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.

Many years ago I had to make a tough pitch to a vice president known for being a ruthless negotiator. The team elected me to be the voice but I was definitely nervous. I chanted “he who speaks first buys” all the way up the steps to the meeting. Once there, I laid out our very well thought out plan and then shut up. He reviewed the material, checked his watch, and then simply stared at me. At the time I would have told you it was an hour and half (and my team completely agreed) but I’m sure it was less than a minute. At the end of that time, he agreed. Signed the document and walked out. At the door he told us we’d done a good job. WAHOO!!!!

Later, he stopped me in the hallway and asked why I didn’t say anymore. I told him I had made my case and there was nothing more to say. He laughed and waited. So this time I bought and told him “he who speaks first buys”. He got a big laugh and said he hoped the sales people he had trained had learned the lesson so well.

It came up again this week because I’m conducting interviews for a client. A candidate had a difficult situation in his background and I had to ask him about it. He explained and I sympathized and then explained I needed to pause for a sec to make sure my notes were correct. While I was doing that, he continued talking. And talking. And talking. Seriously. I get that he wanted to make sure I had the right impression and understood what happened wasn’t his fault, but after he talked SO MUCH, I started to wonder why. He was buying, but I wasn’t.

So this week – try it. Put an idea out there whether that’s to a coworker, a client, a prospect, your significant other, your child, whoever and be quiet. It is amazing how powerful it is!

Now take that a step further. Now you know what they say. Happy with that? Happy telling people at a meeting, “we do XYZ and our clients tell us we are the only company they’ve brought in that actually understands what they needed.” You certainly sound more credible and people like knowing others agree. But what do you really want them to say? That’s your next strategic direction. Set up the self-fulfilling prophecy. If you decide you want your client to go to an event, talk to someone and say X, you will provide X.

So how are YOU different?

So what can we learn from him? Give yourself an agenda for any sales meeting you have with a prospect. What do you need to know about the person before you walk out of the meeting? At a minimum, know how to pronounce their name. Write it down on your notes phonetically. That way in the future you will use it properly.

After that, give yourself a list of 4-9 things you want to know about them before they leave. If you have 30 minutes for the meeting, plan on getting the answer to one about every 3-6 minutes. That means the person gets time to talk about their answer. Think about that. If you want to know the goals for our marketing plan, that is going to be a longer answer than 30 seconds. YOU WILL NEED TO SHUT UP FOR THE WHOLE TIME. (sorry – rant sneaking in) So let’s say that answer is 2.5 minutes. You get 30 seconds to ask your question. We’ve already used up 2 minute doing the name thing. You have now used 5 minutes of 30. If you know your presentation on your tool / service / widget will take 10 minutes (and you should know because you should PRACTICE and have information AT HAND to provide), then you know you have a total of 20 for fact finding. You’ve used five. You are a quarter of the way through your fact finding time and you have two pieces of information. See why you need a plan?

So set yourself an agenda to help keep yourself on track. At the end of a meeting you have to have answers to those questions you gave yourself so if you are getting toward the 10-minute-left mark, you know to STOP TALKING. You can’t get answers unless you stop talking.

A little bit more rant – don’t look at the person’s business card and ask a question about something on it in a negative. If I have my twitter address on my business card, I bet there’s a reason. Asking “do you like that twitter?” almost sounds like “is your baby that ugly?”. Obviously I like it or I wouldn’t put in on my BUSINESS CARD. Sheesh.

I learned “she who speaks first, buys” when I started in IT and the company believed we were all part of the sales team so we all needed to learn sales techniques.  And in IT, you are absolutely selling your solution to a problem because generally the user has no way of knowing if you are right or wrong.  ”She who speaks first, buys” is all about making your case and then getting out of the way.  Generally, we want to fill that silence.  It is so much better when people are talking because you have a chance at knowing what they are thinking and what’s going on.  Karen made the point today that the power in an interaction is in the silence and that is so true.

Not sure?  Years ago I was the chair of a team sent to research a solution for a problem we were having as an organization.  There were two cheap solutions that would have required hours and hours of maintenance and support, or there was a more expensive option that would actually solve more than the initial problem and just work.  The team was completely behind the more expensive solution but were scared to death to present to BOB, our VP (Bob was definitely an all-caps kinda guy).  Bob was never unreasonable, but he did have lots of pressures on him that we may or may not know about and he expected people to be consummate professionals.  In this particular organization, most of us were young and inexperienced so we didn’t necessarily know how to be who he wanted us to be.  But, I was the chair so I got to present.

We sat in the conference room and I presented our proposal. I hit all the points that were important to Bob as well as why we felt they were important. And then, I sat down and kept my mouth shut.  I had told the team they couldn’t talk after I finished the proposal.  I looked at Bob and he looked at me and my friend looked at her watch.  A minute and 30 seconds later, Bob asked a question.  We got what we wanted.  Later he told me I had handled it well and was surprised I could sit that quiet for that long. But I knew if I kept speaking, I was the only one buying the proposal – and I was already sold!

So in the end, the lesson is, present and then be quiet.  You have no idea what the person is thinking so stop trying to guess. While you’re trying to read their face and are freaking out that your price is too high, they are trying to decide how to tell their boss they don’t want to go with his college buddy because they want to buy your product or service.  Same uncomfortable expression on the face, but totally different reasons!

Write it down, carry it with you, use it everywhere.  But I will caution you – if you teach it to your children, they will learn it and use it. Thank goodness the dog doesn’t understand…..

Now I am not going to tell you I was super-careful when I dialed or anything, but quickly looking at this information I dialed 880…. NOT 330.  So now I’m dealing with a vendor for one of my clients and I couldn’t even read the phone number quickly! Are you kidding?

So I ask you – beg you – plead with you!  If you are a sales person, be sure it is easy to contact you in multiple ways.  A friend of mine recently pointed out that you should have your email address in your signature so if people are using a cell phone, they can click on your email address. Or, if the email is forwarded and that person has you in their address book, the email address still comes through.  You should also spell out your web address rather than just have links so it is easy to click on it.  And while cutsie fonts are fun for party invitations, get them off your email signature.  It doesn’t help anyone if they can’t call you because the font is so flowery they can’t tell an 8 from a 3.

What ways can you think of to make it easy for your client?

I have a client in need of a database product.  In the course of my evaluation of software, I went to the top software’s website.  I’ll be nice and leave them anonymous.  They have an on-line chat feature so I used it.  Twice “Alex” greeted me and asked how he could help and twice while I was talking he hung up.  I, thinking both times were software glitches, tried a third time. I got “Stephanie”. We got through her questions for me and she indicated I needed an account rep.  Great. On to the next part of the process. Instead, the person who left me a voice mail was Alex. When I returned the call, I was told they couldn’t connect me to an account rep without the client name. When I questioned why they needed that, it was because they might already be in the system.  Since they haven’t ever looked into a database product, I knew that wasn’t the case but when I said so, I was told I had no way of knowing that in a tone that sounded like he thought I was lying. Needless to say the call went downhill from there.

I did speak with another rep and when we talked about the client name piece, the second rep indicated that if they help a customer who is already assigned elsewhere, they don’t get the “credit”.  And there is no way to reassign an account from one rep to another so if I want to talk to someone at this company, I have to work through Alex. Period.  Oh -and just for fun – all the account reps and managers are in Vegas today at a sales kickoff meeting.

So basically a new customer calling in has to give their name, phone, company name, address, and email address so that the rep can see if they are in the computer and if they are, transfer them to someone else who may or may not be available.  It is not in the best interest of the person who answers the phone to answer any questions the caller has because it may not be their account.  And at the end of the day, they only get “credit” (I’ll translate as commission) for those accounts assigned to them.  None of this takes the customer’s needs into account. AND THEY SELL SALES SOFTWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I ask you – when was the last time you jumped through your sales process hoops as a customer?  Do you set up road blocks or systems that encourage the wrong behaviors?  Are people on an incentive plan to help customers or themselves?  It is definitely time to take a look.

The meeting starts off with the standard statement and I do think every person I met with believes it.  Then, with many of them, it is followed up with a complete spewing of all of their options.  I let them because the only way I know to think outside the box is to know what box you are in so hearing about options that might on the surface not work for my client may turn out to be fantastic.  But the sales people completely waste their time, look silly and don’t get the information to be able to follow up with me on new ways for my clients to advertise. Because they don’t know what would work.

So what should they do?  Here’s a crazy idea – prep for the meeting, have questions ready, and then SHUT UP. It is endlessly frustrating to feel like I have to interrupt to talk about my client.  So to my readers, I ask you to do the following before meeting a prospective client:

1.  Know something about me.  Don’t assume  because you know my company name that I sell pedestals.  The good news is it is all on my website!
2.  Have some questions you prepared in advance that would help you match me to products.  The best part is these can be standard questions you ask all your prospects!  Write once, use often. Brilliant!
3.  Ask me a question and then stop talking.  Take notes instead.  When you get back to your office, you should be able to say concrete facts about my business, my clients, and what I need.  Test yourself by describing me to a co-worker.  If you can tell real business information, you did a good job.

Only after doing these three things should you start to show me product.  Showing me things that will meet my needs is great – I don’t waste my time and you look great.  Once we get through the initial information, then you can pull out the other products to help me in the future or with other clients.  But wait until you’ve presented the targeted stuff first.

Someday I’ll meet this sales person and will gush about them forever.  In the mean time, if you see me at the coffee shop with my eyes glazed over, you’ll know it is another one so stop by!

Lesson 1 – Internal communications make or break a transaction. In case after case, things went smoothly or not based more on the internal communication than anything else. If the tactical group wasn’t on the same page as the negotiating team, you ended up with situations like Waco, Tx. If everyone was on the same page, as a news-viewing public we don’t remember the cases because they went so smoothly and worked out in the end. I can recall many deals that were made or tanked based on the communication between sales and operations, or users and technologists, or other internal groups. Making every effort to keep communications open and flowing is critical to every deal.

Lesson 2 – Nothing is more important that strong rapport. I have taught hundreds of customer service and sales people how to build rapport. And no one is allowed to use the cheesy, “how are you today?” when starting a conversation with a new person over the phone as it cannot be sincere. It had never occurred to me how hard it would be to create rapport with kidnappers and even that it was necessary. Imagine, you have to create rapport with someone in the most stressful situation of their lives, with someone else’s life depending on you to do so, and it is highly likely the person is willing to hurt another person?! For the most part in our business transactions, we can assume the person on the other end of the phone wouldn’t purposely hurt someone else.

So how do they do it? First, they tried to understand the person as much as possible. They researched their background, talked to people who knew them, and generally tried to understand what was important to them. Then, as they talked they tried to address the individual’s goals. After all, someone in a standoff situation generally wants to know what will happen to them at the end. If the options are presented, they may find they have choices they didn’t know before. They reiterate these options and goals even when the kidnapper won’t answer – possibly for hours. The negotiator has to keep it positive, low key, and consistent but with enough variation that the kidnapper doesn’t get frustrated listening to them. Having done conference calls where I presented material only to have the audience muted and therefore received no feedback, I can tell you how disconcerting that is. To keep going and have faith that the other person is listening takes a lot of willpower.

So they get to know the person as much as possible, focus on the goals and then keep at it. Even if they don’t get a response. Wow. Doesn’t that sound like a sales message? You research your prospect, try to figure out their goals and then start hitting them with targeted messages. And they keep at it just like we all do!

Even in these life and death situations the same types of activities were necessary to really get the situation resolved in the right way. It was necessary for everyone on the back end to be on the same page and then to really stick with the plan and build rapport with the “prospect”. There were certainly significant differences including there were times the negotiator had to outright lie to the kidnapper to resolve the situation without loss of life, but in most situations those relationships are what made the difference.

I love to build marketing messages based on sales objections.  You already know what issues people bring to the table and how to answer it, so do so before they even get there! Leading with those objection-answers gives you a chance to show you do understand your customers and why they should make the call.  These can be done as a series of emails, a series of blog posts, testimonials that give the reader insight into why the customer was skeptical and how you overcame it, or voice mails that are left for prospects.  Here’s an example of how to work this:

I recently met with a client who’s prospects don’t trust them.  There are some unscrupulous people in their industry and they are always fighting an uphill battle to overcome those concerns.  We developed a list of what other companies have done wrong, and used it as our messages.  We did an email marketing series as well as used them in voice mails.  We pointed out that there are some companies who have experienced X.  We don’t do that – we do this.  It was extremely effective and yielded 40% more inbound contacts.

It was tough for this customer to come up with marketing messages in the past, but now that the sales team is giving them objections and answers, the possibilities have really opened up.  Try this technique and then let me know how it goes!

In the training class, I was shocked when one of the participants continually challenged the trainer to give him exactly the words to say for all situations. This individual complained at one point it would take him “AN HOUR!” to research information to share with his prospects and why couldn’t someone just give it to him?  Throughout the class the trainer repeatedly asked him questions about the situations his prospects found themselves in and how he was addressing their needs. Each time this individual came up short in his answers and didn’t know anything about his prospect-base.

My next appointment after the class was with a vendor.  He was a hard-driving sales person who wants to sell something I don’t think is needed to one of my clients.  In this case he was friendly and asked lots of questions to get at my client’s situation, but each time I started to answer he would interrupt.  Generally his response would be “that’s great!” and then continue on with the line of questioning.  At the end of the hour, I knew lots of reasons the product wasn’t right for my client but when asked, he’ll have no idea why the deal went bad.  In fact, when he tries to answer the questions on the sheet he was following he will find he has no answers to his questions since I wasn’t able to answer.

At the end of the day, I would encourage you to spend a couple minutes and think about what you know about your prospects.  Either say it out loud to someone else or write it down.  Tell them or the paper as much as you can and see where there are holes in the information.  If someone gives you an hour of their time, you should be able to say a whole bunch about them!  If you find that consistently you can’t say much about them, then it is time to look at your discovery process.

The discovery process needs to be about your customer.  I recently had a meeting with a new client and as we were wrapping up I mentioned I was going to talk for about 5 minutes about me so he understood my background.  He laughed, looked at his wife and pointed out they were about to walk out having signed the contract and knowing practically nothing about me because we’d spent the hour talking all about them.  That is the best way to run a sales call because at the end both parties feel good about what happened.  If you do end up leaving before you get to tell about you, do it in the follow up email so they have an idea of who you are.  But the bottom line here is you have to be able to relate their story to others to demonstrate you’ve been successful in the discovery process.  At a minimum, you need to know who they are, what they do (specifically), why they do it, what problems they are having, and why they are talking to you.

What experiences have you had with sales people who didn’t get it?

If I jump into a pool, I have to deal with the change in temperature but it only affects me – unless I splash everyone else in the pool. In reality, most of my clients don’t mind jumping headfirst into something they want to do but is unknown. They know they can figure it out or get used to it or whatever. But walking into that party and bravely walking up to a total stranger and introducing yourself is tough for anyone.  So here are some ideas to make it easier:

1. Know who will be there – research your list first. Don’t just call and ask for a position, call and ask for someone by name.  At that party, it is much more powerful to walk up to someone and say, “excuse me, aren’t you Jane Smith from ABC Company?” than just try to interrupt.  Same with calls – know who you are calling.

2. Create bullet points for what you want to cover. There is nothing worse than answering the phone and having the other person say, “Oh! I expected to get your voice mail!”.  Only once have I said, “okay – here ya go!” and transferred that person to my voice mail but that one was fun.  Scripts are nice, but they often sound like scripts so only read a script if you know you can make it sound natural.  Bullet points allow you to check them off as you hit them but also allows more flexibility.

3. Leave a voice mail – many people have told me over the years they don’t leave voice mail because it is never returned. Well, when I look at my missed phone calls or if I’m in my office and see a number, if the person doesn’t leave a voice mail I wonder why.  It seems odd that their  information wasn’t important enough to go in a voice mail.  Likewise, compelling voice mails CAN get results so have something to say in your voicemail!

4. Actually, have something compelling to say either way.  Tell me something I might not have known, could use in a meeting, could quote to a client, could send in an email, SOMETHING.   That gets people’s attention and gives you the instant credibility you need. In fact, if I have a good piece of information to give a prospect, I generally like to leave it in voice mail or send an email first because then they call me to get more info.  Very powerful stuff.

5. Remember that the difference between interrupting someone at a party and calling them on the phone is they can choose whether they take your call.  If someone is standing next to you trying to talk it is tough to ignore them but if the person is truly busy, they won’t pick up.  So in that regard, they gave you some permission to interrupt – even if it is for a very short time.

Everyone has to make cold calls at some point and they aren’t easy. But having a plan, knowing something of value to say, being honest and professional goes a long way to making it easier.  You have a product or service to offer that this person may need or you wouldn’t call. Just keep that in mind and uh… dive in?

When I began my business, I embraced this philosophy whole-heartedly.  I am not a good hunter.  I don’t like the uncertainty, the failure/misses, or the need to put myself out there like that.  Coincidentally, my clients aren’t either.  They don’t like the hunt.  So we build programs that are more about the harvest.  Being a gatherer has its advantages – people remember you longer and with more warm feelings if you are a gatherer.  I know this is true because in the last two weeks I have run into people I have been cultivating for 6 months who are now ready to do business.  They’ve gotten my newsletters, phone calls, emails and blog articles and now are ready to go. Hooray!

So when I say to be a gatherer – here’s what I recommend:

Know what kind of fruit you want – what kind of business would be best or second best?
Know where the fruit is – know which prospects could give you the type of business you want.
Provide the water and sunlight to the fruit trees – Give them vital information for their business.
Check on the plants – Contact your prospects to see how things are going.  Have a good reason to be checking though!
Be ready to harvest when the fruit is ripe – There is nothing worse than being ready to buy and not being able to for some reason. So when the prospect is ready, be available.  Answer the email or phone call, schedule the meeting, whatever it takes.

The tasks involved in cultivating plants is the same as managing prospects.  Be sure you have the tools you need and backups to help if the market conditions don’t provide what is needed.  After all, slow and steady often wins the race!

Another sales person is one I’ve used as an example in training classes for years. I received a voice mail from a sales training specialist who focuses on getting calls back on voice mails. Sweet! Since I was training people on sales techniques, I figured I’d give him a try and see what happened. His first voice mail was engaging, he came across well, left his phone number at a reasonable speed, and seemed like he might know what he was talking about. And then I got the second voice mail. Guess what? SAME VOICE MAIL. No kidding – not a word or inflection was different. I gave him four shots before I returned his call and all were the exact same email. The voice mail I left him said I appreciated his efforts, but persistence in the same message wasn’t the technique we felt was the most effective so we wouldn’t be hiring him. He did call back and we had a nice chat about using one’s own training techniques as demonstrations.

So what’s the point? These people were good at the mechanics. Both did exactly what their formula said to do. They weren’t thinking about it – to the point that I think the first guy would have been thrown off if I had said I was interested. So stay engaged, be human, and don’t just follow the script. When you research someone, know why your product will help THEM. Make sure it is a good fit so you will both be happier. And my biggest pet peeve, ASK QUESTIONS. Be interested in getting the other person talking! Confirming what they know puts up barriers. Getting them to talk puts them on your team. Learn about your prospects through research and their answers – it is those conversations that result in new business.