I’ve come across two different instances of a nefarious sales trick that is reviving itself in the telecommuting era. Two different customers recently shared accounts of salespeople who were on their payroll and the payroll of another company. This stickler is that they were allegedly full-time employees for both companies. In one instance, the salesperson was on the West coast while headquarters was back in the East. This guy set up a small office in an office building and had a slider sign on the door. He would simply slide it to reveal the company he was representing that day for that appointment. He also had a company car from… Read More
Continue ReadingHow Pipeline Bloat Occurs
Here is another line from a sales employment ad (emphasis mine): The primary role of this position is to build a revenue generating sales pipeline which will primarily consist of prospective accounts. Pipeline bloat is something we encounter with sales managers on a regular basis. As you probably know, salespeople have a tendency to…overestimate their pipeline. This is done for a number of reasons, but the primary one is to make their sales manager believe that the salesperson is on the cusp of big revenue. Many a sales manager has been drawn in by potential deals. So with that as a backdrop, I am surprised to see a sales ad… Read More
Continue ReadingPreset For Mediocrity
SellingPower.com’s article deals with something we have seen throughout our many years of sales assessing, hiring and coaching – financial comfort zones. Here is a good explanation of it from the article (emphasis mine): Eker stumbled on the concept of financial blueprints while running his first company, a fitness business. In that business, his trainers often referred to a body’s “set point,” or the metabolic rate at which a body is comfortable. Eker, looking back over his financial history one day, realized that again and again he followed the same financial pattern of making a lot of money and then losing it. Up and down, up and down for fifteen… Read More
Continue ReadingDo Values Change In A Recession?
That is a tough question since I think values are primarily hardwired into each of us. We assess this trait in sales candidates – call them motivations. Each person tends to have two of these motivators that drives their behaviors (some people have 3 primary motivators). We have assessed salespeople who were in slumps, who were unemployed and who were candidates. These are stressful situations that should impact their values. When we had the opportunity to assess the same people at a later date (years later), we did not see an appreciable change in their values/motivations. Granted, this was no scientific study, but rather a consistent observation. BusinessWeek.com provides this… Read More
Continue ReadingBite-Sized Selling
I have come across many articles recently that promote selling tips in this recession. One common thread runs through all of them – chase smaller deals. Here is an example from Inc.com – 5 Tips for Selling a Service Now: “The big change for us in 2009 is that we are more flexible on minimum amount of an engagement that we’ll pursue,” says Gay Gaddis, the founder and CEO of T3, an Austin-based advertising and marketing agency that specializes in digital media. In years past, her firm only went after client engagements that were worth between $1.5 million and $2 million. Now, “some larger clients are breaking RFPs into smaller… Read More
Continue ReadingChaotic Freedom In Sales
I read this line from an sales employment ad this morning: Reps are NOT restricted by territory. The unrestricted territory seems innocuous enough…maybe even valuable. It usually isn’t. As a salesperson, I would read this ad with some skepticism in that the company may be trying to add salespeople without a cogent management plan. Back in my early years I took a job with a company that had no territories. There were approximately 15 salespeople in there serving the local market. What I learned is that the “old-timers” had effectively squatted on all of the accounts, whether they had an active relationship or not. Since there were no defined territories… Read More
Continue ReadingEntrepreneurial Ambiguity
Inc.com is celebrating its 30th birthday with some fascinating articles including an interview with Jim Collins. The interviewer asked for his definition of entrepreneurship which involves a paint-by-numbers vs. blank canvas analogy. However, the follow up question and answer was notable: It has to do with your ability to handle risk, no? Not risk. Ambiguity. People confuse the two. My students used to come to me at Stanford and say, “I’d really like to do something on my own, but I’m just not ready to take that much risk. So I took the job with IBM.” And I would say, “You’re not ready for risk? What’s the first thing you… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Enormous Forecast
Shrinking revenue reports are the fear of most sales managers. This fear is further intensified during this economy. There are salespeople who are attempting to leverage this fear by submitting an inflated forecast. These salespeople provide forecasts that are filled with large deals that are welded to the 90 days out category. The sales managers who buy into this approach are trading accuracy for enormity as they submit the aggregate forecast from their team. I suppose the sales manager’s thought is that the salespeople will get shot before he or she is shot. Perhaps, but the business pays a tremendous price for this obfuscation. There are two antidotes to this… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Little r Relationship
SellingPower.com offers up a spot-on short article about maintaining customer relationships in this economy. The pressure on salespeople is extremely high right now in two regards – there are limited opportunities to close new business and the business world continues its radical information shift thanks to the Internet. First off, companies have slowed down their purchasing, but they are still purchasing. I think this fact gets lost in the doom-and-gloom reporting that saturates our senses. The tactical truth is that salespeople are going to have to unhook business from their competition to increase their sales. Many order-taking salespeople will fail miserably in this endeavor. Second, prospects are far more informed… Read More
Continue ReadingCompanies Get It Wrong Too
I was recollecting about a job I took in which I felt I did everything right. It is doubtful I did, but it is my recollection so bear with me. I qualified the opportunity, the sale, the expectations and the ramp time. All of the responses were a good fit to my abilities. The ramp time was 6 mos. before getting to a steady revenue stream according to the hiring manager. I knew I could beat that and I did by cutting it in half. I had closed a handful of fairly sizeable deals within 3 mos. and was chasing a handful of large deals. And then I was laid… Read More
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