Sales Force One

A Vote of Confidence

Usually a manager or a coach (in sports) who gets a vote of confidence from team ownership is not long for the world.  That vote of confidence is often followed with an exit interview.

Occasionally I will ask a sales manager about someone on their team who is struggling...along the lines of "how much confidence do you have in that person?"  As Stephen Covey so correctly identified in his book The Speed of Trust, people trust you on many different levels, but in the business world trust is granted to those who produce an expected outcome.  When I ask a sales manager if they trust an individual salesperson and the answer is yes, what they are saying is that they have confidence or trust in that salesperson's ability to produce new business.

If you don't have confidence in someone on your team, what is that costing you?  Does it cost you new clients?  Does it cost you lost opportunities with existing clients?  Does it cost you your time?  If you don't have confidence in someone, I would encourage you to think of their total compensation package as including a significant charge for your most valued commodity - your time.

Bottom line - you are paying them more than you think!

Sales Lessons From President Obama

Since the name of this blog is Sales Force One...and since our 44th President was inaugurated this week....what can we learn about selling from Tuesday's inauguration?

I see two things:

1. Whether you agree or disagree with President Obama...and whether you voted for him or not...there is no question about his skill as a communicator.  He has the ability to inspire people through his skill as a communicator.  Even though I disagree with many of his positions, I do not miss opportunities to watch him deliver a speech.  He owns the room and his ability to communicate is the best in a President since President Reagan.  So how about you?  When you are presenting, do you own the room?  Do you inspire people to change?
2. After the swearing in ceremony was botched, President Obama and Chief Justice John Roberts had a "do over."  In golf, we call it a mulligan. Just curious about you as a salesperson.  If you had a "do over" with a deal you recently lost, what would you do differently?  And more importantly, have you learned enough from that deal that you are now unlikely to make the same mistake again?

You Can Stick It

My early vote for best business book of 2009 goes to Chip & Dan Heath for Made to Stick - Why Some Ideas Surive and Others Die.

According to the Heath brothers, there are six key qualities of an idea that make it stick:

1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotional
6. Stories

The relevenace of the book for salespeople are numerous....but the first connection I made is to how salespeople sound and what they say when they lob the phone call to secure a first appointment.  Typically the call is one sided with the salesperson doing all the talking about the salesperson's company and the problems they solve.  Not very compelling is it?

The book references where a Carnegie Mellon University economist named George Loewenstein described curiosity as the result of people feeling a gap in knowledge....and that these gaps cause pain....and that people feel compelled to fill in those gaps.

Back to salespeople - the authors write on page 85 "One important implication of the gap theory is that we need to open gaps before we close them.  Our tendency is to tell people the facts.  First, though, they must realize that they need these facts."

So how about you?  Do your phone calls "stick"?  Or do your prospects tell you to "stick it"?