the potential effectiveness of a sales rep.

I've touched on product issues, business processes, intra-company edicts, compensation, and motivational issues that you'll want to ensure are handled or discussed before you take the financial step to train your team. Superior sales training is an essential way to get your team performing at optimum level, but you'll want to make sure you have a firm foundation in place before you do it. Add pre-training analysis to your Best Management playbook.

Increase sales by using your enthusiasm to get prospects motivated to want to buy from you

One of my mantras when I teach my sales training courses is that you've got to quickly determine how your solution is either going to make your prospects money, or stop them from losing money. Then tell them. That's all about ROI. But pumping up the enthusiasm is really important as well, and I witnessed this concept first hand recently when someone sold me a whole bunch of stuff I never intended to buy when I walked in the door. I was happy with my purchase too, and follow-on sales resulted. We can all learn a lot from this story, so here's what happened:

There's a company called Rosenblum Cellars that makes Zinfandel wines, and they're located way at the northern tip of Alameda, across the bay from San Francisco. I'm not a big zin drinker, but Alameda's a great town, and I was curious about this winery that's located on an old naval air base, so one Sunday a friend and I drove out there. We paid a small tasting fee, and began sampling. And that's when we ran into Kenny Goodman. He asked immediately what we thought of the first glass, and I told him it didn't have enough "pop" for me, because typically I like cabernets. Then he really went into action. "Look," he said, "I'm not supposed to do this, but I'm gonna pour one of best zins that usually I'm supposed to charge for, but I won't charge you. This stuff is really fantastic!" And it was pretty good! "I knew you'd love it, I just bought a whole case last week myself. And if you think that was great, getta load of this one!" He poured another glass from another hidden bottle, and in an animated fashion jumped all over the place, raving about those two new bottles.

We weren't his only customers, but he treated us like we were the only ones in the place. We walked around the tasting room a bit, and I noticed he was going into his performance with all the other customers, too. He wasn't pouring from the same bottles, but made everyone feel like they were special, and he was going to do something special for them. I just loved Kenny's enthusiasm for his product, and it was infectious. My friend and I loaded our trunk with bottles we hadn't intended to buy, and joined the wine club, too. My friend standardized on one of their zins, and serves it as her wine of choice at home. Kenny made a lot of money for the winery that day, and pumped follow-on sales for months to come, too.

My sister Vickie works in the wine industry in the Napa Valley, and I told her the story. She said everyone in the industry knows Kenny, and his enthusiasm is legendary.

So what can we in inside sales learn from Kenny? Two important things:
1) Enthusiasm. We deal with the same products every day, and to us they're old hat. But they're new to the prospect. Try to talk about your solution the same way you did when you found out how great it was. Rave about how it's helping other customers, and tell each prospect about how you just can't wait for him or her to get it on board so you can hear about their success stories, too. And don't be afraid to put yourself in the story, either. Kenny was a such a big fan of his product that it made us want to try everything, and we felt that if he liked it so much, we would, too.
2) Treat each prospect as if he or she is special. We talk to sometimes dozens of prospects every day, and it's easy to go into the same old rap. Take a look at your prospects' websites. Get really enthusiastic about what they're making, and talk about their products. Change your conversation to reflect what's going on at your prospect's company. Ask how their own products are making their customers' lives better. If you're one of their customers yourself, talk about how much you love their product or solution. Make each prospect feel as though he or she is the most important person you've talked to that month.

If you take Kenny Goodman's approach, prospects will want to buy from you, and sometimes that's what will drive the business to you, and not to a comparable competitor. Selling over the phone is a tough job, and some days are tougher than others. I'm sure it's like that in the wine room, too. But if you pump up the enthusiasm and make each prospect feel unique and special, you'll have more fun, your day will go faster, and you'll write more business. Sales managers and execs ask me every week how to better motivate their teams. Self-motivation is the best answer, and if we all think of our prospects as being unique people working in fascinating environments, the enthusiasm can be infectious. While you're on your way to work tomorrow, seriously think about how you'll go about re-crafting your rap to add more "pop" to your conversation.  And consider adding Kenny's techniques to your Best Practices playbook.

7 Ways to make an Underperforming Territory profitable, fast

It's fairly common for superior sales performers to be rewarded by being transferred to an underperforming territory. Rarely is the sales rep happy about it, and it's probably happened to a large percentage of you reading this. If it hasn't happened to you yet, get ready, for it may. In my telesales training courses, I always tell people that our world is a lot about constant change, and how well we handle it. Today's post is about how a really great rep got a lemon and made lemonade out of it. I worked with Gordon at a software development tools company, and saw him take control of what had been a terrible territory, work it, and make it one if he best territories in the company within a very few months. Even though the product line we're talking about was technical, his story can apply to anyone selling anything in a territory that has traditionally been a poor earner. Here's what he did:

First of all, he wanted to know which companies weren't buying our tools, and why, so he made a list of the biggest companies in all of the states in his new territory. In his first week in the territory, he made a telephone call blitz, and found that there were two types of non-buying prospects: those in which upper management (e.g. VPs of Engineering) made the decisions against us, and those where upper management didn't care, but instead had empowered Project Managers and Developers to make their own decisions and select their own tools.

Not surprisingly, he found that many of his prospects had never been called, or hadn't been called in months. Gordon started making extensive charts of the types of software development projects that these companies were working on, and became an expert in project knowledge. Gordon was a great salesperson, but he was non-technical. All he wanted to know was what they were building, who would buy the finished product, and what types of tools the engineers used. So he ended up with two charts (today, you'd call them spreadsheets): "Nonbuyer Reasons and Personnel," and "Project Classifications." Then he really went to work.

He had inherited several decent customers, called high, and found that there were many projects starting at those companies for which development tools had not been selected. He leveraged his VP contact, and sold a lot of new product to those companies (within 6 months, he'd doubled the previous year's sales on current customers alone). He also uncovered many opportunities at companies that hadn't been called in awhile. They were now in his sales pipeline, after less than one month in the new territory.

But there were still some companies that wouldn't buy, because they didn't like our company. He was able to determine that the VP of Engineering at a huge prospect company had a sister, and she was married to the Director of Sales at one of our competitors. That company had standardized on our competition, and Gordon knew he'd never get a sale there as long as upper management stayed the same. At other companies, Gordon found that individual engineers and project managers had prejudices against our development tools (too bad, because our tools were superior), and would work to ensure our tools were never placed.

In his new territory, many development teams were in a state of flux. Some companies were downsizing their departments, and engineers were getting laid off, and having a challenging time finding work. By this time, he knew about different engineers levels of expertise, and he also knew how they felt about our products. So here's what he did: since he was calling all over the territory anyway, he started asking if they were hiring engineers. If they were, Gordon would check his list. If an engineer looking for work loved our products, Gordon found him or her work at companies were he wanted to get more business. He got advocates at new companies that way. And if engineers didn't like our products, he found them positions at that big company with the VP whose sister was married to his competition. Gordon figured if he had engineers in his territory that didn't like our solutions, it was best having them all work in one place, in a company that for political reasons would never buy our development tools anyway. In essence, Gordon played his territory like a chessboard, shifting the pieces from one square to another. He was able to do this because he probably called more people in the territory than anyone had before, asked great questions, took good notes, and plotted things on charts. He turned two of the states in this underperforming territory into two of the most profitable in our company in under a year.

So what can be learned from Gordon?

1) An underperforming territory can be an opportunity waiting to flourish.
2) Call high, and ask great questions to determine why people aren't buying.
3) Ensure that you're providing as many solutions as possible to companies that are already your customers.
4) Know your prospect's business, so you can figure out how your product can help your prospect to make money faster, or stop losing money.
5) Make enough calls that you can be considered a territory expert.
6) Develop your own analyses tools and charts to understand what's happening (or happened) over time, not just what happened today.
7) Think out of the box. In Gordon's case, he improved the lives of his advocates, and they remembered the favor he did for them.

As Gordon would tell you, you have to work hard, but you also have to work smart. Add Gordon's techniques to your Best Practices Playbook for selling successfully to an underperforming territory.

What makes a great Inside Sales Manager? Ask Pete Tarbox!

This week, I've had a significant amount of commentary on a number of posts I've written on what makes a superior sales manager. There's been a bunch of traffic on my posts entitled 5 Great Sales Demotivators: Decrease sales by following these practices, and Increase sales by conducting an effective Telesales Employee Performance Appraisal, among others. Earlier this week, Pete Tarbox weighed in on what he feels are traits that are critical in being a successful inside sales manager. Pete's been around long enough to have seen a lot, and I profiled his techniques for selling to the Defense Department in my 5 Critical Tactics when Selling to the Defense Department post.

I like Pete's approach to management excellence so much that I'm producing it verbatim here. What do you think?

Traits of an excellent sales manager:

1. Like a great rep, a great manager listens and asks probing questions before taking action. This is crucial when diagnosing a sales situation.
2. Comes across as truly wanting to help their reps (instead of beat them up). I've encountered a number of VP's who will react in a negative, emotional way before (or without) making sure that they really understand what's going on.
3. Helps their people to build skills by teaching in detail (or getting someone who can, like you) what needs to be done, as opposed to only saying what needs to be done (such as "you need to talk to executives").
4.  In my experience, people who have actually done the job at their company - or are willing to learn in detail what it really takes -  make the best sales managers. I once had a new VP come in and learn NOTHING about our product or market. He thought that he could increase sales by teaching new sales techniques (he never learned what the real problem was, nor did he understand our market). That's an extreme case, but I frequently see VPs hired that come from other markets - and then come in and show a lot of aggression to their sales force. People who are promoted from within are able to better empathize with their reps and translate winning skills.
5.  Do not overload their reps with non-value-add tasks. Forecasting, reporting, tracking all serve a purpose and must be done - but that needs to be balanced with actual selling.
6.  The best also understand how to carve up territories in ways that make sense for their people (provide enough opportunity without providing too much busy work), i.e. when you have 12 multi-divisional accounts and are asked to generate a "quick" overview for a meeting tomorrow... or all of a sudden find yourself in the middle of 5 enterprise upgrades (which may not represent current revenue opportunity but must be successful in order to keep your customers and have future opportunity).
7. Helps to insulate their people from constant change (this is a tough one because things are constantly changing, but it's demotivating to work a bunch of accounts that then get handed out to other people, or to start and stop on an account, and so on).
8. And like all managers - makes it fun to work for them, communicates to their workers the linkage between their activities and the big picture, communicates corporate objectives.

(Geoff here again) Thanks for your perspective, Pete. Managing is never easy, especially when times are tough. In my experience, managers never get enough time sharing best management practices and discussing areas of challenge with one another. But a number of inside sales managers read this blog, and we have some very good posts that managers can read by clicking on the Management Techniques link on the left side of this page. Our telesales management classes are always popular, too.

Pete's thoughts provide some great food for thought, and represent timely discussion points for sales reps and managers alike. Why not add them to your Best Practices Playbook?