ABC: Always be closing

If you have ever seen the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, you will know it's about sales. The movie was filmed and takes place in 1992, in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn NY, the place I was born and raised. The movie depicts four struggling salesmen and how they became desperate when the corporate office sends a representative, played by Alec Baldwin, to motivate them by announcing that in one week, all except the top two salesmen will be fired. In the movie, as with all sales jobs,  it comes down to leads.  Without leads you're nothing, you might as well find another career path.  If you have watched the movie before, you will see that the salesmen constantly complain about their leads. Their leads are stale, recycled and consist of "deadbeats with no money".

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Are you a go-getter or a clock watcher?

My primary background is in Internet marketing, but I have a few years of real world experience working a 9-5 sales job. The sales positions I have worked were strictly cold calling based, the toughest of them all. This was not a position where I already had an existing pipeline of customers who I could nurture and  grow. This was the type of position where if you did not produce,  you did not eat. Sure there was a base salary, that's laughable though as anyone in sales will tell you.  It's meant as security for if you had a bad day. For most people, it would barely pay their monthly living expenses. In most companies, if you don't produce long enough, your career usually ends with a termination, and rightfully so. If you can't earn for a company, why should they continue to pay you?

Bad days happen, as we are all humans and not robots. Bad weeks is a stint, and a bad month, well there should not be a bad month. Unless you're selling peanut butter that is. I accept the fact that yes we are in a recession and consumer spending is at an all time low, but guess what, consumers and businesses are still buying. It's the go-getters who are adapting with the times and changing their tactics. It's the go-getters who are the people who never have a bad month. Are you a go-getter?

It's the clock watchers who accept failure and never learn from it. It's the clock watchers who never get ahead. It's the clock watchers who barely meet their monthly quota. It's the clock watchers who constantly complain about their leads. It's the clock watchers with the old school sales mentality. It's the clock watchers who are comfortable with just barely skating by. It's the clock watchers who bitch and moan. It's the clock watchers that have the fear of the unknown, i.e. technology. Are you a clock watcher?

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Telephone sales is comparable to a movie, you must act a role:

As with the movie back in 1992, all sales was done on the phone and face to face, the luxuries of  lead generation via the Internet was non-existent. The same applied for me when I did cold calling sales. My job was selling product placement on cable TV shows.  I worked for a production company who had a series of low budget TV shows they produced. You would have never heard of  these shows, as they ran primarily on networks noone has ever heard of or barely watched. These shows aired when most people were sleeping. Picture trying to pitch that over the phone, it's not an easy sell.

Like an actor, I assumed a completely different last name, as my last name was not good for sales. It often led to much confusion with the folks on the other end trying to pronounce it. I for the most part assumed a new identity. When I picked up the phone and got a hold of the decision makers, I became an actor and a good one at that. I acted confident, knew what I was talking about, had an answer and counter answer for every question thrown at me. I convinced the person on the other end of the phone, that they needed our services more than we needed their money. I expressed that my time was limited, and that if they passed up on the opportunities I was offering, that I had another 10 companies that would say yes in a heartbeat, their competitors. Now I never did anything dishonest, but I did what was in my realm to get the sale. I was a go-getter.

I quickly learned the fundamentals of telephone sales:

A: Attention

I: Interest

D: Decsion

A: Action

The same fundamentals hold true for the web. The exception is it's your website doing the selling. Voice contact is secondary if need be.

Leads were non-existent. I was told to generate my own.

This particular company supplied you with no leads. It gets worse, there were no computers at the job either. All we had was a cubicle, telephone and notepad. Talk about bare-bones. That should have been the writing on the wall for me at that point. I was forced to be a go-getter if I wanted to make some serious cash, that meant closing 1-2 sales a day, or 4-5 sales a week. The product I was pitching was a 2-3 minute advertising slot, costing anywhere from $5,000 - $7,500 dollars. These type of buys are done through ad agencies, director of marketing, mid level executives and so forth. Just getting through to these people is a task in of itself. The biggest struggle would be getting past the gatekeepers first, that was not hard with a good pitch. After all, I was a television set designer for a major television show, and I wanted to feature their products on TV. That hook worked 95% of the time, albeit it was a bunch of crock, but it was my act.

I generated my own leads, the Internet was a small part of it. This was in 2004, when social media was in its infancy. I relied on search engines a lot for lead research. But my success came from offline lead generation back then.

For instance we had a show about men's products. These products ranged from electric shavers to golf clubs to power tools. My focus, the majority of the time was on the tool niche.  I bought every tool magazine that was published at the time, from woodworking to power tools. I picked products from the magazine, that were interesting, new and unique and pitched them. I searched Google for tool websites, tool manufacturers, and anything remotely related to tools.  I obtained tool trade show directories, I had lists among lists of thousands of companies that produced tools. I called each and every one of them. Guess what, I did very little research into the companies I was calling beforehand. The mindset was for them to sell me on their prodcut. It was a blind call 75% of the time. Sure I had a lot of misses, but with persistence I killed the tool niche. I generated a tremendous amount of sales. I was focused, persistent and wanted to make money. I was not there to watch the clock, I was not happy with the base salary, and I very often did not have a bad week. I was a go-getter.

Years later I was still singing the same tune.

I also worked for a communications company in their hosting division as technical administrator. My role there was primarily supporting a sales force of 50 sales reps in assisting them with generating new business. This was a company who supplied you with leads, their existing customer base, and people who have used one of their products before. This was basically giving the sales teams found money. Sure a lot of the leads were stale and recycled, some you could not close, but none the less, it was a goldmine that was handed to sales reps. All these sales reps had to do was pick up the phone and pitch. You had a few go-getters who exceeded their monthly quota month after month, but sadly the rest of the sales force were clock watchers. When gold was given to them, they would still complain about the leads, there was always an excuse on why they could not make a sale. Cold calling was encouraged, no one did it. The ones that attempted to do it complained. This to me was not a sales force, but rather an order taking force. Inbound calls would come into the company with customers already looking to purchase a product, all these reps did was  run their credit card through and take credit for the sale.  Inbound calls were split between 50 sales reps, so it was not all found money. The call volume was relatively small.

When they complained:

I asked a simple question, what are you doing to generate new leads? Are you do anything at all? After all this was an Internet company. Every sales rep had a computer in front of them. Instead of using the most powerful tool available to them, the Internet for lead generation and research, they surfed Ebay.

I would always say to complainers, there are tons of start-ups out there who need servers, why not go after them? I would throw idea after idea out there to them and all I would hear is  a complaint about it. They wanted the free money, it made me quite sick after a while hearing that.  It was nothing but negativity. 

The go-getters were different:

These were the sales reps who did think out of the box. These were the earners for the company. These were the people always on the phone while the others were surfing Ebay waiting for the phone to ring. Unlike the clock watchers who were hoping for that one big sale, these guys always had something in the pipeline working. They did not sit idle waiting for that one big sale which might be nothing more than a promise that may or may never come.

These guys built a solid pipeline of business. They asked for referrals, they used Google all day long for lead generation. Most of all they nurtured their existing customers, constantly calling them to make sure things were running smooth.  They answered customer emails in a timely fashion, no matter if the customer was angry or not. They went above the call of duty day in and day out and were rewarded handsomely with a constant stream of business. They never had bad months, and in the event that they did, they could always rely on their pipeline to carry them through.

They were honest and most importantly had good work ethics and morals. More importantly they never oversold a product, that's key. The go-getters realize early on to start small. In time their customers need's change, and as the customer grows in size, so does the account. Most importantly they were always closing!

Sales is not about:

It's not about a one time wham bam thank you mam sale. It's not about overselling, read above. It's certainly not about customer avoidance either, meaning you take the credit card once and never speak to them again. The customer should never be passed on from person to person. Not answering a customer's email or phone call is avoidance, no matter how pissed off they may be. If you oversold them, apologize, do whatever it takes to make them happy and if necessary win back their business.  In a downturn economy, it's now more vital than ever to build a pipeline of business, repeat business that is. If you have no desire of being a go-getter, when it comes to sales, then maybe you are in the wrong career.

 By Mike Fruchter of MichaelFruchter.com (Twitter/FriendFeed)