“I decided tonight I want to be a professional salesman.”

A big decision.  Particularly for a freshman in College.  He was winding down that first year.  Learning.  Growing.  Experimenting.  Tonight he shifted to a place of commitment.

His words moved me.  I truly felt inspired as we continued our conversation about his life choice and next steps.

I was meeting him for the first time last Thursday evening following my keynote to several hundred college students at Northern Illinois University. The content was focused on Accelerating the Transition from Campus to Sales Career.

This kid and so many of his classmates  are going to become BIG producers.  They have a huge head start thanks to the cutting edge professional sales curriculum offered at NIU.  They also have so much of the right stuff inside them.

In partnership with event host CDW I had the privilege of sharing a few ideas with these students to help jump start their transition into a successful sales career.  No doubt the class of 2012 is graduating into a climate of economic uncertainty and anxiety about the future. There is intense competition for every job.  There is intense competition for every sale.  These students know this and embrace it.  I actually believe it represents their most significant opportunity to compete and win.

These students/soon to be rookie sales representatives don’t have bad habits. The Sales 2.0 movement is transforming the professional selling landscape mandating a skills and competency upgrade perfectly suited to this next generation of sellers.  When the game changes enter a new generation of GameChangers. They are more prepared than you think, less entitled than rumored and ready to compete for your job and your client roster. They don’t see their limited experience as a barrier or disadvantage.  They might just be right.

Just about every student attending the event stayed around for the networking.  They had questions for me.  Wanted to connect with CDW and genuinely seemed interested in connecting with each other around a night dedicated to their future.  I couldn’t help but wonder how many veteran salespeople routinely sacrifice a Thursday night (or any night) and come out pocket for professional development and some hardcore practice to advance their own skills and competency?

I loved being back on campus because I love being around students.  I love the mindset of the student.  Curious. Inquiring. Listening. Learning. Growing. Improving.  If you want to succeed in sales today the student mindset is one you have to embrace to compete at the highest levels.  The best salespeople are students of the game.

What else are they?

Prepared:  Most new jobs, sales, wins and opportunities are secured not in the moment of truth but in the hours upon hours of preparation prior. GameChangers show up prepared.  They do the research. Prepare questions in advance.  Have a point of view, compelling position of value and compete to win every time out.

Interested: Sales isn’t about you.  Your prospects don’t care all that much about you.  Your product or service probably isn’t all that different from your competition and it likely costs abouthe same. GameChangers make the sale all about the customer. They spend a lot more time being interested than they do trying to be interesting and understand that selling is asking, not telling…selling is listening, not talking.

Consistent: Best practices.  Good habits.  Discipline. Systems.  Process. Hustle. GameChangers don’t do things right once in a while or every other week.  It is an every day, all the time commitment to excellence.

Connected: GameChangers develop meaningful relationships and a robust network of connections. They connect people to each other, ideas and earn influence by participating and providing value. They understand you cannot automate relationships but recognize the opportunity to expand, accelerate and impact relationships online though friends, followers and connections.

Committed:  GameChangers present to earn commitment.  Not to simply share information. Every meeting has an outcome objective and they work with the end in mind.  They are also committed to performance.  They deliver their number and compete to win regardless of the circumstances. No excuses. Just results.

That big decision?  Well, I couldn’t help but complement these students on their outstanding choice.  What great skills to develop.  There simply isn’t a better place to launch your career!

No idea, insight, innovation or invention will ever see the light of day without a salesperson who can bring it to the marketplace.  Master that skill, put up big numbers and you’ll have an abundance of opportunity for the rest of your professional career.  Sales makes business happen.

I saw limitless potential on display last Thursday night.  With the right organization, committed to investing to develop sales talent (CDW is a great example) this next generation of sellers has the opportunity to do big things in the world.

Will be fun to watch!

Many thanks to Team CDW for making this special night happen and including me!

 

{photo credit: Ven Sherrod}

 

Posted in Recruiting, Sales

Tags: Career, CDW, College, NIU, Sales, Sales 2.0, Sales Training

I am trending toward 70 live events/engagements this year, focused predominantly on the drivers of business performance (Leadership/Sales/Innovation) during this incredible time of transformation and change.

Each engagement is a little different.  We go the route of customization and focus on delivering a consistent experience.  That keeps me on my toes.  Where I like to be.

Occasionally we’ll insert an engagement into the lineup that is a departure from the conference or corporate event that challenges us to think different.

Going back on to a college campus next Thursday qualifies.  In partnership with premiere technology solutions provider CDW, Delta Sigma Pi, Pi Sigma Epsilon and the American Marketing Association I will be presenting Sales Shift: Accelerating the Transition from Campus to Sales Career.

This one is personal.  I want this evening to matter.  I recognize that sacrificing a Thursday night a few months before graduation is tough call for any college senior.  That fact that a few hundred have decided to do just that and join us at NIU is inspiring. I wouldn’t have done it.  That’s the honest truth. I would have been doing the Court Street Shuffle and that makes these future sales stars a little different from me.  Good for them.

It is also precisely why in making my own transition from campus to sales career I was 7 months into the shift with a goose egg on the scoreboard.  I couldn’t close.  I couldn’t even open.

I came dangerously close to making the transition back to my parent’s basement.  Selling baseball cards for beer money wasn’t the game plan but it was exactly where I was headed.  I had a little natural talent.  I had absolutely no sales skill.  Talent alone isn’t good enough.

Jim Rohn saved me.  He delivered an epic seminar that I still count as the single most transformational moment of my career. One night. Three hours. Jim opened the door.  He gave me permission and some powerful tools to jump-start my success.

I read Think and Grow Rich and the The Greatest Salesman in the World in the next 3 days.  (my homework from the seminar…I still have the notes).

That was the beginning.  I never looked back.  It’s funny how once you become good at something that begins to fuel your passion.  That is how it was for me.  I wasn’t passionate about sales or leadership until I was good.  That is also the truth.

Today it is even more important to be good.  Scratch that.  Today any VP of Sales is searching for the extraordinary.  Every spot on the roster counts.  Today you need to be better than good.  Average is over.  I know this because I asked.  I asked 5 of the strongest sales executives in my network what they want from new hire graduates.  What they expect.  What they need.  I will shed more light on that Thursday night.

Bottom line, they are looking for an edge. They are all very impatient when it comes to results.  They all are facing enormous pressure to hit a number.  They have no choice but to demand sales excellence and high impact performance out of the gate. That is also the truth.

In looking back today I was lucky.  That night with Jim proved to be transformational.  The decision to change happens in a moment.  That was mine. In preparing to go back to campus I plan to bring some of his timeless insights with me.

My Alma Mater has an Alumni Gateway at the corner of Court and Union Streets where Ohio University and the City of Athens meet.

The Alumni Gateway greets all who enter the campus with an inscription that reads:

So enter that daily thou mayest grow in knowledge, wisdom and love.

The inscription over the alumni gateway for those departing the campus reads:

So depart that daily thou mayest better serve they fellowmen thy country and thy God.

Beautiful words I have always remembered.  Today I am reminded of the significance in their meaning.

I am very grateful for the opportunity to connect and share next week.  I hope my words can serve to inspire.

I know these students will most certainly inspire me to continue to grow in knowledge, wisdom and love.

Posted in Sales, Uncategorized

Tags: Campus, Career, CDW, College, Graduation, Jim Rohn, NIU, Ohio University, Sales, Sales Training

“21 appointments next week” I proudly offered before ingesting a large amount of a very cold tap beer at our Friday afternoon happy hour to close the week.

“Incredible! You are going to have a huge week!” my friend replied.  He understood.  He also made his living making sales.

Another round.  After all it was time to celebrate.  That was a record.  A new personal best. 21 new business meetings in 5 business days.  Each one of those appointments was secured via good, old fashioned cold calling.  You smiled, dialed, pushed and pressed until a 60 minute face to face was locked or you didn’t pay the bills.  Simple.

I planned to head out that Sunday evening and make the two hour drive from Cincinnati to Indianapolis.   I covered the whole state of Indiana and my trunk would be full with the required 21 presentation kits.  Armed with a map of Indiana I was “prepared” to hustle and win.

My friend was right.  I had a huge week.  I called on and closed BMG Music.  Remember BMG Music Club?  12 CD’s for the price of one?   At the time their business was booming and they became a very big client.

That was selling then.  This is now.  Not much of what I did then would pass as sales competency now.

The world changed. BMG Music?  Out of business.  That old school approach to professional selling? Dead end.

The best sellers are making the sales shift, gaining a huge competitive advantage and exploding past plan.

Unfortunately this is the week that a lot of sales professionals part company with their organization for missing plan the previous year.  I had a CEO just say this to me directly, “show me a sales organization where a bunch of sellers who missed plan the previous year are still employed and I’ll show you an executive team that doesn’t know how to establish and adjust targets and plans.” That is tough.  That is sales.

Missing plan isn’t an option for the best sellers.

The best sellers today are experts.  They rigorously prepare for every prospective client encounter and customize solutions to fit for the specific opportunity {TIP:  You cannot do that 21 times in one week}.  The best sellers know how to deliver value first, earn a reputation and wield influence. Yes, they still hustle.  The difference?

I don’t cold call anymore.  I don’t enjoy it and more importantly the effort/outcome equation doesn’t compute.  Time is a precious commodity and there are simply more efficient/effective ways to end up with a calendar full of quality meetings with qualified decision makers eager to do business.

I prefer warm calling and social selling (click the enclosed link for my Social Selling Keynote).

More effective.  More fun.  Makes it a whole lot easier to make plan.  New techniques, tools and technology give the more progressive sales pro an abundance of opportunity and huge advantage in competitive selling situations.

Knowing that the way we connect, communicate and ultimately make decisions has changed means knowing that professional selling requires a new and improved approach.

One constant does remain.

Sales drives the business.  All of the ideas, innovation, strategy, interpersonal relationships and process initiatives don’t matter much if you don’t have the revenue to turn on the lights.

Sales success today requires a shift in approach, strategy, skill and competency.  Are you ready?

Posted in Performance, Sales, Social Media, Uncategorized

Tags: Sales, Sales 2.0, Sales Expert, Sales Training

Increasingly, when a client partner has a meaningful, high impact experience they feel compelled to share.  They want the world to know. Smart sales leaders recognize this opportunity and invite their best customers to share their experience with the world. For example:

Simply stated your own customers are your best brand ambassadors.  If your customers aren’t telling your story, evangelizing the experience and sharing the outcome perhaps you need to consider:

1.  Are you delivering enough value?  Value your customers simply cannot live without?

2.  Are you developing real, meaningful relationships?

3. Are your customers invested in your success?  Are you invested in their success (or just making sales)?

4.  Are you really listening to your best customers?

5.  Are you Social Selling?  Do you have the platforms and requisite participation to create an impetus for your customers to socialize your brand experience?

Writing and sharing takes time.  It is hard work.  It is also the work that makes sales easy. It sure beats the hell out of cold calling.

For example:

As a seller your own opinion of the value, differentiation and impact of your solution is increasingly insufficient. Invite your best customers to share their experience with the world.  Make it easy for them.  Flip the sale.

You might soon find yourself spending a lot less time time doing the thing that sellers dread the most (cold calling) and more time in business development meetings that matter.

Posted in Sales, Social Media, Uncategorized

Tags: Sales, Sales 2.0, Sales Training, Social Selling

Sales drives the business.

All of the ideas, innovation, strategy, interpersonal relationships and process initiatives don’t matter much if you don’t have the revenue to turn on the lights.

Want a cure for the business going sideways?  If layoffs, furloughs and salary freezes sound familiar the solution is simple.

Sell more.

You can sell your way right out of a recession.  There are great examples all around us (the coffee shop I am sitting in now achieved explosive sales growth and expanded during the great recession).

Increasingly, sales growth requires strong leadership.

Ironically, sales success as an individual contributor doesn’t automatically translate into the requisite skill and competency to lead other individual contributors.  I know this from personal experience.  I know this from our consulting work. Yet, sales organizations routinely move their top individual contributors into management roles as a matter of practice and risk missing twice (weakening the territory and the team if the top producer isn’t prepared to lead and is no longer closing).

That doesn’t mean it can’t work.  It simply takes work and is far from a sure thing.

I’ll have the good fortune of spending tomorrow morning talking Sales Acceleration with a room full of gifted Sales Leaders and C level executives preparing to push their business to the next level of breakthrough performance.

3 key themes I will reinforce:

1. Lead From The Front: You’ll get attention and effort around what you inspect.  You’ll earn respect based on your own ability to contribute value to the process, people and performance.  Set the tone.  Drive the pace.  Never demand more than your are willing to give yourself.  If the performance isn’t where it needs to be look in the mirror first.  Own your number.  If the CEO is spreadsheeting all day long encourage him/her pick up the phone or join a call once in a while.  All hands on deck.  Your team is watching.

2.  Protect & Serve: Lead in the service of others.  Sure, we’ve all heard of servant leadership.  What it means is that your existence isn’t about you.  It is about them.  You exist to help, guide, develop, teach, counsel, coach, correct and consistently elevate their potential and performance.  Your success is entirely their success.  Fight with them.  Stand by them.  Hold them accountable.  Firmly accountable. Your team is watching.

3.  Let Go: Hire great people (you need great HR because as a Sales Leader you likely don’t have the art of selection perfected).  Develop their talent.  Earn buy in to your process and program.  Put them in a position to fulfill their potential and blow past plan.  Then…get the hell out of the way. Autonomy is a coveted culture characteristic of top producers.  Let them learn by doing.  Proposals and power point presentations don’t need your approval.  Not if you have the right people in the right job. Let them do the work.  Celebrate their success every step of the way.  Your team is watching.

When others entrust you to guide and shape their sales talent and career path it is an awesome responsibility. Embracing the weight of that challenge is incumbent upon today’s effective leader. It is a phenomenal time for emerging leaders to add more value to the business, impact people and accelerate growth by doing the right things.

Posted in Leadership, Sales

Tags: Leadership, Sales, Training

I was on a conference call with a prospective customer this week.  We discussed an engagement for the sales organization.  They are experiencing the challenges of the ‘Sales Shift‘.  Lengthening cycles, discount competition, margin pressure, anxious buyers and less budget all together.  Tough landscape for the sellers.  The world has changed. It isn’t going back.

What was good enough to get us here isn’t going to be good enough to get us there.

They know this.  That is the reality of their reality. So they are making moves.  Upgrading talent (firing and hiring). Improving process.  Investing in development. Solidifying strategy.  Socializing best practices.

During our discovery call we discussed the outcome objectives of the event.  In addition to sound process and core sales competency they are hungry for a little bit of the sales passion:  competitive spirit, hustle, attitude, persistence, follow up, accountability, relationship strategy and a ferocious commitment to making plan…to exploding past plan.  Some sellers have it. Some don’t.

So, she asked me the big question: “Can you really tech this to our people?”

My answer:  YES.  I can.  I will.  If I don’t?  Don’t pay me.  That simple.

What I cannot do is MAKE THEM DO IT.  I cannot put inside them what was left out.  If the pilot light is out we have a problem. That is why I was excited to learn they are focused on getting the right people on the bus.  They recognize the shift.  Not everyone is up for making the transition to what is next and new.  That is why the people strategy comes first. Get the right kind of sellers in the seats and we’ll put the process in place to accelerate performance and move them past plan.

We spent a little time talking about what kind of person is making the shift.  Wants to make the shift.  Wants to put in the work to make plan.

We agreed.

Focus on the people strategy first.  Once you have the right kind of people in place you can teach them to sell more.

Included is content from our keynote at the ACA Convention, Sales 2.0 & The Social Shift:

Posted in Recruiting, Sales, Social Media

Tags: Sales, Sales 2.0, Sales Shift, Sales Training, Social Selling

You need to practice.

Whatever you want to do better.

Sell. Lead. Write. Speak. Design.

They all require practice.

Athletes and artists get this straight away. They spend 90% of their time preparing to be successful for the 10% of the time they stand in the arena to compete or entertain (which happens to be about as competitive as business gets).

It is a bit harder in business. We play the game 40, 50 and in some instances 60+ hours a week. When is there time?

A 90-10 ratio might not work but the business athlete still finds time to practice. They are learning, testing, trying, improving, studying and perfecting the craft each and everyday.

Show me a sales professional that doesn’t practice. I’ll show you someone that will eventually lose deals to a seller that does. The market is competitive. For sales. For client satisfaction. For promotions. For merit increases. For jobs.

Mastery requires practice. I like to practice at night or early in the morning. Some people I know practice over lunch and on the weekends. Others I know schedule time throughout the day. Find the time that works best for you.

The best players I know make practice a habit. There is of course the occasional exception. Former NBA MVP and perennial All Star Allen Iverson was one of those great players that didn’t care much for practice. So gifted. So talented. So superior an athlete. Sadly, not much of a leader. I think he is playing in Turkey now.

Enclosed is the now infamous AI interview commentary on the subject of practice. It is funny to watch.

Would you want him to lead your team?

How do you feel about practice? A better question…how DO you practice?

Posted in Leadership, Sales

Tags: Allen Iverson, Competition, Leadership, Practice, Sales