Sell it to me before you try to make me buy

I was recently sent to a trade expo in the gold coast to help members of the PIAA to join up to the company that I’m currently working for. It was my second time at a event and my first ‘attempt’ at networking. I was thankfully with a bit of a digital guru called Dean Power (look at his blog – Byron New Media) who gave me some good tips.

I always prefer face to face interaction because it’s much easier to get a decision from a person by judging their response. I also wanted to find out more about the pet industry, it’s not one that I was overly familiar with and being an ‘interest’ based market was extremely popular. However what I found out was that I was going about it in the wrong way.

I was attempting to tackle a face to face introduction as if I was a telephone discussion. Which is clearly a silly thing to do but at the time I thought it was a good approach. What I was forgetting is that in a ‘cold’ face to face introduction you have to explain the ‘product’ from a user prospective (apart from certain industries obviously) because otherwise they won’t even attempt to understand you. They’ll just tell you to go and start talking to the next person. You also need to get to know the person at a basic level before you can even think of entering any kind of sales process.

The solution that I found was to go back to basics and just talk to people about their product, listen to what they had to say and get to understand them as individuals. Not attempting to sell to them at all and just waiting for them to ask what I did. The main benefit of being there in person is that you can be more ‘personal’ and don’t have to use the majority of the ‘core’ selling techniques (open, match & close) because you can just get to know people.

Not only was I more successful when I was more personal but I also got to know some really awesome people who were passionate about what they did and hopefully I’ll ge to work with them. If I don’t then I just really appreciate them showing me what they do and I hope I’ll be able to see them again.

So the lesson to learn from this post? 

Firstly, never fear failing but always question it, I could have easily given up there and then but I looked at where I could improve and tried another way. 

 

Secondly, always remember that the environment is a huge factor in how you can approach people and you need to be sensitive to that. If you ignore it then you’ll just end up failing and never having any idea why.

 

Thirdly, look at how amazing this dog is as a Tiger!

Start up sales team advice

This week I was asked for ‘business’ advice by a friend, which was surprising as I’ve never really thought of myself as someone who gives business advice, but it an interesting experience nonetheless. The issue was regarding an eccentric new investor who had asked her to write a report ‘snooping’ on her colleagues.

The obvious ethical issues aside, I quickly found out that there were a few things that I (she) could suggest to improve the sales team that didn’t involve all of them losing their jobs. Just good business sense. I ended up typing a sales plan, which might have put in slightly more than expected. The result was that I worked out a few basic things that should happen in every sales team, regardless of age or industry.

The first thing is a weekly sales meeting, either first thing Monday or last thing on a Friday (I’ve heard the term virtual beer to describe the latter) but something where everyone in the sales team can add some knowledge to the table. What’s discussed in those meetings should always be up to the sales manager but the result should always be that knowledge is shared between the team. This will make your sales team learn to naturally share information with each other and make the office a slightly more sociable place to exist.

An easy way to improve these meetings further is to turn them into games and competitions. The best example that comes to mind is when my Mum was working in retail banking in the UK and used these games to get people who had all but given up on the job to try harder. I remember once that the reward was to ask a really personal question to any member of the team, it really helped motivate people in a positive way and encouraged communication.

I ended up being asked a very personal question and having to answer it in front of my mum, not a proud moment!

The next thing that I’d suggest is sales training, no matter how experienced a sales person can be, it can never hurt to have a refresher. I don’t really think I really started selling properly until I got sales training. I was more than happy to sit through it twice and felt like it became more useful the second time than the first. Think of specific questions or experiences that you weren’t sure how to work out, give the trainer a specific example to work with.

The final thing that can really help a sales team grow is to give them a group goal or incentive, not just financial but team building exercises. It doesn’t have to be an expensive trip abroad but should be a tad more than just going to the pub on a Friday night. A good example from BNZ is where they close their branches and send staff out to help local community groups, which could be the local zoo to clean up after the animals or even the local park and planting trees.

It’s easy to be lazy and just let the Friday night pub become the norm but if you try a bit more then you can do something really good every Friday night and not have to break the company credit card.

While these sound basic, you would be surprised at how some of these can be easily over looked.

How to treat new clients as a similarly new account executive

What is the best way to build up a relationship when you are a new inexperienced account executive in your first job out of university? The answer is unfortunately that there isn’t an ‘easy’ way but rather two schools of thought in the sales industry that are both equally useful tools, but need to be used with the correct clients.

I’ll explain what both schools ‘are’ and give an example of how I’ve used them in the past, and try to come to an simple conclusion in the end.

The first type of sale is what I like to call the ‘relationship building’ method and is quite simply getting people to like you so that they buy from you. This school believes that buying is an emotional decision, that buyers are willing to buy from you based on you as a person rather than the product. I used to assume that the weakness in this strategy was that the media buyer would eventually have to report back on what they’ve bought and not be in a job for very long because they’ve spent their entire budget on who they ‘like’ most rather than what they had to do. However THIS article here by Anthony Innarino, describes how you need to influence how the buyers rationalise their purchases. You need to make them put your product top, based on the ‘A’ column, that you’ve decided on/sell best with. It’s a great article and also a very good blog to read if you want to find some great training on being a sales manager. The idea being that if the person likes you enough, then they will find a way to put you in the ‘A’ column .

The benefits of this school are very obvious, people like you and therefore people buy from you as long as you’re a likeable person, you’ll carry on selling stuff. The negatives is that this kind of relationship needs a large amount of time to build and as a young ‘account executive, you are expected to go away and bring in the new money. You don’t have the time to ‘build’ up any relationships because you need to prove yourself quickly so that you can get onto the bigger accounts. Another issue is that mis-judging the line between ‘good relationship’ and ‘being messed around’ then you’ll quite simply fail and end up with your trousers down. It seems like such a simple line not to cross but you’d be surprised how easy it is to fall for that old trick.

A personal example of this was when I thought I had a particularly good relationship with a client, we used the term ‘mate’ in emails and he assured me that he liked my general chit chat and was certain to buy from me. He never did. He was the decision maker, had the sign off and was spending money but kept putting me off until another day. I take none of it personally because he is very good at what he does and it is the job of a media buyer to put you off your stride. However as a young account executive, roughly 3 months into the job, I had such high dreams that he couldn’t be lying to me, he must mean what his saying. The simple truth was that he was never going to buy from me and that I should have dropped spending time on him rather than others.

The second school is a ‘hard ball’ sales approach, which I could explain but I think the explanation from Glengarry Glen explains it better than I ever could. The central idea is that you need to be more aggressive with the prospective client/customer and doing anything other than ‘closing’ is a waste of time. This approach is the uglier side of sales that people assume is always the case and it really isn’t as bad as some people think. I personally find it a bit of an adrenaline rush and quite effective to get a quick deal in now and again. It certainly requires allot of confidence and quite a few times to practice it on a few deals that you know are not going to come in. The advantage is that you get the deal in when you need it to come in, you essentially get exactly what you want and as a sales person that is an awesome feeling. The downside is that it can be pretty soul destroying to do this everyday considering that the success rate will be quite low. I have a large amount of energy for my working day but I can’t make an endless amount of those types of calls. I’m sure other tele-marketers can but I personally find it a bit soul destroying. It also doesn’t breed repeat business, people don’t like repeatedly being talked to in that way, which in some industries is just what’s going to happen. I’m told that outdoor advertising is one of these industries but I’m not 100% sure if this is true or if there are any others.

The end result is that both have a place with clients, and within certain industries, it depends how many people you’ve got to pick from when it comes to ‘leads’ but the way I prefer to think about it and as a very smart swedish tele-marketer once told me, the relationship works like a mobile phone credit, you do good things and then you make that call for the money. It gives me a good way to balance the hard sell with relationship building and pulling the hard sell.

My final bit of advice to new sales executives is to try both and be ready to burn. What no-one will actually tell you is that the real secret of being a good account executive is being prepared to failing and asking what you can learn from each mistake.

Try something new and tell your manager how it went, why you think you failed and ask for their feedback on either what to try next or how you could have done better.

What is a ‘Sales’ person?

A good way to start with what ‘my’ definition of a sales person, which is obviously going to be a reflection of my experience in sales rather than an absolute definition.

A sales person is anyone who works in the client facing part of a business. Meaning anyone who speaks to clients or customers on a daily basis or as part of their role is a sales person for that company. Which might sound overwhelmingly obvious to the majority of people but has multiple applications. For example, quite often support teams and product managers are also sales people because they face ‘buyers’ on a daily basis.

The argument against this is that ‘sales’ people are a different breed, we go after the money while the rest of the company stands behind us and supports us through it. Which is true within certain companies, it all depends on the industry that you’re based in and most importantly the product for sale. However it assumes that sales people are the most important part of a business, when the truth is that the most important part of a business is their clients/customers/consumers.

I doubt everyone will agree but my logic behind is that everyone who faces outside the company should feel a sense of ownership for their company.

 

 

Introduction

Howdy,

I’m a young English sales guy living in Sydney, working for a ‘funky’ social commerce start up company.

It’s always a very hard task to start writing a blog considering that this is most likely the first thing that people will read and ‘judge’ you for. First impressions always count. However this also shows that I do tend to over think things rather than just doing it.

So I’m going to keep this as short and as sweet as possible.

This blog is written to document the lessons that I learn on a daily basis in my role as a sales person. They might not be unique insights and may not carry as much experience as other blog writers have but I have my style or just my youth will add an interesting prospective.

I plan to write a post a week about something I’ve learnt, a mistake I’ve made or even just an amusing ‘thing’ that I’ve discovered.