You’ve heard the old phrase “don’t sell the steak – sell the sizzle?” coined by super sales person Elmer Wheeler back in the 1930’s?  Good.  This article is not about that.  Well, not exactly not about that perhaps.  Read on. 

An un-paid plug for Omaha Steaks.

The real quote is much more clever than the abbreviated version that gets thrown around today:  

I’ve mentioned before that everybody is really a sales person because everyone is selling something.  Selling ideas, selling themselves as knowledgeable, as hard-working, etc. 

Let’s suppose you understand that whatever concept you’re selling must have quality (the cow), and the delivery must have a value (the steak), and that you even understand how to make that very palatable outcome desirable (the sizzle).  You still need to master one important thing.  And that is how your message is delivered. 

Which brings me to one of the smartest people I’ve known.  Peter was highly educated, multi-lingual, had a high i.q., was articulate, and was generally pleasant company.  Without giving away nationality, Peter was not born in the U.S.  This is important to understand because culturally, his issues were perhaps only issues here in the States. 

Peter was on a number of projects that I had to work very closely with him on at points.  I emphasize the concept of close.  We were in small conference rooms together, tucked into cubicles in an office environment that was growing so quickly we were always running out of space.  And in those small spaces, I had reached one of the most awkward points in my career. 

Because Peter had the worst personal hygiene habits I have ever, and I mean EVER have come across.  Let me blunt.  He stunk so bad it gave me a headache.  So even if any of his ideas had quality, value, and appeal, no one, and I mean NO ONE could hear through the smell. 

As uncomfortable as it was, a number of us went to our manager at the time.  Our manager had the difficult discussion with Peter.  Peter was hired to be a high level project manager working cross functionally.  Except no function wanted anything to do with him. 

One of the best vegetables in the universe....when it's not stuck in your teeth.

So yes, you need a quality product, idea or service (the cow).  You need to make that fit your customers vision of delivery (the steak), and you need to remind them of what it will do for them to satiate desire (the sizzle). 

But you also need to always be mindful about how the message is delivered.  Timing matters.  Method matters.  Word choice matters.  How you look and prepare matters.  I’m sorry, but you can’t have broccoli in your teeth, because it matters. 

My Grandfather was not a great sales person but he did leave me with a piece of wisdom that resonated with me.   He said “You may not have the most expensive shoes in the room but you can always have the best polished shoes”. 

Make sure your message isn’t obfuscated by things you can control that would hinder its positive reception.

Earning an income is a simple equation:

Work x Application = Income

This isn’t rocket science (unless of course you are a rocket scientist, then it’s a whole other ball of wax).

Admin Gal has an ax to grind with Sales People.

Admin Gal gets the fact that sales people need to make a living.  If they are respectful of her, she will do what she can to get them to the right people to open a dialog.  No, sales people do NOT need to speak to the top of the totem pole at the first swing.  Let me get you to the correct person.

DO NOT call incessantly hoping, beyond hope, to catch Admin Gal’s boss on the phone when she is ‘off duty’.  It isn’t going to happen.

A – Admin Gal’s boss won’t pick up a number he doesn’t recognize.

B – Breathing heavy then hanging up is just plain RUDE.

C – Just do what Admin Gal has asked you to do.

I will use these pages to share sales stories, techniques, strategies, tips and tricks that have worked for me throughout my career as a fruit vendor, tropical fish entrepreneur, door-to-door salesman, instrumentation salesman (thank you Roger), high technology sales manager, international sales manager, director, vice president, managing director and finally president of my own consulting firm for the past 8 years.

Ask me what I am still doing most days and I will tell you without hesitation: In a word, SELLING! … and so are you, regardless of what you do for a living.

I will share what I’ve learned, how I apply basic sales techniques to selling a showerhead that saves a few dollars, convincing my wife to take out the garbage, or to selling a product, project or service that saves an entire company. I will share stories, books, training aids, tools and give you some insights about what has worked for me and introduce you to some of the best salespeople that I have met along the way. I encourage you to share your stories with the rest of us.

I hope that some of this will help you and I am sure we are going to have a laugh together along the way. If you are saying to yourself that you are not a salesman, I will convince you that you are. Remember that first date, were you not selling?

Stop by from time to time.

Regardless of my obsession with the freecreditreport.com commercials, a jingle that I will sing for days, I have not actually had the guts to enter all my extremely personal data online to discover a number and report I don’t even need.

Yesterday though, encouraged by a blurb in the reputable Readers Digest, I logged on to creditreport.com (note the absence of the market friendly and tempting word “free” before the address).  Readers Digest claims this is the only site approved by the federal government.  Backed by RD and the feds?  I’m there!

It was so nice to see all my student loans laid out neatly before me, and they even gave an estimate of what the monthly demanded bill would be.  Oh, the things to look forward to upon graduation.  In all seriousness, it is a great service to check out your credit report, get your score, and even see who has checked on your credit recently.

The sneaky part came when I called to cancel my free trial.  Once you sign up for this service, you are actually signing up for a continued monitoring system of your credit.  You can get a free 7 day trial to check your credit, but you have to cancel within that time if you don’t want to start getting billed.  So along with having to remember to actually call (a task a recommend doing immediately after you check your info so you don’t forget), you have to deal with the phone operators who don’t want you to cancel the service.

Luckily, I have been employed by the whole high pressure sales, shady language, and fast talking business, so I have a heightened ear for situations that may, in a few words, screw me over.  After informing the operator many times my excuse that I just didn’t have the money or interest in continuing the membership for almost 15 dollars a month, he informed me of an option for 9.95/mo because of the economy.  After he told me this was an option, I simply said “okay.”  Okay as in “I understand,” not okay as in “sounds awesome sign me up right now!”  Warning bells went off when there was a couple seconds of silence after this exchange, so I asked how I would know if he cancelled my membership.  He then told me he had just signed me up for the 9.95 option because I said okay to it.

“Oh, that was sneaky buddy!”  Seriously, I think these were my exact words to the operator.  I know, I use big time intimidating sentences.   Trying to finally cover all my bases I told him I didn’t want any part of the service for any price and to cancel my service immediately, and not to offer any more deals.   I heard angry tap-tapping to complete my request and then a curt reply that I should get a confirmation email in ten minutes.

It was great to check my credit score for the first time, get to see a total of my loans, and take advantage of the one free check I get once a year, but a little frustrating to deal with calling (you can’t cancel online) and navigating sales people customer service.

Take advantage of this service, keep your guard up, and remember to always check on a secure connection!

Collect followers for vanity – collect relationships for value – share something of value and build your relationships!

To me social media is a set of great networking tools, that you can use to enhance your networking and NOT a replacement for networking.  I use this WordPress blog, Twitter and Linked-in not to collect followers, friends, and connections but to enhance the relationships I have with people within my network.

I accept it is hard not to get caught up in the social media game of “who has the most followers” on Twitter, “the most contacts” on Linked-in or “friends” on Facebook, especially when you see a competitor has a few thousand more than you.  However for professionals it is not the number of contacts you have but the value of your relationships with your contacts that is your key performance indicator (KPI).

How I use my three main Social Media Channels.

1. Linked-in – www.linkedin.com/in/GordonMacIntyreKemp Like most people, I asked my best contacts to connect on Linked-in and the key word is “connect”!  So many people build a list of 200+ connections on Linked-in and think that is their network built, its not, it is your social networking database populated with targets.

• By regularly changing my updates I make sure that my contacts know what I am doing and I read their updates and send congratulations and comments as appropriate.
• Most importantly though I regularly make time to network and see my contacts face to face.  Every month I select a group of about 25 of my contacts whom I think would like to meet one another and I invite them to meet me for a speakeasy.  On average 16-20 attend and people say they are the best networking events they get invited to.  No speakers, no presentations just me in a bar mixing up my contacts and engaging them on a deeper level.
• Because I am social people reciprocate and when I get invited to someone’s networking event I ask “is there room for me to bring along one of my clients?” This way my contact gets a new high value contact at their event and my client gets a free seminar and well everyone is happy.  Its not clever its just networking!

1. Blog – I like to share my insights on selling, networking and social media every week and every blog is promoted via my Linked-in updates, on the Linked-in profile itself and via Twitter.  Every client I have read my blog before becoming a client and this is working so well for me that next month I am investing in a major new (best practice) blogging platform that will host not only this blogs but those of my best practice partners and guest bloggers as well.

• As a result of the cross referencing a lot of people who view my Linked-in profile also read my blog and this willingness to share my expertise has changed the dynamic of all of my recent sales presentations from being “asked to pitch” to being “asked to help”.
• If you are selling expertise (legal, financial, consulting or other professional services) then blogs are a vital tool in terms of building trust in your ability to deliver.  Sales techniques don’t close deals nowadays, trust closes deals and the higher the trust the higher the price you can charge for your expertise.
• A willingness to share shows how genuine you are and social media is changing the nature of knowledge in sales- if you are not the first to share your knowledge you may as well have never known it.

1. Twitter – http://twitter.com/theintelligiser My first two Twitter accounts were personal (I don’t use them anymore) and admittedly at first I didn’t see a business use but now where as Linked-in is where I manage my valuable relationships Twitter is where I grow and invest in my weaker relationships.

• There really is no better tool for finding and engaging interesting people you don’t yet know.  With my business account I set out deliberately to follow as many interesting people and business people that I could identify as being from Scotland (where I do most of my business).  Most of them followed me back and I shared my thoughts, observations and links to my blogs and I got some great feedback.
• The best thing for me about following people on Twitter is that you get a real insight into people’s personalities and the things that motivate them from their tweets.  This means I now have a list of really interesting people I want to meet so I invite them to my speakeasy events, introduce them to my most valuable contacts and assuming all goes well we connect on Linked-in. Several have become high value networking contacts (friends in reality) and two have become clients.
• You can’t advertise on Twitter but you can sell, anyone who says you can’t just does not know how!  Selling isn’t selling anymore it is Engagement Marketing; people want to do business with people they trust and people they know.  I find the best way to sell is to be the sort of person people want to do business with.

To sum up.

The new golden rules of networking; Use social media but don’t forget to be social, collect followers for vanity – Collect relationships for value – share something of value and build your relationships. Oh and one final point – if your goal is to sell it wont work your goal has to be to genuinely help the people you are networking with or they just wont engage you!

Next Steps – Why not share?

1. Leave a comment
2. Email the link to this blog to your valuable contacts
3. Retweet it – share something of value & build your relationships.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp

Intelligise, Be Brilliant

We are fortunate to have a guest blogging this week. Business writer Laura Bell shares her wisdom. You can find Laura at her website, http://www.bellbusinessreport.com
or read her book, “101 Things You Didn’t Learn in Harvard
Business School,” on Amazon: http://tiny.cc/Ir4OC

All business is selling

I ran across a trade group recently who acted as if they wanted me to write for their publication. When I submitted info on successful ad campaigns, they weren’t interested. (That was to be the article topic.) In their eyes it didn’t apply to their clients. You see, their clients were financial planners. As such, they were service oriented, not product sellers.

The woman who wrote me back said that they had been debating the idea of whether or not their clients actually sold among their board members for years. This is another example that there are those in the corporate world collecting pay checks that haven’t got one iota of sense when it comes to business. Such ignorance finally takes its toll.

I have been interviewing top business leaders and writing my own business prose since 1979. In 1984, I did a lengthy profile on the first woman Dean Witter ever recruited for the sole purpose of being a stock broker. She told me that the first two years she had to work like the devil to build her name and reputation. After that, it was a virtual piece of cake because they all came to her. (Keep in mind that more people were pushing to invest back in that time. Nothing is that easy today.) Her adage was simple. “Sell yourself and then they will buy anything from you.”

If you run your own business, you are always going to be selling. It hasn’t got an anything to do with whether or not you are selling service contracts, investment plans, or the newest widget on the block. You are selling.

You are selling from the first day you decide you are going to launch a business. If you can’t convince someone else you have a valid idea, then you are going nowhere. You then have to either write a business plan or hire someone do it. You have to either convince a partner this is the new bonanza or you have to hire employees. Then there is the money to get the thing going, probably the hardest sell yet.

Some people are natural born sales people. The rest of us have to be pushed, myself included. To make it even harder, we try to convince ourselves we are just offering a service. Well, so is the guy down the street who has already paid his bucks to launch a great ad campaign. He paid someone to do the job he didn’t want to do.

I betcha if you could ask the ‘big guys’ they would probably admit they were tired of selling. I remember hearing Donald Trump on a talk show discussing his hard times. He was millions in debt. His task was to call the bankers he had dealt with in the past and convince them if given the chance, he would pay back his debts. He had to ‘sell’ them on the idea that he could do it. Without his faith in himself and taking that approach, that would probably been the end of Trump

I am sure that one thing Bill Gates and Steven Jobs have one thing in common, their dislike of presenting new products at conventions and exhibits. Gates is famous for showing products that fail to work properly when demoed. We know he’s Gates, but he still human and I can bet he can’t stand that part of his life.

No one ever said selling was fun. Of course, there are those few who seem to get their kicks from it. Think used car salesmen and high powered realtors. Other than that, it is a job that we are stuck with if we run our own business. If this idea sends tremors to the pit of your stomach, there are two options. You either find a partner who is brilliant at it or stay an employee. Yes, really. There is no way to sugarcoat it. That is simply a fact of business life.

If you are determined to have your own shop, but feel you lack these skills, then take a couple of classes. Spend the time to get this skill or as already said, stay at the starting gate. If you have children coming up, you might want to have in your envisioned business one day, let them spend times selling Girl Scout Cookies or get involved in a Junior Achievement program. The skills learned here will last a lifetime.

I heard an older woman screaming to a sales outpost guy, from the company 3, at a shopping mall the other day. I wasn’t chocked, since he was waving with his “offer” in front of her face, telling her to “at least listen to what I have to offer”. OMG!

People, or sales people are mad. They know nothing about sales!

I would make her become in love with me, before I show her the product. I’m the “link” between the consumer and the “brand”. I’m vital, essential, I’m the core! The same goes for CR people. Make the consumer love you! Make them love you so much that they want to buy you a drink or invite for dinner at their place tonight! Smile, touch them, flirt, show your ass, do anything good!

Don’t tell me you cant do that. You know you can. You can do it at the disco! Huh…

But the reason why sales/CR people have “bad manners” is because they don’t appreciate their job. You need love what you are doing, otherwise it will be a pile of shit after you leave the office!

Forcing people to buy… what’s going on with companies these days? Are they so desperate? If you need to sell more, stop doing what you are doing. Now! Don’t think a “rubbish” decoration will make people look at you or your products! Understand the consumer, and everyone will come in herds! Mirror neurons will do the rest!

This post is some kind of “outburst” of mine. I can’t see how it fits with my other blog entries? But who gives a F***!

Do you consider yourself to be an excellent sales manager?  I imagine you do, it’s difficult to imagine that any manager would continue to perform any task in a way that wasn’t working well.

But if you’re ever lucky enough to experience a formal upward feedback process fasten your seatbelt because you’re going to get some shocking results.

In my first sales manager roll I was ready to become that perfect manager.  I tried my hardest to be fair, treat everyone similarly, give clear direction and begin to build a high performance culture.  When I got my first feedback I got a lot of compliments, great scores compared to my peers…but I also read some shocking comments and saw that I had a lot of room for improvement! 

Let me share some of the shock.  “Greg plays favorites”, “he doesn’t make it clear what is expected of me” and “he doesn’t give me the freedom to do my job.”

How is this possible?  Me?  But my overall scores were some of the best in a very large company!  How could I still get these kinds of comments?  Since my upward feedback came from direct reports and from another level down I began to investigate.  But first a little secret.  If you want to know more about what you are doing that will drive people’s impression of your leadership you’re going to have to share some of the information about your feedback.  In other words, you’re going to have to admit that you’re not perfect, but you care enough to want to change.  Once I decided that I was willing to do whatever it took to become a better leader the rest became a little easier.

So I began to call a few of my direct reports.  I shared with them where I was doing well but also shared my lowest scores.  And even though those lowest scores were not a disaster they were still my lowest scores and they needed improvement.  I shared a few of the comments made and asked them what I was doing that was damaging my credibility as a leader.  Once you’ve opened that door get ready for some very interesting information.  I remember asking one of my direct reports, (still a close friend today) what I was doing that would cause people to believe I played favorites.  Bob told me that when he held meetings that people would comment “Greg called me about that subject last week and he said…”  Well after several weeks of hearing this one sales rep nearly broke down and blurted out “Greg never calls me about anything”.  That was really interesting!  I thought it was a very good trait to always be reaching out and getting information about what was going on in the field, but was totally unaware that the way I did it was making some people feel left out.  You can say they’re too sensitive, but what I learned was that my intentions are irrelevant!  People will form opinions about your actions, not your intentions.  Bob gave me another example; he told me that some people commented that I always sat by the same people at meetings or team meals and this may be leading people to believe I had favorites.  From my perspective I was flying around the country nearly every week, sometimes visiting four cities…that’s four meetings, four half days of joint calls and four team dinners.  I was sometimes exhausted and probably did look for a seat near people I knew.  But if you put yourself in a sales reps shoes and think that Greg has come to town four or five times and always sits by the same people you’re probably feeling very left out.  Both of these were pretty easy to fix.  I continued to make calls to reps to get their input, but I kept a roster by the phone and put checks by people I called so that I wasn’t calling the same people all the time.  And I continued to fly around the country attending meetings, making joint sales calls and going to team dinners.  I just made one little change, I looked for a seat next to someone I didn’t know very well.  You know what?  Very small changes, very big changes in my leadership credibility.

So what’s the learning?  For me it was that I do not own my leadership credibility.  My credibility as a leader is owned by the members of my team and they will give me credibility when I earn it, not just because I want it.

So I think that you probably are a good manager…at least in your mind anyway.  Are you brave enough to find out if you’re as good as you think you are?  If you have the courage to open yourself up, then you have the potential to move from a good manager to a great leader.

I had a shit day at work. And I’m pissed off that I’m still in a shitty mood, two hours into my own time.

You know what else shits me?

Listening to the bullshit that goes on in Parliament as the Opposition tries to score points on asylum seekers. They’re desperate people. Pull your head out of your fucking privileged arse (yes, Julie Bishop, I’m talking to you – not only have you played the immigration queue jumper card, but now you’re saying the Sri Lankans on the Oceanic Viking will jump the public housing queue. You are making me very, very cross).

People who think asylum seekers are queue-jumping terrorists rolling in money.

The sales people at work who are never on the phone selling anything and then go shopping at lunch because they earn a shitload more than I do, yet I’m the one creating the product they sell (or don’t/can’t sell, as the case often is). And then when money’s tight, the journos are the first to go.

People who blame women for violence against women.

That the snails aways get to the strawberries before me, no matter how many snail pellets and beer traps I use.

And that the neighbour’s cat shits under our window. And it got in last weekend and pissed in the living room in a bag Man Friend’s step mum brought back from France for us. I hate that cat.

Got something you want to add? Go on, let it out.

Tonight my Mom, Dad and I are going to see Cavalia. It is supposed to be like Cirque du Soleil with horses. I think it could be really cool. Although from the pictures it looks like Lord of the Rings came to visit, but it should still be cool none the less.

One of my sales people lied to us yesterday. I am not sure how to handle it. He and I have never been the best of friends so it will be difficult to not get overly mad.

Yesterday, 11/11, I did not get to make any wishes at 11:11. That made me kind of sad, but at the same time, I realize its just a day.

And my Mika station on Pandora is playing the Beatles? Since when are they in the same category?

I’m a Mrs. G.’s VIB (Very Important Blogger… but of course)! Today I attended the first of many of the Mrs. G.’s VIB Blogger Series at the Mrs. G.’s store on Route 1 in Lawrenceville, NJ.

My mom has shopped at Mrs. G.’s for a number of years and this was the first time I was able to experience their incredible showroom. The event was an opportunity to meet fellow bloggers and network with them, as well as take a tour of the Mrs. G.’s facility and watch some demos.

Their sales people are so knowledgeable about all of their products and extremely helpful. I fell in love with the front loading Electrolux washer and dryer (I want it in red), as well as a few tv’s.

I guess I should have checked them out sooner so we could watch the World Series (Go Yankees) tonight on one of them. Hey Santa…are you listening?

We participated in a demo featuring an Electrolux kitchen and ate tomato bisque soup, salmon, brussel sprouts with pancetta, apple cider and fondue! How cool is that? I even placed my hands on the stove and didn’t get burnt. Since there isn’t a flame and its all magnetic, it’s the perfect option for families with small children.

Ok, so about that tv… they have some amazing sets to choose from. Did you know there are 3D capable tv’s? If you have a 3D capable tv you can plug it into a media server that can show 3D content and Voila! (The server comes with the 3D glasses, not the tv.) I was able to test it out watching “Coraline” the movie. Incredible!

Mrs. G.’s #1 Priority as they proudly display on large signs throughout the store is… drum roll please… CUSTOMER SERVICE. How many places can say that? In a day and age where customer service is seriously lacking (especially with the larger corporations, ahem Verizon), Mrs. G.’s knows whats important. As a third generation family owned company, Debbie Schaeffer is doing a phenomenal job following in her family’s footsteps, staying true to the company and their mission and providing the best products at the BEST prices.

Santa? You still there?

Event sponsored by:

How to quickly turn a failing sales guy into an appointment setting machine.

I was approached after one of my recent sales seminars and asked by one of the attendees to look over his appointment setting script – it was a shocker – here is a snippet with XXX in place of the name, dates and product.

>>Start

Hi (buyers first name)

Sorry to bother you do you have 5 minutes to talk right now?  Yes / No

If No = ask for a time to call back.

If Yes= ask -How are you today?

I am calling from XXX and as I am in your area next week meeting important clients on XXX I would like to see you to tell you about the benefits of XXX.

Have you got just 15 minutes to see me on XXXX?

<<<End snippet

One script can never fit all and personally I like it when salespeople develop their own style of selling on the phone but everyone needs a good starter script to begin with.  Simple as that may sound finding a good introductory sales script often seems about as easy as searching for the holly grail.

This scrip in particular started me thinking; the reason a lot of people struggle with cold calling for appointments is because they come across as begging for the appointment.  Buyers don’t buy from people who beg, a begging sales person clearly isn’t confident in their own abilities or the product and just do not project the level of professionalism required to win the trust needed to close a meeting and then to close the deal.  You don’t need hugely confident sales people either, a key success factor is just sounding confident and so a confident sounding appointment script can pay dividends.

So what is wrong with the script above? Well it makes 7 DEAL KILLING mistakes in the first 20 seconds of the conversation! Let’s look at them:

1. “Hi buyers first name” – the buyer doesn’t know you, the first time you use their name include the surname, if you keep them on the phone long enough to use the name again you can call them by their first name without asking permission.
2. “Sorry to bother you” – Do people really expect to be taken seriously when they start conversations with “sorry to bother you” how about just saying “Hi am not worth talking to”?  If you believe in your product then you are doing them a favour by calling them so stop apologising and start explaining how you can help.
3. Do you have time to talk right now?  – Here is a clue – he picked up the phone!  If it’s not on voice mail they have time to talk but only if you make it worth their time to talk! This question is just asking for a straight no or a wise crack like “that depends on what you want to talk about”? And no that’s not rapport building.
4. “How are you today” – Don’t ask me that! What business is it of yours how I am?  What if I am having a crappy day do you really want me to share that?  If I am having a good day am I going to tell a stranger on the phone?  Worse still if you are calling one of my fellow Scots they will answer “not bad” and ask “how are you” “not bad either” great, is not bad the position you want to start this sales pitch from?  You just lost momentum and gave your buyer time to think up an excuse not to engage with you.
5. “In your area on XXX” – is that the best reason you can come up with to convince the buyer to meet with you – “You are in my area”? “Oh well then, if you are in my area I had better make time in my busy diary to see you” – Get Real.
6. “To tell you about the benefits” –You mean make a sales pitch that is as bad as this one? Buyers don’t want to buy they want results, they want problems solved and they want expert advice from credible professional sales people.  Just tell me what’s in it for me, what specifically is different about your offering and what will it do for me.
7. “Have you got just 15 minutes” – You can close sales in 15 minutes?  I asked the guy and he admitted that a sales meeting took at least 45 minutes and that he always over ran and had to rush his appointments.  His boss had told him to ask for 15 minutes as it was easer to get than 45 minutes, wrong it’s a hundred times harder.  You know you can’t close the deal in 15 minutes the buyer knows it and you both know you are unprofessional for not asking for enough time. Worse still the buyer now knows that you are dishonest.  Engage the buyer on the phone, ask deep and searching questions be professional, be intelligent, show a genuine interest in the prospect and his problems and you become someone that the buyer would like to meet – Ask for an hour and deserve an hour.

To sum it up the script makes the sales guy sound like he is begging for an appointment and has nothing to offer.  You may also have picked up an angry undertone in my writing – well I am angry about this script – the guy was selling sales training!

If someone sells to me this is the least I would expect:

“Hello is that Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp”? (yes) “Great the reason I want to talk to you is…” (Give me a hook and then ask a question to engage me in conversation). Find out my pain, tease me with part solutions from your expert experience of helping people like me and then offer me a meeting to tell me more and maybe even bring along a case study or two. Oh and don’t tell me you will clear your diary to see me (that’s begging) offer me two dates when you are genuinely free and take it from there, I want to believe that I am not the only person who is willing to meet you.

The best way to get an appointment is to be the type of person that people want to meet.

Buyers don’t want meetings with beggars they want meetings with experts who have engaged them on a deeper level, who have something to teach and a product that can solve a problem.

If the sales person changes his approach the appointments will flow, if he doesn’t he will blame the script and the management and quit – at the same time the management will just say there goes another sales guy who couldn’t sell.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp

Intelligise Be Brilliant

I walked in the GNC at the Opry Mills Mall after buying two pair of shoes. This for me is a shopping spree.
I was on a tear. I had a little extra money in my bank account for the first time in a while and I needed some basics.
Shoes came first. Then men’s multivitamins. I could have driven back to VitaminWorld near the other mall, but GNC was right in front of me. Why not? I’m not 15 anymore. I can handle a little salesmanship from some dudes who like to work out and are at least 10 years younger than me.
I was the only customer in the store. Everybody knows to stay far away from a GNC unless you’ve just won the lottery and are determined to get strong and healthy and do it in a hurry.
I had not won any money. In fact a global economic crisis was on and I held three low-paying jobs as I stepped into the shiny maroon threshold of the General Nutrition Center (I think that is what it stands for).
The taller employee had a short haircut and a thick neck with a collared shirt and tie around it. He came at me first.
I didn’t even have a second to browse before he was in my face ready to vacuum money out of my wallet. I didn’t tell him immediately what I needed.  But he recommended the fish oil.
Ha! I already have that covered. I’d been taking fish oil for about a week at that point. My doctor recommended it to bring down my cholesterol. I fended him off for another 30 seconds. I used that time to scan the shelves in front of me to figure out if the store even offered any multivitamins.
Now the other guy came over.  He was a couple years younger than the big fella, but clearly in charge, maybe the shift manager.
He had some pimples but wore his authority in his slicked back hair. Not slicked flat to his head, but styled enough to make him look older than he was.
Two against one, I divulged what they wanted: Information. “Do you have any multivitamins?”
He pointed out a product just to the left of me, the Men’s Mega. It cost $34 for a three month supply. Way too rich for my blood. I usually spend $32 for 280 days worth of vitamins.
They had an opening. Did I want to keep taking my low-quality Vitamin World vitamins, or step up to the plate and take a vitamin that actually might improve my health?
Vitamin World was a GNC copycat. GNC makes its own vitamins with top quality ingredients. The cheap stuff slips right through you.
“Ours are time-release.”
Within a few seconds I had to determine not whether I could afford to spend $100 a year on vitamins, but whether I was man enough to say who cares about my budget and be American enough to accept this level of quality regardless of my economic circumstances.
Well I was. I didn’t want to drive to the other vitamin store and this time I had enough money to take the plunge. Screw it. I want to be taken for a ride. Yeah, what is the point of taking crappy vitamins?
At this point, I hadn’t been taken yet. It was the Gold Card that got me.
If I spent $15 to get a gold card membership that lasted for one year, I would get 20 percent off the price of the vitamins every time I had to buy some (four times a year).
And they had a special. They had a special on gold cards. They were only $9 instead of $15. And if I got a gold card, I could get a bag of chewable orange Starburst tasting fish oil candies on the cheap. They were already on sale and the gold card would make them cheaper.
By now I had dipped into the small bowl of fish oil candy samplers next to the register. As I started to chew, the younger manager guy hammered me with deals, deals I couldn’t properly comprehend because two weird looking men-boys were staring at me and I was chewing a fish oil starburst.
I had enough strength for one defensive maneuver. “I don’t need these candies. I’ve already got two bottles of fish oil at home.”
Ha! I’ve got’em.
“You can double up. Take the fish oil and these. These contain a concentrated does of Omega 3s.”
Vitamin candy that is extra powerful. Hmm. That’s when the GNC harpoon that had been flying through the air since I walked through the door finally landed and hooked me. My brain was scrambled and the mall lighting had started to fry my brain. They  had their hands on the harpoon rope and began reel my bloated carcass toward the boat.
“So….$32 for the vitamins, $9 for the Gold Card and $15 for the fish oil starburst – plus tax –that’s what $60?” The final bite on my bank account was $61. I shook hands with the manager after I made the purchase, and just before I left — a sure sign I’d been taken.
I staggered out into the airless mall to gain my bearings. I was back in the real world where money mattered and health was secondary, not the other way around. My pocket was full of change because I had had to park on the street earlier that day.
I used all those quarters in a frenzy at Double Bubble Island. I jammed watermelon , then very cherry, grape and a couple other flavors in my mouth. The grape gumball was stale and it broke into pieces as I bit down on it.
Two raw deals in a row – GNC and now a stale gumball. Damn it.

Everyone hates sales people – admit it you do as well – even sales people hate sales people!

When a sales person approaches you in a store and asks “can I help you” unless you are in the Apple Store or maybe PC World you automatically say “no thanks just looking”.  Even if you are not just looking, even when you really could do with a second opinion on which shirt goes with the trousers you just picked out.  When a telesales person gets you on the phone you will rarely give them the chance to tell you about the deal they have for you or the service they offer.  At the networking event when someone you just met delivered his elevator pitch before you have even had a conversation and tried to force his card on you, the only person watching who didn’t know that you were not going to do business is the salesman.

The rare exception I mentioned was when you go into the Apple Store or PC World you actively seek out the salesman to ask advice we value their expertise, you understand that you may know less than them and so you are desperate to tell them what we need, how we will use it and how much you can afford and boy will their advice influenced your buying decision.

Why?

Because everyone hates “Sales People” BUT they love “Experts”.

But it doesn’t have to be that way!

In the 80s and 90s sales people were trained to push information, to state the features and benefits overcome objections and then try to close the deal.  The world has moved on but sales training in the main hasn’t.  People don’t want to be sold to they want to be engaged, advised and empowered to make the buying decision themselves.   Engaging means sharing expertise, questioning and delving deep into the needs and wants of the buyer, engaging is far more powerful than running through the old style sales script.  Engaging empowers the buyer to make the decision, it is easier than selling, it’s more fun AND everyone I coach to engage increase their sales by at least 25%.

So stop selling people what you want them to buy and start engaging and helping people buy what they really need.

Fortunately becoming an expert is easy, yes you need to read your product manual and service level agreement etc but that’s just background info.  The best way to become an expert and be loved by your clients is to ask questions.  A field sales person will meet between four and a dozen buyers a day, a telesales person will talk to at least 20 decision makers a day and a retail sales person will talk to up to a hundred.

Now imagine if those sales conversations were used to engage and to understand the reasons that the buyers may want to buy and to understand the problems and pain experienced by the buyers of their service.  How long would it take for every one of them to become real experts in their marketplace, to be able to offer really credible advice and to share information that will empower the buyers, make them respect the sales person and make it far more likely that they will buy?

Results can be instant but to make engaging a habit and get 25% plus sales increases usually takes people I coach about three weeks.  The person in every business that is best placed to access the knowledge required to become an expert is the sales person but most of them just keep trying to force the sale through rather than listening to reasons that their prospect needs to buy and that’s a pity because everyone hates sales people BUT they love experts.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp

Intelligise Be Brilliant

Sales people are told at the onset of their careers to expect REJECTION. It’s just part of selling. Wrong! 

There is no profession on earth that would tolerate the level of rejection ’selling’ experiences without seriously examining its methods, motives, investments … without uncovering the critical defect and correcting it. It would be like NASA discovering an oxygen leak on Discovery and launching anyway. North American sellers could be accused of doing just that, for over half a century, were it not for one undeniable fact. Most sellers are not remotely aware they have a leak.

The leaks … the defects, are self-service and poor or no qualification skills. Since time began the quest for THE SALE, THE CLOSE, and MEETING QUOTA has been all-encompassing. At the furthest end of the selling axis the motivation has been greed, at the other end … ignorance. Almost a year ago to the day an exasperated business woman said this about selling. “In business I need a partner, an ally … I don’t need another salesman.” In that quote lies the road to redemption for salespeople and, as importantly, for those who employ them. But what needs to change?

Post secondary education for one. In a world that employs tens of thousands of sales people not one of these sales people has a degree in ’selling’. There are no degrees in ’selling’. There is no curriculum, no exam, no standard. There are no rules.

Industry needs to change, too. From banks to brothels salespeople are pushed out on to the streets and ordered to meet quota, or else !!!. What the presidents and madams have failed to realize is that, as surely as we no longer need to put film in cameras to take pictures, our salespeople no longer need to be mercenaries to sell our products and services. In fact the selling profession pushes more business away than it attracts. The reason is that North Americans are fed up with being sold to. We are fed up with the traditional salesperson.

For those of you sensing a huge opportunity here, you are absolutely on the right track. However, there is one more thing we all need to understand and do before deploying our new and improved salespeople into the field to put our competitors out of business. It’s called ’support’. For those readers not willing to wait for the next installment of this article I invite you to call Tangent Strategies locally at 947-2299 or toll-free 1-877-446-3383. We love proactive companies and salespeople wherever you may be in North America. We’re ready to be in your corner.

I find it too uncomfortable to be nice when I’m not feeling nice.  Childish, I know.  Perhaps it might help you understand that I didn’t feel I had a right to my feelings when I was a child.  I remember feeling vaguely numb and rather anxious all the time.  When someone was unkind or rude to me, I never responded.  I believed I deserved it. I’m certain I was no angel at times.  All those negative feelings do come out in some ways.  I remember fighting with my brothers quite a bit and when I got older, with my mother.  I also remember being nice to people who weren’t nice to me as if it were my destiny in life.  Now when I’m feeling abused by my boss or a person in my near vicinity I have a very difficult time not overreacting.  I’m working on this.  Sometimes.  Sometimes not.  The times that I’m not working on it, are the times I take great pleasure in lashing out at strangers–sales people on the other end of an unwanted phone call for instance.  I find it rather surprising that the sales person seems offended.  Don’t you think calling people who haven’t asked for your call or who have never met you is rude?  See, I think this.  I used to be a sales person and I thought it then.  I didn’t make a very good sales person.  I can’t be blamed for being rude to them when their phone call is rude in the first place.  So, I don’t feel so bad about it.  However, I’ve been trying to treat people better in general.  I feel it’s a good way to be.  I’ve been reading a lot of the The Ethicist in the NYT and I know he would agree.

However, and this may make me a sadist, I really feel better when I’m done with those sales people.  It’s like a release valve has been opened and a little bit of the rage inside has dissipated.  The feeling I have is one of buoyancy.  I don’t seek these opportunities out, but life offers them often and I’m rather quick to respond.  I have a lot of rage left over from decades of supression.  Aside from medication, I wonder what the healthy response is?  I go to therapy and the gym regularly and I try to get enough sleep–this helps.  Yoga makes me more angry (I have no idea why).  Meditation makes me anxious, but then, eastern religions would tell me I have to discipline my mind.  Yuck.  I grew up in the most oppressive, religious environment there is.  The thought of disciplining anything, but especially my mind, is gross.  I was always told my thoughts were evil and I was evil and I had to discipline my flesh–really?  at seven?  Seriously.   Perhaps it’s just one day at a time.  I HATE that platitude, but perhaps it’s just a practicality.  I do know that I need to find a way to do what it is I love to do  and that would help.  Being chained to the desk of a woman who is less competent than I  doesn’t help.

So often you hear of sales people failing to make the grade after being promoted.  Why is this?  Are sales people simply not cut out for more senior positions?  Are the skills that make a sales rep. shine no longer valid as the promotions come?

Over the years I have witnessed sales people struggle mightily after promotions.  Usually they don’t fail, but they are not able to make the same outstanding contributions as a manager as they did as a sole contributor.  To understand this you should first think through how the roles change from sales rep. to field sales manager, to regional Director/VP.

Sales Representatives – The core them of any sales position is making the sale.  While each industry commands different responsibilities and practices, the primary focus is common to all – to successfully complete the sales.  This includes;

• Making initial contact with prospects, qualifying prospects.
• Meeting with prospects to identify, understand and seek concurrence of prospect needs AND the implications of not addressing those needs.
• Maintaining continuous communication with prospects throughout their buying process, while building a coaching network.
• Continuing to pursue the sale in the face of rigorous resistance.
• Identifying & communicating the benefits of addressing the prospect’s needs to decision makers and key influencers.
• Closing the sale.

So along comes the first promotion…field sales manager.  So the refined skills that made the sales rep. a stand out are a good basis to work from but look how the job changes.

Field Sales Manager – The theme of this position is driving the team to sell.  The sales manager cannot personally ensure goal attainment, they must reach goals through the efforts of others.  The first level sales manager is a player coach.  The best usually invest about 30% of their time helping close the most valuable prospects, and then invest 70% of their efforts ensuring that the team results are maximized.  This job is very complex.  It is most natural for a newly promoted sales person to mismanage their time.  They may very well spend 70% of their time helping close business and only 30% of their time developing the team.  This will most often result in a sales plateau.  So in addition to the skills listed for sales rep the sales manager has additional skills required,

• Concern for Order – Like Stephen Covey documents in his 7 Habits book it is very easy for the manager to run from task to task trying to meet all due dates while investing what little time is left helping close business.  An effective manager will arrange their calendar to ensure they are spending time with all team members.  Maybe not equally the team results will drive more success than the manager’s personal sales contribution.
• Coaching and developing others – This is more difficult than it sounds.  Many of the skills that made them successful as a sales rep have moved from conscious efforts to subconscious habits.  It is a difficult transition to move from doing to helping others do.
• Creating & maintaining effective work teams.  This includes internal team members as well as collaborating with other symbiotic departments.

Okay, let’s say our candidate is an incredibly entrepreneurial and is able to make the transition from rep to sales manager.  What’s next?  Regional Director/VP.

Regional Director/VP – The core theme changes from driving a team to sell, to managing a larger organization.  The job has taken a turn towards analytical thinking, matching resources to potential, creating efficient infrastructures of materials and organizational resources to support the regional sales efforts.  The RVP does not create the sales strategy, but uses their skills to ensure execution of the plan.  The RVP must communicate upwards to clearly and honestly keep senior management appraised on forecasts, product and customer input.  Additionally the entire region looks to this person as the Company’s idea of how they define leadership.

• Analytical Thinking – The RVP must be able to rise above the level of any one particular customer or prospect.  They must look at the sales pipeline as an aggregate indication of the effectiveness of all teams.  They must be able to translate pipeline analytics into action plans including training, product/service redefinition and as a tool to coach & develop their sales managers.
• Using Business Expertise – By now the successful incumbent has accumulated enough industry, product and customer experience to understand not only what the sales pipeline looks like…but is able to anticipate what it should look like and is able to formulate tactical plans to guide the regional to sales plan attainment.
• Enabling the team – The incumbent is accountable to communicate to senior management exactly what is needed in order to make plan.  When sales teams face obstacles they rely on the RVP to identify & acquire resources to help them overcome these roadblocks.
• Training and developing people – The RVP must make themselves accountable not just to their direct report’s development, but for every member of the regional sales team.  Keeping up routine inspection of individual, team and regional pipelines can help the RVP see trends.

So why do people struggle as they move along this track?  Well, I’ve worked within some very large sales organizations and made it to top sales officer.  From my perspective the failure of people falls on the shoulders of their employer.  Field sales is one of the only departments where you sit miles away from your boss.  You do not get the daily coaching sessions.  The accidental conversations that take place in the hallways simply never occur in field sales.  To make matters worse I have not seen leadership training offered to newly promoted sales managers.  There are not training courses on how to interpret the sales pipeline.  How to create developmental action plans around the analytics of the pipeline.  We do a disservice to the organizations most valuable commodity…people.  Not only do we leave the newly promoted manager swinging in the wind…but we withhold excellent leadership from the sales people who depend upon their manager to help them succeed.

I know this is ending up in a rant…but if you want different results perhaps you need to do things differently.

What is so unique about LIGHTYEAR MLM? LIGHTYEAR IS AN ACTUAL ESTABLISHED COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY WITH 20 YEARS UNDER ITS BELT. ITS NOT A WEAK AND BOASTFUL COMAPNY, IT’S THE REAL DEAL. 

There is a great opportunity to earn residual income when you share your product and your business opportunity with others. 

We are giving you a chance to check out great companies and then find distributors that you would like to team up with.

Landing on a website and joining a company with just anyone, does not always mean that you will get the best leadership,mentoring or training from that distributor or their team.

 find a team that you can grow a successful business relationship

These are not jobs… THESE ARE OPPORTUNITIES

WORK A minimum of 5-10 hrs per week to get started part time

The more you put into your business, the more you will get back….

Note: This was a post written by Deborah Fisher earlier this year.  It was brought over into this site because the content provides insight into the market and generating new-build contracts and sales . . . and also because it still drives Deborah nuts every time she thinks about the following BIG BUILDER campaign.

Great. I just received an email blast from a BIG builder (you know who you are!) on another expensive campaign that is going to do little to advance their number of sales for the quarter.  (And after being in the home building industry for so many years . . . I am well familiar with trying to make those numbers for Wall Street.)

Here’s my wonderment: I can not believe how poorly designed some of the marketing strategies are that are rolling out of the home building industry. Who is running the home builder’s marketing??  Who’s coming up with this stuff???  Guys, is this the best that you can do??  Do you really think that one band aid – one program – will fix a lack of sales across the board?  Is this something you came up with or the lame attempt of some advertising agency that doesn’t have a clue about home building and buyers? 

Sorry if I spout off and foam at the mouth, but really, people, what are you thinking, and why do you still have your “BIG” corporate jobs?  For the love of God and all that is holy . . . wake up and get to the heart of the matter!  You are wasting time, money, and the energy of your sales team on “promotions” that have little value and no substance. And we know that our sales teams have very little energy to spare at the moment. They are emotionally and mentally exhausted.  Giving the sales team a promotion that builds them up but will do little to help them achieve their numbers (and yes, it is about the numbers) will only make them crash even further and harder than before.  This type of sales management and marketing platform is tantamount to you being the pusher and your site team being the junkie. Oh, these are hard, hard words, but the facts are the facts.   

People, today’s home shoppers are not delaying the buying decision because of the monthly investment.  A mortgage buy down across the board from 5 % to 2.875 % for the first year is not going to convert traffic.  You could drop the interest rate to ZERO and it is not going to spur urgency!  IT IS NOT ABOUT THE INTEREST RATE!!!  

People are afraid to purchase today because they are unsure that the value of the home that they are buying will keep that value in the days ahead. Who wants to buy a home for $x and have the home home valued at $x-y in the months to come? That difference between $x & $y is what the buyers are worried about!  Who wants to be on the hook for more money than a product has value??

There is a large group of Americans who would like to move up into a better home than the one they currently have, but fear making the commitment to purchase a new home when they are uncertain that will still be employed six months down the road.  Others are in a position where they can’t sell their home.  There is a way to overcome and satisfy the buyer’s concerns for each of these objection so put your marketing team to work to develop and implement a strategy.

Folks, I could go into a litany of reasons people are not buying homes.  It is different buyer by buyer, and I do not have the space in this blog to address each OPPORTUNITY that is preventing your prospects calling one of YOUR homes THEIRS. Let me just say this: do what I did and do on a regular basis.  Review your prospects/leads community by community and person by person, and come up with a way to get that person off of the fence and into your home. 

Please stop trying the “one crummy idea” will generate sales across the board and be all things to all people. Those days are gone. People took those promotions at the time because they were going to buy from you regardless. It was a BONUS to them.  The buyers that went for those promotions are having their homes auctioned off at the courthouse or are mailing the keys back to the bank.  Start looking for REAL promotions for Real buyers. 

It’s what I am doing, and probably why WE ARE SELLING HOMES when our competitors are closing their doors!

So, I am hitting the delete button. Email me when you can figure it out. 

I have (well-meaning) cyber-friends who send me all of the promotional stuff the builders send them because they know I am a marketing junkie, an analytical one at that. Thanks for sending me stuff. Keep it coming. The good, the bad, and the ugly. 

PS. I don’t care if you are offering a Realtor 10% commission. 10% of nothing is still nothing. I think the Realtors would prefer even 2.5% of something.  It is still more in their pockets than they had before. Use your money to make purchasing your home IRRESISTIBLE to THE BUYER. 

PSS.  As a sales and marketing professional in the homebuilding industry for more than two decades, and president of a marketing company geared to builders and developers, please consider using our services.  Not only do I teach at the NAHB’s IBS and the SEBC the very stuff I am talking about, stuff that works, but I am portable. Besides, you really, really need someone outside in the real world not worried about their job to tell you how it really is.

I’ve written in the past about people looking for a silver bullet fix.  You know what I mean.  With consumers it shows up as looking for that one thing you can buy that’s going to fix it all and make you taller, thinner, tanner, and better looking.

With organizations concerned with their revenue line it’s not much different.  Except the thought is that spending money on a crm system, a new compensation plan from a big consulting firm, a sales training program from some guy that wrote a book, or something similar is going to fix their revenue woes.

Yeah...about your car plan this year...the company has had to make a few cutbacks....

One of the best ways to improve sales performance is coaching.  In fact, good coaching is more important than sales training.

Why is coaching so important?  Because done well coaching is:

• Personalized
• Specific
• It happens spontaneously and
• It’s situational

Personal.  Coaching is personal because it should happen one on one.  It’s a sales manager getting out with his or her sales people on the road to make calls.  It’s personal because time spent together inevitably will create dialogue.  A dialogue with open ended questions makes for personalized coachable moments.

Specific.  If a sales manager has implemented some basic measuring tools, he or she should already have a good idea of some of the areas that an individual sales person might be struggling with.  Without letting a sales person fall on their face, the sales manager should be looking to create open ended dialogue about what they have observed in spending time with a sales person.  Getting a sales person to understand and acknowledge weak points, making specific suggestions on how to improve, and then getting bi-directional commitment to make a change is tremendously impactful.

Spontaneous.  Coaching can’t be planned.  It is best received in the moments and time frames that are meaningful.  The only way this can happen is to be there for those moments.  If you’re a sit behind the desk sales manager or worse yet, a shoot them from behind manager, this won’t work.

Situational.  The best learning experiences are experiential.  They get indelibly imprinted on the brain with memory of sight, sound, smells, and emotion.  When Coaching is personal, specific, spontaneous, and orientated sitatuationally around a day of sales calls?  A day of sales calls which can bring up all sorts of things?  The coaching and learning experience is tremendously more impactful than in sitting in a conference room watching some powerpoints from Mr. Perfect Teeth training.

Training still has it’s place.  I’m a big believer in it, even those big-whig book guys’ stuff.  Training is valuable and should be a consistent part of the nutritional intake of sales people in your organization.  But good coaching disciplines are what set excellent sales organizations apart from everyone else.

So, if you’re a VP, how good are your managers at coaching?  And if you’re a sales manager how good a coach are you?  The only way to get better is to commit the time and effort to do it.