Sales Machine

Just wanted to give the Sales Machine community a heads-up that we won another award. This time it’s a “silver Azbees” in the “Blog — How-To/Tips/Service” category, from the American Society of Business Publication Editors.  The award

As with any award for a blog, the judge’s decisions are based as much upon the quality of the comments as on the quality of the original writing.  When I look back on the past year, I’m not surprised we’ve been winning awards since, as a group, we’ve worked on most important aspects of selling:

How to Be Successful at Cold Calling

• What’s the Best Time to Cold Call
• The Ultimate Cold Calling Tool

How to Give Better Presentations

• What’s the Best Opening Remark?
• 10 Big Reasons Your Presentation Sucks

How to Work Complex Sales Issues

• B2B Selling: Can You Win the Game?
• Sell to the CEO!  Can You Win the Game?

How to Stay Motivated and Positive

• How to Motivate Yourself in 60 Seconds
• The Ultimate Sales Motivation Tool

How to Deal Identify Selling Mistakes

• Top 10 Dumb Mistakes Sales Reps Make
• Top 10 Dumb Mistakes Customers Make

How to Cope with Managers and Customers

• Sales Managers: A Field Guide
• B2B Customers: A Field Guide

I’m sure we’ll continue to discuss these issues (and more) in the coming months.  For now, though, I think we can all give ourselves a pat on the back for a job well done.

For myself, I would have LONG ago given up on this blog if it weren’t for the constant input and communication from the regular readers.  This really is a team creation and I hope to be the “chief discussion sparker” for a long time to come.

Regular readers of Sales Machine, and viewers of the how-to videos I post are probably familiar with Gerhard Gschwandtner, the publisher of SellingPower magazine.  He’s started a blog and I have to confess that I’ve actually been reading it. I’ve already added a link to it on the blogroll and that’s all I was going to do, because if I say nice things about it, it’s kinda like sucking up, since I write for SellingPower magazine.  (That was a full disclosure, in case you missed it.)

Even so, I’d be remiss if I didn’t call your attention to Gerhard’s blog, because he’s handling issues that I don’t get into, like sales management, the market position of sales-oriented technology, and other fairly hard-core topics that I know will appeal to some of the deep thinkers who post comments here.  I’m not going to say anything more, except that it’s definitely worth adding to your list of blogs to read on a regular basis.  Here’s the link:

THE SELLINGPOWER BLOG

Based upon the number of comments that it’s already received, my recent rant about marketing (”5 Lies that Marketing Tells Sales“) has apparently touched a sore spot.  Rather than respond to the comments piecemeal (and wrestle with all that html coding), I’ll post my responses here:

Click here to read more»

Great news for Sales Machines readers!

You can get an RSS feed that tells you whether a new post or comment has been added… maybe.

To activate this feature, simply click on both of the “RSS” buttons in the  “Subscribe Box” shown under my bio.

Here’s an example of where to click from one of the other BNET blogs (all of them now have this neat feature):

Because this uses RSS, you can choose whatever reader program you like.

Let me know how this works for you.  I’ve been having some problems with it, but it’s a neat feature, if it works…

There are a few really profound truths about selling. Some are proverbial, like “the customer is always right.” Others are experiential, like “it’s easier to sell to somebody who like you.” But there are also some deep truths about selling that aren’t so well known, and I think I just discovered one of them, pretty much by accident.

I was thinking about high tech hokum, the kind of product concept that never fails to generate excitement and interest… even though the concept itself doesn’t make much sense. There are about a dozen of these recurring themes in the high tech world, but these are the three that are among the most appealing:

• The Paperless Office. The futurist Alvin Toffler predicted in 1970 that paper in the office would soon be a thing of the past. Thirty eight years later and the office is still full of paper. A horde of technologies have come and gone promising to create the paperless office, and even today there are companies that tout the “paperless office” in their marketing materials. Despite this, there is overwhelming evidence that computers have the exact opposite effect. The market for printers and printer paper EXACTLY tracks the market for computers and will no doubt continue to do so.
• The $100 Laptop. This is a project that’s recently been gaining a lot of traction in the news, but it’s been around as a concept for some years. The idea is that impoverished areas of the world need computers in order to connect to the great outside world in order to create opportunity and eliminate poverty. However, anybody who’s been to Africa (for example) knows that the poor have no use for computers. They need food, basic schooling, mosquito nets, vaccines. Look, there are hundreds of children in Addis Ababa who live in sewers! Computers are low on the list of what they need.
• Generalized Artificial Intelligence. Since 1950, computer scientists have been predicting, every five years or so, that machines would be as intelligent as humans “in about 20 years.” The only problem is, that “20 years” remains forever in the future. AI-huckster Ray Kurzweil, for example, just predicted computers “will match man” by 2029. Unfortunately, there have been no breakthroughs in AI since the 1960s. Even though computers are many orders of magnitude faster, they can barely recognize slightly garbled strings of characters or spoken words, let alone exhibit anything close to human understanding.

So, what does the above have to do with selling B2B?

Everything.

At least, that’s what I figured out when I was pondering them. I started wondering:

• Why do these ideas have such continuing appeal?
• Why do they get positive press every time they’re trotted into the limelight?
• Why does nobody remember that there’s been no progress since the last time the idea was surfaced?

It was then that what I believe to be a profound truth about B2B selling popped into my brain.

What was that truth? I’ll tell you in a future post. Until then, here’s a hint, in the form of a question:

How easy it would be to sell a B2B solution if it created a “reality distortion field” that pre-sold the idea in the prospect’s brain?

See the rest of this post in “Lessons from High Tech Hokum, Pt 2.“

Not the technology, but the buzzword.

Ten years ago, “Customer Relationship Management (CRM)” was called “Sales Force Automation (SFA).” Then SFA started getting a bad name because so many of the systems turned out to be expensive mistakes. Vendors switched to CRM buzzword to avoid the taint.

Same thing is now happening with CRM buzzword. Many CRM systems are implemented simply to supply management with data; very few systems actually help sales pros in the day-to-day task of selling. Many sales pros feel as if they’re being asked to be data entry clerks — and give away their contacts, simply to help their managers make fancy reports.

Now that CRM is starting to get a bad reputation, providers of sales-oriented technology are struggling to dump the acronym. Today, about half the websites selling some kind of sales technology already avoid the “CRM” moniker. Instead, they sport a variety of terms like “Sales 2.0″ or “Sales Enhancement Technology” or “Sales Productivity Improvement Tools.”

Eventually, a new term for “CRM” will crowd the other terms out. By that time, the number of self-identified “CRM” providers (like the SFA brethren) will dwindle to a handful. The technology will still be around, of course, but it will be sold under a different buzzword. And probably encounter the same problems with user adoption that SFA and CRM encountered.

Since there’s to be a new buzzword, any suggestions what it should be? If I get some good suggestions, I’ll run a poll in a future post so everyone can vote on them.

I’ve frequently blogged that marketing should be goaled on reducing the cost of sales - and should be compensated based on their ability to meet quantitative metrics based upon those that goal. EVERY time I make that statement, I get a slew of comments trying to define a more expansive role for marketing. I’m told that marketing is supposed to:

• Set the strategic direction.
• Determine market segmentation.
• Set pricing and policies.
• Drive sales into the market.

And so forth.

In last week’s post “Is Bad Marketing Killing Future Sales?“, I blamed a major customer support snafu on Hewlett-Packard’s marketing group. And, lo and behold, that post generated a series of comments saying that the problem wasn’t the Marketing’s fault! Observe:

• Rthorsteinson writes: “I think this has less to do with marketing and more to do with incompetent operations.”
• Terrya69 writes “Marketing seldom, if ever, gets to set any type of pricing for a product or service.”
• CarolBlaha writes “The way I describe the poor service as the author describes is there is always a “sales prevention” department. Cause its not marketing.”

Say what? Is Marketing supposed be the strategic grand pooh-bah or not? If so, Marketing should be held responsible when a customer support program screws customers. If not, then what’s all this talk about setting strategic direction and building go-to-market programs?

Apparently marketers want to avoid being measured quantitively AND don’t want to be held responsible for market-related business decisions that go badly.

I’m a bit confused. Which is it?  Is marketing responsible or not?  Or do they just get the credit when things go well?

If you’re not careful, your marketing group might set up sales channels that ruin your firms ability to forge long-term customer relationships.

The software business is notorious for this. There are now many companies that let you have exactly one support telephone call for free. After that, they charge you $35 per service call. The reason that software vendors charge for support is that their software is inexpensive.

But that’s no excuse, because most problems with software are the result of poor design, lousy coding and slapdash testing. By charging for support, they’re simply passing along the expense to the consumer as a “we can’t develop good software” tax. What’s worse, because crummy software is almost always difficult to install, you generally end up burning up the free support before you actually use the product. Then you’re stuck.

Note that it’s a marketing decision to price the product low and charge for support. And it says: we don’t give a crap about you once we’ve gotten your money. And that’s not the best way to get repeat business.

But the most heinous example of customer-hostile support that I’ve ever encountered came, not from a software firm, but from what’s reputedly one of the best companies in high tech: Hewlett-Packard.

A couple of years ago, my HP desktop printer broke. I called the HP support line, got some guy from India, who tried to help me out, but we concluded that the machine (which was 6 years old) was a goner. He offered to sell me a new one, with a 10 percent discount if I returned the old printer for recycling. I said OK, since I needed a printer that worked. He takes my credit card data. So far so good.

About a week later, my new printer arrives, but with no information about where to send the old one. No address. No shipping label. Nada. So I figure that the “recycling” thing was just a way for HP to give me a discount without irritating their channel partners. Fine. I attach the new printer and throw the old one away.

Two months later, I see a charge from HP on my credit card for around $400. My first impression was that it was the charge for the new printer. However, I remembered vaguely seeing the charge on another statement, so I checked back and, sure enough, there was a charge for $400 from HP on the previous month.

I call HP to ask what gives. Turns out that because I didn’t return the old printer to their fictional recycling center, HP charged me the LIST PRICE OF THE OLD PRINTER. Now, I could understand, vaguely, if they had charged me the discount, or even for the resale price of a broken printer. But the LIST PRICE? That was more than I paid for the printer at the store when I bought it six years ago!

So I get a support supervisor on the line. He says that unless I send them the old printer, they won’t refund the charge. Period. No exceptions.

Now, I understand how businesses work, so I was pretty sure what was going on. Some HP marketing bozo probably thought this scam was a good way to add margin to the bottom line of the upsell program. Every time HP swindled some poor schmuck like me, the company was getting an extra $400 in pure profit. And since printers, like most computer equipment, sell with single digit margins, that’s a bump of at least a thousand percent. Enough to make a statistically significant uptick in the profitability of the entire program.

So the marketing idiot running the “recycling discount” program was probably walking into the monthly revenue meetings with a spreadsheet showing profits that were higher than the rest of the printer group. So he was looking like a big hero. Meanwhile, the policy was making customers like me furious. As you can imagine, I will never, ever buy ANY product from Hewlett-Packard again. And now I’m sharing the story with the world.

Please note that this arrangement had absolutely no benefit for HP’s sales group. The support guy from India probably got a commission on the new printer, but was probably blissfully unaware that he was setting a situation where a customer would get screwed. And certain the HP support staff weren’t benefiting — unless you think handling calls from angry customers is a benefit.

The only beneficiary of the program was the marketing guy who set it up, because that’s the only place where the program would have a financial impact.

The lesson here for sales professionals is clear: don’t let the marketing group set up policies and procedures that create angry customers.

Earlier this week, I posted a list of essential rules for sales proposals and asked if there were any more. As I had hoped, you guys came through with some that should have made it on the list. I’ve edited them a bit to match the format of the original post and added a credit and (when possible) a link to the contributor who came up with them:

• Does the proposal express a real need, want, and desire that the customer shared? (William Stewart)
• Does the proposal mitigate enough risk so that the customer is in a comfort zone? (sw33418)
• Is there a deadline for the customer decision-making process? (Donald Daly, CEO of The TAS Group)
• Does the proposal make sense within the context of the customer’s corporate culture? (sw33418)
• Can the customer actually afford your solution? (William Stewart)
• Is the proposal getting to the real decision-makers or just going to purchasing? (Michael Kreppein)
• Is the customer really able to release the money for your solution? (William Stewart)
• Are you going to have a chance to present the proposal personally? (Nelson Vanelderen)

As before, if the answer to any of these questions is NO, then you’re probably not going to get the business.

Great stuff, people!

When most sales pros think about success training, they focus on the mechanics and techniques of the sales process, like identifying needs and handling objections. Hey, that’s great stuff, but it’s all pretty useless unless you’re psychologically prepared to sell.

According to Ron Willingham, author Integrity Selling for the 21st Century, the foundation of being psychological prepared to sell is congruence among the following core beliefs:

1. What are my basic values about people and life?
2. What do I think selling is all about?
3. Do I believe that I can take the necessary steps?
4. How committed am I to taking these actions?
5. Do I believe in the product or service that I’m selling?

According to Willingham, when these core beliefs are incongruent you’re always fighting against yourself. You’re constantly waging an internal battle because your conflicted about whether or not you’re doing the right thing.

The sad truth is that many organizations have sales cultures that create incongruity between core beliefs. And that’s too bad, because sales pros who deeply feel the difference between their own personal values and the values of the organizational culture are probably going to get sick. It’s been shown repeatedly that such internal conflicts lead to stress-related illnesses, including alcoholism, drug usage, and depression.

Ever wonder why sales organizations that encourage high pressure tactics have high turnover rates? Wonder no more.

If you’re going to sell at the highest level, look at the questions above very carefully. Think about your answers for each of them. Then ask yourself: does selling for this company really fit with my best conception of what I should be doing with my life?

This is a really important exercise, and I’m talking from personal experience here.

About 15 years ago, I was working at a company that had values about work that were deeply different than my own. I was talking to a friend, complaining about the company I was working for. His response was: “Look, Geoff, you’re going to spend roughly a third of your adult waking life at work. Why spend it somewhere that makes you miserable? You should be at a place where you can do your best work.”

That remark forced me to confront the fact that I was wasting a big chuck of my life — and I left the company within six months. I started my own business and have never looked back. Best decision I ever made.

How about you?

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