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Mistakes Of The Self-Centered Sales Person
Thursday, April 30th 2009, 9:37 PM

A sales person like me may be the easiest person for a good sales person to sell to. If I allow you to sell to me, I truly want to purchase what you are selling. Believe me, I've seen and heard a lot of sales presentations in my life, and unfortunately nearly all of them amuse, bore, repel, or anger me.

I actually pity the people who use out-dated, scripted and ineffective techniques. Then I realize that what they say is a result of the poor information they have been trained with. Sometimes I even give them advice on how to best sell me if they are open to listening to me. Unbelievably most are NOT open to this advice and so they fail. They leave the experience not knowing how they were “paper-thin” close to actually getting the sale.

It's amusing being a sales person and observing to a sales pitch from someone else. You feel almost like a hidden camera sting operation. I watch more about how the product is being sold, than to what they are selling.

I've thought about some of the most egregious mistakes I have heard and seen when others try to sell me. See if you can spot a trend. Without further ado, here they are:

1. Pretending To Know Us – The lousy sales person acts like they care about us but never bother to ask questions to better understand what our lives are really all about. This reduces the sales person to taking a guess at what we want and how we buy. In fact most sales people talk about their own experiences when a buyer brings up a concern instead of allowing them to continue to talk. Buyers have no choice but to tell the idiot sales person their price is too high just to get rid of them. Hey it's not the buyer's job to teach you how to sell. Remember that your customer is the “star” of this call, not you.

2. Making Obviously Self-Serving Moves – Salesy questions like, “If I could show you a way to save money on your purchase today, would you be interested?” Or other stupid rehearsed proclamations like "You're really going to like this new program" or "If you purchase today I am authorized to offer you these special bonuses and benefits" never have worked very well. Buyers today have their radar up for these obvious and antiquated techniques. These are the types of “used-car salesman” moves that give sales people a bad name.

3. All Talk No Involvement – Some think that through the sheer force of their words, the buyer is expected to spend their hard earned cash. It is as if they are in love with the sound of their own voice as they drone on and on without pause. Occasionally they stop to scrape the “white stuff” that gathers on the sides of their mouth from talking so much. What they don't know is that what they are scraping is actually solidified spit! Yuck! Here's a hot tip. Give the buyer a chance to tell you what they really want, and then shut up and give it to them.

4. Making a Company Centered Presentation - Rather than basing what they sell on the specific needs and interests of the buyer, the sales person talks about how the product is made or some obscure little know factoid about the history of the product. Remember that everything you present should be “on code” with your buyer. Who gives a rat's a** if the screws used to assemble your product have a ceramic coating? Present your solutions with what this exact buyer needs and wants. What's in it for them?

5. Using Literature As Visual Reinforcement – All literature does is put people to sleep. There is the funny sales person reading the literature upside down to the buyer. Is this bedtime or what? The fact that you are reading to your buyer insinuates that the buyer can't read on their own. What will literature tell them about the relationship and trust that a good sales person develops? Absolutely nothing. Spend this valuable time learning about your buyer and you will be far ahead of the pack.

6. Bragging About Company History & Credentials – Buyers put little weight on you bragging about how good you are. Anything you say is discounted because they believe a sales person will say anything to sell them. It is of little consequence how long you have been in business without knowing how this information translates into any benefits to the buyer. In fact your 30 years of experience might mean you are a dinosaur in the eyes of a buyer. Stay on point and stay relevant.

7. Ask If You Have Any Questions – Many sales people “check in” and ask at the end of a snooze-fest presentation if anybody has any questions. This after the audience has been verbally abused with a boring diatribe. Talking down to your buyer and acting as if they can't understand you, is always bad selling. Why do sales people ask this question? Do they think the buyer can't hear them? Or do they think the buyer is too stupid to “get it?” I really don't know the answer. When a sales person asks me if I have any questions, the only one that comes to mind is "When will you leave me alone?"

One thing all of these mistakes have in common with each other is that they center around the sales person focusing on gratifying themselves. They do nothing to please the potential customer in the process.

In essence, they are performing “sales-masturbation” by this self-centered approach. Remember why you are selling in the first place. The BUYER has an issue they could resolve and THEY would benefit from your solution. Make your approach about them and not you and you will always succeed.

About the author: Joe Crisara is CEO of www.ContractorSelling.com, a website that helps sales professionals to change their thinking and grow their sales. You can contact Joe by emailing him at joe@contractorselling.com

Copyright 2009, ContractorSelling.com - May be reproduced without change, with proper attribution and brief bio. Notice of when and where article is to appear to joe@contractorselling.com
 

How to take a step down the ladder
By Caroline Waxler, Fortune Magazine
April 1, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/d6sbqh

It may be against your instincts, but in this job market, one good move might be in a backwards direction.

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- The scenario is becoming all too familiar. Last month you were a CFO or senior vice president, then comes a layoff and the nasty realization that not only are there fewer jobs at the top to begin with, but jobs at your rung of the ladder are even scarcer. Moving down the ladder goes against every experience you've had in your career so far, but is it something you should consider?

Mitch Drew, 46, of Vancouver, recently accepted a position as an account executive at a television station where he was formerly general sales manager. He had been enjoying a nice upward career progression and was hoping to make station manager next. But when a change of management came in and he was downsized, he found options limited in his local industry. "I now report to a person who has my old job," he says.
Interactive guide: How to find a job

Jim McGovern, 38, of Manhasset, NY, was laid off from a senior vice president job in leveraged finance and took a step down to a position as corporate treasury VP at a Fortune 500 telecom company, a former client, at 25% of his old salary. He took it in large part because he has a family to support and was spooked after seeing "a friend from Bear Stearns leveraged finance twisting in the wind for a year." With a family to support he couldn't afford to be that guy. But your ego has to be ready to take the change in status. It can be disorienting.

"One of the downsides of taking a lesser job was that I was not in a position to contribute as much as I could have. It was a loss for me and a loss for the company," says Peter Rosen, Atlanta, who, after business slowed at his HR consulting company in the wake of 9/11, took a lesser job within human resources at another. "Because of my level I wasn't invited to certain meetings" - the type of meetings that he once ran.

But it's the smart companies that will harness the experience and talent that you have to offer. Says McGovern, "Even though I'm the lowest guy on the totem poll, my boss treats me like a professional and doesn't keep me in a back room someplace. I work for this guy, so if he wanted to dump all the grunt work on me he could. Instead, he decided to take advantage of what I do know."

If you can get past the blow to the ego and the disappearance of perks - goodbye company car, cell phone, window office - there are some nice upsides. Says Drew, "Less stress, more time with my family...and more freedom. Also, I don't have to deal with upper management or owners at a time when the business climate is challenging." Drew doesn't fear being on the firing line, because he's already been there, done that. Echoes McGovern, "I can do the basics in my sleep."

And there's always this: "You can take a lower job and really wow them," says California career coach and author Cynthia Shapiro. "You can make sure you are promoted to close to the job you had previously so by the time you leave it doesn't look like a backwards step on your resume."

However, while taking these lesser jobs can provide much-needed income and the opportunity to stay in the same town, not everyone is ready to make that kind of change. Leslie Padilla, former PR executive for Comcast Programming, cautions those in transition not to feel desperate and take the first job they are offered. Within her first month of severance, she received such an offer for a job at a much lower title and salary. She acknowledged the employer's generosity and instead offered to freelance.

But for many people, having a full-time job, even a downgrade, can be better for self esteem than reading the want ads. Says Georgia-based career coach Walter Akana, "I'd rather see people work in a lesser job where they can continue to network and feel good about themselves. I think it's important for people to be productive."

If you're thinking of taking a lesser job, career coaches advise you to keep the following in mind:

1. Make the most of your new job. This can be done by going to a high-status company - Google, anyone? - or picking up new skills. New York-based executive business coach Carol Vinelli suggests people use this time, whether it's freed up because of less catch-up work or shorter required hours, to develop themselves and do things they've always wanted to do. "Start a formal mentoring program, take classes, teach classes...it could be a big status symbol for your new company to say, 'We have someone on staff who is an adjunct professor at NYU.'"

2. You don't have to stay in the position forever. Most companies realize that when the market opens up you may leave so you'll have to assure them that you are interested in a long-term career there. That doesn't mean a long career staying in that particular job. Once you're in the door, your employer may see your potential and want to keep you on - in another capacity. If a better job elsewhere beckons, take it, but make sure you don't burn bridges. Do what you can to help fill your post and help with the transition.

3. You don't have to put the lesser job on the resume. It's very likely that your prospective employer won't probe who has been giving you a salary if you don't put anything down. "Running checks nowadays is expensive," says Shapiro. To avoid a gap in your resume, however, if you are consulting or taking classes, just say that you were doing that. No one will fault you for putting food on the table in this economy. "The stigma will be blown away," says Dan Finnigan, president and CEO of Jobvite, a recruitment software company.

Optimize Your Website or Get Lost in the Crowd!
by Allan Gunneson
CEO, Gunner Web Group

It used to be that designing an attractive website to promote your company and products was fairly straightforward.  After you designed your site and built a few keywords into the code, you would simply submit the site to the search engines or a directory, grab an iced tea and wait for the traffic.

That model worked fairly well in 1996 but if you are still following this strategy in 2005, you are effectively non-existent on the internet.  Why?  There are now dozens of search engines and directories and somewhere in the area of 80 million websites on the www.  Still think folks are finding you?

So how does the average consumer find your company?  They type in a couple of keywords into a search engine and are then presented with thousands of your competitors’ websites. 

Let’s say your company is Walt’s Widgets.  You have a pretty website with pictures of your widgets, a nice “about us” page, maybe some employee pictures and a picture of your beautiful building.  It all looks good on the website but when Mr. Consumer types “widgets” into Google, poor old Walt’s Widgets is on page 620 of the search results!

How can this be?  Your site is not optimized for the search engines and is not being indexed by the search engine spiders and robots so you aren’t being seen! 

Research has shown that the average surfer will only review the first three pages of search results and will not drill down any deeper.  If you are on page 62, you effectively don’t exist!

Surfers and search engines view a website completely differently and for you to appear on the first three pages of search results is critical to your continued profitability.  You must know what the search engines are looking for, what relevance they are placing on your keywords, what elements of your site have a “welcome sign” for the spiders and, most importantly, know what keywords the surfer is using in his search.  Just because you sell widgets it doesn’t mean that “widgets” is the term being used the most by surfers when looking for your product.

SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is the process of analyzing keywords, reviewing search trends, analyzing link popularity, building code tags, analyzing your competition, optimizing pages within your website to be search engine friendly, editing web pages, submissions to directories and search engines, and reciprocal link building…just to name a few.

What you are after with SEO is not getting the highest number of website visitors.  What you are actually seeking are qualified site visitors who have an interest in buying what you’re selling.  Professional SEO can help deliver a targeted audience to your business.  After all, what would you rather have?  500 site visitors with a 1% conversion rate or 100 site visitors with a 10% conversion rate?

Professional SEO is critical to your company’s web presence so if your site was designed by your summer intern in 2002 or your bookkeeper’s son as part of his high school “media class”, I assure you that you have some work to do.

Start with a good website design featuring good content and navigation.  Then, utilize an SEO professional who can wring the most out of your website and deliver dollars to your doorstep.

Allan Gunneson is the CEO of Gunner Web Group, an internet marketing and web presence provider.  Visit Gunner Web Group here.