Tigers Event Canceled

Unfortunately we had to cancel the Tigers event on Sept 21.

Look for a new alumni event coming soon.

And look for new posts as soon as the school year starts up.

Jim

ALUMNI EVENT - TIGERS GAME!!!!!!

Mark your calendars now.....

The second annual SBM Networking Event - Tigers Game is now scheduled.

Friday, September 21
7:05 game - food is served 1 hour before in the stadium
Tigers vs. Kansas City*
Comerica Park - Detroit

Tickets for all (students, alumni, and employers) are $35 each, and that includes food, non-alcoholic beverage, and game tickets. Please go to the SBMA website and purchase the tickets via Pay Pal. We only have 90 tickets available so (a) act fast, and (b) limit your purchase to you and a guest at most. ( in case the direct link above doesn't work, use http://www.wmusbma.org/payment.html)

I am in process of sending out an email blast, but in the meantime please start spreading the word yourselves and lets have a great event. Remember to invite your employer if that person/s are interested.

I will have real posts again when I return from my Germany, Austria, and Italy adventure. We are in Munich now and get back to the good-ole US of A on Friday.

* This year I will root for the Tigers! Unless of course they are battling the Red Sox for home field advantage.

Preparation and Adaptability

The most fundamental belief I hold about being a successful salesperson is you have to be adaptable. That is, your sales approach and sales behaviors should be customized to fit the specific elements of the selling situation you find your self in.

And my biggest pet peeve about salespeople is that they "wing-it" all the time. Recently, someone said to me, "isn't encouraging an adaptive approach just encouraging people to wing-it?" It was a great question, but I have a very firm answer to it: not at all!

It is my opinion that to be adaptive you need to be prepared. And this is even more critical in selling where the adaptable actions you must take are often while you are face-to-face with a client. It will be your preparation that allows you to quickly and effectively switch gears. It will be the preparation that gives you any alternative gears to switch to. With preperation you are making purposeful and strategic adaptations based on your evaluation of the situation in comparison to the knowledge available to you in your brain. Without that knowledge, you are left with only adaptive intentions, not adaptive abailities. In other words, even if you know you should adapt, without a broad range of knowledge you options are limited to what you know, and that may or may not be what is required of the selling situation.

A simple example. My students in Germany have an assignment due Friday. they needed to research Lyman & Sheets Insurance in Lansing and their sales manager, Dave Drayton. We set up the scenario that they represent Crystal Mountain Resort and they are going to approach Dave about having his next training or business meeting at the resort. Their job is to produce a 1 page research review that is basically 60% the company and 40% the person. I am guessing it will take these students about 2 hours to do well, and that is with them having English as their second language.

So one may claim that no salesperson would bother with this in the "real world". And my reponse would be; that is the problem. Most salespeople would simply head to the sales call or make the phone call blindly and wing the interaction. This going in blind approach means they lack knowledge that could make them adaptable, thus they are going to have to HOPE what they do know is enough and what they don't know doesn't hurt them.

The salesperson who takes an hour and creates their cheat sheet for this customer is already winning. They can start to choose the best approach strategies (Dave, congrats on being named to the Red Cross board!), ask insightful and connected questions, (I saw Lyman & Sheets does alot of work with associations, how has that worked for you?), understand organizational structure (Does Andy Sheets need to get involved in this decision?), and basically create a starting point for themselves that is already adaptive in nature.

Also, such knowledge can make you a better collector of information. Lets say you are selling a CRM software and because you did your research you learned that the staff covers most of Michigan even though they are Lansing based. During the questioning phase you take extra time to collect information related to that travel so you can best recommend the appropriate version of your product (e.g. the most mobile version). Without that pre-knowledge you might have skipped such questions thinking they were just a Lansing business.

So, my guess is you can seek, organize and assimilate information faster then my German sales students, heck you get to do it in your native language. But even if it took you 2 hours, wouldn't it be worth having a more appropriately targeted and adapted sales interaction? Given the difficulty in getting time with people, and the potential long-term value of initiating a relationship with them, I would conclude it would still be worth it.

Be Smart with Your Money.

Your sales manager wants you to go out today and buy a house, a boat, a 65 inch 1020HD flat screen and 3 Movado watches. Why? Because you will then be very hungry to make money (because you NEED that money to pay off all those debts). But that seems like a very stupid way to launch your financial life.

As I have discussed in class - pay yourself first and learn to live within your means. In the long run the freedom that financial security provides will bring much greater happiness then that flat screen. And constantly chasing an inflated standard of living should not be confused with financial security. knowing you can buy things or experiences that are very important to you and knowing that your financial future is relatively bright is a better model of financial security. As a personal example, after years of building equity in our house and living within our means, Paula & I tapped some of our wealth to buy our place Up North. And even with the place Up North (a dream come true for us) we live within our means because we weren't putting a high priced mortgage on top of our already over-debted life (did I just make-up a word?). Instead we were cashing in our past discipline and benefitting from in it in a way that no better TV set or fancier car could have ever given us.

To that end, check out the recent NY Times article on this topic. it is great reading and great advice. Check out his links to past columns at the bottom - also good reading for your financial well being.

I hope you are hungry to sell because you enjoy the challenge and you enjoy the rewards, not because you are handcuffed by unneccessary debt and spending.

Eckert without anything to say....

Yes, I can't think of anything to say. I have class in Germany tomorrow at 9am (German time - EST +6hrs). It is 10pm German time. And I can't think of a good way to start my selling course. I am used to teaching advanced selling or training salespeople, and in both of those cases people have a foundation and it is easy to pick it up from there. but where do I start with these students? The possibilities...

The Concept / Theory: I could start by addressing my picture view of selling. Introduce both the concept of "modern selling" and Adaptive Selling. This would give them a big picture foundation and a framework by which to organize what else they learn. The cons to this approach include it isn't very interactive and sometimes people need to be familiar with a few trees before the forest really means anything to them.

Basic Selling Process Overview: In this case I could use a "middle picture" approach and not do the big picture of selling as a concept, but do an overview of the basic selling process. Basically I could teach the basics of all of the things we will be discussing the rest of the semester. I usually like this approach, but in this case I may not want to do much repeating with such a compressed time frame. And I have a hard time not going too in depth once I get going on a topic.

"Sell Me that Pen" Approach: I walk in and tell someone to be a volunteer and sell me a pen and we pick up the converstaion from there. It is cheesy, but it brings the selling task to front and center immediately. It is a "do it first" then break it down and talk about what we should really be doing.

So why do I bother my loyal blog readers (both of them: Maiki and Juli), with this information? Partly because it helps me think it through, but also becasue I think people have truly mastered a craft when they are small, middle and big picture masters of that craft. So as you develop your craft take the time to ask yourself if you have a good mastery of the ground level selling skills you need (e.g. do you really have a good questioning toolbox), do you have a good grasp of how the basics all work together (e.g. how questioning and presenting should be closely tied together as tasks), and do you have a big picture selling philosophy that guides your work? As you develop yourself take the time to isolate each of these and devout time to each.

I think I have just sold myself on doing all three tomorrow. I am going to start with the Pen, then bounce to the big picture and finish with the selling process overview. Now I can go have that weizen beir that has been chilling in my fridge!

Career Negotiating: Logic & Data

Just spoke with two alum today - one who had to call me after he negotiated a job offer up $4000 and was obviously pleased (way to go Tyler!). The other is in process of negotiating a moving allowance to a high priced East Coast city. In the second case I had two words to share: logic & data.

Yes, we all would prefer a $4000 moving allowance/signing bonus versus a $1000 one. But wishing for more is not a negotiating tactic. Nor is simply asking for more, not unless you can back up why the $4000 is the better number.

So how do you ask for $4000? You need logic. In this case "East Coast Joe" will need to get himself moved to the East Coast and will need to get into an apartment. That will cost money. It will also be a contributor to his happiness and even productivity early in this move. It is perfectly logical to lay out this argument. "I am only moving for the job, the move will cost a lot of money, and not starting in a hole will help me get settled and focused on work quicker and stronger." It is a logical argument. Is it good enough on its own? NO. It needs data.

What will it cost to move? What money is needed to get into an apartment (deposit, first month rent, utility set-up, etc.)? The way to approach these questions is to do some research and have firm answers. "I did some research and it will cost $800 to rent the UHaul, $1200 in deposit, $1000 in first month's rent and about $400 to set up the utilities and such, plus this article here shows that it is typical to spend another $500 in other relocation costs (bank account set-up, change in insurance costs, etc.), so if we total that up I see about $4000 in costs I will face for the move, and thus that is why I am asking for that specific amount. And here is the documentation for all of those numbers" Now that, combined with good logic doesn't guarantee a yes answer from the employer but it makes the no harder.

So if you want to negotiate, I have two words for you: Logic and Data. If you can put those two together in any negotiating situation the defense of your position becomes that much easier.

Good luck, and remember I get 10% of all extra money earned in those negotiations!

No Worries, Mate

I was originally going to be in Australia these first few weeks of May, but not enough students signed up on the Study Abroad trip so I bowed out so that the other students would not incur the added cost of an extra faculty member. The 16 students and the 2 faculty are in Sydney right now, hopefully having a grand time. Well actually I hope they are sleeping as it is before 6am in Sydney!

But, to the point of this post......

The national saying in AUS is "No Worries" and it is not just a catchy saying it really typifies their lifestyle and approach to living. It makes visiting there wonderful. However, as a salesperson and a sales trainer I have a love / hate relationship with such a philosophy.

The love part is the reminder that not everything needs to be an emergency and most things will work out fine in the end. And even if there is a problem, if we go about solving it with calmness and competence we can quickly restore ourselves to a "no worries" state. So from a mental health standpoint, I love it.

It is when the customer is involved that I think this philosophy has its problems. We American are known in Australia as serious worriers, and it is said we are too anal and stressed about things. However, the reality I have experienced is that this intensiveness is often only on the surface and that in practice the "no worries" approach is the problem response mode very typical among salespeople. In their day to day interactions, too many salespeople basically tell the customer "don't worry about it!" and think this reassurance is enough to get them by. The fact is the customer is ALREADY worrying about it and simply telling them not to worry will often worsen the situation instead of calm them.

Instead of telling them not to worry your approach should be showing them that they need not worry. How? By crafting an action plan that addresses their worry and executing the tasks necessary to removing their worry. The ultimate "no worries" state is when you truly don't have worries, not when you simply are told to ignore them. And achieving a true "no worries" state involves removing the source of the worries. It wouldn't make for a tourism slogan, but it does make for a very strong customer oriented approach.

This plays out in selling mainly with objections and post sale problems. lets look at both.

OBJECTIONS: these are simply issues that are causing your buyer to say "not yet" to you. They are opportunities to turn a "not yet" into a "let's do it." So in essence, an objection is a worry the buyer has. What if the product is unreliable? What if I over spend for it? Will it really solve my problem? Will the change involved in switching to this new product really be worth it? In each of these cases you can C-R-C your way to removing the worry.

C-Clarify: dig with questions until you really understand the source of the worry. For example, when faced with the objection, "I think this will be a painful change," many salespeople will immediately jump into their "don't worry" speech without understanding why the worry exists in the first place. They will tell the buyer how this has worked so well in the past and how they have many happy customers. Instead, they should be isolating the root cause of this objection. For instance they could ask, "you are worried about the change, what specific problems do you foresee?" In this case, not only is the "don't worry" approach a poor response, it is premature. It is really saying "even though I don't really understand your worry, don't worry about it!" When said that way it doesn't sound so good, does it?

R-Respond: This is when the no worries approach will really fail you, yet is very common. You should recognize how weak a response is when it can basically be broken down to: Customer: "I am worried about the change" You: "Don't worry about it!" Now most of the time there are many more words spoken, but they only add up to that. The strong response directly addresses the issue and backs up what you have to say with support or action. There is a huge difference between "It works all the time, I have many happy customers who are glad they made the shift" and "well, let me walk you through how we minimize the pain and let me get you in contact with a couple past customers that had similar worries..... then go about and do it. This takes longer, but it goes directly after removing the worry, instead of glazing it over. In the long run, removing the hesitancy will shorten the time to decision, and that is a better outcome in the end.

C-Confirm: You can think of this as asking "are you still worried?" Many salespeople use the worst response you could possibly design here: "any other concerns or questions?" This is what I call a moving-on question. It says to the buyer, I am done with this issue so I am asking you about other possible concerns. Instead you need to ask a straightforward "confirming" (or closing) question such as "does that remove your concern about the change?" Salespeople wimp out on this question because they don't want to hear the answer if it is negative, but the reality is silence here can hurt you. Save your silence for AFTER you ask the direct confirming question and then deal with the answer from the buyer.

Put the C-R-C approach fully into action and you won't need to do a "no worries" song and dance, you will actually be removing the worry and the buyer will achieve a "no worries" state all on their own.

The next time this often rears its ugly head is.....

POST-SALE ISSUES: Your buyer calls you and yells at you because of problems. You cannot take a "no worries" approach. The customer is well beyond not worrying. In fact she is knee deep in worry. She needs a solution, not an empty reassurance not to worry. Now I think the reassurance is great as long as it is tightly tied to a written, action oriented recovery plan. And that is what you have to do, work with the buyer and openly craft a solution plan that will remove the problem. Then your reassurance will have some teeth to it and will be a positive thing.

I just made this mistake with my wife. She was worried about the credit card bill that has our airline flights to Germany on it (over $5000 of flights!). I kept saying "don't worry, I will get paid by the German University!" She wasn't calmed. But today I showed her the expected income flows and specifically how that balance will disappear and she was much calmer about it. I always had the plan in my head, but it needed to be more openly and directly shared to remove her worries. I didn't want her to worry about it, so I took a "I have it under control" approach, yet that approach only deepened her worries. As I was reminded today, an action plan speaks much louder then the "no worries" speech I had been giving her.

I think salespeople do this to their customers more often then we want to admit. We don't want to worry the customer with the details, just "Wow" them with the outcome. But before we get to the outcome, their worry has driven them further away. The lesson is to involve your buyer in the solution, or at least inform them of the steps that will take place. Remove the worry in full view of the buyer and her worry will dissipate faster and more completely. And that will lead you and her back to a true "no worries" state.