Perhaps nothing strikes fear in the hearts of sales professional like the weekly, ahem, interactive sales call. Having run hundreds and sat in on thousands more of these here is a (partial and edited) list of what sales people want and don’t want culled from only the intelligent survey responses of the sales animal;
Do not make everyone sit through everyone else’s pipeline. This is number one by at least three lengths. What happens? The sales people not reviewing pipeline go off line until they are called. They IM, email, and even take other calls. I have seen these call run two hours, arguably 5% of a sales person time during the week where they could otherwise be in front of customers persuading them to buy. Far and away the reply to the pipeline type calls is; waste of time.
Second? Do not schedule a one on one for more than 50 minutes. In fact a (typical) 90 minute one on one to review pipeline is an additional 3.75% of a sales persons time to review what in some cases was already reviewed on the first call. If you include prep which as I am told is typically an hour, this is 2.5 hours of time total or 6.25% of their week. Oh, and the sales people who have a sales call on Monday who get the one on one on Wednesday typically have very few deltas in the pipeline, unless they are selling crack.
The tone. Yes that is correct, those hard driving, not technical enough, demanding, flighty, out of control, weird acting sales team actually has the ability to detect boredom. The result; Sales systematically starts shutting down vital voluntary and in some cases involuntary organ function as a survival mechanism. Boredom to a sale person is not unlike kryptonite to that ultimate metro-sexual Superman. The face twitches, the eyes roll, the body begins a series of uncontrollable fidgeting, and as more and more Dulce de Leche Crème are consumed, they may begin to pace like a caged Polar Bear. This is not good for anyone.
Now I have a few more but I will sidetrack on the sales persons’ mind. Come on in.
Sales people are consistently asked to live in the future. It is never about what happened it is about what will happen. In fact a great line delivered by a VP of Sales to the head of Engineering was;
“Here’s an idea, let’s invest a couple of hundred K in a software application that lists, for the whole company to see, how many bugs are produced by each of your development team.”
True that. Sales jobs are one of the only corporate areas where performance is public, very public and it is rewarded publically and causes career death, again, publically.
A good example of this is the sales kickoff territory (or account or channel) update where a rep, who, because all the sales information is public, everyone knows is struggling, and he has to present to the team what he will do in the future to close revenue and literally live to sell another day. I affectionately call this the “Pipedream Review.” Everyone knows the chance of career survival is low and if the presenter is not a seasoned veteran the BS meters will be in the red. It is often painful and I have born witness to more than a few solid meltdowns and even the sales person leaving just prior to the preso.
Great sales people are cautiously optimistic. That is they have booth feet on the ground, they may get to their tip toes once in awhile but they typically will not make or proffer a sales event that is obviously, literally and impracticably probable as an outcome. Sales people in full meltdown will proffer, propose, guess, sweat, and generally behave manically while the meltdown. This is like a break up between 16 year olds, a lot of weird body language, drama, and a solid dose of teenage angst.
Sales people also will provide some of the most depraved, unusual and typically alcohol infused antics while they are at out of town sales meetings. Some of my favorites;
· A golf cart in a hotel room and the room is on the third floor, pure genius (promoted to Director).
· A rental car sunk in a swimming pool which is not genius, but is an impressive piece of driving (strong talking to).
· Chest butting the CEO after an afternoon of wine tasting (he got fired).
· Sleeping with your fiancés bridesmaid and not knowing it was one of the bridesmaids (unimaginable consequences and put on plan).
· Broken arm in a jet-ski accident (lost their tennis serve).
· CFO TKO’d in a downhill mountain bike race (brought clarity to the balance sheet).
· Sales guy who lied about his scuba certification and ended up with a mild case of the bends (laid off).
· A full on staggering drunk back peddle across the huge-a** sales dinner ballroom into the opposite wall (fired).
· A male and female employee turning in their respective expense reports with the same room receipt (forced, and I am not making this up, to announce their relationship via email to the company and now married two kids).
Okay what was this post about? Oh yeah the weekly sales call.
Talk about successes, customer wins, how to spot a solution, have partners present their stuff, have customers talk to you. Do the gnats a** pipeline stuff in one on one meetings.
Do not make everyone sit through everyone else’s pipeline. This is number one by at least three lengths. What happens? The sales people not reviewing pipeline go off line until they are called. They IM, email, and even take other calls. I have seen these call run two hours, arguably 5% of a sales person time during the week where they could otherwise be in front of customers persuading them to buy. Far and away the reply to the pipeline type calls is; waste of time.
Second? Do not schedule a one on one for more than 50 minutes. In fact a (typical) 90 minute one on one to review pipeline is an additional 3.75% of a sales persons time to review what in some cases was already reviewed on the first call. If you include prep which as I am told is typically an hour, this is 2.5 hours of time total or 6.25% of their week. Oh, and the sales people who have a sales call on Monday who get the one on one on Wednesday typically have very few deltas in the pipeline, unless they are selling crack.
The tone. Yes that is correct, those hard driving, not technical enough, demanding, flighty, out of control, weird acting sales team actually has the ability to detect boredom. The result; Sales systematically starts shutting down vital voluntary and in some cases involuntary organ function as a survival mechanism. Boredom to a sale person is not unlike kryptonite to that ultimate metro-sexual Superman. The face twitches, the eyes roll, the body begins a series of uncontrollable fidgeting, and as more and more Dulce de Leche Crème are consumed, they may begin to pace like a caged Polar Bear. This is not good for anyone.
Now I have a few more but I will sidetrack on the sales persons’ mind. Come on in.
Sales people are consistently asked to live in the future. It is never about what happened it is about what will happen. In fact a great line delivered by a VP of Sales to the head of Engineering was;
“Here’s an idea, let’s invest a couple of hundred K in a software application that lists, for the whole company to see, how many bugs are produced by each of your development team.”
True that. Sales jobs are one of the only corporate areas where performance is public, very public and it is rewarded publically and causes career death, again, publically.
A good example of this is the sales kickoff territory (or account or channel) update where a rep, who, because all the sales information is public, everyone knows is struggling, and he has to present to the team what he will do in the future to close revenue and literally live to sell another day. I affectionately call this the “Pipedream Review.” Everyone knows the chance of career survival is low and if the presenter is not a seasoned veteran the BS meters will be in the red. It is often painful and I have born witness to more than a few solid meltdowns and even the sales person leaving just prior to the preso.
Great sales people are cautiously optimistic. That is they have booth feet on the ground, they may get to their tip toes once in awhile but they typically will not make or proffer a sales event that is obviously, literally and impracticably probable as an outcome. Sales people in full meltdown will proffer, propose, guess, sweat, and generally behave manically while the meltdown. This is like a break up between 16 year olds, a lot of weird body language, drama, and a solid dose of teenage angst.
Sales people also will provide some of the most depraved, unusual and typically alcohol infused antics while they are at out of town sales meetings. Some of my favorites;
· A golf cart in a hotel room and the room is on the third floor, pure genius (promoted to Director).
· A rental car sunk in a swimming pool which is not genius, but is an impressive piece of driving (strong talking to).
· Chest butting the CEO after an afternoon of wine tasting (he got fired).
· Sleeping with your fiancés bridesmaid and not knowing it was one of the bridesmaids (unimaginable consequences and put on plan).
· Broken arm in a jet-ski accident (lost their tennis serve).
· CFO TKO’d in a downhill mountain bike race (brought clarity to the balance sheet).
· Sales guy who lied about his scuba certification and ended up with a mild case of the bends (laid off).
· A full on staggering drunk back peddle across the huge-a** sales dinner ballroom into the opposite wall (fired).
· A male and female employee turning in their respective expense reports with the same room receipt (forced, and I am not making this up, to announce their relationship via email to the company and now married two kids).
Okay what was this post about? Oh yeah the weekly sales call.
Talk about successes, customer wins, how to spot a solution, have partners present their stuff, have customers talk to you. Do the gnats a** pipeline stuff in one on one meetings.
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