5 skills for a “Sales guy To be or Not to be”

Over the past few years, I have met a lot of friends, acquaintances, peers who have asked me “What is it that you actually do?”, “What does it mean to chase a quota?”, “What is all this thing about managing relationships?”. Some of these discussions ended with an enigmatic awe, some were quite informative for me, and well some ended making me feel if I made a really dumb mistake by taking this up….

In this blog, I want to give a quick run down of quintessential check list that will give you a snap shot of what this job demands. This is by no means comprehensive or a classical list that a career counselor will give you. However, this will definitely give you a taste of the real thing, and in some ways might also turn you off.

However, before taking a crack at a sales job it might be a good idea to run through this list, talk to a couple of guys already doing the deed (buy them a drink, you will get better information) and then listen to your heart.

Quality #1: Do you believe in the fact that work and life need to be kept in two water tight containers?
Well if you answered “ Yes” to this one, then kudos to you! You should definitely try and become a Project Manager, or even better an accountant. I think the best would be become a primary school teacher. Don’t even think of sales.

I don’t want to be critical here, but let me share an incident with you. I was in the Marriot Marquios of New York city. Jack Welsh was doing a book reading of “Winning”.

He was asked a question “Jack, don’t you think we are getting too short term focused by focusing on qtr to qtr growth”

The answer was classical Jack “ Any stupid can work on managing the long term or the short term. The key is to eat and drink at the same time”.

Same thing applies to sales. You will be managing a territory with about 50-60 accounts and chasing a target of millions of dollars that will be tracked on a weekly basis. You will win some, lose some all the time while competitors are at your heels.

Are you telling me that you will have a great year, spend long vacations and drive a BMW by compartmentalizing your mind?

I don’t mean to say mix things up. I am pretty good at work life balance my self. I meditate everyday, spend quality time with my wife, give time for hobbies and still mix things up….

So be clear, it’s a 24X7 mindset in this job of sales.

• Quality #2: You plan to go for a movie, then your friend says lets golf first, and you wife comes along to say that you need to do groceries as well, and at the end of the day, you end up cleaning and watching a DVD as some unexpected friends came by. Did this turn you off?

Long question short: Does ambiguity threaten you?

In case it does, then one thing is clear “Steer way clear of sales”. Ambiguity is the sales guys shadow. That’s the whole reason why a sales job is like hunting. A “pre-meditated” sport. In a deal the number of unknowns directly affect the outcome.

Let me give you some intangible real-life unknowns that have affected my deals:

• “The client doesn’t want to try us because we haven’t been tried before” – well then how will we ever start!!
• “I like their office and would like to spend time there”
• “Their technical engineer smelt as if he came from a football game and didn’t shower for two days” (The client told me this over a drink)
• “Funding was diverted to another strategic project”
• “Our delivery team sent a document that had references of work we do for a competitor!!”
• “I thought the client was a tactical buyer, but he just came back from a strategy workshop”

If you like your day to be something where you plan on a checklist, execute serially and end of the day assess progress, become an analyst or even better a landscape manager. Don’t bother with a sales job where for better or worse, ambiguity reigns supreme.

• Quality #3: Are you brutal with yourself?

There is nothing like “trying hard and putting in a lot of effort” but missing the quota. Sales is a digital approach. Either you meet the quota or we will get some one else who will…Its that simple.

Leading companies in the US let go of sales guys who miss the quota for 3 qtrs in a row. The highs are high and the lows are low.

After all your performance is what will ensure that the thousands of developers and technologists in your company get a project to work on.

• Quality #4: No means yes. Always

After losing 3 deals in a row to a client will you bid the fourth with more zeal and value than ever before? Lets take something closer to life.

You had a really bad argument with your neighbor, but right now you need the toolset he has to fix some of your stuff in the garage.

Will you give him a call?

Broader question “ Can you put your ego aside and use it for better stuff?”

Remember a client who says “NO” is saying so because he said “YES” to someone else.

• Quality #4: You are at a crowded bookstore on human anatomy and psychiatry. Can you small talk with the people around you and engage them for just enough to leave a memory behind? Even better, can you pick up a phone and make a credit card sales call to someone you don’t know?

If people intimidate you and you need time, a lot of time to break free, please become a researcher or an analyst or something else. In Sales you need to be able to reach out to other human beings as a genial person with an affable demeanor. If that gives you the wriggles, may be you should wriggle out!

• Quality #5: You are leading a team on a hike. It’s a team of 8 people. The team needs to cook on the way, make camp in time, plan for next days resources and also have fun.

Can you get all this done with least air time?

If it takes you more than 1 sentence to describe the goal to your team, you should be in marketing or corporate communications. A sales guy’s time is real money. You might have great English, excellent speaking skills, but if your audience doesn’t get the clarity it needs to execute then you will run the risk of losing the sale.

“Communication is the art of speaking just enough and knowing when to keep your mouth shut!”

I hope you liked this list. I hope it gives you the fire to don the sales hat. In case you think this doesn’t make any sense, well you wouldn’t be the first….

3 Top Websites for Sales Research and Networking

Information access is the key to unlocking the dynamics of the sale. The more you are informed about the clients pain points, organization hierarchy, business drivers and decision makers more effective will be the sales cycle. In an existing client relationship its easier to lay your hands on this critical data. You can leverage your team at the client location to help you with some information like org charts, time slots etc. In addition to this, an existing relationship also gives you the license to walk the corridors. This way, its relatively easier to understand the organizational politics, budgets and most importantly get opportunities to get in front of the client.

However, imagine a contrary scenario where you are the sales guy(generic term used and no sexism intended) for a leading technology consulting firm and you specifically focusing on say Telecom and Networking. Your wish list will invariably have the names of companies like Cisco, Nortel, Alcatel, Verisign, AT&T and the list goes on. For the sake of simplicity, lets take the case that your aim is to get a break into Cisco. Essentially the goal here is to get in front of your buyer and present the capabilities of your firm. What would be an ideal modus operandi to make the inroad? How can you crack the sales quota by landing yourself in front of a decision maker in least amount of time? Cold calling will help, but I have some ideas that can make your call warmer.

Over the past four years, I have worked on a research technique that has helped me get into the offices of Fortune 500 Companies and also CEO offices of start-ups. The tools that I have leveraged in this process are a mix of networking at exhibitions (which i will cover in a separate blog), research websites and sales tools. There is a prescribed flow that I use before I make the first call. Its a good mix of research, pre-meditated approaches and a slice of luck (something on which i dont have much control). However, in this blog, i want to speak more on the resources. I am sure most of you know these already, but as I always say, the idea is not to do different things, but to do things differently.

The three resources, I found to be the most effective are:

• www.linkedin.com : Linked in is a professional networking website. Through this website, you can upload your profile and also send invitations to people whom you know and also connect with already existing members. I have been a member of linked in for the past 4 years. Recently, I have seen a huge spurt in activity in the amount of people joining in and also leveraging the tool. This is indicative of the rise of social networking websites and also an clear indication of harnessing collective intelligence. For starters, I ran a search in linked in with the company name Cisco and title Director. My network showed that there were 500 people whom I was connected with who were in someway or the other associated with Cisco in a Director position. Can you have a better way to have a more distilled and focussed list? I will let you onto one more secret. People today use linked in for HR and Networking. However, I tell you that it is the most attractive database for a sales guy to tap into! try it and let me know your thoughts.
  
• Couple of other websites that do a similar job are zoominfo.com and ryze.com

• www.hoovers.com: This is the mother of all websites for Corporate information. For starters its a paid subscription for the really cool features like org. charts and people searches. However, hoovers is a database that you simply cant ignore if you are really serious about getting some new clients. It has the most detailed industry structure along with the most detailed org. hierarchy. The updates are latest, they have great Bio's on senior management and what's more you can actually do a search that can be as focussed as "show me the list of CIO's of companies which are listed with revenues more than 200MUSD, in the Biotech market in the Northeast". Not only will you get this list, you can save the query, edit it for say manufacturing, and run the whole damn search again....If your company doesnt have Hoovers, get them to buy it, or move to a place that has it....

• Google Alerts: This less known utility of Google can be a real ace up your sleeve when you are prospecting a specific company or a specific vertical. For example, If you are prospecting Cisco, AT&T, Alcatel and Nortel. What do you think is the most effective way of staying up to date on all the latest that is happening in these companies? When I say on top, I mean really on top of things. For example, how do you know where the R&D leader is speaking at this month? How was the latest investor presentation session at Bear Sterns? How did the latest charity event for Breast Cancer support go? One way could be that you can read the websites regularly. But lets be honest. You have a quota to meet, relationships to manage, pipeline to focus on, and on top of all this you have a life! Setting an expectation that you will read the websites is at best a fallacy. So the silver bullet is use Google Alerts.
  
• Search Cisco in Google.
  
• Go to News link and select the news alerts
• Set up the frequency at which you want the alerts. I usually use once a week.
  

Now you are all set. Every week, you will get an e-mail alert from Google that will give you a list of URL's that will show all the places the word Cisco was plotted on the world wide web!Check it out and then tell me if you have some thing that can beat this...

Happy Hunting!!!

PS: I owe the new look to my blog to a really smart Usability Engineer Rajnish Dureja. To know more about him check out: http://rajnishdureja.designmaze.com/