Biz 101

How to Overcome a Customer’s Prior Bad Experience with Your Company

One of the most daunting tasks for any salesperson is trying to repair a relationship with a customer when one of your predecessors did something that totally turned the customer off on your company. Anyone who has ever been in sales has heard a customer say something like, “You have some nerve coming in my office after what your company did to me back in 1999”. During my career I never cease to be amazed about how long some customers hold a grudge over something (real or imagined) done to them by someone else from your company, sometimes many, many years ago. Overcoming a grudge that has been held for a long time is extremely challenging, but not impossible. I have been able to overcome most, but not all, past grudges by doing some or all of the below things:

Referral. If you have a happy customer that knows the grudge holder very well ask that customer to call on your behalf and vouch for you. If you can get a customer that is a friend of the person you are trying to sell after a past mishap, a referral, or better yet several, can get you back in the door.
A credit good on the first order. I have given a former customer a $500 credit good on their first order as an apology for past missteps and as a peace offering. This has worked for me more often than not. One time a former customer used the credit on a $5500 order, the first sale we made to him in over 20 years. That was the best $500 I ever spent. I got a nice order, and better yet, resumed selling a customer others in our company had given up on. That customer ended up buying over $80,000 from us over the next twelve months.
A sincere apology. If you are able to get in front of the aggrieved party a sincere apology can also work. I have said things like, “Mr. Jones, I understand that my predecessor made some serious mistakes in handling your account and beyond apologizing on behalf of my company, all I can say is that if you give me a chance you will see that I am different.” I then make a point of handing the customer my business card and I point out that my office, home, and mobile numbers are all on the card and that he or she can call me 24/7 with any problems in the future. It’s amazing how far a sincere, heartfelt apology will get you.
Ask for a small order to prove your worth. I have asked customers that haven’t bought from us in years to give me even a small order just to test me as to how I service my accounts. I had one customer give me a $150 order after months of begging for an order. I ensured that he received his shipment without any hitches, and exactly when I said he would. He was so impressed with the amount of care I exhibited on a small order that his next order was $7000. We are still selling that customer six years later.
Persistence. When all else fails, be persistent. Persistence doesn’t work with all types of customers but I have found that, generally speaking, the type of customer that I want to sell is a fair person and is impressed with persistence. If you refuse to take no for an answer (without being a pest) you can wear down even the most bitter former customer.

These are some of things that have worked for me over the years. If something else has worked for you, I would love to hear about it.

How to get Appointments

One of the most frustrating parts of being in sales is trying to get an appointment with a person who doesn’t want to meet with you. Before I get into techniques that have worked for me let’s examine why some buyers refuse to meet with salespeople from companies with which they are currently not doing business. As I have done a fair amount of buying in my career and as I have asked this question of a lot of my customers here are some of the reasons I haven’t agreed to meet with new salespeople as well as some of the reasons customers of mine have told me they duck potential new suppliers:

No time. A lot of buyers are extremely busy, especially in this era of downsizing, and simply don’t want to make the time to meet with a potential new supplier.
No interest. Some buyers believe that they are very aware of all of the offerings available to them and they don’t think it’s a good use of their time to listen to a sales rep for product they have already deemed inadequate.
Personal relationships. Some buyers have developed very close personal relationships with their suppliers and they don’t want to jeopardize the relationship. Sometimes I have found, after several wasted years that the person I was trying to meet buys from a relative. I wish someone has just told me that.
Bad prior experience with your company. Many times you will be trying to get an appointment with a buyer who has had a bad experience with your company in the past. This is a tough situation but it can be overcome with persistence and selling skills. I will do a post on how to overcome past problems next week.
Kickbacks. In my over 35 year career I have only been asked for a kickback a few times. However, I have felt, but couldn’t prove, that I couldn’t get an appointment with a buyer because he or she was getting a kickback from a competitor. One of the times I was directly solicited for kickback a buyer who wasn’t an owner of the company I was calling on told me that to get his business I would have to pay for a furnished apartment where he could meet with his girlfriend at lunchtime. I refused and never called on this person again.
Your product is too expensive. Some buyers purchase on price only so if you represent a product sold at a premium price most buyers who are doing business with a lower-priced competitor of yours will refuse to meet with you.

The above is not an all-inclusive list of reasons why buyers won’t meet with you but it’s fairly comprehensive. I think it’s helpful to know what you’re up against when you’re having trouble getting an appointment so you can formulate strategy to secure an appointment.

Given the above how do you get an appointment with someone who doesn’t want to meet with you? Here are some of the things that have worked for me over the years.

A referral from someone your prospect respects. I have found this to be the best way to get in front of a prospect who has been ducking me. I ask around to my other customers until I find several who know the prospect and, if I have a good relationship with them, they will call the prospect on my behalf and recommend that he or she meet with me. When you can get several of your customers to call one of your prospects with which they have a close relationship you will almost always be able to get an appointment.

Request an appointment via e-mail. I have found that most busy people hate phone calls as they are intrusive but I, and my top salespeople, have found that a well-written e-mail can get you an appointment. Your e-mail needs to be brief and well-written enough to grab the prospect’s attention. For example, one of our top salespeople sends an e-mail to out-of-town project managers doing a job in his area requesting a brief appointment. He researches which products are specified on the job and then points out the products that we distribute that are going to be used on the project. He also mentions other similar jobs we have supplied. His e-mails almost always result in an appointment… and better yet, orders.
Call early or late. If a prospect doesn’t respond to your e-mail and you can’t get past his or her assistant, call early or late when the assistant isn’t there. Most busy people come in early and stay late and their assistant is usually there only during traditional business hours. I have called busy people at 6:30 AM and they were so shocked and impressed that a salesperson would be calling that early that I was granted an appointment.
Request an early morning appointment. When I get to a prospect but they tell me they’re too busy to meet with me I ask if I can meet them at 6 or 6:30 AM before their phones start ringing. Again, most busy people are surprised that any salesperson would ask for a meeting so early (as most buyers think salespeople are lazy) but this has worked for me several times. I make sure to show up a bit early and bring coffee and donuts with me. Several of these early morning appointments ended up stretching on for hours.
Send an unusual sized package. When none of the above has worked for me I have had some success putting a letter inside box the size of a microwave oven and sending it via Federal Express. Everyone signs for a package of that size because they think they are getting some sort of gift. When they see my letter inside some prospects (but not all) are impressed with my ingenuity and give me a call and agree to an initial meeting.
Send part of a gift. One friend of mine had a lot of success sending large prospects a glass case with a stand that would hold a football. A letter was sent with the glass case explaining that my friend had a football signed by all living Super Bowl winning quarterbacks that goes inside the case and he will be happy to deliver it if he can get an appointment. He said this was expensive (about $500) but it almost always worked. Obviously, you should only do this with prospects that have the ability to buy a lot from you.
Pay for the appointment. What do I mean by this? On a few occasions nothing I did worked and I couldn’t get an appointment with some very lucrative prospects. In those cases I would show up at their office and tell the receptionist or assistant who had previously told me several times that the buyer wouldn’t see me that I would pay $1000 for 15 minutes of the buyer’s time. I asked that the receptionist or assistant tell “Mr. Busy” that I know that “time is money” so I was willing to pay $1000 for 15 minutes of his time. I said that I would leave after 15 minutes if the buyer said I wasted his time. If the buyer is interested and asks me to stay then I get the thousand dollars back. I never once had a prospect keep the thousand dollars. Again, I think this worked because it was so novel and imaginative. One of the people I did this with remains a close personal friend. We often laugh about how I finally got an appointment with him.

What other techniques have worked for you when trying to get an appointment? I’m anxious to hear.

How to keep your Company out of Court

It’s a sad fact of life these days that we live in a very litigious society. We read in newspapers and see on television every day a vast number of lawsuits for real and imagined grievances. Given the propensity of people and companies filing lawsuits for just about any reason, how do you keep your company out of court? Here are some of the ways we have managed to stay out of court over the years:

• Create a culture of not breaking laws. I have been fortunate that early in my career my mentors stressed the importance of operating within the law. It never ceases to amaze me how many people don’t. For example, I have acquired companies that were paying every single employee on salary, in blatant violation of wage and hour laws. Amazingly, very few of these companies ever had a complaint lodged against them for doing this. If you do break wage and hour laws you are liable for treble damages on the unpaid overtime.

• Pay your taxes and fees. A prominent business leader in my hometown went to jail for tax evasion a few years ago in his early 70s. I can’t imagine how horrible it had to be for his family to visit him in prison at that age. Prison is terrible at any age but I imagine it is even worse when you are elderly. Plus, his once sterling reputation has been forever destroyed. You especially need to make sure that you never fail to pay the taxes you withhold from your employee’s paychecks. Failing to do this can land you behind bars. I have seen companies in desperate straits not remit payroll withholding taxes and end up regretting it. I would let my company go under before I would ever fail to pass through payroll taxes to the government.

• Obey rules and regulations. One company that I acquired had drivers that were driving large trucks without the proper commercial driver’s license. To me, that is sheer insanity. If one of those drivers hit a minivan with a mom and four kids the resultant judgment would have broken the company. I just don’t understand why people run that risk.

• Do background checks. Many business owners with whom I come in contact don’t do a background check before hiring a new employee. Given that you can get a complete background check immediately, over the Internet, for less than $100, I can’t understand why anyone would hire someone without getting a full background check. Not only does this keep you from hiring criminals but this could keep you out of jail because if an employee who was hired without a background check killed another one of your employees the financial settlement could destroy your company, not to mention living with that guilt the rest of your life.

• Improper interview questions. I have found that many companies allow managers who have never been educated about what you can and can’t ask on an interview conducting interviews with prospective employees. I have interviewed people who have shared with me inappropriate questions they were asked on prior interviews and it can be appalling. Again, in our litigious society this is unnecessarily leaving you and your company open to a damaging lawsuit.

• Not having an employee handbook. A good employee handbook can also save you money and/or keep you out of jail. Key topics such as sexual harassment, proper work rules, safety guidelines, overtime rules, and other important subjects are all part of a well-written employee handbook. Absent an employee handbook your employees will just wing it and that can get you in a lot of trouble. Also, make sure that you have each employee sign a form acknowledging that they have received and read your handbook and keep that in their personnel file in case they ever bring an action against you and claim that they were never told your work rules.

• Failure to do employee reviews and warning notices. If you terminate someone for poor performance but have never given him or her an annual review documenting the poor performance you are leaving yourself wide open to a lawsuit. In between annual reviews you should also document subpar behavior with written warning notices. If you have a solid system of doing annual reviews and giving written warnings for poor performance you can avoid costly settlements from wrongful discrimination or discrimination suits. Absent those things you are leaving yourself wide open to a large settlement.

• Failure to investigate employee complaints. If you have an abusive supervisor who is violating the rules in your employee handbook and you ignore those complaints you are again begging for trouble. You are actually better off to not have an employee handbook than to have one that you do not enforce. Each and every complaint lodged against a supervisor or a coworker needs to be fully and thoroughly investigated and discussed with your attorney unless you look good in stripes.

• Not telling the truth to government officials. Sometimes, even the best run company ends up being accused of violating the law or committing a crime. We’ve all seen plenty of examples of the cover up being worse than the crime. Anytime you are contacted by a government official you need to instruct all affected employees to tell the whole truth and you are to do the same yourself.

The above is not a complete list of how to stay out of court but experience has shown me that it’s a good start. If you have any other ideas I would love to hear from you.

Building a Company that’s “Built to Last”

Most of the people I know that own companies don’t seem to realize that companies have personalities just like human beings. However, most companies with which I am familiar have ended up with a “personality” by default. These companies become known for certain things without having planned for the company to have been known for those things. By this I mean some companies are known for being fun to do business with, some are known for being difficult to work with, some are envied for how happy their employees seem to be, some are known for being difficult to deal with, etc. However, I only know a few companies that consciously set out to create the persona for which they are known.

If you were going to build a company and consciously strive to be known for certain things what would they be? In our case we have consciously tried to build a strong, efficient, profitable, and fun company. How do you build a strong, efficient, profitable, and fun company? Below are some of the things that we have consciously attempted to do:

Be very selective in our hiring. Experience has taught me that we can’t change the people we hire so we better be very careful to hire the right type of people. As mentioned in previous posts, we do extensive interviewing, background checks, and psychological assessments to make sure that we are hiring the right type of person that will fit in with our culture. If you do this properly you are a long way down the road towards building a successful company where high achievers want to work.
Put aside money for a “rainy day”. If we had not done this in our company we would not still be in business over four years after the construction industry began a near free-fall. If you have reserves you don’t have to do things such as pay your suppliers late; miss payrolls; lie to suppliers, customers, and your employees; and most of all you don’t have to touch the third rail of business which is to not remit to the government taxes you have collected on their behalf. Not remitting taxes to Uncle Sam is sheer insanity and should never, ever be done.
Automate. One of the biggest parts of creating an efficient company is to automate as many tasks as possible. Any time you can automate a manual process you decrease the chance of a mistake being made, you need a smaller staff, and you eliminate jobs that are drudgery for people to do and that only make them unhappy.
Treat people with respect. You would think I wouldn’t need to say this but I am still amazed when I visit with fellow business owners and I see and hear how some of them treat their employees. I go out of my way to say “please” and “thank you” but I see other business owners that bark orders and treat their employees like indentured servants. I pointed this out to one owner only to have him tell me, “I pay them well so why should I have to say please to get them to do something”?
Treat everyone the same. We do not have two benefit plans; one for management and one for the rank-and-file. Believe it or not, a lot of companies that I interact with have a gold-plated benefit plan for management and a bare-bones plan for everyone else. Not only do I think this is wrong, but once the word gets out about this morale is destroyed forever. I also hate reserved parking spots, especially those with canopies over them. I know of one company that cut everyone’s pay during the recession and then the owner and his son each got a new Mercedes. Gee, I wonder why their employees hate them?
Avoid layers of management. The more layers of management in a company, the further away management is from customers and employees. Plus, information gets filtered as it bubbles up from the bottom to the top and in many cases by the time it gets to senior management it bears little resemblance to what really happened. You also save a lot of money by not having layers of middle management. It was harder to have a lean organization before e-mail and cell phones but advances in technology have allowed us to have a very flat organization that is very responsive to customers and employees.
Deal with problems quickly. Problems, unlike fine wine, don’t get better with age. Whether it is a customer problem or an employee problem, deal with it as fast as possible, provided that you are comfortable that you have the facts straight. If you have a culture of dealing with problems quickly your company will stick out versus your competitors because most companies take too long to resolve problems and by the time they do the customer or employee relationship is irreparably harmed.
Create a culture of accountability. If you build an organization where people are accountable and do what they say they’re going to do, when they say they’re going to do it, your job will be so much easier. Conversely, if you tolerate excuses and missed deadlines both you and your employees are going to be miserable.
Take extra good care of your top performers. Early in my career one of my mentors told me that he would rather have one $100,000 a year person than two $50,000 a year people. It seemed odd to me that he wanted to pay an employee that much money back in 1979 until he explained to me that one person worth $100,000 a year generally does the work of three or more people, you only have fringe benefits to pay on one person, and someone that well-paid rarely leaves you because jobs that pay that much ($200,000-$300,000 in today’s dollars) aren’t readily available.
Give recognition where recognition is due. A handwritten note sent to a top performer at home, a dozen roses sent to a top salesperson’s wife to thank her for tolerating the long hours her husband worked to have a big month, handwritten birthday and Christmas cards, $100 bills (or more), taking an entire department out for lunch, and other tokens of recognition go a long way. You don’t always have to give someone a five or six figure bonus check for them to feel appreciated.
Have fun. This is last but not the least of the things I recommend you do to build a solid company. Keep it light around the company, don’t always be serious, and look for ways to have fun with your co-workers. If you create a fun environment it won’t feel so much like “work”.

What other suggestions do you have for building a company that’s “built to last”?

Lasting Lessons from Wharton

Early on in my career I was fortunate that one of my first employers gave me the opportunity to go to the Executive Management Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and I learned many things that have served me well throughout my entire career. Here are some of the top lessons I learned at Wharton:

No one plans to fail but most people fail to plan. I never cease to be amazed when I find that a company that I interact with doesn’t have a strategic plan or even a budget. As another friend has said many times, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”. Take the time to plan and budget. It always seems worse than it actually is. In a previous post I mentioned the one-page strategic plan we use in our company. If you didn’t see that post here is a link to it.
It’s all about people. I would rather have an inferior company with a mediocre product and a great team than the inverse. I have seen great people take a less than stellar product and make it a winner and I have also seen an inferior team destroy a great product or company. If you surround yourself with great people then managing is easy and going to work is fun. If you don’t, work becomes drudgery.
Invest in education. A lot of companies don’t spend any appreciable money on educating their employees. A lot of times I hear, “It’s too expensive” or “We can’t spare him or her”. My standard comeback to that is, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance”. Ignorance is a hell of a lot more expensive.
You cannot improve that which you do not measure. The mid-20th century quality expert, W. Edwards Deming first coined that phrase and it is as true today as it was then. If you want to improve something (quality, fill rates, response times, etc.) you need to measure it and better yet, post the charts publicly or on your company intranet.
It’s all about cash. Many companies manage for profits not cash. Through accrual accounting you can post a profit while you’re going broke. Never forget that you pay your bills with cash, not profits. Manage the business to generate cash because there is nothing worse than not being able to make payroll or pay a key supplier because you’re out of cash.
Invest in technology. Early in my career, I had a mentor who taught me to spend money on leading-edge technology because, as he pointed out, computers don’t get pregnant, they don’t go on strike, they don’t ask for a raise, and most importantly, they don’t join unions. In my current company there were eight people in the accounting office when we bought it and there are now three. Oh, and by the way, sales have almost tripled since we bought the company 10 years and two recessions ago.

I learned a lot of other things in business school but these are the main lessons that come to mind at this time. If you have anything to add to the list, let me know.

The Secret of Sales Success

Most sales trainers overly complicate the sales process. They teach techniques such as probing questions, trial closes, assumptive closes, and many, many other ways to make a sale. While these techniques have their place in selling, the true secret of sales success is building relationships with your customers. All things being even near equal, customers buy from people they like better than other people calling on them. Even if your initial quote is high, if the customer likes you and wants to do business with you, you will get “last look”. Many times your customer will even show or e-mail you your competitors quote because they want to buy from you. In over 35 years of selling when I have been given last look I can count the number of orders I have lost on one hand…with fingers left over.

How do you get customers to like you more than the competition? Here are some techniques I have seen work over the years:

Eat breakfast and lunch with a customer daily. One of our top sales people eats both breakfast and lunch with customers every day. Sometimes he even eats breakfast twice, with two different customers. “Why does he do that”, you may ask? Well, sometimes he calls or e-mails a customer and asks him to meet him for breakfast the following day but doesn’t hear back from him for several hours so he asks someone else and they accept. Then, the customer he asked first finally calls back and says that he can meet for breakfast. So, our salesperson has one breakfast at 7 AM and a second one at a different restaurant at 8 AM. This isn’t quite as tricky as dating two girls at once but you still don’t want to get caught at it so you should eat at different restaurants.
Entertain. Find out what your key customers like to do at night and on weekends and then do it with them. It’s just that simple. If you have a customer that likes to fish, take him fishing. If you like a customer who loves country music you and your wife should take him and his wife to dinner and a show. If you have a customer that likes to hunt, take that customer hunting. It really is that simple. Even if you don’t have an expense account you should still entertain to the extent that you can afford to. I think golf is the best way to entertain. With warming up, golf, and lunch or drinks afterward you will spend five or six hours with your customer and really get to know him or her.
Send cards and presents. You should send your key customers birthday cards, baby presents, graduation presents for their children, and the like. They don’t have to be expensive, and it’s actually better if they aren’t because then they look like bribes. A simple, thoughtful gift or card goes a long way in building relationships.
Get involved with their causes. If you have a customer who is deeply involved with the Wounded Warrior Project, the Red Cross, United Way, or another worthwhile cause you should get involved with these groups as well. Not only will you spend more time with your key customers but they will appreciate that both of you have a shared cause.
The Mackay 66. Harvey Mackay wrote a classic book of business advice in 1988 called Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive. In the book he touts the Mackay 66. This is a list of 66 questions (http://www.harveymackay.com/pdfs/mackay66.pdf) for you to get the answers to regarding each of your key accounts. You obviously can’t get the answer to all 66 questions on one sales call or it will look like an interrogation. Keep the list with you and answer a few questions on each call. Over time you will know more about your key accounts than anyone else calling on them and that will result in a deeper relationship and more sales.

As I said at the outset of this post, most sales trainers overly complicate the sales process. If you aren’t already doing some or all of the above try doing it and I guarantee you will see your sales zoom.

Converting Suspects to Prospects

During my career I have noted that most salespeople waste a lot of their time by not properly qualifying their sales prospects. How does one separate suspects from prospects? I have found that there are four hurdles you need to ensure that a suspect clears before you spend any significant time with them. The four hurdles are:

Need. Does the prospect truly need your product? You should ask a few well-chosen questions to ascertain whether the prospect truly needs your product or service. If they don’t really need your product or service, move on. Some prospects just like to chat and will waste your precious time if you let them so be sure to determine that they really need your product or service before you make any further calls on them.
Authority. There is nothing worse than spending a lot of time on a prospect only to find that the person you have been romancing doesn’t have the authority to make the purchase. You have to be careful about how you determine whether the person you are calling on has the authority to make the purchase because you don’t want to make him an enemy. I have found that asking, “Will anyone else be involved in making the purchasing decision? If so, can we invite him to sit in with us?” works most of the time.
Timeframe. When talking with a prospect ask probing questions that will tell you if the prospect’s timeframe for making purchase is now. If not find out when the purchase will be made and follow-up closer to that date.
Ability to pay. It always amazes me that salespeople will spend time calling on a suspect without checking with their company’s credit department to see if the potential prospect has acceptable credit. It’s extremely frustrating to salespeople (and sales managers) to spend weeks or even months trying to get a sale only to have the credit department shoot it down. Don’t waste your time calling on suspects until you have found out that your credit department will allow you to accept an order from them.

Time is the most precious commodity for all salespeople but my experience has been that most salespeople end up wasting a lot of time by not ensuring that their suspects have cleared the above four hurdles. If you aren’t already ensuring that your suspects can clear the hurdles noted above try doing this and let me know your results. I bet you that your sales will pick up significantly.

Lessons from Six Sigma

If you aren’t familiar with the term, Six Sigma, it is a set of business management practices originally developed by Motorola in 1986. It achieved widespread notoriety after Jack Welch implemented it throughout General Electric during his tenure as CEO. Six Sigma is designed to improve the quality of products or processes by identifying and eliminating defects in products or processes. A Six Sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of the defects or errors are removed from business processes. The thinking is if you can produce near-perfect products or have near-perfect interactions with your customers, your sales and profits will correspondingly increase.

What are some of the major principles of a Six Sigma that you can apply in your business?

Base your management decisions on long-term goals, not short-term goals, even at the expense of short-term profits. This is easier said than done, especially if you are a public company. This is hard to stick to but thousands of companies have proven that it works. It pushes you to have a strategic plan that you adhere to, sometimes at the expense of short-term profits.
Create continuous process flow so that problems are surfaced. When you look at each of your business processes and break them down into components it is easier to find and fix problems. For example, take a process such as inventory receiving and break it down into each of its components starting with the original purchase order through the inventory put away process. Examine each step of the process and identify parts of the process that breakdown on occasion, and change the processes to make them more bulletproof.
Use “pull systems” to avoid overproduction. If you manufacture products, minimize work in process and inventory, creating a “just-in-time” environment. How much inventory do you have sitting around in your warehouses or on the plant floor tying up cash and gathering dust? You also eliminate inventory that becomes obsolete and needs to be disposed of, thereby hurting profits.
Work to level out the workload and production instead of a stop/start approach. This can be difficult for any business with last-minute customer demands, but what about the other processes in your business? Keep in mind that stop or wait time is waste.
Build a culture that stops to fix problems to get quality right the first time. In many companies there is such pressure to produce products quickly, or make deliveries quickly, that quality takes a backseat. Train your associates to understand that they are empowered to stop what they are doing when there is a problem and fix it before proceeding.
Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment. Use Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) throughout your business and standardize them to best practices. Standard procedures help employees know it is expected to ensure consistency.
Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others. Train, recognize, and promote those who buy into the system and adhere to it 100% of the time. Also look for people who can teach it to others.
Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve. Set targets, goals, and objectives for your suppliers. What is the net effect if they improve their products, which ultimately improves your customer’s satisfaction?
Get personally involved in the processes so you thoroughly understand each situation. Get out of your office and get on the shop floor or the loading dock so that you personally understand the problems your associates are facing firsthand. It also does wonders for morale when your associates see that you are getting personally involved.
Make decisions slowly, thoroughly consider all options, and implement decisions quickly. Do your homework, be detailed and focused, then get it done quickly. Do not allow the implementation of a great idea to lose momentum due to a slow pace of getting it done. Wherever you see a potential for value, go after it and save money fast.
Become a learning organization through relentless reflection and continuous improvement. Constantly be looking at your business for ways to improve both processes and people. Break your business down into individual processes, or have someone do it for you, then drive out waste with passion to find extra value.

If you’re having problems with quality which is hurting your bottom line and leading to unhappy customers you ought to consider at least learning more about Six Sigma even if you don’t fully implement it in your business. What do you have the lose except for customer complaints?

E-mail Tips

Email use is now the norm in most every business in America and around the world. You would think that with the heavy use of e-mail people would learn how to use it effectively by now. I still cringe about half of the time when I get e-mail because of misspelled words, run-on sentences, lack of capitalization, poor grammar, and the one that drives me the craziest: the ubiquitous use of “reply all”.

Here are a few tips that will help you be a more effective user of electronic mail:

Turn on your automatic spell checker. Every e-mail program I have ever seen has an option to “check spelling before sending”. However, most people must not be aware of this and only occasionally manually run the spell checker before sending an e-mail. Just doing this one thing will make your e-mail look much more professional. If you use the most popular e-mail software, Microsoft Outlook, all you have to do is go to File, Options, Mail, and check the box that says, “Always check spelling before spending”.
Fill in the subject line. Believe it or not, I still get e-mails every day with the subject line blank. As I get over 200 e-mails per day I ignore the ones with empty subject lines until I have responded to e-mails where the subject line grabs my attention. Also, spend a few seconds thinking about what to put in the subject line so that it accurately reflects your message and interests the reader enough to read your e-mail before others.
If you change the subject when you reply to someone, change what is in the subject line. Several times a day I get an e-mail that has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of the e-mail. This is because some people get an e-mail from me and it reminds them that they wanted to ask me something so they click on reply, totally change the subject, but fail to change the subject line. This is really a problem when you try to search for a subject and the e-mail you’re looking for is under a subject line that has no relationship to the body of the message.
Explain why you forwarded an e-mail. I regularly get e-mails forwarded to me with absolutely no message as to why the sender forwarded it to me. It is a pet peeve of mine when the sender won’t take five seconds to explain why an e-mail has been forwarded to me. I am not a mind reader so if you forward an e-mail to me please explain why and let me know if action is required. Otherwise don’t be surprised if you don’t hear back from me.
Give a due date. When I send an e-mail to someone in our company where I am requesting a specific action I always include a due date. Otherwise, when I don’t hear back for a week or two I am told that since no due date was given it mustn’t have been too important. Better yet, put the due date in the subject line directly after the subject. Then there is no excuse for not getting a response by the desired date.
Tailor your vocabulary to match the vocabulary of the recipient. By this I mean, in our building supply business, when I send an e-mail to a customer that I know only has a high school education I avoid using unusual words that the recipient either won’t understand or will feel demeaned by. Also, avoid using business grammar from the 1960s such as, “attached, please find”, “pursuant to your correspondence of x-date”, and the like. Not only is this superfluous verbiage but, again, it will make most readers feel like you are talking down to them.
Follow-up on your e-mails if you don’t hear back in seven days. I find that when I send an e-mail to solicit business, ask for a favor, or simply when I send an e-mail to someone who doesn’t know me, the vast majority of the time the original e-mail is ignored. I always blind copy myself on each e-mail of importance and then drag it into tasks in Outlook and set a reminder date seven days after the date I send the e-mail. If, in seven days, I get no response to my e-mail I send a simple follow-up mail asking, “Did you get this?”. Over 50% of the time I then get a response. I think that busy people ignore e-mails from people with whom they are not familiar but when they see a follow-up e-mail they know they are dealing with a professional, not an amateur, and they then respond.
Be sparing in your use of “reply all”. Most of the time, after two or three emails all of the people copied on the original e-mail don’t need to be copied any longer. Only copy those who really need to know what’s in follow-on e-mails. If some of the people originally copied miss being copied on future e-mails they will let you know. (Don’t hold your breath waiting for this.)
After three to five e-mails stop using e-mail. E-mail is great for quick answers and simple questions but once the email string has gotten three to five deep pick up the phone or go see the person you’ve been e-mailing. You will resolve the situation much sooner this way.

If you use most or all of the above tips I bet you will find that your e-mail productivity increases significantly. Either way, please let me know.

Ten Things Top Salespeople Do

Most people think top salespeople are born, not made. I am proof that’s not the case. When I started high school I was tall, skinny, and shy. I’m still tall but that’s where the comparison ends. I learned to be a top salesperson in every company I have been with by consistently doing the following ten things.

1. Plan every sales call. I have a written plan for each sales call I make. I review my CRM system, note what was discussed the last time we met, review any personal topics that came up, and list my objectives for this call. It never ceases to amaze me that most salespeople have only a vague idea of a plan for their sales calls, if any. Most are what I call “industrial tourists”;i.e., a company pays them to drive (or worse, fly) around “visiting” customers, and the occasional prospect, buying lunches, playing golf, or similar things. Most salespeople don’t have a written “game plan” for every call. They just wing it and hope for the best.

2. Have a written plan to grow your top ten accounts. When I was in sales I always had a plan to add to my sales to my top accounts. Marketing 101 teaches you it’s easier to sell more to your top accounts who already know and like you than to prospect for new accounts, so you should always have a plan to sell more to your top customers. No one gets 100% of the business from any account so always be planning how to grow sales to your best customers.

3. Review your “value add” frequently with customers. I am always looking for “value adds” I can use to get more business from my customers. A value add could be providing labor along with your products to take this headache away from your customer, selling products pre-assembled, customizing products, providing financing, etc. Without a “value add” you are often times reduced to selling on price.

4. Prospect for new business even though you are doing well. Most salespeople don’t prospect until their business falls off dramatically. Not prospecting for business when you’re doing well is like not buying life insurance until after you’ve had a heart attack. Top salespeople are always prospecting and preparing for a rainy day.

5. Begin your day with a list of things that you need to do that are both urgent and important. Most people either fritter their day away doing “fun” tasks or they take care of the urgent at the expense of the important. Make a list of things that you need to do that are both urgent and important and stick to that list, at least for the morning. I move on to other things on my “to do” list in the afternoon but I reserve the morning for tasks that are both urgent and important.

6. Become a serious student of the selling profession. When I do seminars on selling I always begin by asking who has ever been to a seminar on selling before. Almost always only a smattering of hands go up. Next I ask how many have ever had a golf lesson, shooting lesson, swimming lesson, or any other type of lesson related to a leisure pursuit. You guessed it! Almost every hand in the room goes up. If you sell for a living and don’t regularly go to seminars, read books, and listen to recorded programs on the art of selling you aren’t serious about selling as a career.

7. Build strong personal and professional relationships with customers. The best way to keep your competition from taking your best customers away from you isn’t by constantly lowering your price. It is by taking the time to build strong personal and professional relationships with your customers. By this I mean socializing with key customers and joining professional groups to which they belong and then being active in those groups. If you do those two things you make it infinitely harder for your competitor to take your key customers away from you.

8. Don’t waste your time on customers who pay slow, constantly complain, and who buy little of what you sell. As a professional salesperson, time is money and you need to spend your precious time in pursuit of big volume, good pay, and professional accounts that can buy millions of dollars from you over the years.

9. Develop your personal brand. By this I mean what are you known for in your market? How have you “branded” yourself? What do you do to set yourself apart from your competition? I used to do my own newsletter back in the days when I had to type it myself, take it to a copy shop, and mail it out. It wasn’t great but no one else I competed with did a newsletter so I won by default. In today’s world with e-mail and other technology tools, doing your own newsletter is much easier. This is just one idea. What else can you do to set yourself apart from the competition?

10. Outwork the competition. When I was in sales I started earlier and quit later than anyone else I knew of with whom I competed. When I couldn’t get an appointment with a workaholic who was always “too busy” to see me I would get his attention by asking for an appointment at 6 AM or on a Saturday. Workaholics were always impressed when I would propose appointments at such odd times. Back before cell phones I gave my customers my home phone number and encourage them to call me 24/7 whenever they needed anything. I’m always amazed when a salesperson who calls on me doesn’t return a call from me on Friday afternoon until Monday morning and then gives me the excuse that they turn their cell phone off over the weekend. You can be sure I never bother them again… with an order, or anything else.

In summary, selling isn’t hard, but properly done, it is hard work. Always keep in mind the old adage, “There is never a traffic jam on the extra mile”. The type of customers you want to sell will recognize that you are doing some or all of the above and, if you do it consistently, it will pay off. Take it from this tall, formerly skinny and shy guy.