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Here we present a selection of Sanjay's articles on Hunter Sales and business related ideas for students. Zen
and the Art of Sales Sometimes, doing the right thing means doing nothing at all. This is the best lesson I have learned in my 10 year sales career. Sales can be a strange profession. The emotional highs and lows are matched only by the financial rewards and penalties. But with the awesome earnings potential, there can come a sense that “if only I worked a bit harder, I could make a little more money.” But this sense is a myth. If the instinct is followed, then you will alienate potential customers and cost yourself earnings in the long run. Here is why. Doing well in sales requires excellent customer service and rapport, and also requires a constantly flowing pipeline of deals. These two requirements are in continuous tension. Win too many new deals, and you won’t be able to service them all. Spend all your time on account management, and you’ll miss out on new opportunities. The best opportunity for future business comes from your existing clients. This is significant because there is no such thing as a typical workday for a salesperson. In my best sales year, I personally accounted for over $110 million in bookings, but only worked about 25 hours a week. Most of my time was spent playing golf, and not necessarily with customers. I deliberately kept the pace a bit slow because there were times when my best accounts needed me to deliver a 20 hour day or a 100 hour week. And if I had too many customers, or too many deals going, I would have been unable to deliver my attention when it really mattered. This is called traffic engineering in technical parlance. If you’re building roads, then you build for the busy hour of the busy day (Friday at 5pm). But most of the rest of the time, the roads are under-used. Try not to think about the 401 highway. It’s an anomaly. That’s the kindest word I could think of. The principle applies to sales as well. If you book up all of your time with deal-making and prospecting, then there will come a time when your best client needs your attention, but your attention will be elsewhere. It may be an unreturned phone call, an email that sits in your inbox for a week, or a proposal that lands on the buyer’s desk a day after the competitor’s. This will cost you business. Resist the temptation to “do something” all the time. I frequently encounter the following situation. I get a call from a potential customer, wanting information and pricing on a particular product. I get the information to her quickly. There is a flurry of visits, phone calls and emails over a few days as she asks questions and gets answers. Then she says she’s going to make a decision. Days go by with no word. What should I do? I used to think every time this happened that the customer must be discovering, or worse, deciding on, a competitor’s solution. I learned though, that this was infrequently the case. Usually, there was simply no trigger to force a purchase. Eventually a trigger would come (a budget cycle, existing equipment breaking down, or a promise to a superior), and I would get a call with the decision to purchase. Ocassionally I would get a call informing me that a competitor’s solution had been chosen, but giving me an opportunity to respond. That’s when I needed all my attention and time focused on the problem at hand, without the distractions of a bulging pipeline. Early in my career, I would pester the customer during the silent period. Never got a sale that way. I did manage to look desperate, which could lose the sale, but at a minimum would hurt me and my company when it came time to finalize pricing. What I learned to do was to maintain a presence so that the customer could get ahold of me easily if she was interested in buying. The equivalent of saying, “How may I help you?” every once in a while. When the customer is ready, the phone call will come. This is the true Zen of Sales. Don’t focus on the outcome (the sale). Focus on the inputs: providing information, demonstrating sincerity, developing a relationship with the buyer. If you do these things well, then the sale will come. A good tool for keeping in touch is an email once a quarter or twice a year with some news of interest to your target. Don’t be pushy, be useful. Beware the temptation to create a false trigger event. Especially the oh-so-popular end of quarter discount. Over time this trains your customers to not buy anything until the last days of the quarter, and dramatically reduces your margins. I love it when my competitors offer this sort of a deal. I always have the opportunity to respond, and I can add a sweetener, “don’t worry, take your time, our offer won’t expire at midnight tomorrow night”. That’s usually all it takes to convince the customer my offer is the better deal. So I spend a lot of time on the golf course. Quite frequently with those customers who I like best, and who don’t laugh as much when I drive the ball. I have learned to not grasp at opportunities, but let them come to me. I sell a heck of a lot of stuff. You can too. Networking 101 It really is “who you know”, not “what you know” I got a $200,000 a year job doing Fortune 500 sales because I took an interest in a recruiter’s sword collection. A friend got into MITs Sloan School of Business because she smiled at the stranger sitting beside her on flight home. Who should you be smiling at? Networking is at the core of all real career success. It really is “who you know” and not “what you know”. According to Thomas Stanley, author of “The Millionaire Mind”, the average millionaire had a lowly 2.92 GPA, SAT scores between 1100 and 1190, and teachers who told them they were mediocre students but personable people. Here is how to be perceived as personable, and how to use the power of networking to attain career success.: Be sincere. Do favours. Be proactive. Does networking mean you have to smile at people you don’t like? Many people think that networking is somehow dishonest, that it means being insincere or somehow false. Not at all. For example, you shouldn’t tell a colleage with an ugly pair of shoes how nice her shoes are. That would be false. But do tell her that her last email was really well written, or how nice her hair looks. Be honest, and find something praiseworthy to comment on. Don’t waste your time on people you don’t like. They’ll know you don’t like them, and any attempt to network will be wasted. Focus instead on being charismatic and well-liked yourself, and network with those around you that you genuinely respect. The best way to network is to be in the business of doing favours. It’s a great answer to the social question, “So, what do you do?”. Next time, try answering, “I’m in the business of doing favours. What do you do?” Listening is a better way of networking than talking. Always give a little more than you get. The best thing you can give away is your own networking contacts… it doesn’t cost you anything, and it is genuinely valuable to the recipient. The third key is to be proactive. This just means that you should think about networking, and make a point of doing it actively, rather than just being friendly and hoping nice things will happen. Be aware that each person you meet presents a networking opportunity. When you meet someone new: Be sincere and friendly. Think about how you can help this person (do favours). Actively seek to get to know this person better. Ask questions. People love to talk about themselves. Let them. So now you’re getting a bit of sense of why and how to network. Now where do you find people to network with? Everywhere. But in addition to the friends of your friends, co-workers and school-mates, you should try to regularly get out and meet people through professional organizations. Examples include Toastmasters, or your local Chamber of Commerce. A good way to find networking groups is to ask someone you admire which clubs or groups they belong to. Probably the most under-used networking source is your own family. The friends of your parents can be quite helpful. So the next time your parents have a dinner party, spend some time with the folks and network with their friends. It’s pretty easy (since most young people will be avoiding them). And you’ll impress your parents. They might even raise your allowance. As you’re networking, you’ll collect a lot of business cards yourself. You’ll very quickly lose track of who is who. Try to remember one significant fact for each person you meet, and immediately scribble it down on their business card. It will help you re-establish rapport when you next call that person. An important concept in networking is to understand that opportunities will come when you go outside your immediate comfort zone. Your friends are your friends, not professional resources. But their friends, and their friend’s friends are potential allies. This is the “Six Degrees of Separation” concept. That you’re somehow connected to everyone in theworld through only six intermediaries. You can probably get to Kevin Bacon even more easily. What will networking skills get you? A better job. Invitations to better parties. Better dates. Get out there and smile!
Sanjay Singhal was Editor of Cornell Business while at the Johnson School. He is now on his 4th startup, www.simplyaudiobooks.com , with Sean Neville, JGSM ‘02. He spends his spare time in Vancouver trying to convince his fiancee to move to Toronto. He can be reached at Sanjay@AquantaGroup.com |
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