Category Archives: Career Growth

In Sales, when do you Fold ‘em and Quit?

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Most of us are familiar with Kenny Rogers’ song “The Gambler”.

In one of his most famous lines in the song, the lyrics go like this –

“You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,
Know when to walk away, and know when to run.”

when do you quit in sales?Contrary to popular belief, the best professional poker players don’t bluff their way to winning with a bad hand. When they get a bad hand, they know it’s better to fold quickly, cut their losses, and wait for a better hand. Unless independently wealthy, they realize they only have so much money to gamble with, and they don’t want to lose by bluffing. Sure, sometimes they may get lucky. After all, it’s gambling. But the professional knows that in gambling, while it’s good to be lucky, it’s always better to have a winning hand.

But what do you do in sales when you are dealt a bad hand when assigned a sales territory or group of accounts?

It happens. You start a new job, or a new sales manager is hired, or there is an influx of new salespeople, or there is a reorg of your sales department, and suddenly, all those great territories or accounts disappear, and you are left with a losing hand.

Now what?

Before quitting, access your situation and see if you can turn your bad hand into a winning one.

Here are five things to consider –

1). Is your situation only temporary? If you are working in a start-up or a fast-growing company that has a high turnover rate of salespeople, chances are if you are patient and can afford to wait, the tide may turn back in your favor when other salespeople quit and you are assigned their good accounts. Even professional poker players know that you have to play the waiting game before you win a large pot. So don’t bitch or complain. Smile. Be professional. Play the waiting game. So when the bodies start falling by the wayside, and everyone else is playing duck and cover, make sure you’re in a position to pick up the good accounts and run towards success.

2). Is your assigned territory or accounts really that bad? Just because the prior salesperson didn’t do well with his accounts, doesn’t mean you can’t turn things around. Sometimes a new salesperson coming in with a different approach or perspective is all it takes to turn bad accounts into good ones. Maybe the chemistry wasn’t right between the last salesperson and his accounts. Maybe the last salesperson didn’t make enough cold or prospecting calls. Maybe the last salesperson didn’t have a good understanding of the market or your company’s products or services. Maybe the last salesperson was just lazy and coasting in his job. Whatever the reason, don’t be so quick to judge your assigned territory before you had a chance to dig in, do some research and make sales calls. There may be diamonds in the rough that haven’t been found yet.

For example, I worked at a durable medical equipment company where a new salesperson was assigned the “garbage” accounts by a senior sales rep. The senior rep had enough on his plate, so he figured he didn’t have anything to lose by dumping his crappy accounts on the new guy.

Did the new guy cry? Hell no. He worked the accounts and ended up getting one of the largest orders in the company’s history from an account that everyone thought was dead. Furthermore, the new guy blew his quarterly quota out of the water and ended up gaining the respect of his colleagues and the owner.

Garbage in is not always garbage out.

3). Do you have great support from your Marketing Department? Has your employer finally weeded out the deadwood and hired better marketing professionals? Are you seeing an uptick in social media activity on Twitter, Facebook, and other sites? Is your Marketing Department publishing quality content on your company’s website to draw in more prospects? Are you seeing an increase in your company’s trade show attendance? Are you receiving a better list of prospects to contact? Maybe the real reason why the prior salesperson didn’t do well was that he didn’t have good support from his Marketing Department. If your employer is finally waking up to that fact, you should stick around and ripe the awards of their efforts.

I once worked for a small publishing company where the marketing director worked remotely out-of-state. While she had all of the job skills, she was spending most of her time doing freelancing work for other companies. Frustrated and angry, my employer finally canned her and hired a new marketing director. After that, our marketing efforts slowly started to turn around. Like my colleagues, my sales began to pick up with a new marketing professional in place.

4). Is your employer introducing new products or services? OK, so your accounts are crappy. You’ve done everything you supposed to do, but you’re not getting anywhere. You’re getting the evil eye from your sales manager, and the cold shoulder from colleagues because they feel you’re a loser. But wait! If your employer is introducing new products or services, that could be the ticket to save you. If that’s the case, sit tight and see if your sales will increase.

5). When all else fails, talk to your sales manager. Contrary to popular belief, smart sales managers know that high turnover hurts their bottom line, and can badly affect their professional reputation too. Like you, sales managers want to make money. They don’t want to waste their time constantly hiring new fresh blood because salespeople are quitting. If you have earned enough brownie points, proved that you are a reliable and hardworking professional who “gets it”, and plead your case to your sales manager. Based on your evidence and other information, he may assign you some better territories or accounts.  It never hurts to ask.

Selling is like playing poker. You have to work with the cards you’re dealt with. Sure, you could fold ‘em and quit your job.  Just make sure your cards are not as bad as you think before hitting the pavement seeking other opportunities.

Why you shouldn’t Slack Off during the Weekends

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never slack off during the weekendI know. You had a tough week. You made tons of sales calls, or you attended a lot of client meetings. Maybe you just got back from a conference. You feel drained. You’re tired. Now with the weekend here, you want to kick back, relax, and watch sports or that movie you promised yourself to see.

It’s time to chill.

Or is it?

Should you completely spend your time relaxing? While your guard is down, your competitors may be working behind the scenes to undercut you and steal your clients.

While most experts agree that you should take time to relax during the weekend and clear your head, in sales you must constantly upgrade your skills to remain competitive.

Here are 5 things you can do during the weekend to remain in your A-game –

1). YouTube – watch some YouTube videos on sales. You will find plenty. According to my count, there are more than 345,000 sales training videos alone on YouTube.

2). Paid online courses – or if you are more ambitious, you and enroll and take paid online courses. Here are three websites to check out –

www.lynda.com
www.udemy.com
www.smei.org

And don’t forget, the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (which I’m a member) has a lot of resources you can review anytime.

read good sales books, articles and blogs3). Read – there are plenty of sales books to read. But if you don’t want to spend your hard-earned commission money on books, you can read free articles and blogs online.

Blogrank has a list of the top 50 sales blogs.

Alltop also includes several sales blogs.

And SalesEngine has a list of the 18 sales blogs that you should be following.

(My blog isn’t on any of the above lists. No hard feelings).

4). Practice – are you still stumbling over your opening pitch, your presentation or getting tongue-tied handling objections. Relax – it’s the weekend – practice always makes perfect. Maybe spend time with your significant other and do some roleplay (no, not that roleplay, I mean roleplay in sales).

AGsalesworks has a good article on “5 Tips for Better Sales Role Plays.”

And Intelligent Conversations offers “Five Rules for Effective Sales Role Play.”

5). Study your competitors – Go to your competitor’s websites – what are they doing better than you? Are they offering new products or services that you should be offering? Review the list of clients they have on their website. See any clients you like? Good, now go after them.

Darren Dahl wrote a great piece in Inc. on “10 Tips on How to Research Your Competition.”

Derek Halpern wrote an interesting article in DIYthemes on “How to Learn From Your Competition (and Steal all Their Best Ideas).”

Yes, we all need to relax. And while the labor movement should be congratulated for giving us the 40-hour workweek and the weekend, you shouldn’t use all your leisure time to relax.

Is it a good idea to work on straight commission?

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When is it good to work on a straight commission?

Here are some things to consider –

1). Is your employer well-known in the industry? If yes, that’s half the battle right there. Nothing makes your job more difficult than working for a company that has very little name recognition. If a prospect instantly recognizes your company name, that will save you a lot of time by not having to explain what you are trying to sell. A good example is real estate. If your company has little or no name recognition, you will be wasting valuable time explaining to the prospect who you are and what you do.

2). Does your employer have a good marketing plan? If your company is helping you generate good, qualified leads, you will save yourself a lot of time. Nothing is worse than working on straight commission and wasting half your day finding leads. Searching on Google may be fun but it doesn’t pay the bills. You are a salesperson, not a glorified lead generator. If your company does not have a good marketing plan, your valuable time will be eaten up hunting leads.

working on straight commission3). Does your employer offer benefits? Believe it or not, some companies that pay only straight commission will sometimes offer benefits. Unless you are married and can piggyback on your spouse’s benefits or your parents’ insurance policy, this could be a big help to you.

4). Does your employer offer paid training to help you learn about the products or services you are selling? That could go a long way in helping you get a jump-start in filling your pipeline and generating income.

5). Does your employer give you some compensation for a short time? To help you ramp up, some employers will pay a small base salary for a few weeks or months. This should give you enough breathing room to build up a reasonable pipeline so you can start earning a commission.

6). Is the company’s commission structure generous? Normally to make a straight commission plan work for you, you either must be selling a high ticket item (e.g., real estate), or a lot of smaller items (e.g., vacation packages or timeshares) to be successful. As a rule, the higher the item’s cost, the longer the sales cycle will be. Can you afford a long sales cycle while working on straight commission? Only you can answer that.

There is nothing wrong with working on straight commission. Sometimes, your commission will be uncapped – meaning you can earn as much as you want. At some companies, if you are working on a base salary plus commission structure, your commission may be capped.

At the end of the day, only you can decide what works best for you. Just make sure you know what you are getting yourself into.

Is Inside Sales the same as Telemarketing?

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telemarketerAs any new job hunter out of college will tell you, one of the most difficult things to determine when pursuing a sales career is what is the difference between Inside Sales and Telemarketing. Many job postings seem to use those words interchangeably and the job descriptions appear to be the same. Frankly, I don’t think even some employers even know the difference between both terms.

First, there definitely is a difference between Inside Sales and Telemarketing.

Telemarketing is a quick and dirty sale. You make tons of phone calls every day, do a quick sales pitch and see if the prospect will bite. No real sales techniques are used. No qualifying questions. No establishing rapport. No building relationships. Before the prospect can even get a word in, the telemarketer is blasting away, speaking a mile a minute in hopes you will listen before you hang up.

Telemarketers usually use scripts and are required to stick with them. There is no improvising. It’s simply a cold calling technique used to make a transactional sale. Very short sales cycle. You either get a yes or no answer. If it’s no, you move on. If it’s yes (which is rare), you then expand more on what you are selling, obtain the credit card information, thank the new customer, and move on.

No lead generation required on your part. All the leads are provided in a Customer Relationship Management  (CRM). If the phone number is bad, or if the contact is bad, you quickly move on to the next call.

telemarketerOn the other hand, inside sales require a more long-term and strategic approach to selling. You use all the basic sales techniques that you have been taught – asking qualifying questions, determining needs and problems, being an expert in your field, finding the right decision-maker, handling objections, asking trial questions, and closing the sale.

Inside sales require a lot more patience and discipline because the sales cycle can be long. You may be required to do some research before calling on prospects. You have to take good notes, schedule follow-up phone calls, and stay on top of your game.

While you may not make as many phone calls as a telemarketer, you still have to hit the phones. But besides making calls, you also need to send good emails and maybe even some direct marketing material. Also, unlike a telemarketer, you are required to update and correct your customer/prospect files in your CRM. That means not just correcting contact information, but entering good notes too.

Inside sales require a lot more thought and planning. You are usually working more closely with your sales manager and marketing team. Depending on what you are selling and the industry you are in, you may not have a large pipeline compared to a telemarketer. In fact, a telemarketer really doesn’t have a pipeline per se; instead, he just has an endless list of prospects he calls on based on time zone and geography.

So when seeking a new sales position, if you see the terms “telemarketing” and “inside sales”, you now know there is a difference. Just make sure your employer knows the difference when you go on a job interview.

The courage to sell

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the courage to sellFor most of us who have been selling for a long time, it’s almost second nature to us. We don’t even think about it when we make cold calls, or give a presentation or conduct a webinar. You just do it. It’s part of the job.

But take a step back. Do you remember that first cold call you made? Do you remember the first time you stood at an exhibit booth waiting for prospects to walk up to you and ask questions?

How did you feel? Nervous as hell.

Think about for a minute. It takes courage to pick up the phone and call strangers. It takes courage to knock on the doors of strangers. It takes courage to stand at an exhibit booth at a trade show and talk to strangers. I know some people who would rather be unemployed than go into sales. Next, to death and public speaking, selling is probably ranked up there as one of the top things that people are scared of the most. I know one newly hired salesperson who was humiliated by a negative response he received while speaking to a prospect over the phone. It was his first call to a prospect at the company. For the next couple of hours, he didn’t make any more calls. Noon rolled around and he went out to lunch and never returned to work. He didn’t even call his manager and tell her he was quitting. The salesman just disappeared!

And let’s be honest here. Sales professionals are not the most popular people in the world. How many times have you hung up on a telemarketer? How many times have you been interrupted by cold calls from salespeople at work? When you are sitting on a plane and someone next to you says he sells insurance, do you quickly look out of the window and stare at the wing for the rest of the flight? When you see someone standing on a street corner asking for donations for a charity or selling products, do you avoid eye contact and quickly walk away? And don’t you love having a salesperson knocking on your door on a Saturday morning asking if you need energy-efficient windows?

While many of us may love our jobs and the companies we work for, sales professionals are not always…well, treated professionally. In fact, some of us don’t even want to admit that we are sales professionals. We use euphemisms like “consultant” or “account manager.” Or we quickly change the subject. I actually received an email from a contact on LinkedIn who praised me for calling myself a “sales professional” in my job title. He wrote “Nice to see someone with sales still in the title. Also nice to see it teamed with professional. Too many Account Directors or Category Advisors out there. We are all salespeople and some are professionals.”

Be proud you are a sales professional. Because if nothing else, it takes courage to be one.