The phrase “I was ghosted” is a new addition to the sales lexicon but the problem is ancient. You meet someone at a networking event, have a positive conversation and then you follow up with them. Your email goes nowhere and all you get is crickets. So you send it again as a forward, so that the previous one is there in the thread as a subtle shaming reminder “hey, I wrote to you, but you haven’t answered me yet”. More crickets. What do we do in these cases?
Being old school, I like the phone. I prefer to speak with people, but in the modern world, getting anyone on the phone, has become harder and harder. Also, I observe like some sort of amateur anthropologist, that the younger generation have become more text based. The reason for this is the low confrontation element through using text. It gives the other party the escape route of just not replying and ghosting you. No sales come from this approach though.
Also, I get a truckload of emails and messages on various social media everyday and so does everyone else. Sometimes my computer screen top right hand corner will whiz in a notification that so and so has contacted me and in two seconds it has gone and I have missed it, because I was concentrating on some work I was doing. Then begins the search for which social media platform that message came from, wasting an enormous amount of my time. I hate that.
Anyway, are they not replying because what they told me at the event was total crap and they are ghosting me? Or are they like me, drowning in a tsunami of information inputs from the different sources hammering us all day long? I always work on the assumption of the latter and I keep trying to make contact. The risk here is you become annoying and start to create flesh wounds to the brand. We get spam emails and notifications all the time, so we don’t like it and the temptation of the potential buyer is to see our correspondence as spam and start becoming upset about it.
In the second email, we need to be sensitive to their schedule and make an apology for adding to their inbox. We also need to restate the benefit we can bring to them and make that the justification for following up. We are duty bound to do our best to help them advance their business and that is why we are following up.
For the third email, I like another slightly different version of the same message maintaining that all of this effort we are making is to help them.
For the fourth email, I like the nine word formula used by Dean Jackson. Sending something very brief is unobtrusive, but makes the point. It might be something like, “Are you still interested in doing something with ….?”, and you can fill in the blank referencing your company, product or solution. I sent this to a suspected ghoster recently and was delighted to get an apologetic response, talking about how busy they were etc., etc.
We all get a lot of emails, so my email technique has two consistent themes. I always start my reply emails with the word, “Thanks….”. I do this because I am very outcome driven and I can be so focused on the point of the email, I forget the human element. I need to remind myself to start my message from that point of view. Left to my own devices I would be straight into the business point of the correspondence. If there has been a little time since the last correspondence, by using a trigger word like “thanks” I am able to remind myself to say something like, “Thanks, I hope all is going well”, before I get into the business at hand.
My second technique is to make their personal name the header. If they are a Japanese person, I will put it in polite form – Tanaka san or maybe Taro san, depending on how well I know them. However, if I write “Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo” in the header, that will give potential readers a headache. It signals there is a heavy duty message coming their way, which is going to suck up their time and they are already feeling put upon by the amount of work on their plate right now. We are all more likely to open an email addressed to us personally, so their name alone is the best guarantee of the email being looked at.
It has never happened so far, but if someone challenged me on this practice, I would just say, “My commitment is to help your business succeed and I want to make sure you will at least have the option to consider if what we have makes sense and putting your name in the header helps to elevate my email above the other hundreds of emails you are dealing with every day”.
I use this same basic reply whenever anyone ever challenges me about the amount of follow-up I do. I will also add, “I am sure you teach your sales team the importance of serving customers and that means doing the follow-up consistently and properly, so that is why you are hearing from me – we are here to help your business beat your rivals and do better”.
The reality is they know their own sales team are not doing enough follow-up and secretly they wish their people were more persistent and dedicated like us. The key take-away is we need to be ready beforehand for the pushback. There is no point trying to come up with an snappy answer on the spot – it is better to have prepared for this eventuality. We don’t want brand damage and to have people running around town saying “those people over there at XYZ are terrible, they keep pestering the hell out of me”.
Always allow the buyer to say “no” for themselves, without second guessing them by not following up. If however, you don’t get a reply and are ghosted after four follow-ups, then the answer is actually “no” and you and I need to move on and find a new buyer.
What would the buyer’s agenda be, during the sales call? “Don’t take too long, because I am busy”, “Don’t waste my time with stuff I don’t need”, “Don’t erode my cash flow”, “Don’t rip me off”, would probably be the most prevalent. Our clients often tell us one of the biggest problems they have with their sales teams, is the buyer runs the sales meeting. Their own salespeople just sit there, nice and sweetly and do whatever the buyer wants. “We are paying them, but we feel they are working for the buyer not for us”, is another common complaint. This is all very fortunate or we would have nothing to do!
“Always be closing” is an old saw in sales and is partially correct. As salespeople, we have no idea if what we do or what we have is going to be relevant for the buyer. From the buyer’s point of view, they are not sure if we or our company are the right people to do business with. We need to build trust from the very start, before we even think about closing the buyer. How do we do that?
Trust is hard to build in sales. The image of salespeople is high pressure, lots of smooth talking and duplicitous attempts to get a sale. This would be a great set of descriptions for failing salespeople, who will shortly be ejected from the profession. We do not want to get smeared with that brush, so we need to make it clear to the buyer we are real professionals.
We present ourselves in a manner which says, “this is a solid person, who looks professional”. Buyers initially only have our outward appearance to go by, when they meet us. We must make that winner. For men, that means no food stains on the tie, no crumpled suit or one which doesn’t fit properly, no scuffed, worn down shoes, clean ironed shirt, etc. In my experience, women have better common sense about how to dress for business and don’t have these types of problems.
What comes out of our mouth has to be clear, articulate and confident. That means no umming and ahhing. If we don’t sound like we know what we are doing, the buyer is certainly not going to feel they can trust us. We start by explaining four things: 1. Who we are, 2. What we do, 3. Who else we have created success for and 4. our suggestion that maybe, we can do the same thing for this client. This should be concise and clear, in order for the buyer to decide to invest more time listening to us, rather than getting back to more pressing matters.
Next, we map out the meeting. We do this so that we are in control of the agenda and don’t allow the buyer to take us off course or highjack the sales call. This might be a prepared piece of paper for the buyer to look at or we might just go through the items verbally. We start with the benefit to the buyer to have this meeting with us. Next we ask how familiar they are with our company and what perceptions they may have. Why would we ask about perceptions? Aren’t we setting ourselves up for trouble with that type of question, you might be thinking.
Now in the rough and tumble of business, competitors may be spreading false information about our financial situation or this client may have had trouble with one of the salespeople who preceded us, who has long since left the company, but not the memory of the buyer. We need to draw this resistance out early and deal with it, because if we don’t, it will sit there as a blocker to building trust with the buyer. If the perception is so bad, then we won’t be able to make a sale anyway, so we are better off to meet it head on and early.
If the buyer says, “I remember one of your company’s sales reps and he was useless and unreliable, so why should I deal with your company?”. We can reply, “Mr. Customer, if you had a member of your sales team, who was not reliable and you received complaints about him from customers, what would you do?”. The buyer will probably say, “I would fire him”, or “I would move him out of a sales role”. At this point we say, “That is exactly what we did, which is why I am here today, to serve you and make sure my company provides you with real value”.
After getting through the perceptions bear pit, we move on to suggest we look at their current situation and where they would like to be in three to five years. We also add we will look at any challenges which may be impacting the company’s ability to get to those five year goals fast enough and the implications therein. There is a small detail here which is important. We don’t just talk about getting to their goals. Given 100 years, they could probably do it on their own without any assistance from us and there would be no sale. Instead, we inject the element of speed to reaching their goals which gives us some leverage to talk about how we can speed up the solution achievement from our side.
We then talk about addressing how we might be able to assist the company, based on our solution lineup. Importantly we then ask, “how does that agenda sound and do you have any items you would like to add?” If they have no other points then, we ask sweetly, “May I ask a few questions” and we are off to the races with the sales call. Doing it this way increases our ability to direct the sale’s call. We can get enough information to know whether we can in fact help them and if we can, then how we can help them. This is the professional’s way of doing sales. Is this what your sales team are doing or are they being pushed around by the buyer?
We have all heard that business advice to “work on your business, not in your business”. When we are the owner of the business we can sometimes forget this, because we love doing the sales ourselves and spending time establishing relationships with our clients. I know this a problem for me, because the successful sales process is like a drug and you want more of those dopamine hits when you land the deal.
Salespeople like people and they like the personal elements of dealing with buyers. To grow the business though requires scale and that usually means hiring, training and developing more salespeople. If you are out there landing deals, then you cannot scale and will be stuck right where you are now. Most small businesses are trying to bootstrap their growth, so you need deals to fund the growth. This leads to a chicken and the egg situation, where you need to be in sales mode to land deals to generate the cash to expand. If you stop selling, then the cash flow gets impacted and there isn’t the cash to hire more people.
Another issue will arise if you ever decide to sell the business. If you are the key or one of the key producers, the new buyer will want to reduce the price to take into account that you won’t be there to generate the deals or they will want to lock you in as a part of an earn out over a number of years. Being the boss is one thing, but selling the business and then having to now work for someone else is entirely another thing. If you weren’t unemployable before you started the business, then after years of being your own boss, you are likely totally unemployable now.
Going from a big component of the sales flow in the business to zero is a bad idea. Revenues will tank and then you have all manner of cash flow dilemmas. We have to wean ourselves off the star salesperson role. Like the successful athlete who has to move out of the limelight to being in the background as the coach, we have to make that adjustment. A lot of our ego can be tied up in the sales role and this can be hard to diminish. We can also enjoy the thrill of the chase and landing big deals and now we have to live that process osmotically through our salespeople.
We have to start handing off clients to our salespeople. This is painful, because they are “our clients” and maybe they like having the boss taking care of them, because that is tied up with their ego too. Another pain point is we now have to start paying our salespeople commissions for taking care of them and that is a cost we didn’t have before.
All of this thinking is small beer. We have to get our mind on the big picture. We need to be looking for ways we can add more salespeople and we need to be thinking “how can I build this business, so that it can run without me”. If you can get it to that stage, then you have something to sell, otherwise you will never get to sell the business. If you are planning to hand it all over to your kids, then keep going, but if they are not interested in being part of your dynastic ambitions, you can’t live forever and you will have to sell it one day. In this case, you need to get yourself out of the revenue engine and make sure others are doing that job for you.
When we are super efficient, we find we are doing things ourselves, because we are really good at them, but actually are we really being effective? Getting freed up from our selling activity to spend that time coaching, mentoring and driving our salespeople will provide leverage. I am a hard worker and I work 12 hours a day, so bully for me. However, if I have ten salespeople working for me, they are putting in 80 hours per day, so nearly seven times more than me. That is leverage, so the key point is to decide what I should be doing with my 12 hours a day, to make their 80 hours more effective?
We might think, “well they are on base and commission, so that is all the motivation they need to succeed”. I wish that were true. Invariably we all get into certain work habits and sometimes these habits are not helping us to be as productive as we should be. There may also be a sales manager between the sales team and yourself, so you might think, “I can concentrate on my sales because my sales manager is taking care of the sales team”. I wish that were true. Invariably, they could be doing a better job and they need closer supervision too.
Everyone loves it when you are busy selling, because you leave them alone and there is no close scrutiny going on. That is not as effective as when we concentrate on what the sales team and the sales manager are doing. Gradually, move your clients across to the sales team and become more knowledgeable about what your salespeople are doing all day long. The results will be insightful, if not downright scary.
The famous Green Bay Packers Coach Vince Lombardi often referred to the importance of the basics in the American Football game, the blocking and tackling. Being an Aussie and a Rugby fan, I sort of know what he is talking about. The brilliant plays, full length of the field returns, Hail Mary throws, the tactics and strategies are all important, but if the basics are not being done properly, it all comes crashing down and you will never win. Sales is the same.
Blocking and tackling is boring, grinding, not flashy and not exciting. There are many aspects of sales which are dead boring, painful, annoying and irritating, but they have to be done. For some salespeople though, landing the whale client is a much more scintillating idea. I have had a number of salespeople, who were very talented, smart individuals, who found all that blocking and tackling was for lesser mortals. They decided to start at the top and work up from there. Their intelligence proved to be a stumbling block to success in sales. That big deal would be the game changer. This client is going to be a huge contributor to profits, once the deal is landed. Except I am still waiting years later for that deal to be landed. That revenue they trumpeted never turned up and they are gone, gone, gone.
Recently a friend of mine asked me to coach someone whose business was struggling. In the course of the conversation, it became clear that the blocking and tackling of sales wasn’t exciting for him. Here is a revelation – it isn’t exciting for anyone! Nevertheless, the business needed income and he was the one designated to go out and get the deals. Our mindset can work against us, as well as for us. If we want to pursue bright shiny objects, because that is exciting and we want to avoid the slog of sales because that is boring, we will be out of a job or out of our business. We have to change our mindset and there is nothing like survival to focus your attention where it needs to be.
The pandemic has not negatively affected all industries, but it has hammered most, mine included. This is the most difficult time in business I have ever experienced, due to a catalyst we haven’t seen in play since the Spanish Flu in 1918. There is no corporate memory on how to deal with this existential threat to corporate survival.
Clients are now working from home. You call their office and all you get is subordinate obscurantism regarding their email address or their phone number or any other details about how to get in contact with them. The blocking and tackling of cold calling has become so irritating in Japan.
Maybe it is the same everywhere, but here there is a definite mindset that anyone calling the company is an enemy and they must be thwarted at every turn. The boss’s minions who answer the phone probably imagine they are doing a good job keeping their boss away from callers, but are they really helping? The wheels of commerce need to turn and nothing happens in business until a sale is made. We need new and better services than we did pre-pandemic, but it is proving very hard to get that message out.
Consequently, cold calling is in remission for most salespeople. Blocking and tackling still has to move forward and we need to think of different ways of grabbing buyer attention. In normal times, turning up to the office and trying to see the buyer would be thought to be inefficient. Tobikomi eigyo (飛び込み営業) needs to make a comeback. It is much harder to eject people from the office reception than on the phone or over email. Companies are getting back to the office at least a couple of days a week, so there is a chance the buyer will be there and guess what? They are not meeting other sellers because the guard dogs are keeping salespeople at bay and no one else is just dropping in. Naturally, many of the newer buildings have elaborate entry procedures requiring QR codes etc., but not every buyer is thus shielded from us dropping by.
Is it efficient? Compared to just getting blocked all of the time, it is slightly better than nothing. At least it gives us a chance to meet the buyer and set up a formal appointment for a later stage. Is it enjoyable, just suddenly barging into the reception area and trying to meet the buyer? Not really, but you need a thick hide, if you want to be in sales, so you have harden up. By the way, if anyone ever complains to you about your tactics to see the buyer, just say, “Yes, I can completely understand your viewpoint and I am also sure that this is the type of mindset and approach you would want to see from your own sales team, when facing these tough times due to the pandemic”. Believe me they will quickly get the point and even if you are still blocked, there has been no brand damage.
Sending something interesting by mail is another good idea. The guard dog will block your call but will diligently deliver the mail package to the boss’s desk. Put together some contents which will get the buyer interested. Make the package slightly lumpy, so that it doesn’t look like a bunch of boring documents. What ever you need to put in there, it better answer the buyer’s most pressing need and be able to inform the buyer of that fact in two seconds. The window of attention is only showing a sliver these days, as everyone is so busy. We have to make the most of the chance we have manufactured.
Blocking, tackling and grinding drives us all crazy, but we cannot defy the truth of the importance of mastering the basics in sales. You can talk up a storm, project the arrival of the whale any moment now and make all manner of excuses, but either the deal gets done and the money gets banked or it doesn’t. Back to basics everyone, if you want to survive what the world is throwing at us all right now.
If you have ever watched one of those nature documentaries about the piranha fish, they can strip an animal of its flesh in seconds. The way they do that though is totally different to a shark. Growing up in Australia, we are all experts on sharks and we know that they can distend their lower jaw to make the size of the bite larger. They will take huge chunks of flesh off your body at a time. The piranha however only takes small bites but there are a tremendous lot of them and this is where the trouble comes from. These small bites remind me of some clients and how they attempt to strip you of your deal content, one little bite sized piece at a time.
We are dealing with a large company and a new division. This is a group we haven’t worked with before, so the people are new to us. We struck a deal for a reasonable piece of business and imagined we would set some dates and get busy with the delivery. Gradually, they came back with a little larger piece of business and wanted discounts for volume, which we agreed to. And then they came back with another tranche and wanted more discounts. And then another tranche and a request for more discounts. “Hmm, I am being played here”, was the thought going through my mind. I was in a bind now because being unable to see the total deal size from the beginning, I had nicely backed myself into the corner labelled “Big Discounts” and had no wiggle room.
Did they plan that approach from the outset or did they get into a feeding frenzy on the discounts and think “let’s see how far we can push this along?”. I am not sure which is which, but I do know we are working for a substantial reduction in revenues as a result. In retrospect, I should have entertained the possibility that they would want further discounts and should have arranged my numbers, so that there was a hard stop which came into play much earlier. In fact, they actually came back with a slightly different requirement and I was determined that if we had more of this scope creep, I would pull the shutters down earlier on the discount front this time.
They were also taking bites on another front. There are always issues around personnel resource availability and certifications in the training business. Dale Carnegie is very strict regarding trainer development and it basically takes 18 months to get the first level of trainer certification. After that, for every other core course you want to get certified in, you have to add a week of specialist training and pass the accreditation, which isn’t a forgone conclusion by any stakes. The next level of piranha activity surfaced around trainer selection.
We recognize that trainer quality is everything for a training company, which is why we spend so much time and treasure getting people certified and put them through hell to get accredited. If you don’t believe me, come on over and give it a try! There is always the question of the alignment between how many people are qualified to teach a certain piece of content and how many are actually able to meet the timetable requirements of the client.
This is a tricky balance at the best of times and made even more difficult because of Covid. We have external and internal trainers and in normal times, we have good availability, but thanks to Covid destroying the training industry, a number of those external trainers are no longer available. If they cannot get regular work doing training then they gravitate more towards things like consulting and they have limited windows to do training. The upshot is when we are getting more piranha bites about wanting to see more and more trainer profiles and more and more demands about selections, we have to push back.
Are we prepared to walk away from the whole deal, especially during a devastating pandemic, if the client proves to be a pain? Many service industry companies have a “no idiots” policy regarding who they will work for. Actually they use a much stronger word than idiots, but I think you get the picture. Scope creep, discount pressure, difficult to deal with individuals are a toxic cocktail. Where do you draw the line for your business? How much is too much, when trying to satisfy clients?