Sales Autopsy!

Well, Illinois manufactured it’s own 5.4 Richter quake this morning at 4:36am central time. They felt it in Chicago, St. Louis, MO; Louisville, KY; Des Moines, IA and Janesville, WI.

The New Madrid Seismic System Fault wasn’t dormant today.

Woke my wife up, but I’ve been in so many BIG ones, growing up in California, that I slept through it.

I recall one morning waking up to my bedroom window bending in and out!

Got out from beneath it quickly, in time to hear all our glassware and plates flying out of cupboards in the kitchen. So at least we got to buy new things.

Sales pros! What does it take to wake you up?

I’m shaking your brain right now to get into behaviors that make you money and to sleep through behaviors that distract you from doing so.

Shakin’ up and wakin’ up - life is short. Keep your focus on activities that make you cash.

If you don’t make any more money, it’s not New Madrid’s Fault.

I’m in Brisbane, Australia where we’ve just won the Gold Medal for basketball in the World Masters Games. The Games are basically Olympic sports for athletes 35 years and older. I still play on the US team.

So it’s our day off before heading home and I (the 2 guard) am with my point guard, Chuck. We’re visiting Lone Pine, the biggest Koala bear sanctuary in the world.

A woman is giving a presentation on the plight of the koala. Poor, beautiful (and stinky!) animal was almost hunted to extinction until 1910. The last month hunting was allowed, 600,000 pelts were taken. A picture pops on the screen and the crowd gasps as this old tin-type photo shows two guys with rifles and a huge mound of bearskins, maybe 30 feet high behind them.

“Help save these animals,” the woman pleads. “They are now in danger again, losing their food source to real estate development.”

She finishes this emotional tug on our hearts with, “Does anyone have any questions?”

My hand shoots up and dozens of heads turn to me as I ask,

“WHAT DOES THEIR MEAT TASTE LIKE?”

Half the crowd explodes with laughter, as half gasp in horror. The woman stutters a response about not knowing and you don’t eat them…

So one of my life missions is accomplished - make people laugh. And there’s a wonderful selling lesson here, too.

GREAT questions distinguish great sales pros from medicore.

Do you ask questions that make buyers stop and think? Questions that show them the inevitable consequences of their decision-making? Questions that speak thoughts they haven’t yet landed on?

Try on some of these, for example;

What if you didn’t buy a solution for another six months, would it make a difference?

What have you tried before and why didn’t it work?

Have you ever quantified the impact of this concern to the company?

Ask GREAT questions and you can guarantee your sales career, unlike the Koala, will never get near the brink of extinction.

“Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from animals… except the weasel.” - Sales Guru Homer Simpson

This post will be using guilt to motivate you to action. So be prepared to hear your mother’s voice as you read along.

Is there that ONE THING you should be doing to improve performance, and you’re not doing it?

It might be making X number of contacts each day, and you’re falling short.

It might be getting help handling those objections that eat away at closed business.

It might even be that you’re chasing too many poor prospects and need a method for exterminating these bad buyers.

Stop weaseling out of work. Don’t be a stinking sales varmit! Pick a specific time to get your task completed and imagine how awesome you’ll feel when it’s behind you.

And ahead of you is income, more sales, and a future that’s brighter than it was before you were playing the part of the professional selling weasel.

Your mom’s voice has faded away, now get to work.

I’ve sent my twin girls off to 2nd grade today where they will switch classes on their teachers.

My son will be leaving a carton of orange juice on his teacher’s desk. When she picks it up, hundreds of Skittles candies will pour out of the big hole at the bottom to the delight of his classmates. He will also be placing a rubber snake beneath her desk - because she’ll be getting down there to pick up candy.

See, the best practical jokes (and I could write a book about tormenting students and professors through 4 years of college) anticipate the reaction of the person being pranked. By knowing their response you can take the joke to another level.

How well do you anticipate responses when you sell?

Nobody in our business should ever be surprised by a prospect’s behavior. NOT EVER.

We’ve heard all the objections, so why haven’t we created fantastic and potent responses to each one?

I have. I got sick of hearing the same old things, so I went out and got smart about dealing with the behavior of potential clients.

Take your top six objections, then ask around to determine how others who sell well react to them. Or look ‘em up online.

No more surprises in selling.

Let the only fools be reps who don’t attend to their careers as professionally as you do.

Have a great April 1st. Go do something funny to someone you care about.

No, the beautiful Mrs. Schumacher did not inspire me to a career in our profession. In fact, I only remember one thing she taught during that year…

“When you butter your toast, you don’t have to coat the bread to every corner.” (back then you learned manners as well as math)

So I’m thinking of Mrs. S today as I plop my toast on a plate and begin to smear butter across the coarse, lunar-like surface.

And I think, “NO! I’m not going to be frugal with my butter. I’m successful. I can afford it. I can put all the butter, then all the jam, then all the jalapeno peppers on my toast that I want (just checking if you’re still with me on the last one).”

And I smear too much of everything, too far across my morning meal.

So how’s your attitude on your performance?

Do you treat yourself, often, to reinforce that you’re doing well and deserve some goodies?

I like that my teacher taught us to be frugal. And I do believe every sales pro should have a personal budget and be able to live within their means.

But I do like rewards and bet you do as well.

And you definitely earned the right to treat yourself a little more than you have been doing up until today.

So butter yourself up big - you deserve it!

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

-Mark Twain

This is a pro procrastination message.

Here’s when I encourage putting off those calls and activities…

You know those poor prospects that just showed up in your contact manager to re-connect? Put ‘em off to tomorrow. Or later. Or forever.

You have so much legitimate business, there is no reason to chase these jokers.

So unless you have a small, well-defined territory that you need to saturate over time, just procrastinate on poor prospects.

And get going after the good ones.

You can tell your manager that sales expert Mark Twain said so.

In early January, when a national deep freeze extended even to the Florida Keys, iguanas fell into their natural hibernation-like torpor, and some compassionate Floridians, unaccustomed to seeing iguanas that appeared nearly dead, took them indoors to warm them up, which is a mistake. The owner of the veterinary clinic in Marathon said one “sweet lady” called him about the five-footer she had dragged inside. “When it woke up,” said the vet, “she couldn’t understand why it seemed to be coming after her. When they warm up, they go back to being a wild animal.” [Keynoter (Key West), 1-7-08]

If you facilitate or oversee sales coaching and education, here’s a question for you…

What are you dragging into your training house that doesn’t belong there?

Too much of traditional sales training is based on strategies that are no longer as effective as they were in the 70s and 80s.

You know this is true, too. Prospects have heard all of our closes and when we offer up some of these common comments, it comes across as pre-planned, perhaps even manipulative. Many of them today are much smarter than we are.

We also know a great deal more about buyers than we knew in the old “blast ‘em with features and benefits” days (i.e., “I’m praying one thing on this laundry list of benefits will strike a chord and cause that guy to buy”).

In fact, with sales teams I’ve managed or been hired to train, I teach them how to eat lunch. Think about it. Do you want reps crashing around 2pm every day, tanking productivity and diminishing morale in the office or out in the field?

A holistic approach might also include giving some budgeting skills to reps whose income might fluctuate as erratically as John Travolta’s acting career.

So drag those old, five foot lizard-like ideas out of the house. Replace them with smart new strategies that increase the quality of your training and the quality of your sales team.

Do it quick before your sales continue to hibernate. Call me directly for help or ideas, I’d be happy to talk about this with other corporate sales training pros.

Dan Seidman, dan@salesautopsy.com or 1-847-359-7860.

Forbes just published its annual list of the world’s wealthiest men. http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/News/GatesDethroned
BuffettIsRichest.aspx?GT1=33009