Send every networking contact, prospect, customer and referral agent a personal email wishing them a Happy Holidays. But, you can’t say “Merry Christmas” because not everyone believes in or celebrates Christmas. If you broadcast an email, make sure it’s personalized.
Visit all your customers and bring a gift. If your company provides you with gift baskets or cookie tins, use those. If not, shell out your own dough and write it off at tax time.
Make sure you send a nice gift to your biggest referral agents. If someone has sent you business during the year or could send you some business, make sure you honor them. Use services like Proflowers and have gift baskets delivered to their homes. If you’re dealing with a man, send something he can give his wife or girlfriend. It will make him look like a big shot and he’ll want to help you out in the future.
Sponsor a holiday party. Many businesses are cutting back. If there’s a large sale that you’ve been trying to land, sponsor that company’s onsite holiday party.
Prospect. It’s easy to say that it’s the holidays and no one is working, but if you look, rush-hour is still taking place every morning and afternoon. Someone is working. If you’re out there working it, you’ll set yourself apart from the competition, business owners will admire your tenacity and everyone is in a better mood during the holidays, so they should be nicer.
Plan ahead. Write down a strategy for success to follow throughout the next year.
Set goals. Write down a list of goals you want to accomplish during the coming year.
Don’t disappear. Nothing is more frustrating to a customer than calling or emailing you and then hearing an away message or receiving a “Out of Office” email. Imagine if someone wanted to buy, called you and heard an away message? Who do you think they would call next? Your competitor, that’s who. In today’s world, with Black Berries and web based email, there’s no excuse to not check your messages. You’re in sales, if you want to disappear over the holidays, get a job at a college.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Selling in a Small Town
If you’re ever assigned a small town for a territory, here are some tips:
• Visit as many businesses as possible. When you visit a business, don’t solicit as much as mine information; act like you’re a detective solving a crime. What you’re trying to determine is the state of the market place: who are the key players, how your company and its competition are performing and what issues the business community is facing.
• Identify all the key vendors servicing the community. Small businesses rely on vendors and it’s important to work through them. Typically, you need a way to compensate the vendors for referred business. At the same time, you want to reach out directly to the businesses in the community. Word will get back to the vendors that you’ve been proactively looking for new business and that should provide you with more leverage in your dealings with them.
• Use the phone as little as possible. Small town people are wary of outsiders. Outsiders pester them with phone calls. Showing up in person means a lot.
• Attend Chamber and other networking events. Normally, I think Chamber events are a waste of time, but not in a small town.(1) In small towns, business leaders actually attend events and will talk to you.
• Make regular visits and keep in touch with existing customers. This shows that you care and will lead to referred business. Small town business people know each other and if you perform and prove to be trustworthy, they will recommend you to their friends.
• Find something, anything, to connect you to the town. If your wife is from the town, if a relative of yours lived there or is married to someone that grew up there…mention that information when you are talking to the business people. Know the area; throw out names of local businesses and business people. Use their terminology. I sold in Yuma, AZ and there was a part of town called the “big curve”; they had an “old mall” and a “new mall”.(2) If I was asking where a business was, for instance, and it was near the “big curve”, I would say, “big curve”. It helped make the people there feel more comfortable around me.
(1) I went to a Chamber breakfast in Yuma, AZ that started at 6:30 am and when I showed up at 6:35 it was already packed and I had to scramble to find an empty seat.
(2) The “new mall” was over five years old and will probably be called the “new mall" until an even newer mall is constructed, sometime in 2020.
• Visit as many businesses as possible. When you visit a business, don’t solicit as much as mine information; act like you’re a detective solving a crime. What you’re trying to determine is the state of the market place: who are the key players, how your company and its competition are performing and what issues the business community is facing.
• Identify all the key vendors servicing the community. Small businesses rely on vendors and it’s important to work through them. Typically, you need a way to compensate the vendors for referred business. At the same time, you want to reach out directly to the businesses in the community. Word will get back to the vendors that you’ve been proactively looking for new business and that should provide you with more leverage in your dealings with them.
• Use the phone as little as possible. Small town people are wary of outsiders. Outsiders pester them with phone calls. Showing up in person means a lot.
• Attend Chamber and other networking events. Normally, I think Chamber events are a waste of time, but not in a small town.(1) In small towns, business leaders actually attend events and will talk to you.
• Make regular visits and keep in touch with existing customers. This shows that you care and will lead to referred business. Small town business people know each other and if you perform and prove to be trustworthy, they will recommend you to their friends.
• Find something, anything, to connect you to the town. If your wife is from the town, if a relative of yours lived there or is married to someone that grew up there…mention that information when you are talking to the business people. Know the area; throw out names of local businesses and business people. Use their terminology. I sold in Yuma, AZ and there was a part of town called the “big curve”; they had an “old mall” and a “new mall”.(2) If I was asking where a business was, for instance, and it was near the “big curve”, I would say, “big curve”. It helped make the people there feel more comfortable around me.
(1) I went to a Chamber breakfast in Yuma, AZ that started at 6:30 am and when I showed up at 6:35 it was already packed and I had to scramble to find an empty seat.
(2) The “new mall” was over five years old and will probably be called the “new mall" until an even newer mall is constructed, sometime in 2020.
Monday, December 14, 2009
5 Ways to Beat the Stress of Sales
Selling can be very stressful and eat at your psyche. What other occupation regularly subjects you to hang ups and abrupt emails, requires you to walk uninvited into businesses, compels you to reach out to so many people and expose yourself to so much rejection?
Typically you need to make ten phone calls to make one appointment and four appointments to make one sale. That means you will hear the word “no” thirty-six times before you’ll make one sale. Many times, you would love to hear the word “no” because so many prospects just stop returning phone calls and communicating with you.
Making a sale can expose you to a whole slew of other issues. These include: botched installs, missing signatures or paperwork, mispriced products, serviceability issues, delayed or canceled orders, sales and commission disputes.
A manager once told me that sometimes you just need to go home, get some rest and come back the next day ready to go.
So, sales can get rough. Here are some ways for you to stay strong and positive:
• Get a dog. There’s nothing like coming home to your dog. A dog greets you like it won the lottery and you’re delivering the check. There’s no way you can’t feel better when your dog goes crazy each time you walk in the door. Dogs love to go for walks, which brings me to my next suggestion.
• Exercise. Exercise burns off stress, will make you feel better about yourself, keeps you in shape and energized and releases endorphins in your brain. Depression seems to be a modern phenomenon. Before the 1900’s people didn’t have time to be depressed, because they were working their asses off. So now things are easier and we’re all living like kings, so you have to move your body and get your blood pumping. At least you’re not digging graves or cleaning up after horses.
• Avoid alcohol and tobacco. When you drink and smoke, you might feel better but it’s only temporary; you’re only delaying the effects of stress. If you feel bad and drown your sorrows, you’re going to feel even worse when you sober up.
• Live a healthy lifestyle. Get your sleep and eat right. If you’re stressed and you aren’t sleeping enough and eating garbage, you’re going to be a stressed out, sleepy, fat person.
• Enjoy yourself when you’re not working. Don’t live to work, work to live. Don’t be one of those people who sit around until they have to work again, live your life. It will make you a more interesting person when you’re in front of clients.
Typically you need to make ten phone calls to make one appointment and four appointments to make one sale. That means you will hear the word “no” thirty-six times before you’ll make one sale. Many times, you would love to hear the word “no” because so many prospects just stop returning phone calls and communicating with you.
Making a sale can expose you to a whole slew of other issues. These include: botched installs, missing signatures or paperwork, mispriced products, serviceability issues, delayed or canceled orders, sales and commission disputes.
A manager once told me that sometimes you just need to go home, get some rest and come back the next day ready to go.
So, sales can get rough. Here are some ways for you to stay strong and positive:
• Get a dog. There’s nothing like coming home to your dog. A dog greets you like it won the lottery and you’re delivering the check. There’s no way you can’t feel better when your dog goes crazy each time you walk in the door. Dogs love to go for walks, which brings me to my next suggestion.
• Exercise. Exercise burns off stress, will make you feel better about yourself, keeps you in shape and energized and releases endorphins in your brain. Depression seems to be a modern phenomenon. Before the 1900’s people didn’t have time to be depressed, because they were working their asses off. So now things are easier and we’re all living like kings, so you have to move your body and get your blood pumping. At least you’re not digging graves or cleaning up after horses.
• Avoid alcohol and tobacco. When you drink and smoke, you might feel better but it’s only temporary; you’re only delaying the effects of stress. If you feel bad and drown your sorrows, you’re going to feel even worse when you sober up.
• Live a healthy lifestyle. Get your sleep and eat right. If you’re stressed and you aren’t sleeping enough and eating garbage, you’re going to be a stressed out, sleepy, fat person.
• Enjoy yourself when you’re not working. Don’t live to work, work to live. Don’t be one of those people who sit around until they have to work again, live your life. It will make you a more interesting person when you’re in front of clients.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Embrace Sales
Often, I’ve let myself feel down about being a sales rep. I’ve let myself fall into the trap of wishing I had pursued a more dignified or specialized career; one that didn’t have the ups and downs and the “what have you done for me lately?” mentality that comes with sales.
Why?
Sales is a career that doesn’t seem to have a barrier for entry. There’s seldom a license required, college is not a prerequisite; if you can talk and know how to get dressed, you’re in. I have worked with reps that didn’t attend college, could barely write, had trouble reading, were chronically late and didn’t know how to use a single Microsoft Office program. I worked with a woman that wanted me to help her with her computer, because the screen was dark, and after looking at it for ten seconds, I realized that the monitor was turned off.
When you get right down to it, your brain might be your own worst enemy in some sales jobs. If you think about things too much in sales, you’re going to talk yourself out of cold calling and making follow up calls.
So, for whatever reason, you ended up in sales, had some success, formed a life style that required a certain level of income, couldn’t get yourself into management and now you’re stuck working in an industry with a bunch of half wits. And every time some receptionist talks down to you, a prospect
no-shows for an appointment or someone won’t return your call or email; you ask yourself, “What did I do to end up in sales?”
When being in sales gets you down, keep in mind a few things:
• The reason most people are rude and condescending to sales people is that they are too afraid to take a job in sales. They’re sitting around making 35k, struggling to make ends meet. A sales job, that could make all their money troubles go away, is right there for the taking, and they don’t want it. So what do you do when you’re too afraid to try something? You put it down. Just ask broccoli some of the things I’ve said about it in the past.
• All these business owners with the no solicitation signs and the bully temperaments; they wish they had a sales rep that would cold call and be persistent, to sell their products. Heck, most of those guys wish they could afford to hire a good sales rep.
• We live in America, a country and society built on capitalism. Sales people are red blood cells in the country’s capitalistic circulatory system. You want to be a patriot? Go out and sell!
• Maybe we dress up and put gel in our hair, but we’re the bad boys of the business world. And it takes balls to be in sales.(1)
(1) There are a lot of tough sales women, without balls, who do just fine.
Why?
Sales is a career that doesn’t seem to have a barrier for entry. There’s seldom a license required, college is not a prerequisite; if you can talk and know how to get dressed, you’re in. I have worked with reps that didn’t attend college, could barely write, had trouble reading, were chronically late and didn’t know how to use a single Microsoft Office program. I worked with a woman that wanted me to help her with her computer, because the screen was dark, and after looking at it for ten seconds, I realized that the monitor was turned off.
When you get right down to it, your brain might be your own worst enemy in some sales jobs. If you think about things too much in sales, you’re going to talk yourself out of cold calling and making follow up calls.
So, for whatever reason, you ended up in sales, had some success, formed a life style that required a certain level of income, couldn’t get yourself into management and now you’re stuck working in an industry with a bunch of half wits. And every time some receptionist talks down to you, a prospect
no-shows for an appointment or someone won’t return your call or email; you ask yourself, “What did I do to end up in sales?”
When being in sales gets you down, keep in mind a few things:
• The reason most people are rude and condescending to sales people is that they are too afraid to take a job in sales. They’re sitting around making 35k, struggling to make ends meet. A sales job, that could make all their money troubles go away, is right there for the taking, and they don’t want it. So what do you do when you’re too afraid to try something? You put it down. Just ask broccoli some of the things I’ve said about it in the past.
• All these business owners with the no solicitation signs and the bully temperaments; they wish they had a sales rep that would cold call and be persistent, to sell their products. Heck, most of those guys wish they could afford to hire a good sales rep.
• We live in America, a country and society built on capitalism. Sales people are red blood cells in the country’s capitalistic circulatory system. You want to be a patriot? Go out and sell!
• Maybe we dress up and put gel in our hair, but we’re the bad boys of the business world. And it takes balls to be in sales.(1)
(1) There are a lot of tough sales women, without balls, who do just fine.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Freezing Vodka - Part One
Fabi was my first sales manager at Cox Business Services. I remember that I had one interview with her and she offered me the job. At the time, I had been in sales for over ten years but had no outside sales experience. In every outside sales job I interviewed for, my lack of experience was discussed and scrutinized, but not with Fabi. It never came up.
I was going to be part of new business division. This was going to be the fourth time Cox was attempting to start up a business division. All the previous attempts had failed.
This time around, Cox was going all out to make the business division a success. They hired Ken, our G.M., who leased the 30th floor of a class A building in downtown San Diego.(1) The lease was $45,000 a month for 5 years. They spent $75,000 to build a display room, to demonstrate the phone, video and internet services.(2) The location was supposed to impress customers and attract the best employees. Everyone was given free parking and free cable.(3)
Fabi, as it turned out, hired a team with a heavy emphasis on looks and personality and little emphasis on ability. We were all single, attractive men with little outside sales experience. Typically, salesmen are attractive but it went a little further than that. One guy, Eric, looked like Brad Pitt but with less sales ability than Brad Pitt. Fabi called us her “dogs” and had us each buy a stuffed animal dog and place it in our work space.
There were seven other sales reps when I started, Dan, Philippe, Thomas, John, Eric, some other guy and some lady(4), I forget their names.
Dan was a stocky, little Filipino guy. He had good command of the language, was well dressed and professional. Dan sounded great in person but sounded completely gay on the phone. The first time I heard him I thought he was talking to a gay guy and was mirroring him. But then he talked the same way on every call.
Philip was a whiny, nasally French guy from Northern California. He was good looking, in a John Davidson from “That’s Incredible”, sort of way. There wasn’t a subject or a situation that Philip couldn’t complain about. He made me seem positive and upbeat.
John used to come into the office grumbling and sullen, disappear for a few minutes and came back singing and smiling. Rumor had it that he used cocaine. If he did, he never offered me any. John could identify any song, after hearing just a few notes, even if someone was humming them. He left a really good job selling auto glass. He was making close to six figures and had a company car.
Eric was the before mentioned good looking guy that needed the Wizard of Oz to give him a brain. Fabi hired him without any telecom and very little sales experience.(5)
Thomas was a big, pudgy guy with a huge head who transferred from inside sales. He was the single worst salesperson I’ve ever worked with. One day I overheard him on the phone talking to a potential customer. From what I could gather the caller was ready to buy but had some questions he needed answered. Thomas couldn’t get the guy off the phone fast enough. He kept saying, “Okay? Okay?” almost like he was irritated. The guy had no clue.
Thomas wrote his own sales letter that he mailed to prospects that resided on Cox’s network. Because Cox didn’t utilize the Phone Company’s local loops, a business had to be on the Cox network to receive service.
Thomas’ letter was his way to let those businesses know they were connected to Cox’s network. It was a bit presumptuous. Imagine a company mailing out a marketing letter that said, “Guess what. You can buy our service!” In Thomas’ letter he wrote: “I want to inform you that your business is serviceable. Yup, that’s right. Cox service is available to your business.”
First, the word “serviceable” didn’t mean anything to anyone outside of Cox. Second, what professional uses the word “yup”? Who types it in a business letter?
On my first day at Cox, we reported to the main office and went through a haphazard training session. It was obvious that nothing was planned ahead of time. Philippe, who was a quick study, was all ready complaining about the products and pricing. That afternoon, we sat through an absurd session on contract folders. We were supposed to use a yellow folder if we sold phone service, red if we sold internet, purple if we sold web hosting and an orange one if you sold a combination of phone and internet. If you made a sale and placed the contract in the wrong color folder, it would be returned to you.
Afterward the folder training we sat around for an hour before Fabi informed us she nothing else and sent us all home.
We dicked around for a couple more days, until the office downtown was ready. The first thing I noticed was that we had about four times more space than we needed. Fabi had a corner office. Hugo, the Build Out Manager had a corner office. The other two corners were for the Customer Service Director and Ken. Before we made one sale we had a Customer Service Manager and Director(6), Inside and Outside Sales Managers, a Sales Director and a General Manager, a Marketing Manager and a Marketing team, an Operations Manager and Director and a Network Build Out Manager. I think there were three customer service representatives and they had a Manager and a Director.
The man making all the decisions was Ken, the G.M. Ken was simply the worst person I’ve ever worked for. I can’t imagine what the people responsible for hiring him were thinking. The first time I met him, he shook my hand violently for a full ten seconds. I felt like I was a bull rider trying to stay on a bull. Afterwards, he advised me to wash my hand because he just gotten over the flu.
Ken used to walk around the office closing the blinds to save electricity. We were on the 30th floor and there were beautiful views in every direction and he wanted the blinds drawn. One time he came over to the sales area and asked for help from someone with muscles. One of the guys told him I worked out. He looked me up and down, in a real creepy way, and told me to follow him. He wanted me to move some potted plants in the lobby. I literally moved them an inch or two and he was thrilled because he thought that made the lobby looked so much better.
Ken waited about two weeks before he expressed his frustration with the sales team. He would come over and ask us questions about something sales related. When we didn’t answer appropriately, he would become agitated, and then go bitch about us to one of the administrative employees.
He would take over our sales meetings. He would ramble on about outdated sales techniques and strategies. Fabi started scheduling our meetings on the fly and held them on the sales floor instead of the conference room, to avoid Ken.
Thomas never should have left inside sales. He was in the residential call center and it was easy pickings over there. They had people working 40 hours a week and making six figures. There was some skill involved but basically all you had to do was stay open for calls, be aggressive and good on the computer. There was no outbound calling and the pricing was very aggressive. Cox was competing with the local phone company for phone service and under cutting their prices. A second line cost five bucks a month when the phone company was charging more than twice that. The residential side was a success because of their low prices and they were the only alternative to the phone company. The business division wanted to charge more than the incumbent and there was a slew of competition.
We were pricing our internet service by number of computers connected to the network. When someone asked me how much are service cost and I asked them how many computers they had networked, they looked at me like funny. We were selling high tech but our pricing system was no tech. Networking had become more sophisticated and routers were being utilized, so there was no way for Cox to know what they were connecting to. If you priced the service the way the company wanted, a company that had ten computers on their network would pay $400 a month, ten times what a residential customer would pay for the same service. Meanwhile, the phone company was selling their high speed service for as little as $29 a month.
Our only hope was to count every other computer and bundle our internet with the phone service. Then we could hide the cost of the Internet. Our phone service was only slightly less than the phone company’s, but if you didn’t quote the taxes and surcharges, prospects would do the math in their heads and think that we offering a better deal. Everything would be fine until they got their first bill.
At first, big, fat Thomas had the inside sales team spoon feeding him leads. He had worked with everybody over there, when they were all in the residential call center. They would send him the stuff that wasn’t automatically serviceable and Thomas would work it though the system. He was the only one us making any sales. He would sit and stare at his computer while the rest of us were busy making cold calls. He never left the office. We would go out and prospect and Thomas would sit in front of his computer. And then, all of a sudden, he’d pull a sale out of his ass. It wasn’t fair and I took it up with Fabi. He was making the rest of us look bad. Fabi went to the inside sales manager and put a stop to it. Fabi was probably willing to do this because Thomas was the least attractive one on the sales team. She probably thought she could replace Thomas with someone more dateable. From that point on, all of the leads from inside sales were distributed evenly. Thomas was done. He kept staring at his computer but never made another sale. He tried to transfer back to residential. He had to quit and get rehired and he lost all his seniority.
(1) If you watch the movie Traffic, Dennis Quaid’s office was one of our conference rooms.
(2) Imagine bringing a customer up to your floor to show him phone service, like it had just been invented.
(3) Including the Playboy channel if you wanted it.
(4) The lady quit right after I started. She quit because Cox was going to establish sales objectives. I guess she had worked there for some time and was never measured. Imagine that.
(5) Think Liam Neeson hiring his secretary in Schindler’s List.
(6) There were three customer service representatives; almost a one to one, employee to manager ratio.
I was going to be part of new business division. This was going to be the fourth time Cox was attempting to start up a business division. All the previous attempts had failed.
This time around, Cox was going all out to make the business division a success. They hired Ken, our G.M., who leased the 30th floor of a class A building in downtown San Diego.(1) The lease was $45,000 a month for 5 years. They spent $75,000 to build a display room, to demonstrate the phone, video and internet services.(2) The location was supposed to impress customers and attract the best employees. Everyone was given free parking and free cable.(3)
Fabi, as it turned out, hired a team with a heavy emphasis on looks and personality and little emphasis on ability. We were all single, attractive men with little outside sales experience. Typically, salesmen are attractive but it went a little further than that. One guy, Eric, looked like Brad Pitt but with less sales ability than Brad Pitt. Fabi called us her “dogs” and had us each buy a stuffed animal dog and place it in our work space.
There were seven other sales reps when I started, Dan, Philippe, Thomas, John, Eric, some other guy and some lady(4), I forget their names.
Dan was a stocky, little Filipino guy. He had good command of the language, was well dressed and professional. Dan sounded great in person but sounded completely gay on the phone. The first time I heard him I thought he was talking to a gay guy and was mirroring him. But then he talked the same way on every call.
Philip was a whiny, nasally French guy from Northern California. He was good looking, in a John Davidson from “That’s Incredible”, sort of way. There wasn’t a subject or a situation that Philip couldn’t complain about. He made me seem positive and upbeat.
John used to come into the office grumbling and sullen, disappear for a few minutes and came back singing and smiling. Rumor had it that he used cocaine. If he did, he never offered me any. John could identify any song, after hearing just a few notes, even if someone was humming them. He left a really good job selling auto glass. He was making close to six figures and had a company car.
Eric was the before mentioned good looking guy that needed the Wizard of Oz to give him a brain. Fabi hired him without any telecom and very little sales experience.(5)
Thomas was a big, pudgy guy with a huge head who transferred from inside sales. He was the single worst salesperson I’ve ever worked with. One day I overheard him on the phone talking to a potential customer. From what I could gather the caller was ready to buy but had some questions he needed answered. Thomas couldn’t get the guy off the phone fast enough. He kept saying, “Okay? Okay?” almost like he was irritated. The guy had no clue.
Thomas wrote his own sales letter that he mailed to prospects that resided on Cox’s network. Because Cox didn’t utilize the Phone Company’s local loops, a business had to be on the Cox network to receive service.
Thomas’ letter was his way to let those businesses know they were connected to Cox’s network. It was a bit presumptuous. Imagine a company mailing out a marketing letter that said, “Guess what. You can buy our service!” In Thomas’ letter he wrote: “I want to inform you that your business is serviceable. Yup, that’s right. Cox service is available to your business.”
First, the word “serviceable” didn’t mean anything to anyone outside of Cox. Second, what professional uses the word “yup”? Who types it in a business letter?
On my first day at Cox, we reported to the main office and went through a haphazard training session. It was obvious that nothing was planned ahead of time. Philippe, who was a quick study, was all ready complaining about the products and pricing. That afternoon, we sat through an absurd session on contract folders. We were supposed to use a yellow folder if we sold phone service, red if we sold internet, purple if we sold web hosting and an orange one if you sold a combination of phone and internet. If you made a sale and placed the contract in the wrong color folder, it would be returned to you.
Afterward the folder training we sat around for an hour before Fabi informed us she nothing else and sent us all home.
We dicked around for a couple more days, until the office downtown was ready. The first thing I noticed was that we had about four times more space than we needed. Fabi had a corner office. Hugo, the Build Out Manager had a corner office. The other two corners were for the Customer Service Director and Ken. Before we made one sale we had a Customer Service Manager and Director(6), Inside and Outside Sales Managers, a Sales Director and a General Manager, a Marketing Manager and a Marketing team, an Operations Manager and Director and a Network Build Out Manager. I think there were three customer service representatives and they had a Manager and a Director.
The man making all the decisions was Ken, the G.M. Ken was simply the worst person I’ve ever worked for. I can’t imagine what the people responsible for hiring him were thinking. The first time I met him, he shook my hand violently for a full ten seconds. I felt like I was a bull rider trying to stay on a bull. Afterwards, he advised me to wash my hand because he just gotten over the flu.
Ken used to walk around the office closing the blinds to save electricity. We were on the 30th floor and there were beautiful views in every direction and he wanted the blinds drawn. One time he came over to the sales area and asked for help from someone with muscles. One of the guys told him I worked out. He looked me up and down, in a real creepy way, and told me to follow him. He wanted me to move some potted plants in the lobby. I literally moved them an inch or two and he was thrilled because he thought that made the lobby looked so much better.
Ken waited about two weeks before he expressed his frustration with the sales team. He would come over and ask us questions about something sales related. When we didn’t answer appropriately, he would become agitated, and then go bitch about us to one of the administrative employees.
He would take over our sales meetings. He would ramble on about outdated sales techniques and strategies. Fabi started scheduling our meetings on the fly and held them on the sales floor instead of the conference room, to avoid Ken.
Thomas never should have left inside sales. He was in the residential call center and it was easy pickings over there. They had people working 40 hours a week and making six figures. There was some skill involved but basically all you had to do was stay open for calls, be aggressive and good on the computer. There was no outbound calling and the pricing was very aggressive. Cox was competing with the local phone company for phone service and under cutting their prices. A second line cost five bucks a month when the phone company was charging more than twice that. The residential side was a success because of their low prices and they were the only alternative to the phone company. The business division wanted to charge more than the incumbent and there was a slew of competition.
We were pricing our internet service by number of computers connected to the network. When someone asked me how much are service cost and I asked them how many computers they had networked, they looked at me like funny. We were selling high tech but our pricing system was no tech. Networking had become more sophisticated and routers were being utilized, so there was no way for Cox to know what they were connecting to. If you priced the service the way the company wanted, a company that had ten computers on their network would pay $400 a month, ten times what a residential customer would pay for the same service. Meanwhile, the phone company was selling their high speed service for as little as $29 a month.
Our only hope was to count every other computer and bundle our internet with the phone service. Then we could hide the cost of the Internet. Our phone service was only slightly less than the phone company’s, but if you didn’t quote the taxes and surcharges, prospects would do the math in their heads and think that we offering a better deal. Everything would be fine until they got their first bill.
At first, big, fat Thomas had the inside sales team spoon feeding him leads. He had worked with everybody over there, when they were all in the residential call center. They would send him the stuff that wasn’t automatically serviceable and Thomas would work it though the system. He was the only one us making any sales. He would sit and stare at his computer while the rest of us were busy making cold calls. He never left the office. We would go out and prospect and Thomas would sit in front of his computer. And then, all of a sudden, he’d pull a sale out of his ass. It wasn’t fair and I took it up with Fabi. He was making the rest of us look bad. Fabi went to the inside sales manager and put a stop to it. Fabi was probably willing to do this because Thomas was the least attractive one on the sales team. She probably thought she could replace Thomas with someone more dateable. From that point on, all of the leads from inside sales were distributed evenly. Thomas was done. He kept staring at his computer but never made another sale. He tried to transfer back to residential. He had to quit and get rehired and he lost all his seniority.
(1) If you watch the movie Traffic, Dennis Quaid’s office was one of our conference rooms.
(2) Imagine bringing a customer up to your floor to show him phone service, like it had just been invented.
(3) Including the Playboy channel if you wanted it.
(4) The lady quit right after I started. She quit because Cox was going to establish sales objectives. I guess she had worked there for some time and was never measured. Imagine that.
(5) Think Liam Neeson hiring his secretary in Schindler’s List.
(6) There were three customer service representatives; almost a one to one, employee to manager ratio.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Telecommunication Sales – Tricks of the Trade
If you work in an area service by AT&T:
If you call AT&T’s repair phone number, it will ask you to enter the number you need service on. If you enter a number and it’s not an AT&T phone number, the system will tell you who’s providing the service. I used to cold call and then go back to the office and check the phone numbers on all the business cards I collected, to tell what company the business was buying their phone service from.(1) Then when I called the contacts, I mentioned the carrier’s name. It made it seem like I knew more than I did and the person was more likely to listen to me. The information also helped me tailor my sales pitch.
If you work for Cox Business Services:
When I worked at Cox, no one could tell the salespeople where the company’s service was specifically. Many times reps would go out canvassing in an area that the company couldn’t service. A number of times, reps made sales to companies that were too far off Cox’s network. There was no way to cost justify the build and the sale had to be canceled. That didn’t make for a happy sales environment. I discovered that you could search by name in the Cox’s database. So I would search for words like, “National”, “United”, “First”, etc. and then look for businesses with suite numbers in their address. I knew that Cox could service any business in the existing customer’s building and I could sell phone service to existing Cox internet customers.
Make friends with the network engineers. They are given plans for network build outs. If they are building out to a new mall or shopping center, they’ll have plans that should include store names and contact information for the mall management. Proactively call all the out of state retailers and tell them Cox is the incumbent phone service provider. I did this for a new mall in San Ysidro, California and won 60% of the mall business.
If you work for Qwest:
Qwest has a system called Exchange and if you type in a phone number, it will tell you which carrier is providing the service. If it comes up Qwest, look up the account in BOSS and look to see if you can cost justify a PRI, if the customer is paying too much for their long distance or would be better off with an integrated T1 instead of phone lines and DSL.
If you work for a competitive local exchange carrier in Verizon territory:
Verizon is one of the few incumbents that still offers fixed bandwidth, integrated T1’s, and their pricing is horrible. I sat through an hour long conference call, webinar, learning about this service.(2) After the conference, there was a question and answer session. I wanted to ask the moderator what year it was because I thought I had gone back in time and 512k was still considered a good Internet speed. I also wanted to ask them for a list of their customers utilizing the service. I wanted to market to the world’s most uninformed customer base.
The way to identify these businesses is to conduct a speed test on one of their computers.(3) If their speed is less than a megabit, they probably have one of Verizon’s pre-tech-stock-crash, integrated T1’s.
If you work for a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC):
Try to locate areas that are too far from any of the phone company’s wire centers and can’t receive DSL service. Offer the businesses integrated T1 service.
When you get a business’s phone company, phone bill:
Look for “crammed” charges. These are monthly charges from third party companies that the phone company bills for. They are almost always erroneous. On the bill, near the charge, is a toll free number for inquiries. Have the company call to get the charge removed. This practice will help you create good will and trust.
If you’re selling against an incumbent phone company’s integrated T1 service:
The phone company is new to integrated service and horrible at it. They don’t manage their installations, conduct site surveys and they charge to extend the demarc. The integrated T1 has always been the CLEC’s bread and butter; feel confident in pushing your company’s service.
(1) I put the number in my mobile phone and called when I was out in the field sometimes, to avoid places my company was already servicing.
(2) I hung in there because I wanted to win an iPod.
(3) www.speedtest.net is a good site.
If you call AT&T’s repair phone number, it will ask you to enter the number you need service on. If you enter a number and it’s not an AT&T phone number, the system will tell you who’s providing the service. I used to cold call and then go back to the office and check the phone numbers on all the business cards I collected, to tell what company the business was buying their phone service from.(1) Then when I called the contacts, I mentioned the carrier’s name. It made it seem like I knew more than I did and the person was more likely to listen to me. The information also helped me tailor my sales pitch.
If you work for Cox Business Services:
When I worked at Cox, no one could tell the salespeople where the company’s service was specifically. Many times reps would go out canvassing in an area that the company couldn’t service. A number of times, reps made sales to companies that were too far off Cox’s network. There was no way to cost justify the build and the sale had to be canceled. That didn’t make for a happy sales environment. I discovered that you could search by name in the Cox’s database. So I would search for words like, “National”, “United”, “First”, etc. and then look for businesses with suite numbers in their address. I knew that Cox could service any business in the existing customer’s building and I could sell phone service to existing Cox internet customers.
Make friends with the network engineers. They are given plans for network build outs. If they are building out to a new mall or shopping center, they’ll have plans that should include store names and contact information for the mall management. Proactively call all the out of state retailers and tell them Cox is the incumbent phone service provider. I did this for a new mall in San Ysidro, California and won 60% of the mall business.
If you work for Qwest:
Qwest has a system called Exchange and if you type in a phone number, it will tell you which carrier is providing the service. If it comes up Qwest, look up the account in BOSS and look to see if you can cost justify a PRI, if the customer is paying too much for their long distance or would be better off with an integrated T1 instead of phone lines and DSL.
If you work for a competitive local exchange carrier in Verizon territory:
Verizon is one of the few incumbents that still offers fixed bandwidth, integrated T1’s, and their pricing is horrible. I sat through an hour long conference call, webinar, learning about this service.(2) After the conference, there was a question and answer session. I wanted to ask the moderator what year it was because I thought I had gone back in time and 512k was still considered a good Internet speed. I also wanted to ask them for a list of their customers utilizing the service. I wanted to market to the world’s most uninformed customer base.
The way to identify these businesses is to conduct a speed test on one of their computers.(3) If their speed is less than a megabit, they probably have one of Verizon’s pre-tech-stock-crash, integrated T1’s.
If you work for a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC):
Try to locate areas that are too far from any of the phone company’s wire centers and can’t receive DSL service. Offer the businesses integrated T1 service.
When you get a business’s phone company, phone bill:
Look for “crammed” charges. These are monthly charges from third party companies that the phone company bills for. They are almost always erroneous. On the bill, near the charge, is a toll free number for inquiries. Have the company call to get the charge removed. This practice will help you create good will and trust.
If you’re selling against an incumbent phone company’s integrated T1 service:
The phone company is new to integrated service and horrible at it. They don’t manage their installations, conduct site surveys and they charge to extend the demarc. The integrated T1 has always been the CLEC’s bread and butter; feel confident in pushing your company’s service.
(1) I put the number in my mobile phone and called when I was out in the field sometimes, to avoid places my company was already servicing.
(2) I hung in there because I wanted to win an iPod.
(3) www.speedtest.net is a good site.
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