Know Your Audience

Recently, I had the chance to meet with and present my product line to a group of sales reps.  The sales manager through whom I made these arrangements had sent me an agenda to let me know when I should expect to be ready on the day of the meeting - very gracious.  I noticed that not only was I the last cat on the agenda, I was slotted to speak to the group just before lunch - a double whammy!

Do I pull out all the stops and create a presentation that employs fireworks, circus elephants, and a movie star or two?  Or, do I turn this thing on its ear, do something very unconventional, and take the chance I'll bomb?  Well, calls to Tom Cruise and Charlize Theron went unreturned, and the elevator in the building in which the meeting was going to be held obviously wasn't rated for elephants.  So, I went with option two.

"Hello, my name is Grant Greene, and I'm the guy standing between you and lunch.  You've been here all morning, and you've sat through, at my last count, ten other presentations.  I'm fairly confident if you haven't already tuned me out and had your eyes glaze over, you're about to do so if I launch into a twenty-minute presentation telling you about my wonderful company.  All I'm going to do is ask you, as a group, to share with me five or six suggestions/recommendations that would cause you to want to lead into every sales call you make with my company and products.  Just five or six, and then I'll get out of your hair and let you get to lunch.  Deal?"

About halfway through my unorthodox pitch, a looked at a handful of reps and thought I could read the look on their faces: you are one lazy dude.  However, by the time I finished, I had engaged at least 80% of them.  I believe once it dawned on them that I wasn't going to bore the snot out of them with ANOTHER PowerPoint presentation, and then I directed questions at them rather than opening up for questions, they understood I was there to learn from them rather than try to "teach" them.

I took the chance for two reasons: (1) the obvious being that I was fairly positive that my presentation would have fallen on deaf ears - I MIGHT have been able to engage the attention of 20% of the people in the room if I was lucky; (2) a good friend of mine once taught me, "ask them what they see as obstacles, take away those obstacles, and their excuses to perform are gone" - by implementing their suggestions, I have an extra card to play with them and get them to work more closely with me.

Not only did I increase my chances for success with these reps, I've found ways to improve my company and products!

Seeking out the Decision Makers

This is not a silver bullet for your cold-calling efforts, but it is a helpful guide as to whom you should be seeking in the different types of accounts on whom you’ll be calling.

Food Accounts
Generally speaking, these companies are helmed by a hands-on owner. If, through your research, you know the name of the owner, ask for her/him. If not, I would recommend asking for the Plant Manager. You might have to fall back to an Operations Manager if they don’t have a Plant Manager. For those food companies that are not managed, day to day, by an owner – she/he may be off site, and this is an investment – then you definitely want to seek out the Plant or Operations Manager.

Manufacturing
Start high and work your way down: ask for the VP Operations. Sometimes you’ll get that very person, other times you’ll be told, “We don’t have a VP Operations.” If that’s the case, ask for a General Manager or Operations Manager.

Distribution Centers
Again, start high: ask for the VP Operations. You might need to seek out the Warehouse Manager or the Operations Manager.

Small- and Medium-Sized Accounts
I won’t try and dissuade you from calling on these types of accounts because some of them are diamonds in the rough: you can get good margin in a lot of them because they serve a specialty market, for example. If you get the feeling you’re dealing with a small- or medium-sized account, ask for the Shipping Manager. The reason I recommend this is that this type of company generally requires the employees to wear a lot of different hats. If you start with the Operations or General Manager, she/he may pay no attention to you because they have bigger fish to fry. If you start with the Shipping Manager, you may ultimately need to be kicked up to her/his boss, but you’re in a good starting position for gathering information.

Companies dealing in Government Contracts
The same guidelines apply as those of a Manufacturing account, but you may also want to seek out persons with titles like “Design Engineer” or “Manufacturing Engineer”. If all else fails, just ask for one of the engineers. They will ultimately pass you off to a purchasing person, because that’s Standard Operating Procedure, but they’ll want to test you and your company first to see if it’s even worth passing you off to the purchasing department. In these types of accounts, if you ask for purchasing first, you’ll be drowned in a sea of RFQs and get nowhere.

Dealing with the Gate Keepers

Always start off asking for a specific title – the gate keeper is better handled when you are specific. Generally, you never get anything for which you don’t ask.

Failing specificity, if the gate keeper asks for more direction, try, at all costs, to avoid using the words “purchases” or “buys” – their little Martian antennae shoot up, and they direct you straight to the purchasing department. In about one case in a thousand, the purchasing person is really the one with whom you want to work, but the other nine-hundred ninety-nine times will require someone with more firepower.

I would recommend saying something to this effect: “I’m looking for the person who is ultimately responsible for movement of materials both into the plant/facility/company and out the shipping door.” The latter part of that sentence tends to get them NOT focusing on a purchasing person; the former part of the sentence usually keeps them from deferring you to the shipping manager (which isn’t your goal unless it’s a small- or medium-sized account as indicated above).

No matter how eloquent you may be in your pitch to the gate keeper, you may still be pushed toward the purchasing person. You have one last chance to see if you can get the name of the VP, Ops Manager, General Manager, etc. by saying something along these lines: “By the way, what is the name of the Ops Manager. I’ve always found it helpful including her/him when I work with the purchasing manager because they tend to work together so closely.” It’s cheesy, but it’s worth a try. Also, if you’ve been pushed off to the purchasing manager, and you have been given an e-mail address, sometimes just getting the name of the person with more firepower is helpful because you can figure out her/his e-mail address by the way the purchasing person’s e-mail address is constructed. For example, the purchasing person’s name is Trevor Statham, and his e-mail address is tstatham@newprospect.com. If you can get the name (with correct spelling) of the person higher up the ladder, you can generally guess at her/his e-mail address.

In closing, I’ll use a dating analogy: you need to make a compelling pitch to the gate keeper to give you the right phone number. If you don’t, you’ll probably get the phone number for the local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous or the recording for time and temperature.

Beware the Fat Friend

You’re an average-looking person who likes to talk to people, and you’re reasonably certain you have an engaging enough personality that people like to talk to you, but you don’t have that tractor-beam-sucking-them-in quality that only .001% of humans in the entire world possess. Sad, yes, but true. However, that doesn’t mean you hang it up and become an insurance claims adjuster.

When you’re out cold calling on potential customers – it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in or the product/service you’re hawking – you need to look at this activity the same way you should when you go out clubbing and want to pick up on someone.

Think back to the club or any other mixer/social situation. When was the last time you were successful in winning over the attention of someone by walking up to them and saying, “Hi, my name’s __________. I’m good looking, and you would be very happy dating me?” If you’re not in the .001% of the human race with the tractor beam, or the person you’re hitting on isn’t completely drunk or willing to say yes to the first person they see because they’re there on a dare from their sorority/fraternity, I’m guessing that’s not the best pick-up line. Why? You may be good looking (at least your mother thinks so), and you may have it together emotionally, financially, and spiritually – you truly are a good catch – but this tack is basically asking the person to make a split decision about you and your offer. If you’re looking for the start of a stable and mutually beneficial relationship, do you really want the object of your affection to make a decision in the same amount of time they would devote to choosing between Diet Coke and bottled water?

It’s EXACTLY the same when you’re cold calling. If you walk up to the person you’ve decided is the decision maker, and you immediately launch into your pitch, it’s the very same as saying, “Hi, my name’s __________. I’m good looking, and you would be very happy dating me?” In a matter of seconds, you’re asking your potential customer – hopefully, your potentially lifelong customer – to decide whether they want to date you.

People like talking about themselves. Rather than pitching your company, ask them about theirs. And always listen for verbal cues. When you ask them about their company, you’ll get an instant verbal cue as to how far you’re going to get in this initial call. If they start to tell you more than you ever cared to know, make mental notes of things that will help you later. This is the time at the club where your future date gets to size you up and decide you aren’t a homicidal maniac and you could be fun on a date. The key here is you take your time to let them warm up to you.

Conversely, if they clam up, your cue here is to get out with an appointment as soon as possible. “I realize you’re very busy right now. May I come back tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. to discuss ____________ with you?” Whether they clam up at the beginning (in club speak, this means you’re not turning them on) or talk to you for a while, the moment you sense the “friendly exchange” portion has come to an end, you ask for the appointment and get out.

Why ask for the appointment rather than pitching them right there and then? With the appointment, they’re expecting you. When you meet with them at the appointed time, they have set time aside to speak with you ABOUT YOU – they’re in the right mind set for you to pick up on them, for lack of a better term. If you try to pitch them right there – even if you’re getting the vibe they’re digging on you – you don’t know what was happening just before you walked in or what’s about to happen while you’re standing there. At the club, it could be the fat friend just went to the bathroom to puke and the party's leaving as soon as he/she returns, or your quarry's boyfriend/girlfriend just stepped away for a drink and his/her return is imminent. You may or may not have or keep their undivided attention. An appointment (the equivalent to the phone number at the club/mixer) usually puts those odds more in your favor.

Whether it’s at the club or in the marketplace, your goal here is to get them alone and focused on you.

Sales Math

Quite often, there's an inverse relationship between how much grief your boss gives you about getting a particular company as a customer and how much the company isn't worth.

Honesty is the Best Policy; Timing is the Best Practice

After working on landing a significant customer, certain factors changed that were going to make it extremely difficult to deliver my product to the customer at the price we negotiated. When these factors first presented themselves, I ran through every possible option I had available and was only able to come up with one solution to deliver the promised price – this "solution" had some less-than-desirable requirements on the customer’s part. Failing that, the only other option I felt I had was to tell the customer I was forced to withdraw my proposal. At any rate, I had to be honest with the customer.

I met with the customer and presented them with the two options. Needless to say, they were less than happy. Later that afternoon, I received a phone call from the owner of the company in which he expressed, in no uncertain terms, his distaste for my bait and switch. He made some very strong statements about my character – and they weren’t necessarily endorsements of which to be proud.

How could being honest be wrong? I thought being up front would be redeeming. Not quite.
When I went in to talk to my customer, hat in hand, honesty should have still been at the core of my presentation – but I should have added one more option: time. "Mr. Customer, in light of these factors, I can think of two possible options that are less than ideal. I tell you this to let you know that with a little more time, we will find the optimal solution."

It was a rookie mistake and one that my experience should have helped me avoid. The customer looks to us as the experts – as well they should! If we don’t live up to that expectation, we’re nothing more than schlocks!

Timing

When you go into sales, or if you're already in and you've got some gung-ho sales manager, you always hear, "Don't let the sales opportunity slip away." Far too often, this is misstated and/or misinterpreted as "Don't let the buyer walk away from you by any means necessary."

Before you ever get to that point of deciding what you have to do to keep the buyer in front of you is determine if the buyer is even ready. The signs range from the subtle to the obvious, and we'll explore how to recognize those signs at another time. However, in this brief entry, I want to touch on one of the most-often missed fundamentals in the sales process -- and this applies to all types of sales: timing. I'll illustrate this point with an example.

I came across a large opportunity last month, and I began to see dollar signs. As I began to speak with the decision maker, he was very clear that he and his company just signed a one-year agreement with one of my competitors. At that point, I could have thanked him for his time and called him back in a year. However, remembering the size of the opportunity, I decided to "turn off" my salesman sign and become an information gatherer.

Not feeling like he was going to be pressed with a sales pitch, my contact opened up and gave me more information than I had sought. I thanked him for the information and for the time he spared me and excused myself. An associate of mine who was indirectly connected to this project asked why I didn't push my product. I told him that my goal was to get the man comfortable with seeing me on a regular basis over the coming year. I'll pop in occasionally with a box of doughnuts, I'll shoot off an e-mail here and there asking to take him to lunch, etc. And as the one-year agreement comes to a close, I'll be standing right there when the time is right.

He has a need for what I sell, and that need is ever present. However, he set up the timing, and he made it very clear to me. If I were to give him a sales pitch now, he would turn me off and make a mental note not to take my call or respond to my next e-mail.

Your customer may need what you have to sell, and he/she may acknowledge that need, but you have to determine when, in their mind, they will need it from you.