Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, May 24, 2010 @ 10:02 AM
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.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, May 17, 2010 @ 10:02 AM
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the challenge a client of mine is facing, namely being located in an area where an increasingly violent civil protest is taking place. Even before an M79 grenade hit across the street from his facility, he'd arranged to have his inside sales team work from home. Even so, as power was shut to his building during days where the temperatures reached the mid-90s, he realized that his servers might be damaged, and not work when fired up again, and his concerns turned out to be justified.
If you've been watching CNN or BBC World news, you now know that a small scale military battle is taking place between the Thai military and protesters on the streets of Bangkok. It's happening right at my client's building, so normal operations are shut for the time being. Streets have been sealed off, so his salespeople weren't going to get to work anyway.
Over the weekend, my hotel, which is in another area of Bangkok, was in a "hot" zone as well. At 3 am, I was awakened by loud noises down on the street, and being unable to sleep, I went down for a look. The military was battling protesters that were armed with who-knows-what, but one device exploded near me, my guess would be another M79 (a WoWasis travel blog post provides a little more about this particular incident, BTW). I had a quick discussion with a couple of military personnel about the security of the area in general, then went back to sleep.
I've got another client that I'm visiting on this trip which necessitated a trip to the Philippines. The office I was visiting is located just outside of Metro Manila, so I rented a car, drove myself to the destination, then took an extra couple of days during the weekend to see some sights. Although the maps had not indicated as such, the roads were in such a state of disrepair that a 4 wheel vehicle would have been much more appropriate. Compounding this was the fact that road signs were almost non-existent. With the exception of a couple of modern expressways, getting anywhere by road in the Philippines is tough.
I very nearly didn't write this post, because my blog is all about the challenges of inside sales from both management and rep perspectives, and this post is more about the difficulties faced by teams working in international environments that for the most part are unheard of in the western world. I think the value in posting this is that outsourcing is always under consideration for any company looking to reduce headcount, and just about everyone is familiar with how much manufacturing has already been outsourced to Asia. Within the next several years, with the proliferation of cloud-based computing, it wouldn't surprise me if the outbound telesales business from an outsourcing perspective didn't continue growing here in Asia as well. The technical infrastructure exists, but the question would be whether or not, as my client is discovering in Bangkok right now, the social and business structure underneath is stable enough to support that kind of business model.
Barring unforeseen events, I'll be back in my U.S. office today, where the biggest assault I'll be facing this week is the onslaught of junk mail through my mail slot.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, May 10, 2010 @ 10:05 AM
I read a very good article today on career development strategies, written by
Kriengsak Niratpattanasai, a management consultant who writes periodically in the
Bangkok Post. While his article is geared to people already managing, I'd like to take a more basic approach, and suggest that if you're a Business Development or Telesales rep right now, I think it's a very good idea to look at your career in its current state, and design a plan for your next career step.
A good number of inside sales reps fail to do this, primarily, i think, because many of us landed in this profession by accident. Inside sales was just something we'd do to bridge the gap to our next real job. And now, 5 years later, we're making real good money, have exciting conversations with prospects, and know an awful lot about business in general. But we're still not thinking career, when perhaps we should be.
Consider a model that could work like this. Say you're fresh out of college, and six months into your role as a BusDev rep. There isn't any reason that you shouldn't set your sights on eventually managing your (or another) BusDev team. By working hard and smart, you could easily be there in 5 years. As an Inside Sales Manager, you could set your sights for a director position in 5 years. Complete the model until you project yourself to be a VP. The model suggests that if you work hard, continually exceed quota, develop your career and business skills, you could be a VP 15 years from leaving college. If you started the whole process at 25, you'd be a VP at 40.
If this sounds crazily aggressive to you, consider the fact that over 150 people I originally trained as reps are now in management. This didn't happen by accident. So I'm going to give you some steps to execute that can get you started:
1) Determine what job function you want to have in 5 years. List your 10 and 15 year plans, too.
2) Conduct a critical self-analysis on your current skill set. The questions you should ask are:
- Are my current skills adequate to perform my current job at optimum proficiency?
- What skills will I have to improve or obtain to exceed at the management job I'd like to have in 5 years?
3) Once you have a list, meet with your own manager to discuss your "5 year plan." Ask him or her for a brutal assessment of where your skill set is today, and where it needs to be to move to the next level.
4) Armed with those two improvement lists, start a plan to make immediate improvements. If those include additional training your company won't pay for, figure out a way to acquire those skills through other means. Books and Toastmasters come immediately to mind as two possibilities.
5) Keep your manager in the loop, by meeting occasionally to discuss the progress you're making, and to get additional feedback. Remember that your own manager is on an upward career curve, too. These discussions will be great for both of you.
So there's your 5 point plan for becoming a VP in 15 years. You don't have to be 24 years old, either. As far as I'm concerned, you should start this process at any age. Chances are you won't be doing this all at one company either. If you've taken all the right steps, you very well may be interviewing at another company eventually for that high-level position.
One of the great things about living in tough economic times is that you're forced to really think about what matters in your career. So the challenge I'm throwing down is this: think proactively, not reactively, about where you're headed, and start taking some notes today about where you really need to improve to get to the next level. You won't be alone, as all successful people beat themselves up over something they could have done better yesterday, then figure out fast how they'll do it better next time. So add a process for fast-tracking your career to your Best Practices playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, May 03, 2010 @ 10:02 AM
Marianne is an inside sales rep who's just landed a telesales job selling high-end graphics tools to developers. Many of these folks are already customers, and her job is to upsell and cross sell. And she's dealing with people that really need those upgrades, but can't find the budget. So they tell her to call back next quarter. Today's post is about how to deal effectively with that issue.
When I mentioned Marianne's dilemma to a friend, he told me that one of his sales colleagues from years past had countered the "I can't afford it" sales objection with "You know what, Bob? You can't afford NOT to have it." Then the sales rep would discuss the reasons why. My initial reaction was that this was just another cheesy closing line from the past, hackneyed enough that you wouldn't use it today. But then I thought, with a modification or two, it would work. Here's how:
Marianne's new company never lowers it prices. It's an engineering-intensive company with a huge R&D budget. They're always introducing new upgrades, too. Fact is, Marianne's pricing will never go down. Her products will always be increasingly more expensive. So she should use the following model:
1) Build value by understanding the customer's business. Determine if the upgrade she's selling can be used to help her customer to make more money, or prevent it from losing money. Don't even discuss pricing until your customer agrees that it makes business sense to acquire the upgrade.
2) If the customer then balks at the price and wants you to call back next quarter, let's say, then mention to the customer that a very good reason to acquire the product today is that the price might actually increase again before the next call. Here's how her response could be crafted:
"[First name], I'd be happy to call next quarter, but let me tell you why I'd recommend that you move forward today instead. You've already told me that this upgrade is going to save you a significant amount of time, so you know it has value. What our company tends to do is raise prices over time to reflect the additional engineering we put into the product, and when those price increases come, they tell me in a moment's notice, and I can't do a thing to roll back the prices. I can't tell you when our prices are increasing, but I'd hate to call you next quarter and have to tell you that the pricing is even higher than it is today." [Now just be quiet, and let the prospect/customer respond]
I've personally used this effectively over the years when I've sold high-end products. It not only increases the perceived value of your product, but gets the prospect thinking that the pricing that he or she initially perceived as being high, might actually, in fact, be low. You can use this rebuttal with any high-end product or service that does have an R& D design and development component that's significant. This is a technique that I teach in my inside sales training courses, and I've witnessed its effectiveness in numerous coaching calls. Add it to your Best Practices playbook.