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July 29, 2013

Is 'Big Brother Sales Manager' Looking Over Your Shoulder?

Stupid sales managers never cease to amaze me. Or, more specifically, I’m especially amazed at how many stupid sales managers still have jobs!

I’ve heard a couple of real doozies in the past week, and wanted to share them with you, so here are both for your amusement!

Sales Manager Horror Story #1

I just took on a new sales training & marketing strategy client. On our initial call, before we got down to business, we shared some old “war stories” from our sales careers, and he had a real whopper for me.

He was brought in as sales director at a company whose sales were suffering.

Why?

Because the sales reps were told to do nothing but … wait for it … COLD CALL!

It was one of those micro-managed horror offices where you had to check in at 5:30 PM every day with your stack of business cards to “prove” you’d knocked on enough doors.

In any case, my client came in, put a stop to all that nonsense, implemented what he’d learned from my Never Cold Call Again system, and sales skyrocketed! Better yet, sales turnover dropped, which is a big deal, because in preparation for a presentation I’m giving tonight, I learned that the cost of turnover per salesperson is equal to 150-200% of that person’s annual salary. (Wow!)

When he eventually resigned to start the company I’m now helping him with, they went back to their old ways, and took it a step further: All sales reps now have GPS tracking devices on their cars so Big Brother Sales Manager can keep tabs on them all day.

THIS IS INSANITY! And, needless to say, sales dropped to an even lower level than before my friend took over.

Sales Manager Horror Story #2

Here’s a real email that came into our helpdesk yesterday:

I just read about ‘crap that comes out of salespeople’s mouths’, and had to share this story. Some time ago I got into contact with a company owner in New England who was looking for people to cold call for his consulting business. When I touched base with him, I told him that I had access to several groups that were already doing business with his ideal prospects and that I wanted to set up a plan for him to contact those prospects all at once instead of one at a time.

His response was, “I’m looking for dialers, not order takers.”

WOW! Another moron! Do these unqualified, idiot managers not realize that becoming an order taker is the pinnacle of success for a salesperson? But I guess people like this have some kind of Napoleon complex and a desire to rule others.

How To Avoid Big Brother Sales Managers

If you don’t want an overbearing sales manager breathing down your neck, there are two ways around it:

1. Quit and go sell for someone else. I know jobs are tight in this economy, but if you’re being forced to cold call 40 hours a week, you’re not going to sell much anyway.

2. Sell SO MUCH – I mean blow your numbers out of the water, to the 200% amount and beyond, and your manager won’t care if you show up to work in your underwear, because those numbers are making him look good AND are showing up in HIS commission check.

Regardless of which path you choose, you’ll never succeed if you don’t know how to really make a ton of sales, consistently, month after month. And cold calling will never get you there.

New York Times best-selling author Frank Rumbauskas is the author of the Never Cold Call Again® System and has won numerous accolades, such as Readers Choice for Business Book of the Year from 800-CEO-READ, and has been named one of Fast Company’s top 30 most influential people online. To learn more, and to download a free 37-page PDF preview of his Never Cold Call Again lead-generation system, visit http://www.nevercoldcall.com

Posted at 04:01 PM in Sales Managers | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 24, 2013

In a Sales Rut? How to Stop Digging Yourself Deeper!

The other night, after going through total shock upon learning that I'd never read it, my wife handed me her copy of Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson. (If you haven't read it, read it!)

It's a story about two mice and two "littlepeople" who are the size of mice, but who are human and have human brains and emotions. The mice, on the other hand, act like mice - they act on instinct and are always in hot pursuit of cheese.

They're all camped out on Cheese Station C, enjoying their vast supply of cheese. Until it runs out one day.

The mice, being mice and unemotional, simply put their running shoes on and scurry back out into the world, in search of new cheese.

The littlepeople, being emotional humans, whine and complain. They yell and huff and puff, about how "This isn't right" and "We want our cheese back!"

It takes them a long time, but finally one of the two littlepeople gets out into the world, in search of new cheese. It's not easy, it's discouraging at times, and it takes time. But eventually he finds his new cheese, and it's a bigger and more delicious pile of cheese than he'd ever seen before.

The moral of the story? Anticipate, embrace, and adapt to change.

Are YOU Adapting to Change? Or Digging Yourself Deeper?

Change is a fact of life. It always comes, yet the lessons from Who Moved My Cheese, along with many other writings, point out that it's the one thing in life that is the most bitterly opposed.

However, if you don't anticipate change, embrace it, and adapt to it, you will be left behind, and you will fail.

And this is even more true in business than it is in personal life. Business changes rapidly. If you don't stay one step ahead of those changes, and adapt readily and quickly, YOU won't succeed.

It's Time for CHANGE!

One of the biggest areas where change is omnipresent is in sales. Twenty years ago, no one predicted that the bulk of business and commerce would happen on the Internet. And as little as five years ago, few people anticipated that you could do 100% of your sales prospecting with Social Media while generating huge sales numbers.

Yet, despite all that, most salespeople are still doing what their predecessors did a hundred years ago, and beyond: Cold calling.

WHY??!?!???!??

Sure, it'll get you an appointment here and there. If you're good at it, you might even make enough sales to scrape by your quota and keep your job another month.

But you'll never, never attain really huge sales success. All that will happen is that your supply of proverbial "cheese" will eventually dwindle and run out, and more and more people reject cold calling as they build relationships via Social Media and other Information Age avenues.

So do this right now: Resolve to stop cold calling forever. Accept once and for all that the time for change has come. And it's time to adapt to our new business world before your "cheese" runs out!

Posted at 10:51 AM in Sales Training | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 23, 2013

Forbes Magazine Says that Social Media Beats Cold Calling

Yep, it's true. But it's really no surprise, is it?

Here are the facts:

Social Media vs. Cold Calling Results

- 78.6% of salespeople using social media out-perform those who aren't
- Social media users exceed quota by 23% over social media non-users
- 40% of salespeople have closed deals via social media

And my favorite statistic of all in this report:

Salespeople using social media to sell spend less than 10% - that's right, less than TEN PERCENT - of their time prospecting!

How much of their time do cold callers spend prospecting? That answer is easy:

MOST OF IT!

And that's the biggest flaw of cold calling of all: TIME.

"But cold calling works for me!"

I hear that one all the time. In a conversation I had with Jeffrey Gitomer a while back, he said that salespeople always tell him, "But I make a lot of sales cold calling!"

His reply: "You and I have different definitions of the term 'a lot.'"

Salespeople who think that cold calling "works" for them really don't understand the value of their own time. Or, they place no value on their time at all.

Forget about the fact that 80% of decision makers surveyed said they'll never buy from a cold call. Forget about the fact that technology is making cold calling damn near impossible nowadays.

Forget all that, and think about this: If you're relying on cold calling for your sales leads, you are using up a HUGE, TREMENDOUS amount of your time to accomplish that!

The recent Baylor University study on cold calling concluded that it takes 7.5 HOURS of cold calling to get one - ONE! - truly qualified appointment.

Every morning, when I check my LinkedIn inbox and read the success stories that users of my Never Cold Call Again system send me, there are always at least a few who mention how much more free time they have in their lives, and how astounded they were to finally realize just how much time cold calling was costing them - and how draining it was both physically and mentally.

Think about this: If you can cut the time you now spend on sales prospecting in half, and spend the time saved face-to-face with hot, qualified prospects, just how much more would you sell? I'm willing to bet the number would astound you.

That's what you can do by switching from cold calling to social media for prospecting.

And The Best News Of All....

The best, and most promising bit of data in the Forbes report, was this:

75% of salespeople who are succeeding with social media have had ZERO formal training on how to sell with social media!

If they're doing that well with no training on the subject, just think of what you could do if you DID have that training!

So do yourself a favor: Get educated on how to sell with cold calling. I don't care if you buy my material, Gitomer's books, or someone else's but social media selling skills - particularly on LinkedIn - are ESSENTIAL in today's business world.

Posted at 02:31 PM in Cold Calling | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Crazy but True: Most Salespeople HATE Selling

It never ceases to amaze me how few salespeople I meet who actually love selling, like I do. Worse yet, it appears that a huge number literally hate it - but keep on only because they need a job!

Ask anyone outside the sales profession why they don't like to sell, and they'll tell you, "I hate selling."

There is one reason, and one reason only, why anyone hates selling:

It's because they are inept at it.

They've failed at it.

They can't do it.

This is true in any profession, or any activity in the world, for that matter. People who tell you they hate playing golf - myself included - hate it because they suck at it.

Want To Be Successful? Love What You Do!

It was Socrates who first said it, and it's been repeated by dozens of authors and success philosophers down the centuries: "The only unsuccessful men are those who have not yet found the work they like best."

It's a plain and simple fact that when one is doing the work one likes best, that person is happy, successful, and prosperous.

Work is no longer work. It becomes a labor of love, a joy, to perform.

When I was asked to give an presentation recently on what the #1 cause of sales turnover is, since sales turnover is EXTREMELY expensive for organizations, I had a research assistant find out, and pages and pages of research and case studies all gave the same answer:

Salespeople quit their jobs when they don't like them.

Going deeper into the research, the #1 reason why salespeople don't like their jobs is cold calling. In fact a surprisingly large majority said they'd rather have a root canal than make 100 cold calls.

Is it any wonder, then, that so many salespeople are failures, when they literally HATE what they're doing for a living? When they'd rather have a freaking ROOT CANAL than go to work?

On the other side of the coin, the report contained numerous surveys of business owners & senior executives. When asked what they dislike most about their work, the answer was consistently the same: Receiving cold calls.

The Shortcut to Sales Success

It's well-known to everyone that, no matter how cliche it may sound, the first requirement of success is a positive mental attitude. And you can never have that in your work if you hate your work!

Simply having that positive attitude, and the upbeat enthusiasm that goes with it, makes you magnetically attractive to prospects. They can't resist wanting to BUY from you.

And knowing that cold calling, above everything else combined, is the #1 reason that makes salespeople hate their jobs and destroys positive attitude, the shortcut to sales success is very plain and simple: STOP COLD CALLING! NOW! TODAY!

Posted at 02:22 PM in selling | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 22, 2013

"Increase Your Activity! Make More Calls!"

I know you've heard that line a million times. Maybe even more.

Every time sales are down, or you're not at your numbers for the month, what do 99% of the unqualified sales managers in the world - which would pretty much be 99% of sales managers altogether - always say?

"Make More Calls!"

As if doing something that isn't working now will suddenly and mysteriously work if you just do more of it!

The sad reality is that they really don't know what else to tell you. Few sales managers succeeded in sales themselves, and if they did, it's because they had an uncle or daddy high up in the company who made sure they got all the good leads.

I even had one whack-job manager, years ago, who had a Wheel of Fortune type wheel. Every morning each of us was required to spin it and it would land on "100 phone calls," "Hit 50 doors," "Call 50 potential referral partners," etc.

In one word: STUPID!

The Big "Numbers Game" Lie

When challenged on why their only answer - ever - to the problem of lack of sales is always "make more calls," they always give the same answer: "Sales is a numbers game."

Uh, no it isn't. Sales isn't a numbers game. It's a game of brains and strategy.

Would you win a game of chess against a seasoned player if you believed you could just blindly make more moves, without really knowing what you were doing? Of course not, and the thought of doing so is really stupid, but "make more calls" and "sales is a numbers game" are just as stupid.

Here's why:

Early on in elementary school, around the second or third grade, I learned multiplication. As part of that education, I learned that anything multiplied by zero always equals zero. Always. No exceptions.

So, if you're making 20 or 30 cold calls a day, and not getting any success from it, why make 50 or 100 calls a day?

20 x 0 = 0

And 50 x 0 = 0. And 100 x 0 = 0.

The very definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again but expecting different results. By that definition, the overwhelming majority of today's sales managers belong in a psychopathic hospital. Which isn't too far-fetched, considering the fact that one of my old "numbers guy" type of managers is now serving 25 to life for putting a contract on the Director of Sales when he was fired for non-performance!

(Little did he know that the "contract killer" he tried to hire was really an undercover police officer!)

But I digress.

If cold calling - and increasing activity - won't solve the problem, then what will?

Easy: Don't increase your activity. Change your activity - change it to something that works!

And guess what - in today's Information Age economy, there are more ways and means than ever before to get a HUGE number of hot, qualified prospects in your pipeline than ever before. And all without cold calling.

So stop listening to the dinosaur sales managers - few of whom ever succeeded themselves - and start thinking for yourself if you want huge sales success!

Posted at 02:09 PM in Cold Calling | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Are You Complacent? Or ... a Sales Genius?

There are two major traps that salespeople and entrepreneurs alike fall into. I've fallen into both myself, first as a salesperson, and then again as an entrepreneur, in the initial years after I started NeverColdCall.com.

The "Genius" Problem

When I was selling in late 1999/early 2000, my specific territory was an area of town that was very business-dense, so there were a huge quantity of B2B prospects there, but that area was also notorious for the arrogant and so-called "fake" people who both lived and worked there.

During that time, I repeatedly came across the "genius" problem: People who had the attitude that if they didn't already know about something, then it must not exist; therefore it was very difficult to get appointments with these people. (Eventually I realized that I DID NOT WANT appointments with these people - they weren't worth my time.)

Never mind the fact that I was selling a brand-new, cutting-edge technology that they absolutely didn't know about. In their minds, they already knew everything!

I did the same thing for a while after initially enjoying financial independence, which unfortunately didn't last all too long because I also fell into "genius" mode. I was doing so well with so little work that I closed my mind to further learning and had fun instead. Then eventually I came to my senses and gave up the "I don't work anymore" routine - as you can tell from these emails, I now work - a lot!

Salespeople do it too. I fell into the trap, which was particularly dangerous at a time when the Internet was just beginning to take over, and it began to make older, albeit proven, lead-generation methods less and less effective.

The "Complacency" Problem

This is the more dangerous of the two. I know I did it, first in sales when the leads and commission checks were pouring in with little effort. When 9/11 hit, the economy crashed - and I was forced to reinvent FAST - I gave up my complacency in a hurry.

I did it again after starting NeverColdCall.com, at the same time I had considered myself a "genius." I was fat and happy, as the saying goes, and let things run on autopilot for a while.

Of course, it didn't last, because in today's economy, businesses are forced to reinvent themselves an average of every two years - a far cry from the Industrial Age of the 20th Century when a business could chug along for decades with few major changes.

Complacency in Sales

I can always tell when I'm dealing with a complacent salesperson. It's a dead giveaway when they say, "I don't need your stuff because cold calling works for me!"

When I hear that, I immediately know I'm talking with someone who is happy with mediocrity - happy to earn just enough to keep the bills paid, stay employed for another few months, and maybe even put a few away into the savings account.

However, complacent people never, ever achieve noteworthy success. Never, ever.

That's the reason I stopped being complacent. Now I never stop thinking of and working on new idea, new businesses, and I never stop learning - last night I read chapters from two different books while listening to a third in the car today. Not to mention the fact that I have a short list of books I reguarly re-read, to be sure I stay sharp on fundamentals. (Hint: It takes a minimum of three readings of a book before you really "get it.")

The bottom line is that if you want to achieve noteworthy success, and attain your goals and dreams, you must never fall into the complacency trap!

And if there's one huge red flag that a salesperson has become complacent, it's that they're still cold calling in the 21st Century, when cold calling simply doesn't find enough qualified leads anymore to make it worth your time.

So do yourself a big favor: STOP cold calling, and START using effective, intelligent, Information Age methods to start bringing qualified prospects to YOU!

Posted at 01:23 PM in Sales Tips | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)