Now personally I think LinkedIn is an excellent tool. It’s a great way to get in touch and stay in touch with people you know. Also from a sales perspective it’s very useful for getting introductions to people. If you search for someone you’d like to meet and they are two degrees away (only one contact between you), then you can ask your contact for an intro and away you go. If you can’t get an introduction or they are three or more degrees away you can at least research the person prior to cold-calling. So you know where they’ve worked before, their career trajectory, their education, etc. All very useful background.

Returning to my networking event; one of the people who I invited to connect to me did so, but on closer inspection I noticed that his contacts were hidden. This is a well-documented option and obviously I’ve come across it before, but for some reason this time I found it really annoying. Is it just me or is this against the whole ethos of LinkedIn? Surely joining a social network that’s based on the power of networking & introductions, connecting with someone and getting to see all of their connections but refusing to share your own is just plain mean?

I can understand why someone might choose to do this. If you’re in sales you may not want to show possible competitors who your customers are, you may want to avoid a headhunter farming your contacts, or you may just feel that you’ve gathered your them over the years, why you should share them? I thought about this early on when using LinkedIn and in the end decided that for LinkedIn to work best there has to be a degree of reciprocity (you show me yours and I’ll show you mine), otherwise it wouldn’t be half as powerful as it is. If everyone hid their contacts where would we be?

So let’s see what you think…

Oh no! I'm a prospect...

One of the most interesting and entertaining experiences for sales people is when someone tries to sell to them. Common opinion is that sales people are easy to sell to because the sympathise with person selling to them. I’m not really sure whether this is the case, personally I quite like to torture the person selling to me.

I can recall when I was in my early twenties, single and living in a flat/apartment. The kitchen was pretty horrible so I phoned a supplier and asked for someone to come round to give me a quotation for a new one. An appointment was made and a few days later a super-keen young man arrived on the doorstep.

On entering the flat the first thing he did was compliment me on my “lovely home”. This was very nice of him, but remember this was a bachelor flat complete with empty take-away cartons, festering rugby kit, probably a good selection of empty beer cans scattered around… you get the picture. I told him that we must have been on the same sales training course because I’d heard the (naff) tip about starting the meeting with a compliment. That was his credibility shot from minute one.

He then launched into a presentation with the aid of a flip chart (this was in ancient pre-Powerpoint days). I don’t think he really asked me anything about what I wanted, why I wanted it or how serious I was. What I wanted was what I asked for, a quotation. I had no idea whether a kitchen cost £5 or £50,000 and wanted to find out.

After his presentation he finally got round to giving me a price. I thanked him for his time and pointed him in the direction of the door. He then said that as a one-off token of good will, valid only for today, he would give me a 30% discount. This didn’t raise his credibility in my eyes… he had just tried to rip me off to the tune of several thousand pounds. I thanked him again (less vigourously) and once again indicated where the door was. He then told me as I edged him out that he’d taken a liking to me and while putting his materials back in the car would ring his boss to see what might be done.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he went through the pantomime routine of “ringing his boss”. He shortly returned to tell me that he had twisted the arm of his boss and they would be happy to sell me the kitchen half-price, but I would have to sign immediately on the spot. So now I knew that he was going to rip me off to the tune of double the going price only a few minutes earlier. Adios.

Actually I don’t like to torture people selling to me. Like all customers, if I think the sales person has my interests at heart, is credible, honest and respects my time I’m more than happy to talk to them. If I think they are manipulative, untrustworthy and not really interested in my needs they get the bum’s rush. Twas ever thus.

Most sales trainers advise you not to knock the competition and in general that’s very wise advice. Early in my career I’m embarrassed to admit that I ignored it (as most inexperienced sales people do) and came a cropper. I was competing for a good size deal and from previous experience thought that the person I was competing with had questionable ethics. When it came down the final two I couldn’t help but slip this into a conversation with the customer… I thought I was doing her a real favour. As it turned out the customer knew my competitor personally. I didn’t get the order and also had a very embarrassing conversation the next time I bumped into my competitor, who had been told about my opinion of him.

So that you don’t have to learn the hard way like me, here are three problems that arise from knocking the competition…

• It reflects badly on you and can be seen as “dirty tricks”.
• You may actually raise the profile of the competitor in the eyes of your customer. For instance if all of your product comparisons are against one particular competitor you are as good as saying “these are the guys we worry about at night”.
• You open a can of worms. The customer may be enthusiastic about your comparison with the competition and start asking you how you compare on other features that aren’t so favourable to you.

However we all know that sometimes the customer will ask you how you stack up against a competitor. Or your competitor may have “knocked” you… and the customer wants to know if their facts are correct. So if you must talk about the competition…

1. Make any comparisons generic rather than specific to the competitor. So you might say “our new flanged widget offers a 20% speed increase and 10% downtime reduction compared to older unflanged designs”. This way you are seen to be making a general point and as even-handed.
2. If you are forced to comment in a one-to-one way on a competitors product, talk about your features, advantages and benefits not the competitor’s short-comings. This way you are more likely to come out of it smelling of roses. Also if you try and comment on your competitor’s features you may be wrong (you haven’t been trained on them after all) and end up looking foolish.

So, as ever, engage your brain before putting your mouth into gear. It’s tempting to take a cheap shot, especially when you think you are helping the customer but better to take the high ground.

Coming thru! Sometimes you just have to press on...

Is it just me or does it seem to be the case that most sales people I know have either played sport at some time, or are obsessed by it? Just looking back at the sales people I’ve worked with over the years this seems to be the case. Thinking about it I can see why this might be…

Firstly selling is by its very nature competitive. You are always either competing against a quota or a competitor. So it’s not great surprise that people who revel in the excitement of competition are attracted to selling.

Secondly I believe that the social skills that are learnt on the sports field and afterwards in the bar are invaluable in creating the kind of rounded person who fits well in sales.

So what can we learn from sports…

1. Training. It amazes me that someone can expect to get to the top of their profession without training. Do people really think that because you’re good at something you can stop training? Does Tiger Woods train (when not busy elsewhere)… you bet. But often I’ve been on sales training courses where half of the people are there under sufferance; they’ve been there, they’ve done it, end of story. If you want to be good train, and train hard.
2. Goal setting. It’s been statistically proven that setting goals helps people achieve higher. Setting increasingly challenging goals is the key to high performance. If you don’t set a goal how do you know when you get there! You might want to take a look at this article on setting goals for 2010.
3. Resilience. If you’ve ever played sport you will know what it’s like. It’s raining, the sun’s going down, you’re losing, you’re sore in place you didn’t know you have and the opposition is looking to rub your nose in it. But you have to pick yourself up for the sake of the team and your own pride. Sport teaches people that kind of gritty determination to get stuck in when you least want to.
4. Teamwork. In sales everyone wants to be a star, which in itself is not a bad thing. But sometimes the task is just too big and you have to ask for help. In fact in key account sales if you’re not a team player you’re at a real disadvantage.
5. Magnanimity. As Rudyard Kipling said in his poem “If”…
   If you can meet with triumph and disaster
   And treat those two impostors just the same
   When we do win let’s play it cool and if we lose let’s be magnanimous. When you don’t get the order (which does happen occasionally) be willing to shake hands with the customer, wish them well and promise to be back… we will do business sooner or later!

A legal black-hole. Where deals go to die.

You’ve worked with the customer for months, closed the big deal, even enjoyed the adulation and now the agreement is with legal. A month later the agreement is still with legal and you’re getting nervous. A conference call is arranged with the customer’s lawyers to go over it. Someone is off sick, so it gets postponed. You finally hold the conference call, a few amendments have to be made, nothing major. Three months later the agreement still isn’t signed, you’re worried about the deal unravelling and are losing the will to live. Oh dear!

In many companies the sales team regard the legal department as a black hole where deals go to die. This may or may not be true but there are a few reasons why it might be…

• Sometimes legal can deliberately delay signing agreements. If you have an ongoing customer they will be buying products using your standard terms and conditions (or an old agreement) until the new one is signed. Thus the new agreement is kicked into the long grass.
• No sense of urgency. Legal are rewarded on a completely different basis to you and have their own goals. What is a critical deal for you is just another project to process for them. Sales and legal work on completely different timescales. Sales people by their nature want results now. As anyone who has had dealings with lawyers personally or professionally know, they work on more glacial kinds of timescales.
• Sometimes there’s something fundamental in the agreement that the legal person objects to but they have been over-ruled. They will not outright refuse to do it, but will just drag their heels every single inch of the way.

So what can you do about this? Bite your nails, lose sleep, have a screaming hissy-fit in their office. All possible, but I’d suggest the following…

1. Firstly you need to do some inside selling here. Make sure you’ve sold to the legal person how important the deal is for her, for you, for the whole future of the company.
2. Escalate, escalate, escalate. Not by moaning to the legal person’s boss directly, but make sure your boss is fully primed and everyone up to the very top of the organisation. Ensure that everybody at a senior level in the company knows the importance of this deal.
3. Keep agreements that you negotiate on the company’s behalf as simple as possible. For instance a bi-lateral agreement is easier to conclude than one involving you, the customer and two other supply partners. Base any agreement on an existing one if possible. It makes things simpler and leaves less loose ends to negotiate over.
4. If you have a legal negotiation with the customer make sure that you have some senior people in the meeting along with legal. It makes it more difficult to kick something into the long grass if a CxO has already agreed to it.
5. If there isn’t a natural deadline on the agreement make a deadline. A good one is to tee-up a CEO-to-CEO meeting with the customer in x weeks, and make sure all parties know this is for the official signing. Even legal can be prodded into action when the CEO doesn’t want to look a fool.

What shall we call him?

For those who may not have noticed my peculiar spelling, I happen to be English and live in England (and yes it is raining). A number of my bosses over the years have been American and when one of them joined the company he asked me what was going on with all of the Business Development Managers in the org chart. What were they and what did they do? To which I replied… “they’re sales guys”. To which he replied (not unreasonably), “well why the hell are they called Business Development Managers?” Good question.

What we have here is a cultural dissonance. In the USA with its immigrant, enterprise-led culture sales people are seen to represent all that is good about the American Dream. They are self-reliant, entrepreneurial and pretty much get rewarded in direct proportion to how hard they work. Historically in Europe (and particularly the UK) we have things such as the class system and the old-boy network with sales being pretty low in the hierarchy of professions. In fact probably the only lower status professions are journalism and politics. So over here we go out of our way to hide the fact that someone is a sales person. This is done by giving them titles such as business development manager, account executive and commercial manager… anything that doesn’t mention the “s” word.

On a more serious note what does your title matter? I would say that we have to separate out two things here – What your position is within your company and what title you present to the outside world (particularly customers). Your internal position may be “sales engineer” with a job grade, clear reporting lines in the org chart and relevant pay scale. However, if you are dealing with CxO level contacts at customers it might make sense that your business card says “VP – Northern Region”… whatever gives you the credibility to get the job done.