What smart companies do to position their reps to win!

The number one failure that can be found in most companies is the diligence applied to doing their homework. Sales rep expectations are high, as they should be, but support is low. I’m not referring to Post-it notes and cell phones. Instead, I am referring to the basic market analysis that can make or break a sales team. Companies pride themselves on demographics they have acquired and they may even have a good feel for the make up of the decision makers in their industry. Things like age and income are of great help to reps that are dumb, but supporting a sales team means much more than that. A rep can get a grip on the basic demos of the CEOs in about eight minutes on their own. Real support comes in the form of profiling every layer of the sales process. For example, most reps start with the person that answers the phone. Even those of us that use top down selling must get through a gatekeeper at some point. Let’s walk through a typical sale.

First, we must understand the person that answers the phone. Some might say that I am overly analytical, but my reps will tell you that the receptionist can be an ally instead of an obstacle. If you want the dirt you talk to them and having them in your corner is a huge advantage. Don’t believe me? Have you ever made dozens of follow up calls only to find out you are being dodged? Not my sales staff. The receptionist will almost always tell us when our calls are avoided and usually why. If there is a competitor, we know. If the budget is short, we know. If the person we have been dealing with is in hot water, we know. Understanding the receptionist is wildly important because they can save you time and money. 99 percent of companies do little or no homework on this group of people! I sat in a waiting area waiting for the VP of Sales for a company about four months ago. My sales rep had made a friend out of the receptionist and as we sat there, it showed. Just before we went into our meeting she whispered something to my rep. We were shown into a conference room where we were to wait another 15 minutes for this guy to show his face. My rep leaned over and told me that Darlene (their receptionist) told him that the entire point of this meeting was for this guy to snag a few free ideas from us and that he had no money in his budget to hire us. Apparently, he had bragged to the entire office that he had the ability to get free information from firms like ours and that is why he had never hired a consulting firm before! The same rep 6 weeks later was told by another receptionist as we waited, that we were going to see more of her because she overheard the management team discussing how they were going to pay for our services. Both pieces of information drastically changed the tone of those meetings. So what did we know that our competitors didn’t? We knew that the majority of receptionists in this market were long time employees or they were older women that were not working for the money. In both cases, a large percentage of them had raised kids and playing the “I’m new and could use your help” card would work.  Without giving away our methods completely, I will just say that it is incredibly helpful to sales reps that you arm them with “actionable intelligence”. Profiling all of these layers that sales people must deal with can put them in a power position over their competitors. It just makes sense. Think about your industry. If you need to contact consumers at work, wouldn’t it be helpful to understand these kinds of dynamics? For those of you in B2B sales, how many people do you deal with to make a sale? Think about office managers, HR departments, gate keepers, department heads, operational staff, sales staffs, middle level management, custodial/maintenance staff,  executives, IT staff, and on and on. The different levels you deal with in a company can have a bigger impact on your success than the ultimate decision maker. After all, you have to get to the track before you can race!

Let’s try something new to this blog. Those of you that are interested in seeing exactly what I am talking about, tell me what you sell. I will have my staff do a little homework using our methods and give you some inside information about your dynamic! Just leave me the product or service and a way to get back to you and you can report back whether or not this stuff works! Believe me when I tell you, the results will amaze you!