The Salesby5 Blog

Our purpose at Salesby5 is to inspire others. We talk of inspiration often, as it has so much to do with sales. One of the stars on our team is Kya, who is our Brand Evangelist. She has radar that picks out “REAL.”

She has a unique strength to know if someone is sincere (real) or fake in seconds, where most are about 100 times slower. Why does this matter? She can pick off someone trying to get a date, sell copier toner or attempting to get in your wallet faster than my computer can get an Internet connection. Tomorrow’s success is today’s real. This is why we fire customers who are rude, lie or don’t pay when they say they will pay. This is why we do not take a customer or vendor who we do not feel has the REAL Win-Win attitude versus just WIN. We need to feel good about making them prosper or there are plenty of others.

A few thoughts on being real regarding sales:

If you have to remember your pitch: Fail
If you can’t remember the prospects problems and your opportunities: Fail
If you remember a client’s child’s name because you care: REAL!
If you remember they love Papouli’s Greek Grill’s Mediterranean Salad for lunch on Thursdays: REAL!

The point: Get real or get a new job. Today is about transparency and about being real. Fake billboards or sales pitches that leave me wondering don’t work anymore. Do you need some REAL in your life?

photo by Korrigan

I was talking to one of my best friends today. He sells insurance for a company that shuts off the phones during lunch and at 5pm (they stay there later). He said he got his biggest accounts ever due to answering the phone during lunch. Can you imagine shutting things down in sales during lunch and after 5pm? I freak out when there is a message on our answering system that has not been attended to in minutes.

I talked to three different people last week that had made a call regarding sales but had “not gotten a call back yet, so they were waiting.”  Other times, they had not gotten a “return e-mail.”

Here are a few tips on what not to do:

1. Don’t assume that people care. Hope they do, but facts can show you yes or no.
2. Don’t stop after the 8th phone call. End at 12 instead.
3. Don’t be afraid to let your prospects know that it is ok to say NO! I love to add that to my requests, as gives them an out or a reason to stay engaged!
4. Don’t think people care that you need lunch or are off at 5pm. We do! This is not like it used to be (except in West Texas) where you must eat lunch between 11:30am and 1:30pm due to restaurants closing.
5. Don’t think people will change and conform to your old ways. This is the new normal. You will hear about technology, you will think it does not apply to you, and you are right if you live on the Moon.

Right before my former company gave up its roots of being a design firm and became an advertising agency, I was told to grow where I was planted. Today, I see event companies attempting full service advertising and continually losing their customers within a few months, as one or the other is not their calling. I see branding firms attempting to become ad agencies, but will enter the commodity bottom half rather than offering a true difference. For many entrepreneurs, the desire to expand into other areas or test other services keeps them from mastering their true purpose. I know this because I have allowed it at times, although it was not my company’s purpose nor in my heart.  When you focus on your company’s true purpose while doing what you love and loving what you do, you will grow well and fast where you are planted.

There are too many meeting facilitators that claim a meeting is all about the participants and not about them. I recently had a small group meeting with an expensive hired facilitator that told us it was all about us, the participants. He then went on for over four hours of stories about himself before any benefit to the audience was presented, and continued referencing himself during the following hours. I now know more about this person than I did about the U.S. Presidential candidates and none of the content was of any value to me. This leader did not know how to offer a benefit to the meeting’s participants, and ultimately wasted our time. Many influencers of sales, marketing and other industries sell when there are no buyers or prospective buyers. Knowing what to sell and to whom, or knowing when to sell can separate you from the sales people and the sales winners.

A few tips:

If it is “not about you”, make no references to yourself.

If it is a great service, how will it benefit me?

If it is a great product, what will it do to relieve my pains?

I have been a loyal Marriott customer for years. Here is a new un-selling strategy they are using:

A look at an attempt to go to their only restaurant a few minutes ago: 25 people in line, 20+ tables open and 15+ minutes to be seated! I left and went to Mel’s drive-in. “Why?” I asked the concierge. She replied, “Those poor girls have to use a computer system called Open Table to seat you, and are not allowed to just seat you! It is hard to do and they are working as fast as they can.” The general manager will hear from me later today about how they pushed over 30 people away just this morning. 94% of problems are due to poor systems. Dear Marriott, please do not have a system for the sake of having a system! Make sure your systems make sense. Restaurant seating is not science, it’s about humans!

What if you helped a company overcome an unsolved problem that affects thousands of its users and you did it because you love the products? You are also not paid and then this happens…

Creative, maker of Soundblaster, recently sent a cease and desist letter to Daniel_K.  He is guilty of creating drivers that work on Vista for some of Creative’s older hardware and accepting donations for his hard work. 

Creative should have sent this letter instead of un-selling.  Creative, go ahead and use this letter – we promise not to send you a nasty-gram.

Dear Daniel_K,

We are so appreciative of your hard work!  Since we are developing new technologies, we are grateful to have raving fans like yourself who are willing to develop software for our legacy devices.  Contributions like yours make the Creative experience all the better.  We are developing a campaign of Creative Heroes to recognize people, such as yourself, for living the Creative brand. This campaign will include a page on the Creative website that has your picture and tells your story and those like you, who go above and beyond to make our products better.  Additionally, we would be pleased to host your drivers on our site as a user developed file.  We hope you will also accept this as an apology for our previous letter.

Cheers,
Phil O’Shaughnessy
VP Corporate Communications
Creative Labs Inc.