The Pedestal Group

I meet with a lot of sales people wanting to sell products and services to my clients.  I am constantly amazed at how bad sales people can be! Here’s the latest tips I’ve picked up from those meetings.

If I get to the meeting location first it isn’t personal.  Twice I’ve arrived 5 minutes early for a meeting this week and had the sales rep annoyed. And showed it! Before we’d even been introduced!  Seriously?  If you wanted to buy the coffee, buy yours and grab a gift card.  Don’t get annoyed!

READ our website.  Seriously. Please.  Develop a list of questions before the meeting and see if any of the answers are on the website.  I had one person tell me proudly that he had read the site.  But then he didn’t understand  the service my client provides.  Foolishly, I started worrying we hadn’t written that page clearly.  After several minutes, he finally confessed that he “looked” at it but didn’t get into the detail.  Come on people!

You know how sales trainers tell you to repeat back what the person says to show you were listening?  Unless you are a Freudian therapist, turning the exact words I said into a question is annoying, not demonstrating you were listening.  One sales rep asked about our target audience.  I answered and he said, “so I hear you saying [insert my exact words], right?” Without some interpretation or at least changing the order of the words, he was just a parrot.  Not someone understanding what I needed.

So, the morale here is listen to sales trainers but be smart, think about the intent of the training and be sure to be respectful.  A sales call isn’t about YOU – it is about THEM.  Or if you want to work with my clients, its about ME.  And I get there early. Deal with it.

Fritz pointed out that it has been a long time since he got to blog. And, in reviewing his old posts, he realized he forgot one topic in his, “Fritz’s top 10 management tips” so he would like to make it 11. As you may recall, I walk Fritz every morning and get to watch Fritz manage his business and for the record, in his business I am strictly support staff. See if these apply to your business!

1. If you find something interesting, stick your whole face in to really investigate it. Sometimes you will be unhappy with what gets on your nose, but more often it is something fascinating!

2. Dream big – some day you really might catch the bunny if you just stick to it and believe you can.

3. Leave your mark in many places (I know, this is gross but go with me) –  the more people who know you were there the better!

4.  Move quickly and decisively. Don’t dilly dally around.

5. If you come to a decision point, consult those you need to and make a quick decision. Even if you don’t get to go the way you want, moving forward is better than standing still.

6. Following the same course on a regular basis is fine but periodically, change it up! Going out of your comfort zone may yield new things to experience (see #1).

7. If there is something new on your route, it is important to notice, investigate (again, see #1) and know what it is about. Knowing your market is key.

8. If someone new comes along, greet them as a friend first. Offer to play, be nice, show you are a good guy. You never know what they have to offer.

9. If someone else is walking as well, be sure you keep up. Getting left behind isn’t fun – and you may have to drag your cohorts with you to do it.

10. Always clean up your messes. It isn’t right to leave them and they may end up in someone else’s space which is not being a good neighbor.

11. Just because the big dogs walked there, doesn’t mean you have to as well. Sometimes it is good to know where they went and go somewhere else. Why try to compete with that?

Let’s just say you are hosting an event. You walk into the room and your speaker is already there as well as several attendees. If this is 30 minutes before your event, no problem. But what if it is FIVE minutes before your event?

I bring this up because this has happened to me a number of times lately. Either I was the speaker or I was an attendee who got to spend a great deal of time with the speaker because the organizer didn’t show up early. For the one the organizer got there right before it started and the other he arrived on time but then had to get coffee, etc. so we didn’t start on time. So what did they communicate?

In both cases someone sitting near me said, “I’ll have to remember this the next time I’m rushing to get here”. Great. Now at the next meeting of this group someone else isn’t going to show up on time. In one meeting someone took the initiative to make sure everyone was introduced and had a short discussion on why they were there. When the organizer sat down, she was already behind and everyone looked to the guy who had introduced them to run the meeting. Loss of respect was NOT what she was going for at that meeting!

So what should have happened? If you are in charge, get there early. That isn’t a big deal, just schedule the meeting 30 minutes earlier in your calendar. Next, have a plan for what happens when people get there. Will they sign in, will they be introduced to someone, etc. Finally, be sure you own the meeting and run it. Clearly people came when you called, so they already have a reason to listen. Be sure to make it worth their while so they will come back the next time.