Garth's World

How to Stay “At Will” Employed

Last week I received an email from a friend of mine that matches a commonly seen one in these economic times- “please change my contact email to jimmyjoejoe@gmail; Acme Software and I have parted ways.” The main difference in this particular case was that my friend is a successful sales guy for a technology company that is doing well. He was not only tracking well above quota for 2009, but had literally just returned from club (top sales guys go to Hawaii with their families) for knocking it out of the park last year. No warning, no official layoff, no performance “plan,” no incident or behavioral complaint- just a 30- minute sit down with a sales manager that couldn’t return eye contact as he described that “the company is moving in a new direction” and “requires different skill set.”

Other than closing revenue from large companies in the middle of a recession, what “skill set” is required?  What a crock of sh^t. My friend just got “old boy networked” right out of a job by the new SVP of sales, who is steadily replacing everyone in his department with his cronies from his last job. It was going like clockwork- first the sales ops guy that gets everything done, then a regional VP here, a director there and finally the bag carriers in the plum territories. All with no little or no regard to objective performance.

Despite what you might hear about sales being “all about the revenue” and “numbers never lie,” office politics are alive and well in the corporate sales department. In fact, sales people are easy to cut- no one is going to notice an unfounded firing when the turnover is so high anyway.  The top management doesn’t care- they’re going to jettison the VP in 18 months anyway- so having the whole revenue generating team in a constant state of flux is the norm. You think this isn’t an environment ripe for political maneuvering?

I wish I had some advice for my friend as to how to keep his job (which he loved), or at least a way to make the departure hurt for the company (other than to lose a top revenue generator- which can be easily obscured by re-arranging sales credit, revenue recognition, billing, delivery, etc.). But the truth is there isn’t much to be done at this point. My friend was an “at will” employee, which as far as I can tell means that if you are in sales, your employer can bend you over “at” any time, and eventually “will.” Salespeople have to sign their comp. plan in blood every quarter, but when it comes to getting paid on deals after they are sacked (even ones that that closed and were delivered before the termination event)  all they can really do is hope that the CFO isn’t influenced by the VP (good luck with that one). Legally, their commission plan doesn’t hold up in court- just the employment agreement (“at will”). Look at any salesperson’s resume, even the good ones, and there are 5 jobs on there for every decade of experience.

However, there are a few things that a salesperson can do to at least be able to predict their future, if not own their destiny at a company.

1-      Understand the basic relationship between a salesperson and the company.  Despite the military and athletic team dogma, you are on your own. There is no such thing as company loyalty, because “the company” is not a person- it’s an ever evolving set of relationships between certain people in positions of power and how they interact over time. Even if one exec was raised by your parents and presents you his BFF blood oath of fealty that only buys you a year of employment in sales.  Leverage is what you need- not loyalty.

2-      Don’t give into the temptation to get bitter about intercompany politics and conditions. Of course your benefits are shrinking, “corporate doesn’t get it,” the department meetings are too long, marketing support is weak, etc. That’s why you get paid commissions and they get paid on salary- you are a business within a business.   Accept point Number 1, and you will realize that being the chief whiner internally hurts you as much as it would if you complained in front of clients.

3-      Spend at least a third of your time selling yourself within your own company. As unappealing as it sounds to certain types of people, this applies to all job functions and increases in importance the higher up the food chain you go. Achievements that aren’t properly bulleted in PowerPoint and graphed in Excel are like the sound of one hand clapping against the stadium applause of corporate life.

4-      Keep up with the executive musical chairs that are always going on at the top of any company hierarchy. Think of it as “identifying the economic buyer” for the most important sale you have going- your continued employment.

5-      Watch out for ideological shifts as to what the company does- particularly the products and services that are most “near and dear” to the management. Just because you have grown comfortable (and been loudly rewarded) selling large service deals doesn’t mean that the latest MBA charlatan hasn’t convinced the CEO (or worse yet, the board) that the company should really be focusing on small ticket product deals through the channel and you aren’t about to fall out of favor. All revenue is not created equal.

6-      Spend another third* of your time selling yourself outside the company. Always be on the lookout for your next gig. Then when the other shoe drops you can skip the melodrama and self doubt and really enjoy the period in between jobs for what it is- time off to live your life!

To my friend: Onward and upward, brother. Don’t lose that infectious, super positive attitude that you have over this blip on the radar.

*I realize that this leaves at most a third of your time for actually selling the customer. In my experience, that is more than enough time required for an efficient, disciplined salesperson to rock the number. Now pick up the phone and call a prospect and stop lollygagging on this blog!J

Checking out of the Hotel California

After 15 years in the Bay Area (think Beastie Boys:“livin’ on borrowed time-and borrowed money”), I’m packing up and returning to the East Coast.   As much fun as it has been ringing up debt while living in a glorified doublewide trailer on a postage stamp size lot, I finally have decided to proactively apply a tourniquet to my main financial artery. If all goes according to plan (what could possibly go wrong?), I will be adding money on a regular basis to my long forgotten savings account- and will no longer have intimate knowledge as to my neighbors’ (in three compass point directions) daily schedule.  Please don’t misinterpret my tone here- It has been a fantastic experience and I love Northern California and I will miss the weather and the broad-minded people every day for the rest of my life- but it is now long past time to explore a completely new place (and find fresh local standards of morality to debauch).

For many my next destination is a bit of a curveball, since I am a fast talking New England boy turned soft by west coast weather, attitude and wildly tolerant marijuana laws. We picked Charlotte, because:

a)      It is close, but not too close, to family- 2- hour plane ride to Boston

b)      Everything is cheaper- particularly houses

c)      We have good friends that live there and love it

d)     They have a relatively mild winter (I paid my dues growing up in the Vermont tundra)

e)      Thinking about my kids’ education doesn’t instigate a panic attack

f)       They love people from California there- at least realtors do ;-0

g)      Two words: “lakehouse” and “manspace”

I am NOT leaving Jigsaw (at least not voluntarily). I will still write the blog, be the face of Jigsaw to the Community, promote Sales 2.0, etc., as well as spearhead a small number of large biz dev deals. As far as my role of administering enough sarcastic abuse to Fowler to keep him from bugging everyone else on a daily basis- there will need to be reinforcements. I will commit to a steady stream of (de-) motivational emails and advice as to the correct placement of shiny objects for instant redirection of unwanted CEO attention.

Anyway, I am moving the last week in July. Be on the lookout for signs that this blog was written by a guy in swim trunks on his boat…

Drinking “The Speed of Trust” Kool-Aid

Last week, I was informed by my marketing department that I needed to drop everything and get on a plane to fulfill another founder-type duty - in this case, hosting a Jigsaw- sponsored “Business at the Speed of Trust” seminar in Seattle. At first I was totally annoyed for a number of reasons:

1) My wife hates surprises, particularly ones that involve me leaving suddenly

2) It’s the other founder of Jigsaw that loves reading trendy business books and trying to   implement changes based on his learnings.

3) My first job was selling at a similar business celebrity seminar and I was ready for stressed out handlers trying to contain a self absorbed, plastic tyrant snake.

4)  The speaker is a second generation motivational guy- his father is the “7 Habits” guy.

5)  Sitting in a room with 150 people for 3 hours without talking is impossible for me.

6)  I go to Seattle once a month anyway for large deals that I am working on and let’s just say the “Jigsaw Co-Founder is here” novelty has worn off.

7)  I was right in the middle of negotiating the sale of my house- which only exacerbated point number 1.

Anyway, despite my sarcastic vein (exoskeleton) I am a company guy, so I emailed the Franklin Covey contact and figured out what was required. I needed to present a small “non-product  pitch!” talk about how trust was critical to Jigsaw, introduce Stephen M. R. Covey (writer and chief evangelist of “The Speed of Trust”), moderate a lunch discussion and generally “work the session” by locating and talking up selected prospects and customers of Jigsaw- not an experience for my Bucket List, but its not going to kill me either. I had read (skimmed) and discussed the book for one of Jigsaw’s (supposed-to- be-quarterly-but-not-so-much-anymore) management training sessions, so I figured I could paint Homer Simpson’s awake eyes on my eyelids and snooze through the day.

I’m happy to report that I was completely wrong about the seminar and the speaker. And embarrassingly enough, I have been quoting the book and actually put some of the tenets to work in closing on my house.

First of all, Stephen M. R. Covey is the real deal. Not only is he a former CEO, but he backs up all his anecdotes with metrics, case studies and video footage. In person (“offstage”) he was warm, remembers your name and company, asks questions and actually listens to your answers. He generally shows all the traits of a regular person who isn’t completely blinded by his own BS. For someone that that presents 150 days a year, in 30 countries in the last 2 years to heads of state and captains of industry, he amazed me with his patience and willingness to engage in earnest discussions with everyday business people. This much positive reinforcement would have devolved me into a drug addled shut- in that delivered robot-like performances through the popemobile. But not Mr. Covey. He is a guy that obviously believes in his "trust" message and actually lives his life according to the principles of the book.

To try and stuff a synopsis into 2 paragraphs won’t do the book or the seminar justice (Google it if I have piqued your interest). Instead I’ll list a few cryptic statements or observations that you can truly appreciate once you become a believer that “Nothing is as fast as the speed of trust.” 

1) Best example in practice is the coffee and doughnut vendor that lets his customers make their own change - and doubles his business overnight.

2) “Talk straight” is the first behavior that establishes trust. True-dat!

3) Lawyers and venture capitalists are speed bumps on the trust highway.

4) The times we are living in now (credit default swaps, steroids, sex scandals, bank failures, nuclear stand offs) desperately require a good dose of Covey’s principles.

5) Sales guys the world over should read this book. Or look at the pictures.

6) With the vast amount of information available on the internet, it is the customers that are doing the most lying in corporate America now.

7) Bellevue, WA is a little slice of yuppie paradise.

Sales 2.0 Alive and Well

Last week I returned to where it all started for me in sales (Boston) to attend the 4th installation of the Sales 2.0 Conference. As one of the original sponsors and self professed member of the Sales 2.0 Mafia, I might be somewhat biased (if you haven’t noticed that fact while reading this blog then you are seriously tone challenged), but the conference has really grown from a choir of insiders and vendors singing to itself into a valuable networking and learning experience for Sales and Marketing VP’s. After his introduction of the dorkiest “Sales 2.0 greeting” of all time, Selling Power’s Gerhard Gschwandtner recovered by correctly pointing out the “elephant in the room” economy that is driving companies to create more revenue with less resources. From there the speakers overall did a good job of holding the attendee’s attention.  More importantly for me (A.D.D. boy), the breakout area near the main conference room  was buzzing with conversation between real executives  from an impressive array of companies. Here are some observations:

The keynote speaker was delivered by Eric Berridge, Co-founder of Bluewolf. I had only heard of those guys as one of the main consulting partners of Salesforce, so when this ex-Oracle, Gordon Gecko type (I mean this as the highest compliment) got up and started smoothly booming out the way to “Accelerate Sales in a Down Economy” I was ready to tune out what I figured would be an ode to the Sales Shark. Imagine my surprise when he stated that executive management  needed to focus on the culture and personalities of the actual salespeople to find the process that works for their company, and ended with a touching scene from an add pitch in the television show Mad Men.  Throw in the fact that he suggested that sales people needed to know how to write since they spend so much time emailing and writing custom proposals and I almost jumped in the line to kiss his butt at the break. Almost.

The next presentations were grouped by topic, with three 10- minute customer testimonials given by actual customers from the vendor sponsors, followed by audience Q&A with the panel. The quality varied in direct proportion to the presenter’s oratory ability, but the Q&A brought out the real meat. I thought our (Jigsaw’s) presenter, Dan Maier from PTC, did a great job and had the firmest command of the topicJ At one point Gerhard drew attention to a poll on Selling Power’s website  about what company is the best for prospecting and lead generation. To date Inside View is winning, which is preposterous, not because they are a competitor (they aren’t), but because all their valuable contact data is provided by Jigsaw. Please link out and vote right now for Jigsaw:

http://www.sellingpower.com/homepage/index.asp

 I personally love those guys, but homey plays to win!

The last panel was entitled “Social Networking in a Sales 2.0 World.” I know three of the four panelists personally (Nigel Edelshain, Anneke Seley and Trish Bertuzzi- love all of ya) and I knew this might be a contentious topic for skeptical sales types (like me), so I held off on my natural urge to start the cocktailing early. I was not disappointed: each of the speakers had some good points and examples of salespeople using social media, but Ken Melchin from Neocase Software was ready to take them to task about the potential for wasted productivity. Citing a walk across the sales floor of his company with a well known, fiery, bald Microsoft executive, Melchin pointedly asked the panel how it was a good thing that 75% of his sales people had Facebook open on their desktops during the workday. They fielded the questions aptly (if somewhat defensively) by stating that just like Solitaire or personal calls, these activities could be discouraged by holding reps to strict productivity metrics. We had a similar debate in our Idaho office about Instant Messenger- ultimately I think people (including me)  probably abuse it at work, but in the end we’re not babysitters and employees that don’t  hit their numbers walk out of the office with their sh^t in a cardboard box so it’s not a big deal.

All in all, I’m a huge fan of the Sales 2.0 movement and conference. The next one is slated for Chicago in September- maybe I’ll see you there?

PS- Here’s a shout out to Garth Rose (the other Garth) and all the ex-OECers that I saw back in Boston!

Feeling the Flow

On every sales team I’ve worked on there has always been at least one guy (sorry, it is usually a male) that has worked his way into a comfort zone of hilarity on the telephone. Walking by his cube while he is on the phone with prospects, you always pause to listen, like catching a Barry Bond’s at bat back in the day. While everyone else seems to fumble and grope their way past daily objections and other borderline (and outright) insults, this person just smilingly deflects and chuckles his way to a positive outcome. Even if there is no deal, the customer leaves the phone call with a couple of funny expressions to tell.

This week’s blog is a compilation of one liners from Adam Wiebe, now of Infowelders, a sales guy who was so good (and shamelessly hilarious) on calls that his cube mate wrote out his best 50 lines and sent them out on the dork net a few years ago. Thanks to Michael Clifford from Salesforce, who introduced me to Adam and sent me this list the first time.

 

Keep in mind these gems are from actual conversations with a customer...

 

1)  I don’t wanna be a fly on your face

 

2)  I know being on a new vendor call is like a trip to the dentist 

 

 3)  I don’t want to sell you a little webby thing

 

4)   Let me put my sales hat on

 

5)  I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask

 

6)  Some people might say shame on me for not knowing their business, but I say     shame on them for not at least taking a look at what we have to offer.

 

7)  If I take the time to write the email is it really going to go anywhere?

 

 8)  I would like the professional courtesy of a callback

 

9)  New concept PRM which is like CRM’s little sister

 

10)  I will put on a pair of Desert Boots and run to Milwaukee for the meeting

11)  I will call the dogs off on Lisa…

 

12)  We allow you to take a slight haircut…

 

13)  The heavy 747 is starting to lumber down the runway

 

14)  I’m on bended knee

 

15)  I think we got a little too much of a good thing going on here

 

16)  The word document starts with the letter “D”

17)  I know you must get pounded by so many software vendors out there telling you that they can make you thinner and let you spend more time with your family but…

 

18)  I’m dry powder… I’m ready to do something.

 19)  That’s what gets the wax out of his ears….

 

20)  They do wear a different uniform than you guys but they play the same game.

 

21)  We tackle big problems and take out big thorns from big elephants.

 

22)  I will be a respectful pest over the next few months.

 

23)  You are very daring to mention that you are working on projects… I love projects.

 

24)  I will just be a professional pest and give you a call next week.

 

25)  That is more of our sizzle than the steak in our offering.

 

26)  It’s kind of like when you are fat, you know you are fat but when the they come and circle it with a red pen then nobody is happy. (Offline, not to a customer)

 

27)  Hi I appreciate how fast you work but don’t transfer me I have a question.

 

28)  It’s good stuff man… it’s better than rocket science.

 

29)  You know what we need… somebody to say ‘No’ to SAP and tell them that will be a $30M filing cabinet.

 

30)  Everything can be bought Chinese Menu style.

 

31)  I’m not looking to split the atom here with you.

 

32)  We are based here in Silicon Valley so we don’t have to baby talk high tech manufacturing.

 

33)  I’m calling to follow up on a box we sent out … I’m guessing from the silence that you haven’t received it yet

 

34)  How do we go from being in a good light to being in a bad light without you ever speaking with us?

 

35)  I'd hug you if you were here.

 

36)  Our applications are a little on the expensive side because they do come whole hog.

 

37)  Do you have 3 minutes for an introductory call? Don’t worry I will start the egg timer and not run over.

 

38)  I know a new vendor call is like nails on a chalkboard but…

 

39)  Do I sound like a wing nut?

 

40)  I’m off my sales horse now… is it working for you.

 

41)  We have a pretty good mousetrap but you have to see it to believe it.

 

42)  (In a southern accent) These last few years have been such a spending orgy that people are in a runaway freight train and the bridge is out.

 

43)  You don’t know me from Adam although my name is Adam.

 

44)  Is there anything I need to bring or just have my sharpest pencil?

 

45)  I will cut my own throat is there something we can help you out with?

 

46)  We went around the gym with them about 60 laps, they’re a large organization

 

47)  I need one more magazine subscription to go to Hawaii but they pay me to get requirements.

48)  Are they going to do something for 4 grand? I’m an old dope smoker from way back but am I hearing it right?

 

49)  At the very least we can open up the kimono on RSI…

 

50)  I’m not looking for government secrets anything but rather just general information.

Show me the Money (and the outside job you promised)

Recently I had lunch (At El Metate in Belmont, which still brings it) with a young sales guy and he asked me a question that I hear all the time: How can I ask my company to promote me to outside sales? As he should have been able to tell from my long winded, anecdote laden answer, I really don’t know. The truth is, the only time I’ve ever made any type of real leap was when a) I joined a new company or b) my leverage had grown so disproportionate to the short timer sales management around me that I threatened (and was fully prepared) to leave. Absent of those two circumstances, particularly in a down economy, solving that age old challenge has not been my forte. But since this is a blog, I can write, not do.

Let’s start with what not to do. The first time I asked for a raise was after I had been in sales for a year. I had survived the “topgrades” that replaced 8 out of 12 young sales people, worked or travelled 100 hours a week, accounted for about 40% of the company’s revenue, managed the top customers with the most CEO attention, and was making a $27K salary with a commission rate of .25% on deals. Easy case to make. My solution? After a particularly miserable day of sales calls in which I drove around Massachusetts in 90 degree, humid weather in my college beater Subaru with no air conditioning, I ran into the other sales guy who had the same situation as me. We compared stories until we were lathered up into a fury of righteous indignation and then marched into our manager’s office to have “a chat.” We peppered him with details of the lousy product we sold, how we travelled on Sundays, the hardware partner reps that made ten times what we did, how we hadn’t had a day off since college, had to put up with all the crazy CEO dinners, couldn’t park out front, etc., and wrapped it all up by telling him that we deserved to be making more money. He basically threw us out of his office- and he should have- because we didn’t do the following:

  Get an executive champion: The first challenge that anyone needs to overcome while trying to move up is not specific to sales; it’s the classic phenomenon of pigeonholing. If you get your start at a company as the receptionist, everyone gets used to seeing you answering phones at the front desk and buying the CEO’s mother’s day cards.  Changing people’s original perception of you in the smiling monkey tree called corporate life is very difficult. If you present your case for promotion to your immediate manager, he sees you as Fred Savage (or Judge Reinhold, for that matter) in Vice Versa- a kid trying to talk, look and act like an adult. So ignore your sales manager on this one- that should come naturally- and enlist the highest ranking person that you have charmed in some way to help you move up.

Prepare your case: Have all your numbers and past success metrics right at your fingertips. Find out what other companies (competitors a bonus) are paying and how they are promoting their reps. If you want to be an outside rep, match all your competencies to what the current bag carriers are doing. If you think you should be a manager, show that you can enable results, “see the bigger picture” and embody whatever other happy horsesh^t trends are in the business books for management these days. Know exactly what (or how much) you want and make all points lead to that result.

Nail the event: This is a personnel decision, which is a confrontation that makes even the coolest executive get all squirrelly. Formalize the meeting on the calendar. It is not OK for the person to multi-task while you present your case, nor is it something you can work out in the car on the way to a customer. If the person won’t agree to look you in the eye and give you their undivided attention then suggest another time and venue- like maybe the HR manager’s office.  Once you have the gravity of the situation down, stick to the objective points (nobody cares what you “deserve” and everyone has bills to pay) and don’t get emotional. After all, you’re just stating the facts. Just like sales meetings- be confident but not cocky. Then ask for a timetable for when you will get what you want and/or a list of things that need to be fulfilled in order to get them. Don’t leave without next steps firmly in place, and a promise that this will be IN WRITING by a certain date. And for heaven’s sake do it alone.

This is all I got. Good luck. Hey- you can always fall back on Plan B- b^tching about the man holding you down guarantees you a place amongst friends at the local bar.

Garth

BTW- I’m really not any better at this than I was 15 years ago- just ask Fowler.

Jigsaw Data Fusion - Diamonds in the Cloud

Warning: This post is one of those Jigsaw promoting articles that fulfill my responsibility to marketing (remember they do all the heavy lifting for Garth’s World) to occasionally push product. I will use several nauseatingly popular expressions and (attempt to) avoid overtly ragging on any Jigsaw executives, internal processes or partners- which I think makes this drivel worth reading most weeks.

Shortly after we founded Jigsaw, a sales guy friend of mine who had started and sold his own data company told me that “how seamlessly you deliver the data to your customers is as important, if not more important, than the quality of the actual data.” Since my perspective on business information at the time was solely that of a sales guy, I of course dismissed this statement as the typical ramblings of a first time entrepreneur traumatized by the tech melt down. If a lead came to me with an incorrect phone number or email, there wasn’t a pretty enough application, spreadsheet or marketing intern in the world that made the  contact profile worth the time I spent following up on it. Well, six years and countless customer meetings later, I now know that:

a)      The enterprise data customer isn’t a sales guy

b)      My friend nailed it

This is why I am particularly happy with Jigsaw’s latest data-as-a-service offering, called Data Fusion. When our offering was limited to a team subscription to Jigsaw.com for salespeople or a list purchase for marketing, our sales guys used to have to break into advanced hieroglyphics and hand shadow puppetry in order to translate our value to the enterprise data decision makers (who again are not marketers or salespeople). It was as if we were Antwerp diamond wholesalers trying to sell engagement jewelry directly to Chase and Buffy in Peoria.  Yeah, we had the big diamonds for great prices, but we didn’t understand how to deliver them on a ring- and we were speaking Belgian (or Stella-clog windmill or whatever).

Now, with Data Fusion, everything is so easy for the owner of the CRM or prospect database. Jigsaw takes all your crappy, incomplete data and keeps it up-to-date with nightly downloads from all the thousands of refreshes we get from our Community of almost 900,000 members. Data Fusion also comes with Unlimited prospecting licenses for your sales people- so they never have to rent from the sad-sack rental lists, crawl the web or play the Admin shuffle cold caller game. Best of all, this whole process is automated through your Salesforce.com (with our new Open API soon to be “CRM company X”) system- no buying software, procuring data, learning new systems, or trying to teach your sales guys anything. And- it’s priced per license, per month- so even (like everything else Jigsaw) SMB’s can take advantage of the goodness.

Data in the cloud- it’s like diamonds in the sky.

Garth

PS- Data Dinosaurs- you know who you are- “welcome to the jungle, baby- you’re gonna die!!!!

Stressed out Sales Guy

   During  the brief period at my first job (maybe a week) when I was being “trained,” I couldn’t wait to get into sales because I mistakenly thought, like most people that have never done carried a bag, that it was a cake walk compared to all the other jobs in the frenzied software startup.  After hearing presentations by harried HR people, distracted executives, frazzled tech guys,  and a customer service rep who acted like Tweek from South Park, I was dazzled by the tanned, well spoken, confident, funny and seemingly carefree sales guy. How could that guy be stressed? In the rare times he was in the office, he was always on his way out to dinner, yucking it up with some customer or leaving to get on a plane to some exotic sounding place-like Phoenix (keep in mind I was from VT and had been on a plane exactly 3 times). He was the only older person that always seemed to be at the mid week Happy Hours. It wasn’t until a bunch of us newbies went to see Glengarry Glen Ross that I began to get a whiff of the pressure cooker that was in my future.

The truth is sales can be right up there with air traffic controller, inner city teacher and first time mother for causing a state of semi-permanent “fight or flight” response. I used to mock other salespeople that showed signs of stress, but over the years I’ve witnessed and fallen victim to enough random symptoms to realize that how you manage stress is probably the most important component of your success and happiness. As a nail biting, fidgeting, absent minded, random sleep habit guy (I wrote this at 3:45AM) with an eye twitch about 1/3 of the year, I’m no Anandmurti Gurumaa. But maybe some of the techniques I have stumbled into over my 17 years of living life with quarterly quotas can help somebody out there who secretly envies the homeless guy that you saw peeing on your client’s doorway because he doesn’t have to present an ROI analysis to a roomful of skeptical tech dorks and he’s never been “on plan.”

1-      Control what you can. Unlike most other jobs, working more or harder in sales doesn’t mean success. Combined with the fact that the decisions that rule your life are made by someone else, usually when you are not present, this lack of control basically defines stress. So get a grip on what you can regulate. Start with your schedule. Our COO at Jigsaw is sales genius and has a capacity for work that is truly astounding, but the guy is ten minutes late for everything and constantly in a rush. This could be avoided if he took  5 minutes to look over his schedule each day and injected some realism into the agenda (e.g. it takes more than 10 minutes to get to the airport in traffic or talk to Fowler (CEO) about anything).

2-      Worry about one thing at a time. My thoughts about multi-taking are well documented. But salespeople also need to break down large, amorphous worries like “OMG- my quota is so big” or “my pipeline is pathetic” into single pieces that can be acted upon. Block off time to prospect every week where you don’t think about your 2 deals that are going south fast. When you are “all hands on deck” reacting to a customer problem, don’t open up that contract file full of redlines from your current deal.

3-      Respect your body. Given my past (OK, present) lifestyle MSFT Word is actually rejecting these words as I write them as the pinnacle of hypocrisy, but overall physical health has to be a priority to be an effective salesperson and avoid burnout over the long haul. Whatever your vices are: candy, alcohol, smoking, sniffing glue, no exercise, MMO weekends, Plushie conventions, ignoring injuries- eventually everyone needs to rein it in. 

4-      Balance your life.  It is so easy to fall into the trap of prioritizing work over everything, all the time.  But before you know it, work is all you do- and it still isn’t enough. Guess what, there is a never ending supply of deals to do, emails to act on and calls to make. If you don’t have a personal life put it on your critical success factors list for your manager if that’s what has to happen to get you to balance. Get a hobby.  Force yourself to take every vacation day you have coming- plus whatever time you can swindle on top.

5-      Get Connected. Ironically, even though a sales person spends the entire day communicating with people, they are usually keeping an emotional wall between themselves and everyone else. Sort of like being alone in the crowd. If you travel for work then isolation can get even more pronounced. As much as you don’t feel like it, reach out and have personal conversations and exchanges during the day as a break from the constant goal oriented conversations you need have to hit your number. Better yet, make friends with your customers and everyone feels better.

6-      Laugh. If you’re not lucky enough to think that just about everything is absurd, then search out your own comedy. No matter how tightly wrapped you are, you’re going to die, no one really gives a sh^t about the Cisco account, so you might as well get the hiccups once in a while.

PS. I think all my foul language and insensitivity to “corporate speak” has worn off on our marketing department. Check out the survey link below.  Basically we’re asking our community to help us “Doom Zoom ” by voting on the image that best conveys how much crawled or scraped data sucks compared to Jigsaw- and the images are hilarious.

http://enterprise.jigsaw.com/landings/micropoll/doom.html

Wake up Skippy, your Pipeline is Leaking

Last week I alluded to a future blog post wherein I would outline circumstances that indicate that a deal is going south or was never a real opportunity. To be perfectly honest, the comment just popped out of my head as window dressing around three funny stories I wanted to tell.  Sort of what I call a “California yes,” as in “yes, I’ll come to your BBQ this weekend” when in fact I’ve already got six other commitments. Or registering and logging in to a webinar at 10AM on a Tuesday (or anytime, really).  Sure,  I’m taking in all this valuable info about “using Twitter as a platform to run marketing communications and business development “ as I talk on the phone, respond to email, IM our Idaho office, switch around my fantasy baseball team,  and do whatever multi-tasking type non-activity I can to feel productive.

However, Steve Gershik called my bluff in his comments, and even did me the service of naming two great examples of when he realized revenue had passed him by. So now, with my full attention engaged ( as far as you know), here are a few more conditions to be on the lookout for  to help you sniff test whether or not you are chasing your tail.

Useless Coach:This is by far the most common time waster for salespeople. It happens to the best of us once in a while, mainly because speaking to the coach is a crutch- they’re friendly, they take your calls and respond to emails, they tell you positive things, and they get just enough done for you to rationalize (to yourself and your unwitting sales manager) that you’ve got a big fish on the line. Except produce substantial results- the meeting with the DM, a contract, any money changing hands.  This is why any manager worth his salt implements hard and fast stages for each opportunity that require tangible and recordable actions.  Unless you want to go into business development, you eventually have to put Mr. Congenial into a headlock and choke out the money.

Education Degradation: This is when the customer is taking advantage of the salesperson’s willingness to provide endless “education,” complete with presentations from executives, subject matter experts, and other highly valuable resources, but has no intention to buy anything. The worst result of this is when the customer “goes to school” on you and then builds a subset of your product on his own or worse yet goes with a competitor. If you’re going to be the teacher then make sure you’re the tenured professor who gets paid for guest lecturing and writing books, not the TA b^tch for an online school.

The Reversal: We get this one at Jigsaw all the time, because we sell to salespeople. Basically while you are trying to move your sales cycle along, the prospect is trying to sell your company. This can be a very tricky proposition, because you want to show good faith and help the company in any way you can without getting your deal tied directly to their success selling their commodity widget. The last thing you want to do is waste time sitting through their sales meetings with your surly CIO with whom you had to burn a favor in order to get him to not summarily declare that their product sucks. Also, check your comp plan because many times a services trade is a wash and you don’t get paid.

Board Room End around:  This is when you’re doing everything right, but at the 11th hour some random executive appears and trumps your deal , either by outright killing the project or awarding it to another (usually much larger or the incumbent vendor). This condition is very hard to sniff out, as most of the time your customer doesn’t even see it coming. The Data Dinosaurs rely on their age-old connections to try and squash Jigsaw deals instead of improving their product to compete- that’s why they’ll end up in the tar pit.

In general, the way to avoid all of these pitfalls is to:

a)      Always expect them

b)      Require a return value for every action you take. (e.g. If I bring my expert then you bring the guy who signs the check)

Get as many points of reference from within the organization as possible. Talk to everyone that will listen.

p.s.- Check out an interview interview I did on the Funnelholic blog.

 

Three Deals that just Weren’t Going to Happen

After you’ve been in sales for a while, you get a Spidey-sense for when a deal is going south. Maybe your main point of contact goes dark on you. Or you meet the “economic buyer” (if there really is such a person anymore in this decision-by-absentee-corporate-committee we now live in) and he just doesn’t seem that psyched about your widget. Another common occurrence is that you run afoul of an “office of business suppression”- in Jigsaw’s case the Privacy Police - but other products get caught up in IT security reviews, the legal department, a government oversight committee, the standards board, the procurement maze or any other penalty box type organization whose main focus is too grind commerce to a halt in the name of some bureaucratic ideal or another. Whatever the situation may be, good sales people need to be able to anticipate all possible impediments to their deal and learn to read the subtle signs that they have fallen into one of the many pitfalls along the road to a successful transaction.

Someday I’ll think hard on it and try to enlighten you with some of those beacons. Right now I want to relate a few deals that I have been involved with that blew up in such a blaze of glory that even the most sunny side -up (to the point of delusion) sales manager would yank  them off the forecast.

Dot Bomb Car Company goes belly up: In February of 2000 I was selling web analytics as a 5K- a- month subscription to dot com companies. It was like the Lucy the Seal driving around ATT&T Park firing free t-shirts out of a cannon. Fish in a barrel. By June the stock market was in tatters and my company had switched to selling enterprise software (same product of course) for $500K, but it still wasn’t clear how pervasive the failure was going to be. After a few warm up meetings with one of the ecommerce car companies, which had a warehouse full of engineers and web designers during my other visits, I had arranged to introduce the founder of my company to the executive management of FreeAutoForLife.com. Everything was going swimmingly until I excused myself to go to the bathroom. Imagine my surprise when I walked out of the executive wing and took a good look at the cube farm. What was once a scene right out of the NYSE trading floor now looked like Home Depot- not a human in sight! Had I checked www.f^ckedcompany.com before the meeting I would have known that they laid off basically everyone in the company. We were meeting with a few whack job early execs clinging to a dream. It was all I could do not clip off my executive in mid sentence in my haste to exit the building.

Sorry, Can’t Speak Right Now: Another time I was trying to sell software to a large East Bay products company and had set up a meeting for my tech guy and me to meet the CIO . I had the technical team basically convinced that our software worked (like that really matters) and now I had to “paint the business vision” for the CIO. Against my better judgment, I let my SE drive the rental car to the meeting. (Although he was legally able to drive, we were late and had to fly to get there, and let’s just say he was from an area of the world better known for their MSG- laden delivery food than for their driving skills.) He was fine on the highway, but when he tried to enter the company parking lot without slowing down  we did at least three complete 360s and came to a stop with two wheels jacked up on the front curb of the company. I figured no damage, no injuries (at least none apparent immediately) so let’s get to that meeting- right? Well, we sit down in the CIO’s office and I realize that my heart is beating a hole in my chest and I can’t speak. Words were coming out on top of each other in gibberish like Steve Carell’s character in Bruce Almighty. My tech guy tried to take over but his face is beet red and he’s sweating like a crystal meth addict. Add in the fact that I’m 23 years old, he’s 21, and the CIO is probably 60. We were ushered out after a polite 30 minutes and I never got a another call through to even a temp engineer.

2 Frat Boy Jackasses: I moved to San Francisco when I was 24 years old as the first remote employee from a rapidly growing software firm.  Still learning to “juggle corporate life and personal life,” I was a snappy Ivy League guy in a suit by day and booze bag Gen Xer in jeans at night. Anyway, I had been working on getting a technical presentation at Lawrence Livermore Labs (that’s right I named them-I will never be going there again anyway) for 6 months, and finally scheduled the meeting. We flew out our best product manager (also 24) and the meeting was set for a Friday morning at 10.

He arrived just in time to go out Thursday night, which at that time in my life was “mid-weekend.” We hit the town hard and probably wandered back to my apartment at 2AM.  The next morning we jumped in the car with just enough time by my soggy calculation (one minute per mile) to reach the Labs.  Unfortunately, not only did we arrive in Livermore15 minutes late, but the ensuing security clearance took 30 minutes, so all told 2 whipper snapper guys with gelled hair, shiny suits, bloodshot eyes and brewery breath walked into the conference room one hour late! As the group of no less than 25 engineers re-congregated with their short sleeve dress shirts and pocket protectors, we could have been demoing a product that re-grew hair on live heads in 60 seconds and it wouldn’t have gone over. I chalked it up to my winning personality and most servile performance to date that we weren’t led out at gunpoint.

So there it is. I’m not sure if there is a tip or lesson contained in these three stories, but I have hundreds of them and what better forum to get them published