Memories of a Sales Manager:

In tribute to the many dedicated professionals who benefit from MTD Sales Training, I am starting a new series called, “Memories of a Sales Manager.” In this column you will find true stories from sales managers in the front line who lead by example. Some stories are funny, some serious, but each teaches a valuable lesson in sales, management, motivation and training techniques. So, enjoy the first contribution from sales manager John Landrine in the U.S. entitled, “King Kong’s got Nothing on Me!”

We sold outdoor, lighted advertising signs for independent businesses, and this happened one day while I was field training a new salesman. We worked door-to-door which made sense since we could easily see the current signage of the prospective business. The new sales person and I ended up in an area where vandalism was rather high, but since our signs where virtually unbreakable, this often provided good prospects.

We walked into an outdoor and immediately noticed the security glass surrounding the cashier’s booth which appeared to be bulletproof and surmised that this was probably not a very nice neighborhood. But with a new, extremely keen rookie sales person watching, fearlessly carried on. The owner, a huge, not-to-pleasant-looking man appeared behind the protective glass and instantly realized that we were not customers and said, “What the hell do you want?”

Undaunted, I began, “My name is John Landrine and we sell outdoor internally lighted signs for…” He interrupted, screaming at us how he had no need for a sign. “I don’t need no &*%$!!x*n$?!! sign!! I been here for 32 years; EVERYBODY knows me! Nobody comes in here because of %&^%$!!! Sign!! They come because of ME!!” I’m no saint, but this guy introduced me to a new segment of the English language. Undeterred, I challenged, “I have a model and some pictures of the sign in my car. I’ll show it to you, THEN, you tell me if you don’t need this sign!”

“Oh yeah! Well, go get the %:&^*$! thing then!” As we headed to the car, the trainee, literally shaking in his boots, suggested that we get in the car and leave as it looked obvious this guy would never buy a sign and he could be dangerous. However, I told him the first rule is never to prejudge who may and or may not buy a sign—you have to ASK for an order. Well, I quickly found that everyone did know the owner and my presentation was interrupted every two minutes with customers whom he would have long conversations with.

Since the trainee needed the practice anyway, I used this “downtime” to have him sketch a sign for the store. I noticed a mural on the wall outside that depicted a gigantic King Kong figure towering over the skyline of Manhattan, pouring huge bottle of champagne and in one of the floating bubbles was the face of the store owner. So, I suggested the trainee sketch that idea on a sample rendering on the least expensive sign we sold. I was determined to ask this prospect for an order, if it was the last thing I did. (Of course, I hoped it wouldn’t be the last thing I did.)

Just as I went to close, a utility worker came in and went into the back with the owner. But two minutes later, he came running out and flew out of the store in a state of terror, as the owner yelled, “They want $800, when I just gave them money last month!! They think I got $800 laying around here to give to any Tom-Dick-or Harry who walks in and asks for it!!” Well, in about 30 seconds, I was going to ask him for $1400!

As the trainee packed up and positioned himself near the door, I presented the sign and asked for the order. The owner said, “Ok. I’ll take it.” And turned and walked away. We didn’t know what was going on or if he understood the proposal. The thought came to mind that maybe he went to get a gun, but he came back with a check for the deposit! Now, normally I wouldn’t temp such good fortune, but I just had to know and asked, “Why are you buying this sign? I mean, what made you change your mind?” He answered, “All that crap about the sign bringing me in more business, I couldn’t care less about” All you had to do was tell me that you were going to put MY FACE on a big lighted sign…and I would have bought it at ANY PRICE!”

The lesson I learned was that I really didn’t believe in my own teaching. Because of his apparent disinterest, I proposed a sign that was half the size and one-fifth the price of what I should have presented. Though I taught the new sales person not to prejudge, that is exactly what I did.
Develop a solid sales model and process, and use it. You don’t always know, what in your sales integration, is the deciding factor for your prospective customer to buy, so don’t try to figure it out.

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Sales Training

Telephone:
0800 849 6732

7 Ways to Effective Sales Coaching

Want to become a great sales coach? Then include these golden rules:

Lead By Example: The “do as I say, not as I do,” theory doesn’t work. If you can’t do it, or have never done it, then don’t tell your sales people they can do it. If you can’t walk-the-walk, don’t talk-the-talk.

Care: All the sales coaching in the world and all you’re great wisdom and expertise, mean nothing if sales people don’t believe that you and the company believe in, and care about them. The old adage is true in that people really don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. If you always put the bottom line first, that’s all you’ll get; the bottom line.

Praise in Public: When you see progress and achievement, make it known and do it out loud.

Make Corrections By Group: You may have heard that you should praise in public and correct or admonish in private. However, don’t even admonish in private. Make such corrections, fix mistakes and problems by addressing the whole team instead of singling out the guilty party. You can bet that if one person is having the problem, others in the group are as well. Also, keep teaching positive at all times.

Ensure a Chain of Communication: Don’t allow management above you to communicate directly with the people you coach without your knowledge or involvement. Everything must come through you.

Remember the Spouse/Family: Remember these are people you work with, there not machines. You should know something about each person’s situation and always consider them as individuals.

Never, Ever Let Them go Home on a Negative: Have you heard that saying in Marriage ‘Never go to Bed on an Argument’ Well as a sales coach, never let your people go home with a negative thought. A bad day or month, lost sales, mistakes made; whatever the case may be, make sure you give the sales person something positive to take away.

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Sales Training

Telephone:
0800 849 6732

I received a cracking email from a Sales Development Manager recently who needed some advice on how to motivate a sales team who were field based.

Here’s the email:

Hi Sean,

I’ve read your article on motivating a sales team which was excellent and I can apply all of it to my business.

However, do you have any special tips for motivating a sales team who you cannot supervise because they are in the field? The bad apples can infect the good ones, as well as you not being able to keep their chins up for them when the chips are down. You can’t always rely on integrity, and many have different buttons to push.

Your thoughts

Thanks

BM
Sales Development Manager

Here’s my reply:

Hi B,

That is an excellent question, and frankly, I don’t know why I do not get this more often.

Well first, let me add to your question as these things closely relate: I know many organisations have sales people in the field and cannot meet personally with them but maybe once a week, or once a month or even less. So a few questions come up:

1. How do you keep them motivated?
2. How do you keep them focused?
3. How do you correct mistakes that they make in the field if you are not there?

The key is that when you have a long-distance relationship with your sales people, every moment of contact has to be motivational but also educational.

You MUST also HELP them, not just pump them up.

The problem is that to help them you have to correct problems; you must address negative issues. But if you address negative issues when you have sales people that you may not see for a while, those negative feelings can linger. So the question is how can you motivate and address negative issues at the same time and from afar?

First, no mater what it is that your company sells, or how your organisation operates, you need to do three things:

1. Have regular contact with the sales force, if not in person, then either by telephone or virtually—taking in information and relaying only positive responses

2. Uplift and inspire during that regular contact

3. Have regular sales meetings, if not in person, then by teleconference or e-conference and combine the information from #1 and #2.

Let me explain.

No mater what your company circumstances or how spread out your sales force are, the sales manager must have periodic contact with each and every member of the team, either every day, once a week or once a month, based on your sales model.

If your sales model is such that sales people can and should close a sale everyday, then you should be in contact everyday. If your sales cycle is much longer, then perhaps you contact each sales person once a week.

Simply stress that at the end of each work day or at the end of each week, each sales person MUST call you.

If you have sales people who have the opportunity to work very late in the evening in the field, then you as the sales manager should NEVER be done with your work day until ALL of your sales people are finished. As long as they are working—so are you.

Then, during this telephone call, all you want to do is draw out information as to what happened that day or week and inspire the sales person. You just want information on what happened and then uplift the sales person. The main thing you do not want to do is criticise or correct anything. You must present that you are not “looking over their shoulders,” or checking on them. All you want is data on what happened.

Let me give you an example.

Sales manager has five sales people who spread out across a wide geographic area selling point of sale computerised cashier systems to small, independent businesses and restaurants. The sales model is to do five sales presentations everyday and close one sale everyday.

Sales manager has every sales person call in at the end of his or her work day, everyday and they have a weekly sales meeting every Monday morning to start the week, via teleconference.

Now with this set up, here is what you do:

As sales people call in, the sales manager asks tons of questions, and does everything to get the sales person to describe his or her day—but keeping it positive. As the sales person explains a bad day in the field, the sales manager takes note of those negative things that happened and of the mistakes the sales person made, but he does NOT attempt to correct them or even inform the sales person at that time. In fact, if the sales person begins to explain all the details of a big sale gone wrong, where he or she is aware of their mistakes, the sales manager tries to get off the subject.

The sales person may say things that make the manager cringe, but the manager does not say, “Oh, no, you should not have done that!” Instead, the manger says, “Hey, you put in a hard days work and you know the numbers are going to pay you back!!”

Am I saying that this late night phone call should be a rah-rah pep rally? Yes; but much more. It has to be a pep rally but you have to get information about what happened.

One of the most common mistakes sales managers make is to make corrections at the wrong time. A sales person works hard all day and goes home with no sales. The sales person knows that he made some major blunders and lost the sale and is glad the day is finally over. Later the sales manager checks in and the sales person first has to relive this horrible day. The sales person has to recount every detail of this nightmare and voice his mistakes.

Then, when the story is over, the sales manager confirms it by telling the sales person, yeah, you really did mess up! Finally, now feeling tired, broke, and dejected, the spouse comes over and tells the sales person that he is screwing up and needs to get a “real” job.

You want to speak to your sales people at the end of each day or week, and pump them up and give them ammunition to fend for themselves against their spouse, parent, child, uncle and their own conscience AND get valuable information.

Using the example above, let’s say a sales person calls in and as he explains his demonstration of the computer cashier system, the sales manager hears that the sales person does not know how to demonstrate the day’s end reconciliation correctly and that is why he lost that sale and others.

The instinct is to tell the sales person right then, “No! Go back to page six of your sales manual!! You are not doing the reconciliation the right way!” This seems to make sense and it might if you could meet in person with these people everyday. But since you cannot, then you cannot correct this, then.

Instead the manager jots this down, complements the sales person on his perseverance, and lets him know that the he is now one step closer to the sale.

Now, after you get this type of information from all of your sales people and only pumped them up during your call, you use those notes to form your next sales meeting.

In this case, if not doing the reconciliation is something that several of the sales people seem to be having a problem with, or even if it is just one, the manager makes it a topic or the topic of the next sales meeting. The manager does not point out anyone nor does the manager even suggest that someone is not doing this part correctly. The sales manager simply informs the entire sales force that one of the topics they will cover in this week’s meeting is the best procedure to demonstrate the day’s end reconciliation.

Can you see what happens here?

With this strategy, your sales force knows that every time they call you, you only have good and positive words. And at every sales meeting it seems they get sales training that seems to be exactly what they really need! And you did this without one negative word and without singling out any sales person.

I can go on for an hour about all the things you accomplish with this when done correctly. But the main thing is that you create a bond between you and your sales force in that it allows you to “be there” even when you are not. My sales people are field sales people and I make a habit of doing this myself - it works like a dream and the results speak for themselves.

Happy selling!

Sean Mc