One of my closest friends is in the midst of a job search.  His story is no different that the scores out there who are great people, doing good work, who were motivated to find work elsewhere.

So he sends me an email with the title “What do you think ?”  with his resume attached.

An hour later, I send back  a reply with an edited word document that had more track changes than Obama’s health care plan.

In the body of the email I shared that as I read his resume through the eyes of an potential employer I had to work  hard to find key points and there was too much text that either added no value or decreased the value of the person I was trying to “see” in the resume.

For example, the points that I flagged for removal included:

• Who he was married to and what church he attended  (Important if he were applying to seminary, no where else)
• Listing the mundane task that anyone with a pulse would do in a job, ex. “Answered Phone, Prepared Proposals, Talked with Clients”
• The extraordinary details of a job he did 10 years ago that had no significant impact or relevance on the position for which he was applying

To drive home the point, I called my friend and  shared the story on how my dog Annabell, after years of trying, actually caught a bird in our backyard last month. While a satisfying snack, once the consumed bird hit the dog’s digestive tract, extraordinary events started to occur on a scale so impressive that my cousins from Sodom and Gomorrah were like “Dude, that’s just scary”.

In response,  we crated the dog for a few days.

I shared how the paper at the bottom of Annabell’s crate, even after acting as the recipient of nature’s fury, contained more white space than my friend’s resume.

I then had to remind him that my parents where indeed married at the time of my conception, so the word he just called me was technically incorrect.

When it comes to our resume’s it is our natural tendency to data dump, take the long road, to use 3 words when we know that 1 will work just fine.

Having just completed a job search, I know how important it is to manage how you work the job boards and how much care you need to take in manage the information out there.

There is one site for sales professionals that I found quite compelling  www.salesprofile.com.

You basically have the opportunity to upload an elevator pitch about yourself.  What better way to demo your pitching ability and as a sales manager it is a great screening tool.   The 30 second time frame will force you to write a script with only your most succinct, relevant, and important attributes.  Its an exercise that every job seeker should do.

Here’s the press release on it’s launch.    Give it a try.

SalesProfile is a new job search site that will allow users to upload a 30-second “elevator speech”. This groundbreaking feature will give the user an opportunity to display his or her skills to potential employers through video. Employers will be able to view candidates from anywhere in the country or even the world with a simple click of a button. SalesProfile’s multimedia feature promises users efficiency and ease to every candidate and employer.

Candidates will also have the chance to complete a behavioral assessment with an option to display the assessment on his or her profile. The assessment will help candidates stand out among the competition, as employers will see it on a candidate’s profile.

The site also has a job-matching wizard where job seekers answer a series of questions regarding the type of sales job they are looking for. The wizard will also display your compatibility with available job opportunities.

By visiting SalesProfile.com and uploading a 30-second “elevator speech” to your profile you will be entered to win a $1,000 cash prize or $100 gift card. Prizes will be given out monthly to random winners who upload their videos between July 15 and October 15.

For more information visit www.salesprofile.com

Sasser

One of my friends has a MBA from a really good school with a really bad football team.  A school so highly regarded that when they received my application some years ago, they not only rejected me on basis of my academic performance, but they added that with my interpretation of what constitutes  “good” personal hygiene and a fashion sense that would make Huggy Bear exclaim “Dude, that just doesn’t match”, that I would be lucky to become a half-rate writer or a derivatives trader for Lehman Brothers.

The laughs on them.  Based on feedback from one’s of our fans, my writing has been consistently described as “half rate”.  So there.

Anywho, back to my friend.  He has the MBA, from the good school, and his current job?  Cutting grass.

Yep.

A lawn  mower jockey if you will.  Although he’s not of the seniority to actually ride the lawn mower, he can just help get it off the truck.  MBA’s will only get you so far.

While we all need to stay positive and be thankful for today and not worry about what we had yesterday, its tough out there.  I was quite fortunate in my recent job search to land into a real opportunity in work I enjoy.  Others are not so fortunate.

Everyone knows someone that is out of work and is forced to look at short-term jobs that are far below their typical pay grade.  Another friend whose last job title was “President” is looking at delivering pizzas.  It happens.

I was struggling with why my MBA friend could only find day laborer work.  Then it dawned on me.  The MBA.

No boss wants to hire someone they know is not going to fit in with the rest of the team.

If you are looking for mall or retail work, how many other MBAs are on the floor hocking chinos and cookware?

Worse, if the interviewer feels that you are more qualified than they are, there’s a good chance you will not get the call back.

If you are looking for a sales gig, the fact that you closed multi-million contracts with the Government is not going to carry much weight with the HR person at the local home improvement store.  And lets be honest, if you are seasoned white-collar executive, you are most likely going to stink in a blue-collar job that involves sweating.

Im not advocating that you play dumb or hide your accomplishments, but if you are looking for work outside of your normal career, you need to tailor your resume and your interview pitch to fit the job.   If you are interviewing for a job where most of the employees are high school/2-year college you may want to omit the “M” from your “MBA”.

Also you will want to have different flavors of your resume to fit the opportunity.

In my personal resume collection I have the following versions:

• A version that emphasizes my experience working in startup environments
• A version that emphasizes working with Fortune 2000/Federal Governments
• A version that emphasizes management achievements and sales performance but doesnt go into too much detail on the vertical experience but is more general.

If you have other suggestions, we would love to hear them.

When presenting a complex solution, the most effective means of engaging the audience is to create and tell a story that is relevant and is modeled around the prospect’s business.

Most will have a story built around their demo data, for ex. “This is ABC Company and they produce widgets”.  ZZZZZZZ…oh sorry…I was just thinking about ABC Company and thier god-forsaken widgets.

The mantra that our teams use for prepping for presentations is “Accurate, Compelling, and Timely“.

Accurate

This sounds obvious but even demo data has to be accurate.  If you produced watches and the demo model was wrong are you going to get the sale?  Treat all information presented in your presentation with the same care that the prospect would treat their live data.

Compelling

If you have a solution that can not be customized on a per presentation basis, at least have examples ready to go that are very relevant to the prospect.  Example, “<PROSPECT>, so lets discuss how your team would use our workflow to publish out a press release to your website. ”

The one thing that is actually more compelling than talking about the prospect, is talking about the prospects main competitors.  When our team presented our web content management system to a large private equity firm, we went out to their three top competitor’s sites – captured some screens and pointed out flaws in their sites.  Then knowing the systems they used, we explained the specific advantages that our system would deliver and the advantages that would provide them over their competition.

Timely

Keep your presentations, demos, and sample data timely.  If your “current” information is over a year old, update it.   While it doesn’t matter in the execution of the presentation, if the prospect sees a bunch of old dates on the screen this will enforce the thought of “this is not real”.  Your goal is that you want them engaged to the point they can visualize your system working in their organization.

The Greatest Sin

Is having no story at all.

If yours is a technical solution, resist any urges to “let the technology speak for itself”.   Remember that “Cutting Edge” = “Still Has Bugs That Can Kill Your Deal”.

In an effort to keep your presentations from becoming too literal, we share this video.

After my arranged engagement/marriage fell apart over religious differences, she drove a Chevy, I a Ford;  I went to drown my sorrows at the only place appropriate to fill the emotional void that filled my heart….the Waffle House.

Now for our Yankee readers, our Waffle House is the equivalent to your Dunkin Donuts.  They are everywhere.  You can’t really swing a dead cat in the South without hitting one of those pillars of culinary delight.

I found my future wife sitting next to the only vacant seat at the counter.  While I did not notice her face, I heard her say to the waitress that she would like her hash browns prepared in the same manner that I ordered mine…scattered…smothered (in cheese)…and covered (in onions). 

As soon as the words left her lips, I knew that was the woman with whom I needed to spend my first marriage.

What lesson can the Waffle House teach us about sales?  Keep it simple.

You know how when you go into some restaurants they have fabricated crap on the walls?  There’s pictures of old stuff, old dead people, and old movies starring old dead people?  There are ferns, maybe some sports trophies, and the menu is nine pages long with long-winded narratives how the chicken will be prepared in a manner similar to those shown on Man vs. Wild.

The Waffle House is simple.  Look on the walls, there are pictures of food.  Want to see a plant?  Go outside.   In the Waffle House you are there to enjoy a good meal, at a  reasonable price, and then to get the hell out.  There’s no wasted space and people who want to sit and talk can do that in the car.

Right now, Sales teams around the globe are trying to figure out how to drive new revenue with very little new investment.  Most are pursuing a course of action that will be bourne from internal group think, with little real integration, and a questionable value proposition.  Gems like the Cadillac Cimarron were create in these environments.

Go Waffle House. 

1. Simplify your message so that it can be easily consumed by a broader audience, not just Subject Matter Experts in your field.
2. Provide a quality product
3. At a reasonable price

Number 1 is the most challenging of course.   But if you haven’t done so, craft your elevator pitch.  In 90 seconds or less, describe why someone would choose to do business with you.  If you need help,  ask yourself; do your customers do business with you because you are a mid-tier vendor with 200 customers in the perverted arts vertical OR because you can help them solve their widget problem?

If you are thinking of ways to possible build a new revenue stream, take your solution with its widget solving capabilities and boil it down.  Is there a fundamental tenet that if everything else was stripped away it would still contain value?  Does a niche market exist that this would serve?  Can you take this fundamental solution, combine it with a RELEVANT product/service and improve on the value proposition?  Does this new solution present logical upsell opportunities?

If you explained the new solution to your receptionist, how long would it take for them to get the concept? If its longer than 90 seconds, start over.

If you want to brain storm (or mind map) on this idea, here’s a few key questions:

• Look at your customers, what common characteristics do they share? 
• Why did they choose to purchase your solution? 
• Why do people/companies choose to do business with your competitors?
• How can we make it easier, within reason, to purchase a solution from you?
• If you had to cut 90% out of your sales pitch, what is the 10% you choose to keep?

If you havent tried mind mapping yet, I encourage you to do so.  Go to www.thebrain.com and download the free version of their solution. 

Good Luck

Kevin Sasser

From Doyle Slaton at SalesBlogcast.com…

I’m giving away my new eBook “15 Rules for Becoming a Top Producer!”

*IMPORTANT NOTE: This eBook is best suited for highly driven sales and leadership minded business professionals.

I’d appreciate your help in spreading the word. Please let everyone know they can get the FREE eBook at http://SalesBlogcast.com

Let’ see how many eBooks we can give away!

Sincerely,

Doyle Slayton
SalesBlogcast.com

In my years of sales experience and supervised release, there are only two deals, only two, that are burned into my cerebral cortex and awaken feelings of anger and frustration whenever I am forced to recall them.

The first we’ll save for a later date.

The second…..arrrrgggghhhhh!  Sorry, had to vent.

When I was selling Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions, our inside team uncovered an opportunity at a company with whom I used to do business in a former career.  Having left our relationship on good terms after a productive career, I was eager to go visit and see some old friends.

After seeing the state of their web presence, this company needed an ECM like my cousins need a good bail bondsman.  They had over 10 sites, in 3 languages, that were stale, inconsistent, with no logical flow among and within the sites.

I am a big believer in “bird in the hand” so I stayed calm and conservative when forecasting our probablity of winning,  however, in the back of my mind, I knew this deal looked good. 

To improve our chances, I threw out my super, double secret, only good for the next 30 seconds, discount.

I sent our proposal and then waited.

The next day I received a call from the Project Manager, they had a counter offer.

 It seems that a few years previous they had acquired another ECM solution and they wanted me to match the terms of their former vendor….free.

Yep.  Free.

Their current vendor needed a brand name on the customer list to establish credability so they gave the software for free in exchange for some marketing press.

If you are a small company and thinking about using this tactic, unless the prospect is Jesus, don’t do it.  It never pays off like you think.

In the case of my former prospect, because it was “free”  they never paid enough attention or respect to the software.  They did not allocate budget for training, they never assigned a team to get the thing installed, and they never upgraded, because in their eyes, since it was “free” they should not have to invest anything in it…ever.

Evidently this vendor pulled this tactic multiple times, because they went bankrupt and were liquated.

So the counter offer to me was for me to match the same deal as the bankrupt vendor.

As politely as I could, I restated for clarification “You want me to match the same pricing structure as your last vendor of whom you complained about lack of training, support, and the dismal failure of thier solution.  Who, based on these types of business practices, went bankrupt?”

“Yes.  That was the only way we could get this project approved by management.” came the reply.

 ”We’ll withdraw from the project and we wish you the best”.

The motivation for this post came from my good friend DJ sent me this link.

Good Luck.

Sasser

Pretend you are Rhett and Scarlett is the economy. 

Tell me if this clip just doesn’t speak to you.

Did you just read about the CFO of Freddie MAC being found dead of an apparent suicide?

Good God almighty, I can only imagine the darkness in the state of mind that views suicide as a viable alternative. 

Our prayers are with David Kellermann’s family.

So let’s talk about our world.  While rewarding, sales, especially in these times, can be a dark, lonely, depressing pursuit. 

These conditions worsen if the following are true:

• Historically, you are an under performer in relation to the rest of the team
• Your boss and/or management has no firm grasp on the reality of your marketplace
• Management has added unnecessary levels of scrutiny to you and your performance 
• You work remotely with minimal contact with other people

If you are battling a bout of the blues or self-doubt is worming its way into your pitch, here are two recommended remedies:

1. Update Your Resume

In our world, your resume should never go 6 months without being freshened up.   Trust me, there are days when I update mine ever 15 minutes.

In addition to needing it for a job search, especially if your boss catches you writing a blog post during business hours, updating your resume provides the benefit of reminding yourself of just how good you are.  If you haven’t done so, make room and add a list of your major accomplishments to the front page.  For example:

·         Over the past ten years, consistently placed in the top 10% of performers across multiple sales teams selling complex IT solutions and financial services

·         Help lead sales team from startup to annual sales of $10mm, personally leading the team three out of five years in new license revenue and follow-up customer sales

·         Introduced sales team to Strategic Account Management and the benefit of using a structured sales methodology, multiple reps shorten their sales cycles by 20% to 30%

·         Assigned to lead a troubled business unit; able to grow fee income by 25% in the first six months and lower client attrition rate by 50%

If you do this excercise, you will feel better about yourself and will gain a better sense of control over you current situation.

2. Go Learn Something New

I read, on average, one business book a month.  I started this practice during the dot com meltdown as a way to help keep my head as times got slow.  My first books where the ones I would see on the shelves of the “C’s” of my clients.  If you would like to do this and don’t know where to start, read a Jack Welch book.

Along these lines, our friends over at Meeting to Win have clued us in to a free webinar on Sales Leadership from a group that usually commands a premium for their content and insight.

Do yourself a favor and attend “The Sales Leadership Imperative”  on Thursday April 23rd at 1pm EST.

They will discuss how you can:

• Leverage your personal strengths as well as the hidden talents of your team.
• Communicate, connect and captivate your team during each meeting or conversation.
• Utilize a proven coaching model to impact performance immediately.
• Engage in daily revenue-generating activities and stop doing the things you shouldn’t be doing in the first place.
• Master the language of leaders, to get people into action without resistance.
• Build internal coaching program and ignite a power team.
• Develop the infallible confidence of a true champion to model what you want your people to achieve.
• Recruit, retain and motivate your top producers and turnaround underperformers.
• Turnaround or terminate an underperformer in less than 30 days

We highly recommend this session.

Good Luck.

Joey Asher’s How to win a Pitch would be more accurately titled as How to Reinvigorate Your Sound Sales Strategy or How to Regain Your Contact With Reality.  Asher makes no claim to have a magic formula, no claim to a 12-step process to fill your pipe.  He promises work.  Sales requires effort – effort to listen, understand, assimilate client requirements and communicate that match to the client. 
 
HTWaP builds on 5 core components:  Focus on the Business Problem / Organize Around Three Memorable Points / Show Passion / Involve Your Audience in the Presentation / Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehears – matching the “pitch” a formal presentation to a client to a broad concept of the solution sales process.  Refreshingly, his approach avoids jargon, clichés, and focuses sales people on the common sense of engaging the prospect, communicating interest, and presenting yourself and the company as a credible information source. 
 
Asher spends an appropriate amount of time and emphasis on rehearsal.   The simple act of pulling the team together and walking through all aspects of a sales meeting gets overlooked in the vast majority of organizations and sales teams do not prioritize it.  If you read back over the life of The Sales Wars, you’ll see a good deal of success and failure in our posts can map to Asher’s book.  
 
Given the current economic situation, HTWaP resonates – salespeople do not need to focus on gimmicks – we need to actively listen, creatively engage, and understand our customers from the beginning of the process all the way through to the pitch.

Kevin Cahill

Here’s our two cents on the topic of Job Searches.

You either sucked or you were unlucky

Why are you out of job?  You were either a person whose level of performance deemed you expendable or circumstances beyond your control robbed you of your career.  So there you are.

If you are, or are about to be, without a job you need to prepare for the following emotions:

1. An almost overwhelming desire to beat somebody’s a**.

2. Extreme self-doubt

3. New levels of pisstivity (past tense of “pissed off”)

4. Victimized

5. Blind optimism (that your next job is right around the corner)

6. Back to #2

7. Because you dealing #2 again, Back to #1

8. The confidence to deal with the situation

You have to deal with all of these, so inform your close circle of friends that you are going to act like a real horse’s butt over the next few weeks, deal with it and move on.

Your mom thinks you are special, everyone else?  Not so much.

Five years ago at a company that very few would actually recognize, I had a great run in comparison with the rest of the people on my team.  For some reason this does not impress that recruiter on www.theladders.com who will not return my email.

Doesn’t he know who I am?

I’m that guy that is so good, I didn’t bother to proof-read my resume , because my results speak for themselves.

Do you know how bad it sucks to be a recruiter right now?  Because of the overwhelming number of candidates, the amount of resumes delivered for one job at a brand name company can easily break 10,000.  That’s 9,923 crap resumes that have to be filtered before finding the qualified candidates.

If you slapped your resume together and did not have at least two other qualified people read it, you’re most likely going to be a member of the 9,923.

A person who gets paid to write resumes will think your resume sucks.

Several of the job boards, including www.theladders.com and www.bluesteps.com will include a free resume critique.  I highly recommend you take advantage of this offer.

That being said, people who review resume’s for free will have an “upgrade” package that cost more than “free”, so be prepared for that.  Usually the nuggets of knowledge that they throw into the freebie review will substantially improve the average resume.

If you are looking for a heavy hitter type of job, I would recommend you spring for the $1,500 and have your resume professionally done.

Stay away from the free job boards

“Mom, I found the woman I want to marry!!!!”

“Really, where did you meet her?”

“Last night, she was standing on a street corner, down by the overpass.  She came up to my car and we started talking and we just connected.”

“Did she ask for money?”

“A little, why?”

No offense to those job boards that are well-advertised and do not charge anything to submit your resume, but stay away from these.  Your odds of getting noticed are small, and if you associate yourself with the “job seekers too cheap to pay for a higher-end job service”, you will be labeled as such and will not be taken as seriously.

We welcome any additional tips or tidbits that may be helpful to our Sales Brethren.