New Sales. Simplified.

Mike Weinberg

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780814431788
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sales
• Index: Business

The lifeblood of your business is a constant flow of new accounts...n o matter how much repeat business you get from loyal customers.

Packed with tested strategies and anecdotes, New Sales. Simplified. offers a proven formula for prospecting, developing, and closing deals.

With refreshing honesty and some much-needed humor, sales expert Mike Weinberg examines the critical mistakes made by most salespeople and executives, then provides tips to help you achieve the opposite results.

In New Sales. Simplified., you will learn how to:

• Identify a strategic list of genuine prospects
• Draft a compelling, customer focused "sales story"
• Perfect the proactive telephone call to get face to face with more prospects
• Use email, voicemail, and social media to your advantage
• Prepare for and structure a winning sales call
• Make time in your calendar for business development activities

New Sales. Simplified. is about overcoming and even preventing buyers' anti salesperson reflex by establishing trust. This book will help you choose the right targets and build a winning plan to pursue them.

Named by Hubpot as a Top 20 Sales Book of All Time, this easy-to-follow guide will remove the mystery surrounding prospecting and have you ramping up for new business.

CHAPTER 1

Sales Simplified and a Dose of Blunt Truth

Sales is simple. Why everyone wants to complicate it today is what confuses me.

People and companies have needs. Those of us with sales responsibility represent businesses with potential solutions to those needs. Sometimes those people or companies with needs are already customers. There’s also an entire universe of prospective customers with whom we’ve never done business. These “prospects” have needs, too. In sales, our incredibly important, incredibly straightforward job is to connect with these customers and prospective customers to determine if our solutions will meet their needs. The more and better we do that simple job, the more successful we will be, and the more we will sell. That’s sales. Last century, last decade, last year, last week, yesterday, today, and tomorrow—that is sales.

Considering that sales is truly that simple, it sure seems as if there is a great deal of confusion and fear among individual salespeople and sales leaders, particularly when it comes to developing new business. Let’s look at a few big issues effecting sales performance today. But first, let me share part of my personal sales journey and the foundation for a simple approach to prospecting and new business development.

The Groundwork for a Simple Sales Model

After a year in sales managing the Wal-Mart business for Slim-Fast, I had the opportunity to work for a fraternity brother at a small, family-held plastics manufacturer. I jumped at the chance to lead the sales effort for this company even though I truly had no idea what I was doing.

My buddy and I bought a map of United States and mounted it to a foam core board. We printed out our rudimentary sales reports and began sticking colored pins on the map to mark the location of known existing and potential customers. Too young and naive to know I was supposed to be afraid of prospecting and calling on companies that did not already buy from us, I used an industry directory to identify additional prospects and assigned a unique color pin to them as well. Based on what I could learn about our customers from studying the sales reports and speaking with the plant manager, I put together a sales plan to go out and attack the market.

It was 1993. I had a midsize company car, a legal pad, some manila folders, and a calling card for pay phones. No Internet, no Google, no LinkedIn, no CRM, no e-mail, no mobile phone, and no fear.

The business was tough. We were tiny compared to our giant competitors. Our prices tended to be higher. Does this sound like a familiar scenario? Almost every consulting client of mine is in that situation.

It was clearly an uphill battle trying to sell components to American manufacturers in a shrinking domestic market. Undeterred, I set out to conquer the world. I drove to most Midwestern markets at least once per quarter and flew to the Southeast and California a couple times per year. I visited with every customer it made sense to see. I sought to discover what they liked and disliked about their current situation and suppliers, and tried to position my company as a better partner that was easier to work with, more flexible, and more eager to meet their needs. I asked lots of questions, toured their facilities, and talked about improvements to our product and ways we were willing to customize our service. It didn’t take long to learn that it was a lot more fun calling on business owners and senior executives than purchasing agents, but that’s a topic for a later chapter.

When planning sales trips to see current customers, I dedicated time to call and visit with prospects (that’s how we get the scary word prospecting). When one of those prospects would agree to see me, I’d conduct the sales call in an almost identical manner as my customer meetings. I wanted to be perceived as someone who could bring value and help solve business issues, not just another salesman pushing a similar product or offering a lower price—especially since my price was generally higher!

After a couple of years of successfully growing sales by picking off business from competitors, we turned our attention to new markets. We identified an industry that appeared commercially viable for our extruded plastic components and set our now “finely tuned” new business development engine in motion. I gathered industry data, subscribed to trade publications, and then attended the major trade show for our target market. I strategically selected about thirty key prospects and went to work. Telephone. Mailings. Samples. More telephone. Meetings with engineers, designers, plant managers. Before I knew it I found myself in Nogales, Mexico, testing product at a major plant. I vividly remember another trip, this time to Temecula, California, where I had worked my way in to meet with the founder and CEO of the industry leader. The Temecula company became a flagship account for us, and recalling the story today still makes me smile.

When it was all said and done, in three years I had about doubled the revenues of this forty-year-old business and fallen in love with the entire process of new business development sales.

Unfortunately, the succession plan at this family-owned company had turned into a soap-opera-quality family feud. My fraternity buddy was at war with his grandfather, and pretty soon my friend and I were both out the door.

The lessons from those three years were invaluable, and little did I understand then how much I had learned about selling or how in demand I would be. With opportunities at other companies to pursue, I landed at a wonderful, healthy, direct marketing company with a positive and energized sales culture. This business had grown like crazy, mostly through increased penetration of its existing customer base. During the interview process, I remember telling the super hard-charging CEO that I didn’t know anything about database marketing. He said the company had plenty of experts to teach me the business, but what they most needed was a sales hunter to go out, open doors, and identify opportunities for new business. And after hearing my approach to hunting for new business and the success I had with the plastics company, he had no doubts about bringing me on board.

The CEO was proved correct in his decision to hire me. I implemented the new business development process I created on the fly in my last position. Except this time, there were no current customers assigned to me. I had to decide which target prospects to pursue and build a book of business from scratch. My sales manager and the company were incredibly supportive. As I began to experience success, they surrounded me with an excellent account management team so that I could focus on finding and closing new business. I learned what business issues and hot-button topics would earn an initial meeting with prospects and dedicated blocks of time to proactively call my strategically selected targets. It’s safe to say I out-called my peers by a factor of at least three to one as I worked to get in front of every major prospect on my list.

Southwest Airlines became my friend, and I viewed its planes as my personal Sales Force One. It turned into an eighteen-year friendship and, to this day, I consider the airline one of the most valuable resources for my business and encourage clients to take advantage of Southwest’s sales-friendly policies and pricing. It is interesting how many sales road warriors view Southwest as an essential component of their attack plan.

In my third year with the direct marketing company, I had become the top-performing salesperson out of a team of fifteen, set company records for monthly and annual sales, and earned four times what I did at the little plastics company. Life was good. I picked up my first German car and we moved to a beautiful home in a more desirable location.

Why All the Craziness and Fear About Prospecting?

If sales really is that simple, why all the craziness? Why are there so many new theories, new books, new methodologies? Why are there so few A-players on sales teams? Why are so many companies and individual salespeople not achieving their sales goals—particularly their new business development goals? Why does the mention of the word prospecting cause even veteran salespeople to freak out or hide?

In the next chapter we’ll tackle the most common reasons that salespeople fail at new business development. But beyond our own individual attitudes and behaviors, there are a few macro issues plaguing the sales profession today.

So Many Salespeople Are Struggling: What Happened?

Having spent the past decade leading and consulting sales teams, I’ve come to the painful conclusion that salespeople are ill-equipped to successfully attack the marketplace for new business. That’s a big statement, but here’s why I believe it is true for the vast majority of the current generation of sales professionals: Most people employed in sales positions today have never truly had to “hunt” for new accounts or new business.

Why? Because big chunks of their sales careers to date have been during long seasons of economic prosperity. Most of the 1990s and the period from 2002 through 2007 were boom times. There was incredible demand for what many of us were selling. Salespeople could get away with being passive or reactive and still deliver the numbers. In many industries, as long as you took care of your current customers you’d thrive. Highly relational salespeople did great when the business was coming to them.

Unfortunately, times and economies change. The stock market’s Internet bubble burst in early 2000. A year and a half later we endured the tragedy of 9/11. Business slowed, sales stalled, and many companies were in a tailspin. I started my first stint as a sales consultant in 2002. It turned out to be great timing because there was widespread pain and confusion throughout sales organizations. Salespeople making fantastic livings just years earlier were completely lost. Many, victims of their past success as reactive account managers, had no clue how to proactively find and open up new relationships.

In 2007, air began to leak from the real estate-driven economic bubble, and the financial meltdown of 2008 practically ground all commerce to a halt. It’s been a challenging few years and we’re still not sure how the story of what is now known as the “Great Recession” will end. But this much is certain: Many people in sales are struggling as inbound demand for their services has declined, and those without a reliable process to develop new business are in a world of hurt.

Confusion Reigns: Sales 2.0 and the Projected Death of Prospecting

Further complicating matters are a myriad of popular new theories about prospecting that cloud the minds of salespeople young and old. There’s a myth being perpetrated today proclaiming that the old methods don’t work anymore. Many in what’s called the Sales 2.0 movement harshly declare that proactive targeting and prospecting for new business is dead. These so-called experts proclaim that cold-calling is ineffective and pursuing prospects that aren’t coming to you is a waste of time.

These false pronouncements are having a severe negative impact on sales performance. It’s difficult enough to get salespeople who buy in to the value of prospecting to actually block time on their calendars to do it. No one defaults to prospecting mode. No one. And most of us are masters at finding other “urgent” responsibilities to fill our days. Now we have these supposed Sales 2.0 gurus reinforcing the nonactivity and failure of today’s underperformers. “Don’t waste your time cold-calling. That doesn’t work.” Or, even better, “Buyers will approach you when they’re ready. It is fruitless to engage with prospects that are not coming to you.”

This line of reasoning is almost analogous to giving a sugar addict trying to get in shape a king-size candy bar. It’s exactly what the passive-reactive salesperson wants to hear. Forget all that stuff about working out and eating lean proteins, good fats, and tons of veggies. You go right ahead and eat the same crap you always have and don’t worry about exercise. The rules of nature have changed! You can get yourself healthy simply by following health experts on Twitter and blogging about your desire to be fit.

Over the top? Am I being a little extreme to make a point? Maybe. Listen, the last thing I want struggling salespeople to hear is that they have permission to be less proactive. As I often say, “Sales is a verb.” The dictionary would argue otherwise, but experience shows that the most successful new business salespeople tend to be the most active salespeople. Good things happen when a talented salesperson with a potential solution gets in front of a prospective customer who looks and smells a lot like your other customers.

Has the world changed? Yes. Has the Internet dramatically shifted the balance of power in terms of “information flow” during the sales process? Absolutely. Can social media be incredibly effective for building community, creating a following, and driving inbound inquires? It sure can.

I’m as big a fan as anyone of new media. I connect with mentors, peers, prospects, and like-minded competitors online almost every day. I love Twitter. I have a mentor who has been like a big brother to me. We “met” on Twitter, I read his blog religiously, and we speak by phone monthly. A handful of my clients found me through social media. Funny enough, the very fact that this book is being published by AMACOM is because its wonderful acquisitions editor discovered my blog and pursued a relationship with me. So, yes, the world has changed and there are many great new vehicles to connect with potential customers and build relationships. Having said that, we must be vigilant to protect ourselves from the deceptive voices preaching deadly advice that many people in sales want to hear. Technology and new media are a great supplement to, not a replacement for, our prospecting efforts. Let’s embrace the new without discarding the old. We aren’t going to achieve our fitness goals by solely relying on social media, and neither will we hit our new business goals.

Where Did All the Sales Mentors Go?

Let me address one more significant factor detracting from new business development success today: a severe shortage of sales mentors.

Don’t confuse what I am saying. There are plenty of sales managers to go around. What we are missing are sales mentors, those wise old vets who take young pups and newbies under their tutelage and impart years of wisdom and experience to their protégé.

The job of first-line sales manager has evolved or, maybe better said, devolved, over the past decade. Your sales manager used to be the one who took great pride in making sure you knew how to sell. Radical, I know.

I’ve enjoyed many memorable sessions sitting down with sales peers and sharing stories about our first sales managers and their profound impact on our development into sales professionals. From how to get the best shoe shine (whether by your own hand or from the once-famous St. Louis airport shoe-shine crew in the TWA concourse), to how to efficiently pack samples in the trunk of your company car, to how to overcome tough objections, the sales manager was the fount of all knowledge.

Not so long ago, before sales managers became desk jockeys with heads buried in customer relationship management (CRM) sales activity data, many of them would willingly invest the majority of their time in the field, actually working alongside and mentoring salespeople. That is worth repeating: Sales managers would willingly work with and mentor their people, and consider it part of their responsibility to coach their teams on selling skills.

Nothing was more valuable than “windshield time” with my manager riding shotgun in my car. He would alternate between preaching sales theory to quizzing me about product knowledge or what was happening at each of my key customers. When we would pull up to an account, he always insisted I drive around the building. He would say, “You can learn a lot more about a business by watching what’s going in and out of the back door than the front door.” So, of course, twenty-two years later, I’m still sneaking around the back before sales calls and mentoring salespeople to do the same.

But it was when you finally parked the car that the true sales manager turned into Yoda preparing young Luke Skywalker for the sales battle: “Tell me about your last conversation with the account,” my manager would say. Then he would run through the drill: “Who are we meeting with? Describe each person’s behavioral style. What is important to each person attending this sales call? Why do they think we are here today? What is going on in their business that I need to know about? What is your main objective today? What is a ‘win’ for us walking out of here? Tell me your plan for the call. How are you going to handle introducing our new offering? What role would you like me to play? Where are we vulnerable? What is our Achilles’ heel? Which competitors are involved here? Who is more entrenched? How do you like my tie? I wore it just to help you close this sa...