If You Are Going to Fart Wearing Khaki…

As 2008 starts to wind down, our planning for 2009 has already begun with rough drafts of sales plans, operational plans, and balanced scorecards starting to fill my inbox.

If you are in sales, or are managing a team, there are three things you can do to help sustain your revenue stream in 09:  Plan, Prepare, and Execute.

While this may seem cliche’, during these type of economic conditions a vast majority of sales teams and managers will Panic, Pitch, and Pray.

All of your organization’s goals can be traced back to the strength of your USP (Unique Selling Proposition).  A weak USP and you are a commodity.  Commodities are purchased on price alone and the cheapest (least profitable) guy wins.  Low profits means your job is going to suck for a long time.

By “Panic” we are referring to tactics that may weaken your USP.

Systems of a “Panic” mentality include:

Cutting Muscle with the Fat

Discretionary Expenses that should be managed more carefully during a downturn

• Travel Expenses. In any deal in which you have a reasonable shot at winning, the prospect will usually accommodate a two-week lead time for on-site visits.  You just have to ask.  Also, do not feel compelled to send the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to every meeting, we have all been conditioned enough with webex, livemeeting, raindance, etc., that its acceptable to have non-core members of your team participate in your meetings remotely.

• Trade Shows. There are enough trade shows and industry conferences out there to bankrupt your company 12 times over.  Cut out the biggest shows first, they usually have the lowest ROI.  Secondly cut out any shows you attend “just to be seen”.  Your prospects budgets are most likely cut so the only shows they will be to attend are the smaller more focused shows, such as user group meetings.

• People.  If you have a sales guy who has been “borderline” in good times, well, he’s not going to get better now.  Taking a queue from Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap, (Prisoner #763836738), if you need to cut staff, do it quick, do it efficiently, and do it once (if possible).  Onesy, Twosy type firings build a culture of suspicion and panic among the staff, leading them to focus more on “Am I Next?” vs. “How can I job more effectively”.

Expenses that you should not cut, if you can help it.

• People. During the dot com meltdown our demos started to stink, badly.  Our sales engineer team was understaffed by 50% and thus the time they could allocate to each presentation was below the minimum required to build anything unique for the prospect, let alone have enough time to fix the bugs that would inherantly pop up at the worst possible time.  If adding a person will improve the quality of your efforts in your pipeline deals, take the risk and make the hire.

• Marketing. Specifically any money deemed to improve the quality of your marketing is money well spent.  At one point, we stopped outsourcing our copy writing and used internal staff and in return got some real winners.  I remember a product overview sheet that used the word “content” 23 times, on one page with only three paragraphs of text.  Do not underestimate the impact of your client’s impression of you via your website, your collateral, and your presentations.

• Good Hires. Bad hires in Q1 bites you in the ass in Q4.   You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.  But what most people dont realize is that those “monkeys” will then come into your team and instill their monkey-like traits, practices, and attitudes that can infect the rest of your team.

In the next post, we’ll focus on two more systems of “Panic” mentality

• Confusing Cold Calling and “Blocking and Tackling” with a Sales Strategy

• Going “Helen Keller” (Lord, please forgive me for this one)

Sasser

How to Reduce The Schmuck Factor

Anyone who has been in the workforce long enough has had the opportunity to work for, or with, someone who really didn’t fit in, didn’t perform up to expectations, and basically made you wonder if your employer received some sort of tax credit for keeping this individual employed. It is these individuals that we loving refer to as “Schmucks”. We all have Schmucks. If we are honest, we can agree that we all are subject to our temporary moments of Schmuckdom.

Based on the fact that, on average, 20% of the sales people generate 80% of the sales, the “Schmuck Factor” in most sales teams is higher than in the rest of the organization. Ever heard of “20% of Developers writing 80% of the code” or “20% of Client Supporting handling 80% of the issues”? Nope. Its just sales.

Signs You’re Having a Bad Sales Meeting

With “Annual Sales Meeting” Season right around the corner, we decided to put together a list of those elements that make these meetings so memorable.

Thank you for those who contributed including our friends at www.linkedin.com

Pre-Game Show

• Your boss wants to share a flight and makes you change yours to a much later one. Then on the last day, he comes in late and announces he is too depressed to carry on the meeting because his prized Corvette broke down and he has to write the IRS a check for $25K because he made too much last year. Then you try to catch an earlier flight, all to find out they are all booked. Then your flight is cancelled and you are stuck there for another day and have to take a 6:15 flight that next morning.

• The sales book that was purchased, and then paid to ship to each rep, so that they could prepare for an engaging and productive discussion during the sales meeting, hasn’t been opened yet

• The meeting begins with bumper music at 90db, from Mariah Carey’s late 80s hits, while the lame managers attempt to dance a Jim Carey version of hip hop

• Ignoring the lessons learned about knowledge comprehension and retention, the opening meeting is highlighted with the phrase “We have every minute planned out…..” or “we have a team building event every night!”

• In addition to the joy of traveling around the world for 30+ hours only to arrive at a crap hotel. You are informed that you will be sharing a room with a local who is too cheap to pay for a cab ride home.

• You have been asked to watch the movie “Boiler Room” in advance of the meeting – and to be prepared with suggestions on how to implement some of the “tips” you picked up in order to improve next quarter’s results.

• Entire management team dresses in drag during an opening session and attempts to sing a lame song or act out a skit.

Lessons Learned From A 911 Call

A few weeks ago, at a neighborhood meeting, we had a man collapse, become unresponsive, and, in general, scare the holy crap out of all of us.

In short,the neighbor, Charlie, had what equates to a stroke. The following are the lessons that made themselves apparent and the series of events surrounding this emergency as they unfolded.

It is natural not to immediately acknowledge a bad situation

This situated started as I was walking to check on the kids who were playing in the yard adjoining the meeting, I noticed someone laying on the ground, face down. If I showed you a photo it would be quite easy to describe the situation and what was happening. However, as I was walking toward the person on the ground, I kept trying to convince myself that what I was seeing was not what I thought I was seeing. Surely this had to be an odd shadow or a kid playing a game with the others.

From the Gate Keeper

In his book, “Swim with the Sharks” Harvey Mckay states that as CEO of his company he ranks the following two positions as the most key in generating revenue for any organization:

1. Vice President of Sales

2. The Office Receptionist

While the first is pretty obvious, he goes on to explain that the Receptionist, a.k.a. “Gate Keeper” has the power to set the tone of the business relationship. By being the initial contact for the majority of new and existing clients and business partners, their appearance, demeanor, and professionalism can have a significant impact.

In addition to being “the voice” of your company, the Gate Keeper often serves as the “filter” or “tie breaker” when it comes to new hires. If you have a borderline interview, the Gate Keeper can have the swing vote.

How to Reduce The Schmuck Factor

Anyone who has been in the workforce long enough has had the opportunity to work for, or with, someone who really didn’t fit in, didn’t perform up to expectations, and basically made you wonder if your employer received some sort of tax credit for keeping this individual employed. It is these individuals that we loving refer to as “Schmucks”.

We all have Schmucks. In fact if we are honest with ourselves, we can agree that everyone is subject to a temporary bout of Schmuckdom.

Based on the fact that, on average, 20% of the sales people generate 80% of the sales, the “Schmuck Factor” in most sales teams is higher than in the rest of the organization.