People that read QuotaCrush know that I am always talking about the need for transparency and honesty in the sales process.  As I’ve said, when you do the right thing and when you are honest, sales happen for you.  And the more honest you are, the more good karma comes back and leads to more sales.

A few weeks ago, I took a customer out to lunch since I was in town.  This customer has been up on one of the software services for one my clients for about a month, and this was a great opportunity to get some feedback on the product, and talk about the implementation thus far.

At one point in the conversation, I paused and said to the customer, “So.  how truthful was I in the sales process about what your post sales experience with our software would be?”  He immediately replied, “Actually… very!  You made some pretty bold statements in your sales process about what you guys could accomplish and I admit that I discounted some of what you said, but I’m certainly very pleased that you have come through on everything that you have promised.”

Bold statements - but honest ones.  If you put a value statement out there, and you back it up later on, it works wonders for you in the sales process.

As it happens, this particular customer will be giving a keynote at a prominent trade show in about a month, and I’m fairly certain that he will be giving a raving endorsement for our product and service - and as a reference, he will certainly let people know that we are honest and fair in the sales process.  I believe that by being honest with this customer, we now have a champion - and that means the world in the sales process.

It does happen sometimes, however, that a customers experience is not exactly what they expected, and they may feel that you were not 100% true to your word.  At these times, what you need to make sure is that the customer understands where your process may have failed, or fallen down.  Perhaps you got new information after the sale that you didn’t take into account before the sale, or perhaps external factors affected your ability to deliver.  What must happen at this point, is for you to explain in very truthful statements about what happened, and map it back to those bold statements made in the sales process.  Presuming that the sales process had honest statements, you should be able to easily explain why the experience wasn’t exactly what they thought it might be, and how you plan to get them back on track.   Your open and honest communications here should be the way to maintain the relationship - and eventually get a champion again.

I’ve often found that customers for which you’ve had a failure, been honest about it, and then turn around, become even bigger champions.  These customers know that they can trust your word completely.  Problems happen to everyone and every account.  Its how you deal with them that makes the difference.  At a company I was selling for, we had a MASSIVE mistake for one customer.  It was an IT failure on our part, and a very massive mistake.  I found out about it, and immediately went to the CFO’s office in person, sat down and told him of the problem and what we were going to do about it.  After the smoke stopped pouring out of his ears and his face resumed a normal color, he looked at me and said, “Well.  You could have easily hidden this problem from me, so I have to respect you for being honest and for coming and telling me in person.  That’s probably the only reason I’ll give you a chance to fix this.”  We did fix it, and the trust I gained from that customer was immense.  From that point on, he knew there was no reason for him to doubt my word or think that I wouldn’t be honest with him.  I did quite a bit of additional business with that customer (including selling to him on my next sales gig).

When dealing with a person who makes money from commissions, the natural instinct of most people is to think that the salesperson is saying and doing anything to get the sale.  Therefore, distrust is the natural emotion of the buyer.  When you turn that on its head, you will be amazed at how much it will help in the sales process.

When I was in my first job out of college, I worked for a containerized shipping company and wrote code for automating the shipping port.  On the successful launch of our software, the CEO of the company came to the port to see the operation. While reviewing the smooth motion of the trucks thru the port, he saw a trucker changing a tire and he was struggling with a lug nut.  He made an off-hand comment, “you know… someone should fix that… there should be an easier way,” and then he continued on his tour.

Some managers heard this comment, and proceeded on a six month engineering study of lug nuts, and eventually came back to the CEO with an entire plan on new and improved lug nuts, and what the implementation plan and costs would be to equip the entire fleet of chassis with new lug nuts.  These new lug nuts would reduce the amount of stress on drivers needing to change tires.  Needless to say, these managers were quite proud of the work they had done.

After the presentation of the lug nut plan, the CEO sat for a while before responding in anger, “What the heck is this?”  When these managers explained that he had made a comment about the lug nuts and that someone should fix it, not only did the CEO not remember making the comment, he certainly did not appreciate the hundreds of thousands of dollars that were spent in a research study about how to make them better.

This story is always in the back of my mind.  Why?  As a salesperson, I’m always trying to make sure that I choose my words wisely - and I attempt to be mindful of everything I say.  You can never be sure of what small off-hand comment will be taken as gospel, or what small comment might offend or kill a deal.  I’ve already blogged about how you need to keep your on-line presence clean in Swingers Make Bad Salespeople, but what I’m talking about here is something even deeper.  Its about making sure that you are careful in even the smallest things you say - not only because you might offend someone - but because you might take the prospect in a direction you don’t want them to go - or thinking about issues that will cloud the deal and take longer for it to get done.

One time, an account manager and I were at a meeting, and before the presentation, all the people in the room were having a friendly chat about their iPhones, Blackberry’s, etc. and the account manager made a comment about how the service on his phone was so bad he had been late to answer quite a few emails over the past few weeks because of the bad phone service.  Harmless comment?  Perhaps in some meetings, but this prospect focused on this comment throughout the sales presentation - worried about not being able to get the service he might require for his account - because he had a bad experience with this before.  Instead of listening to the presentation as deeply as he should have - he was thinking about his bad customer service experience, and was thinking that he would have that with us.

Simple comment about phones - it was not.  It was a manefestation of his basic fear about using our software.

While I can think of hundreds of examples to this, I’d love to hear stories where off-hand comments affected a deal - or perhaps won a deal.

Managers and entrepreneurs can take lessons from this as well.  As a person in authority, you need to make sure that you are careful about how you phrase things and be clear in what you need your people to do.  I’ve seen sales managers complain about sales metrics on call numbers, and cost per meeting - and have that result in salespeople taking their eye off the ball of closing deals in the pipeline.  In the constant desire to look good in the eyes of the boss, people will do what they think their boss wants them to do - as was in the lug nut example above - but in fact, that may often NOT be what they ultimately want them to do.   This is NOT a cheer for micro-management (I’m vehemently opposed to that), but it is a cheer for making sure you are careful in what you ask of your people, and that you continually check-in to make sure your employees are on-track.

I’m not sure what ever happened to those lug-nut designs and if they were ever acted upon, but I know the story has had a tremendous impact on my career and in the ways that I treat conversations.

One of the most important, yet difficult, lessons that a salesperson needs to learn is that nobody really cares about the product you sell.

Prospects care about their own problems, their own issues, their own pain.  They don’t care about your product.

The only reason they are interested in your product at all is because it solves a particular problem of theirs, or makes their job easier, or saves them money, keeps their boss off their back, or some other selfish reason.  You can think your product is as cool as hell, but people don’t buy something cool as hell, unless they understand how it helps them.  Yes… your prospect will be thinking about his/her own issues while you talk about your product.  If they can’t make a match… they will not buy no matter how cool your product is.

Think about your own purchases.   Especially when you are spending large sums of money, you will always think about how if affect you, whether it be status, comfort, simplification of your life, etc.  Your prospects will be thinking this way too.

Once a salesperson understand this fact, the sales process changes to what it needs to be - about your prospects problems / about their issues and pain.  The faster the salesperson gets to relating the product, and more importantly the features of the product, to the particular pain of the prospect, the faster he/she will get to a sale.

Time and time again in demos, and presentations, I see a salesperson super intent on getting all of their points out.  They are so intent that they do anything and everything to make sure that they cover all the slides they prepared and that they demo every aspect of their product - even when the prospect has told them what they need and what they care about.  What makes me cringe is when I see a salesperson get to a section of their presentation and the prospect says, “That’s interesting, but I here is my problem… and I want to hear about this…” and then the salesperson continues on their defined tour of all of the product features.    As a salesperson, you should focus on the features FIRST that will help solve the prospects greatest pain.  If you can’t define that, then you haven’t done your homework - or there is no match for your product - and you will never get the sale.  And, if you only need a single feature to sell the product, why not focus heavily on that feature until is exhausted and the prospect fully understands it.

Once you get your prospect over the hurdle of understanding how you solve his her problem, then you can start to talk about all the other features and things that will make it even better - and perhaps take his/her business in a new direction.

Salespeople should be the greatest evangelists for their products and they should know and love the product.  But, by knowing the product that well, the salesperson should be able to talk to anyone and quickly ascertain what part of the product, if any, can solve this prospects pain, and get the prospect to understand that too.  If you, as a salesperson, feel the need to just vomit all of the possible features onto the prospect hoping something sticks, well then you are expecting your prospects to do your job and I certainly would not expect you to crush your quota.

Bottom line:  They will never care about your product until you MAKE them care about it.  How?  By showing them how it makes their lives better/easier/simpler/richer.

I was having a great discussion with a very successful entrepreneur yesterday, and as we were talking about articles he had read on this blog and with the things that I’ve been doing at QuotaCrush, he said to me,

“Mark, all this stuff you talk about is great.  Its the right message, and the right way to sell and think about sales.  However, no matter how much you talk about partnership, and solution selling - remember that most of the world still thinks of you simply as a peddler.”

How true that statement is.  The first impression that most people will have from you in the cold call, at trade shows, or wherever you meet them, will be that you are a salesperson and that you are trying to sell them something.  Therefore, that is why we need to work hard to make sure that our prospects understand that we ARE about finding the right solution that we ARE going to sell them something they need - and that we aren’t trying to just sell them something just to make a commission.

Establishing trust with your prospects is key to crushing quota.

Sales, in a rough economy, is not fun.  Its hard, as you get a flood of recections, to not recall the famous paddle scene in Animal House.   As you get rejection after rejection, you have to stand up, and try to get the next sale - no matter how much losing that last sale hurt.

But… isn’t the whole point of QuotaCrush to get LESS rejections?  Indeed it is, but the facts remain that in a bad economy, no matter how good your sales process is, there are customers that just cannot get the budget for your product - regardless of how much more efficient it will make them, how much money it wil save them, or how much it will increase their own sales. 

Think about your own life.  In my own house, it would probably make a lot of sense for me to replace the windows.  The old ones are much less efficient than new ones would be, and I’m pretty sure that most of the gas between the panes is gone.  I probably would get an ROI on the window investment in about 4 years.  I plan to be in my house for more than 4 years, so rationally, this is a purchase I should make, right?  Well, like most of you, I make money on sales and I know that if this economy turns south again, sales may drop in my clients, and I may have an income drop - so I will delay the replacement windows until I feel a little more secure that the economy is indeed headed towards a recovery, and I’m not going to need my savings for other things.

Your prospects are going through this same type of struggle as they decide whether or not they should purchase your product.  What this means is that you need to have a bigger pipeline, patience with clients, and more creativity in how to price and sell your product.

Unfortunately, its indeed a numbers game.  Different prospects will be at different points along this scale, so you need more prospects to make more sales.  While this truth always exists, it is especially true in hard economic times because, like my example, what seems perfectly logical is not often what is driving the decisions.  Clearly, we want more companies to think long-term knowing that the economy will, at some point, turn around, but unfortunately, for us salespeople, that is not always the case, and we have only limited power to change their thinking.  So, you need more prospects so that you can find the ones that will buy - despite the economy.  And.. if you do your sales job correctly, when the economy DOES turn around, you can close everybody who was on the fence.

So as you get paddled by your pipeline over and over again, its important not to lose momentum and not get discouraged.  Find the reason that you are doing this and focus on it. 

 

The three faces above are the real reason I’m in sales.  I have goals to build my company, to help entrepreneurs build their own companies, to help salespeople, and of course to make money.  But, the real reason that I take the constant barrage of rejection that accompanies sales is for those three people (oh… and my wife too )

So… in order to not get discouraged by all the rejection, you need to find your rock, and focus on it.  When that happens, you will find it much easier to deal with the rejection - and also keep you  focused on your end goal.

A few weeks ago, Josh Kopelman wrote a great post on entrepreneurs having transparancy with their board.  Within the post, he spoke about how several of his portfolio companies give him full access to their sales data so he knows where they are at any moment.  That struck me as genius - to provide the board with full access to the pipeline, and I’ve been thinking since then about a response to that - how it benefits the VP of Sales.  As I thought about it, I began thinking more deeply about transparancy in the sales process.   I realized in my own discussions with salespeople, I was advocating transparancy with prospects, and thought that instead I would write about that.

I got a call from one of the salespeople I work with and he asked me, “Mark, I want to close this account by Tuesday so that I don’t walk into the board meeting without this deal closed.  What should I say to the customer to get them to close by Tuesday.”  My answer?  “Tell the customer you want to close the deal by Tuesday so you don’t walk into the board meeting without the deal closed - and you want to know if there is any way to make that happen.” Complete honesty… what a concept, right?   Guess what?  He closed the deal.  He had to give a little on price, but he got his deal.

Another salesperson asked me, “Mark, a client just told me they wouldn’t buy my product because they don’t use services like ours in their process.  I’m embarassed that I didn’t do better market research to know not everybody does this.”  My response, “Tell them that you assumed that they would use services like yours because their competition does.”  Result?  The customer became intrigued enough to find out more about why their competition used services like theirs, and ultimately decided that this product needed to be part of their process.

Yet another salesperson asked me, “What do I do when a customer wants to know who I see as my competition?”  I say, “tell them exactly who your competition is and how you are better AND how you are worse.”

Total transparancy is something that prospects will respect you for - and something that will build trust in you and your company.

Once you have that trust, you will find that in general, people like to help people.  So, when you call and ask for that deal, and you are honest about why you want to close that deal by a certain time, prospects who trust and respect you will generally do what they can to make that happen.  Its not a guarantee for a sale, but it certainly is something that may help you get the deal sooner.

There was an instance where I had developed rapport with a prospect, and the deal was dragging out for a very long time before being closed.  I had a trusted relationship with the prospect, and I called one day to find the status of the deal.  When the prospect told me that it was going to take another week to get the deal done, without really thinking, I said, “John, I know that closing this deal next week is no different to you, but if I bring this in before the end of the quarter its about a $5,000 difference in commission to me.  Another week delay is just killer to me.  Is there ANYTHING we can do on this.”  I didn’t expect anything, but my reationship with the prospect was so good, that he made it happen.  He respected my honesty, my transparancy on why I was pushing, and he wanted to help make it happen.  And, I’ll tell you that I made sure he was a happy customer thoughout his experience with that company.

Clearly (pun intended), there are times when you cannot be completely transparant in the sales cycle, but in terms of determining the close, I am a huge proponent of explaining to the prospect exactly wht you need/want to get the deal done.  They will respect you for it - and may even reward you with the sale for it.

In sales, its very easy to start celebrating the minute a deal is closed. In fact, celebration often starts once the verbal commitment is given. But, if there is one thing that experience in sales will teach you, is that you really can’t celebrate until the contract is signed - and furthermore - you really can’t celebrate until the cash is in the bank.

The past month has been an interesting one for two of my clients. For both of them, there were enough deals on the one yard line that the odds seemed very likely that the goal would be hit, yet so many of the deals got pushed into May that both missed the mark.   Its worth noting that nearly all the deals are still in play.  All that failed was creating enough urgency that the deals were able to close at the end of April. 

In at least half of the instances, the objectives were very clearly outlined..

“Fred, if I give you this deal, will you get us a signature before the end of the month?”
“Mark, I can certainly have this done before the end of the month and really want to.”
“Great, so is there anything that would stop this getting signed and implemented?”
“No, Mark. I’ve read the contract and it all looks great. I’m bringing it in for signature tomorrow.”
“Thanks Fred, looking forward to doing business with you.”

and then…. total silence. No return phone calls, no indication of good or bad, no contract. 

So what happened?  Well, clearly there was an obstacle/objection that was not known, and the urgency that was created wasn’t enough to move the needle.  Perhaps it wasn’t a fault of not asking - perhaps it was something that came up afterwards, but either way, it shows that even when your prospect tells you without a doubt that they will buy, and that the deal is done…. its not done, until the ink is on the paper - and the cash is in the bank.

For the most part, I believe the failure was in creating urgency to buy now.  End of the quarter is something that people understand and expect, and “end of April” pushes did not resonante as well.  For both clients, there are a lot of additional triggers that can be used, and in May it will clearly be to use those triggers to help get people to move rather than to just rely on “making our monthly number.”  In your own sales efforts, you need to find those things that will get people to want to close now rather than later.  Perhaps it is the lost revenue opportunity, or cost savings opportunity, or the summer sales rush, or free upgrade promotion, or something else.  The key to getting those May deals across the finish line in May and not in June - will be that specific urgency goal.

Its OK to enjoy a verbal commitment with a smile, but unless you’ve found that urgency, its not a done deal that you will get that deal done right away - and regardless of whatever deal you have made - they may expect that special pricing, or freebies - regardless of when it is signed.  So, just make sure that you don’t ring that gong until the contract and cash are in hand.

Over the past several months as I’ve been working with more and more start-ups, I’ve had to critique a lot of sales people on their style and offer suggestions about how to do it better.  And, in giving the pitches myself, allow those salespeople to critique my own sales style and determine whether they buy into my style or not.  All of this done, of course, to figure out ways to close more deals and crush quota.

One of the tactics that I nearly always use, which has been pointed out by nearly every salesperson I have worked with over the past several months, is the “one-liner.”    At some point in the discussion about the product or sale, I will make one small slightly humorous line to lighten the mood - or otherwise get the prospect smiling.  I honestly didn’t give this tactic much thought before it was pointed out so many times, but after analyzing it, I understand why I do it.

The sales process, for both sides, is usually a rather stressful exchange with people continually trying to figure out the other person’s thoughts and determine how to get what they want (and make sure they don’t get ripped off).  So, by lightening the mood, or trying to ease tensions, you can help the process along.  After all, if your reading this blog, you are the type of salesperson that isn’t about figuring out how to manipulate your prospect - you are about tying to find the right solution at the right price for them anyway.  So, making sure that tensions stay low and assure them that you are trying to find the best win-win solution is the one of the best ways to make the sale.

One liners from the last month:

• In attempting to finally close the deal with a prospect and feeling that there was still doubt on her side, I said, “Mary, our product will make you so much money, you will buy gifts for my children.”  She responded with a big laugh and a “Oh my God you are a salesman - but I like your confidence.”   Deal Closed
• After about 10 minutes of the prospect essentially giving quite explicit reasons why he thought that our product wouldn’t work for him, I allowed about 30 seconds of silence and then said, “I’m not 100% sure, but something tells me your aren’t a believer.”   After a big chuckle, he said, “Yeah, I’m certainly not sold and I was being pretty clear about that - but tell you what, if you can get me information on 1, 2, and 3, I’ll take a closer look.”
• One of my sales people called a prospect and he said, “Oh God I thought you were one of my ex-wives calling looking for my money.”  She quickly responded, “Oh I’m calling for your money, I’m just not an ex-wife.”

What most salespeople should take away from this is that lightening the mood and easing tensions in the sales process is critical.  In terms of delivering witty one-liners, you should really think about whether this exact tactic will work for you as a salesperson.  Not everyone’s personality will conform to this type of strategy.  If you aren’t someone that speaks like this in normal conversations, then it is perhaps not something that you should try in your sales career.  I don’t consider myself a comic genius, but certainly my personality has always been one that incorporates humor into everyday situatons.

In terms of how a salesperson should deploy mood lightening in their own sales career , its very individual.  If you go with exactly this tactic, then you should make sure that you can think up, and deliver properly lines that will actually move the process along and not interrupt the process.   If the above examples were not delivered in a witty way, it could certainly disrupt and even kill a sale.

If you like to use one-liners like me, leave some of your best in the comments.

With a company named QuotaCrush, you would think that my opinion is that salespeople and sales managers should be singularly focused on quota.  In fact, that is completely counter to by entire belief system in terms of the best way to accelerate sales.

The strategies that QuotaCrush presents to its clients do in fact lead to more sales, but as you should notice in what is presented in this blog, the bottom line is about finding the right solution(s) for your prospects and your clients, and ultimately doing the right thing for them.  Its when you do this, that reaching, and ultimately crushing your quota is possible.  In fact, its by continuing to do the right thing that consistently crushing quota becomes possible because trust goes a long way.   A goal of a salesperson should be that people buy from you because of who you are:  that the fact that you are talking about this product and pitching it to me means that you believe in it - and I know you wouldn’t present junk to me.  When you have that type of reputation preceeding you, then you have eliminated some of the largest obstacles in the sales process.

I don’t consider myself to be “slick” in my sales; despite that people that know me say that I approach every conversation with my sales brain on.  Just ask my wife… I cannot tell you how many times she says, “Stop trying to sell me.”    I would never sell something to someone if I didn’t believe that what I was trying to deliver wasn’t a solution to their problem.  That’s not to say that everything I’ve ever sold has worked out perfectly for the customer, but I never went into the sale believing there would be problems - or convincing the customer to buy something they didn’t need.  And… in the situations that the product hasn’t worked out for the customer, I’ve always made steps to make it right.

Q1 has certainly been challenging for getting sales done, and my clients and we have had to make some major concessions and creative pricing techniques in order to get several sales over the finish line.  But… in finding the right solution that is win-win, I believe that these clients will deliver tremendous value over the long run for the salespeople and the company.

Someone joked to me recently that it didn’t matter the economy, that somehow I could figure out how to get people to buy things no matter what.  And, it was that comment that precipitated this post.  It is true that in an up economy and in a down economy, there are ways to make sales.  In my circles, though, its not the slick sales approach that allow this to happen - but the salespeople that understand the macro-environment, and work to find a solution that makes sense for all parties involved.  When this happens, people feel comfortable buying.

I shouldn’t be writing, and you shouldn’t be reading, this post.

Why?  Its the end of the quarter, and if you are in sales, and if you are awake, you should be working on how to use the end of the quarter to get as many deals closed as possible.

This week is a key week to call all of your stalled deals and wake them up with an offer.  This is the time to grab your April and May deals, and see about moving them into Q1.  This is the week to make sure the deals that you are counting on for Q1 - actually happen.

Remember your “If I… will you”,  and call each and every deal that needs movement and use the end of Q1 as an excuse to reach out to them.  Not to pester them, but to reach out to each and every deal in your pipeline no matter how far out and touch them.

Some resistance from salespeople I have managed on this:

• “But my customer told me not to call them until June.”  It doesn’t matter.  Call them now, and say, “I know you said don’t call until June, but I just talked to my VP of Sales and he said that if you can close before the end of the month, I can offer you x.  I thought the offer made a lot of sense and thought I’d reach out just in case.”  Your prospect, if nothing else, should appreciate that you thought of them.  Make sure your offer is genuine and that you actually have something of value - otherwise you are killing the deal.

 

• “I left them a voicemail last week and they haven’t called back.”  Again, it doesn’t matter.  Call them again and explain the offer.  Leave another message and tell them you will send them an email as well.  (Or vice versa - send an email and then call and tell them you are following up on your email.  Say, “I’m sorry if I’m being a pest, but I wanted to make sure you got the chance to hear about this offer that I’m being allowed to make if you sign before the end of the month.”

 

• “I’ve already made them a sweetheart deal, and I don’t have anything new to offer”.  Well, I certainly hope that you have already put an expiration on a sweetheart deal, and if you haven’t, then it is time to reach out and make sure that they know the deal expires at midnight on 3/31.

 

• “I’m afraid I will come off pushy“  This is exactly the point.  I always advocate win-win sales, and therefore, if you are caling just to hound them on where the deal is, then you WILL come off pushy.  You should be calling with a genuine offer and with a genuine desire to get them as a customer at the best deal that you can offer.  This is about applying a pressure point of the end of the quarter to potentially force a decision faster than they wanted to - and giving them an incentive for doing so.

Any other objections you can think of?

OK - stop reading and go sell.  There are only a few weeks left of the quarter.