I wish you all a great close to the month, a happy holiday season and a prosperous 2010.   Gonna be great.

Can you see these letters - W2?

I always chuckle when I hear a sales rep tell me that they have ADD or ADHD.  I chuckle all the way to HR and start the process of putting them on plan.  While there are a ton of ingredients needed to make a good sales rep,  few successful reps lack focus.

Focus on establishing a system – there are a ton of bad stats about how many hours of selling there are in a day, week, month & year.  The fact is that sales reps battle time management as their #1 nemesis.  While larger companies may offer some sort of BS training course around time management and the majority of the class will be a waste, these classes will offer some sort of system.  Whenever a rep tells me they don’t do well in systems or don’t need a system, I also start the “on plan” proceeding.  Do yourself a favor a make a prioritized list of tasks to be completed.  Other small steps to increase efficiency can be making phone calls on ride to and from work or eating meals at your desk – whatever it is, do yourself a favor a get a system that works where the amount of time wasted is minimized.

Own your number – you are in sales and have a number on your back – don’t ever forget that.  The best sales reps take some time to understand how they make money within the bounds of their quota/plan.  Doing so will help you figure out that through focusing on net-new business, can you make an extra 70% on a deal by selling a partner running a spiff.  Look at your number as a game and figure out what is the best way you can win the game.

Close your mouth -this is especially difficult for many reps as they seem to think what they have to say is important.  Its impossible to hear your customer when you are blathering on about yourself, your product, your life.  No one cares – shut it.

Understand your strengths – If you are not a details person, get some help with someone who is.  Know your weaknesses and put people in place who can help fill those gaps.  I know its common sense and I hope you already know it and are doing something about it.

Sell – its your job and you need to make sure that you are focused on the selling part of it.  Don’t forget to make it a priority in everything you do – ask questions, push the deal ahead – at all times.

Just so we are all on the same page, I know that you already know most of this.  My problem is that if someone tells me that but is failing to show me that they are doing something with this knowlede.  If you know you are weak in and area and do nothing about it, then you cannot succed and should do everyone a favor and stop giving reps a bad name.

#5 – You start work at 9 and end at 5 – this is not a job, its a career ask Chris Rock

#4 – You do your forecast calls and there are more than 4 managers on the call – each firing questions at you – quit today as you cannot make money at this place – too many people taking cuts of your commish

#3 – You hate what you are selling – I’m not going to give the “be passionate about what you do speech” but you can’t be successful selling something you dislike

#2 – You blame everyone else for your failure – product sucks, operations suck, no marketing, company suck – no pal, hit the bricks – you suck – get a job as Santa in the mall

# 1 – You feel lost in your job – I’m blown away by the amount of sales people who refuse to learn the new tricks of the trade – your relationships may carry you a few more paychecks but don’t forget that the tails of the people you have been riding will not be there forever – time to buck up pal and find a new cust serv job as this is not for you anymore

60 days left til the end of the year – how are you going to finish?

If you followed my suggestions for October then you have a focused job to do in November – make it rain.  The music video for GNR’s November Rain quickly became the most requested video on MTV, and won an MTV Video Music Award. It features a sweeping orchestral backing and is one of Guns N’ Roses’ longest songs.   Who gives a shit you say?  You should.

The wiki says “At 8 minutes and 57 seconds, it is a rock ballad in the tradition of “Stairway to Heaven“, “Dream On“, “Dust in the Wind” and “Bohemian Rhapsody“. It is the second-longest song on that album, the longest being the 10-minutes and 08 seconds.  It is the longest song to reach the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.^[3] At around 7 minutes in, the song fades and then builds into a 2 minute guitar solo by Slash.”

Think about that – 2 minutes at the end of a 7 minute song where a strung out Slash plays the guitar in a solo and it killed.

Why did they do it?

All for me and you baby – they simply wanted to wow us.   Their first album Appetite for Destruction was meant to define their audience and then once they knew who we were, they went for it.

So how does this relate to me selling my wares to my customers?

Do you remember the Mr. Brownstone video? Me neither.  Why?  Because rather than cranking out a video because they had to, Guns and Roses  decided to focus in on their fans and give them all that they could want and more.

Being a Lean Sales Rep is about Making Every Call Count – Don’t crank out 10 calls to fill in your stats or impress your boss.  Get excited, get invested and get on the phone with a purpose.

If you really spent October refining the focus of what deals are truly viable and which one have a likelihood of closing, then you now need to figure out how to  “Wow” that select group of prospects.  Its a busy time of year and they will get lost in the holiday shuffle. Wowing them is the only way your prospects will award you their business and their attention.

Make it personal – I don’t know if you need to make an extra customized ppt through preso or load up an ppt with researched data points to show how much you know about their business.  But figure it out and show them you spent some time on them – they will reward you.  Think about the past deals you’ve won in this selling environment.  How many bluebirds have you had of late?  Now of the deals that you have worked hard for, how many of of them have you lost?  Nothing get me fired up more than hearing a prospect turned client tell me or someone else that they selected me because I was persistent.  I always kept calling in a manner that showed them I wanted their business and wanted to work with them more than anyone else.

Make it Easy To Do Business With You -This is really tough as I’ve yet to encounter any business where its truly easy to buy from.   Last month, we talked about getting the paperwork lined up and prepped so that you would not be forced into a corner.  Now its time for you to do that with your clients.  Get the paperwork, addendum, SLA in advance so they can have time to work it through on their end.  Stay on top of them and see if they have any questions.

Set Expectations – I love hearing a rep tell me they will not have the deal booked on time because the person who was supposed to sign the PO is in India for the next two weeks or on vacation.  It’s ok to ask for a deadline and response from your customer if they commit to doing that, you have no relationship and often no deal.

Establish a Communication Pattern – Tell you r customer what you are doing for them, why you are doing , what you need them to do, why you need them to do it.  How they can reach you in an emergency and what way is best to reach them – I usually draft 1 email with all contact info for everyone involved and call it the BATPHONE LIST – DO NOT DELETE.

Wowing a client is not difficult – we often just make it seem that way.

Lean selling everyone and let’s hope that we never have to hear a 2 minute Slash solo ever again.

One of the many annoying sayings heard around most corporate offices is “TGIF” (Thank God Its Friday) and I whenever I hear that, I say (under my breath) “You are a loser” because I hate Fridays.  As a sales rep, this is the time of the week where I get tangled up in non-productive internal meetings and forecast calls.  It’s also when most of my clients and prospects are shutting down for the weekend.  I’ve worked hard all week, moved some things forward and now I’m out of runway and must  stop pushing the deal foreward.  Or am I?  What if I could do a few small things to maintain my flow and keep the ball moving forward.  As a rep, this momentum is my lifeline.  Lose it and your are F’ed.

While there are many ways to build momentum and I thought I would share 3 ways to build sales momentum on a Friday:

1) Get Prepared & Be Productive:

Friday morning before 9:00 am – make a list with 2 columns.

Column 1 has the names of customers that you have not talked to in the past 2 weeks -NOTE: I never let 2 weeks pass without a live call into any existing client because if you don’t have time to speak to them, you do not deserve to have them .

Column 2 has a list of 20 prospects that you will connect live with that day.  This is the foundation of my afternoon call blitz.

2) Be Discliplined and Make the Damn Calls

Clear your schedule for any BS meetings and dedicate at least the afternoon to making calls – this goes for both inside and field reps.  Now while, you can’t cancel a forecast meeting, you can get prepared for that call the night before to limit the time it takes by having your shit together.  From 1pm-4pm, a little discipline and hammer the phone to reach as many people as you can.  Set a goal for each conversation to accomplish the following:

a) Strengthen the relationship – maybe its a personal sharing or learning experience but before you hang up, make sure you’ve uncovered something about the person that you did not know about them and be sure to share something with them to make sure the exchange is 2 sided.   This sharing is critical to building a foundation of a relationship and many of us are guilty of rushing through conversations because we are so busy.  I also want to stress that you must share some things about yourself.  People will open to people who are human.  If its kids, love of a sports team or an enthusiam for choppers, share as it will open more doors than you think.

B) Enter the call with a purpose to uncover a new piece of information about their job/business/pain and ultimately, to move the ball forward.  What has been the biggest pain in the ass to them?  Everyone has one part of their job that was not supposed to be there when they signed on – find out what it is and see how your product/service/partner ecosystem can solve it.

3) Schedule Networking For Next Week

I’ve stressed before the importance of making time to build a network.  Most people start networking when they have no job or hate their job.  These people make me sick and I hate them – they are incapable of being successful as they willl never be able to handle the amount of consistent work it will take.

Here’s what I do every Friday – Make calls to set 2 lunch dates for networking for the following week.  Who is someone that you should meet with but never make the time to do so.  I alway set them on Tues & Thurs to leave M,W,F for customers and prospect lunches.

If you can get prepared and put some focused, hard work into the phones, you will end the week with a clear vision of where your pipeline is, what your prospects need from you and with enough momentum to carry you sailing through the 2 days weekend.

One Final Tip: Don’t ever, ever, ever, say TGIF to me or I will cut you off like a dead lead.

“I don’t have time for Twitter – I’m out there closing business “

“Facebook, Twitter – MY customers don’t use that crap”

These are just a few of the common shitty excuses that I hear over and over and over again from sales reps.  As we reps make excuses for a living (the deal slipped because the CFO’s dog ate my PO), it should come as no surprise that the same employee who is supposed to be the most gregarious one on staff, is the one who is “heading for ze hills” when it comes to Social Media.

Why?  Becuase we are coddled like babies in most organizations.

As a rep, I know that many people in my former organization pacified me.  For example, any calls that I  recieved on the last month of the quarter always started with the following “I am so sorry to bothering you – I know its the end of the quarter and you are probably insanely busy”.   While that time of the quarter was certainly active, I would not have picked up the phone if I had something better to do.

Don’t Hate Educate – Adopt a Sale Rep

Stolen straight outta Crawford – “Leave No Sales Rep Behind” is a program that I would like to see implemented all over this great country of ours.  I challenge all marketing professionals to adopt 1 orphan sales rep and knock some sense into them.

To do my part in cleaning up this mess and seeing some real change, I have created 3 sales rep proof steps to educating the social butterfly on social marketing:

THREE FOR THE SALES REP

#1 – Create a Joint Twitter Account with Your Marketing Team – Tell all of your customers (past, present & future) that you have set this up to allow them another channel to communicate and interact with you.  If they need tech support, send you a tweet, if they need some logo golf shirts, send you a tweet, if they need a quote, send you 2 tweets.

What you are doing here is showcasing your ability to engage with your client, better servicing all your customers and allowing everyone to see how you approach your business.   You are savvy, take exceptional care of everyone you work with and also create a community where customer references will develop on their own.  Your marketing team can help monitor through Hootsuite and develop

#2 Set up 3 accounts  (takes 9:30 to complete all 3 on a FIOS line – I know you and know you have that much free time)

LinkedIn - If you have not done this already you are probably unemployed already so please leave this blog

Twitter - Its here, still here, get used to it

Facebook - This is for work so keep your dumb pictures to yourself – keep your eye on the prize and just create the account stupid.

#3 – Commit to 60 days – I like to think of this as my 2nd gym membership – be disciplined mentally and physically and commit to spending time on it each day.   If you do not see results in 60 days, QUIT – but give yourself some time to get familiar with what it is as I know you will be pleasantly surprised.

THREE FOR MARKETING PROFESSIONALS

Congrats on your adoption – now the fun begins

1. Stop Treating the Reps Like Babies –  Call them out when they don’t do what they are supposed to be doing for you.  If you had a number on your back, I know that you would not let 1/2 the BS slide that you presently do.

2. Help Reps Succeed by Making it Personal –  Take 10 Prospects and 5 Current Clients and see what you can find out about them.  For example, I saw that one prospect tweeted that they were going to a conference.  I called them up, said I was also going (not true) and that we should meet for coffee at Starbucks in lobby – we did and I used the informal meeting to get a 2nd meeting.  I not saying stalk, but use what you can to help your sales team focus and collect useful intel.  Once the rep sees that they can personally benefit from this, you have succeeded.

#3 – Compose 2 Tweets A Week For Your Reps –  this is just enough to get them started and puts the pressure on them to keep the activity level up.  Your tweets can be on new specials, whitepapers, customer wins, whatever – you are in marketing so I will let you figure it out.

Since I went there with the Bush Program reference, I am forced to finish with my favorite GB quote:

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — [pauses] – shame on you. Fool me — You can’t get fooled again.”

Sad truth is that there is a lot of GB in most sales reps – Good Selling & Good Luck