When I work with managers and sellers in our business there's one issue that almost always comes up: Time. Finding it, managing it, understanding where it goes. Our business may not necessarily be more intense or frenetic than many others, but it can seem that way. And the very tools that are supposed to help us control time and manage productivity often have just the opposite effect. I can't solve all of your issues with the calendar and the clock, but if you're one of those who ends up asking "So what the hell did I end up doing all day?" at 6 pm, here are a few ideas.
There are several Trigger Words - and Phrases - but there are a couple of threads that tie them together: predictability and lack of specificity. In terms of the predictable, it's almost as if we've passed around a book called "Stuff Reps Say".... Lazy casual phrases that are tossed into emails and conversations with no real research or understanding. And even when the seller does have a clue about what their client might need, they talk about it so generally that it ends up falling flat with the customer.
While a pale reboot has recently hit the airwaves, there can only ever be one true MacGyver.
If you were a live, viewing American in the late-80s, you tuned in weekly to watch Richard Dean Anderson (in…
Shifting your focus to deserving - the sale, the account, the client's agreement, the budget increase - means you are now talking about (and rewarding) excellence. Winning is entirely out of your control: a team can do literally everything right and still have the ball bounce the wrong way. Deserving success is completely controllable. It's about preparation, work ethic, genuine empathy for the customer, diligence and grit. Deserving success means focusing on process and standards - on how (and how consistently) you play the game.
Embrace big ideas and take big swings. Approach each project and customer like you're in a position to really change the world for them. Great business relationships aren't built on "one percent better." You will be defined by your ambition for your customers, and lack of that ambition means you will be forgotten.
I want to send along a few gifts - sales ideas and insights I've shared with salespeople like you in workshops throughout the year.
Last week in this space I suggested that one unintended outcome of our decade-long dance with programmatic buying was the dark, dangerous alternative world we'd brought into being. Borrowing an analogy…
There are no serious spoilers in this post, so if you're not yet finished with season two of "Stranger Things" - or if you've not seen the Netflix show at all - you're safe. I'm giving nothing critical…
As we wrap up a year of political, social and business turmoil, a post about thanks might be seen as the ultimate Pollyanna gesture. But I believe that gratitude is what unlocks possibility and excellence.…
While the talent pool from which we draw is rich and talented, it is also ephemeral. Even though she's genuinely serious and committed about your opportunity, the new seller or account manager you're interviewing today already has a foot out the door. It's not that she's shallow or underhanded; she's just always thought differently about her career than you have about yours. She expects short term assignments with many, many teams over the arc of her career. And who can blame her? The speed at which companies and strategies are launched today is eclipsed only by the pace at which they are abandoned. Your rep is not thinking about ten years with your company because she can't imagine your company thinking of ten years of anything. Which leaves you, her manager, with the coach's dilemma.
The opposite of selling is describing. Selling means changing the outcome. It means turning a no to a maybe and a maybe to a yes. It means earning more favorable terms and protocols on a technology deal and overcoming the competition to have your content marketing program win the recommendation. Selling is persuasion. It's leaving the world a slightly different place then it was a few minutes ago.
The 21st century ad seller is a business problem solver. She doesn't wait for budgets, she helps create them. She avoids the watering hole where the herd gathers for RFPs and planning cycles. She knows more about how the client's business works - how he sells his products, who he sells them through and what gets them bought - than anyone but the client. She sells. Every day. But she doesn't sell ads. She helps the customer sell product.
