Pause

What makes a brilliant salesperson? Some insights.

Earlier this week I attended a seminar for heads of small businesses seeking to build strong sales organizations. I expected the presentation to be about generating leads and the joys of consultative selling. Fortunately, this session encapsulated less tactical and more big-picture information. I learned some things about what makes a strong salesperson to be sure, and I also learned about what makes a strong business owner in the process. Afterall, business owners hire these people. We have to know what matters.

The presenter, Chip Doyle, offered some immediate ways to identify strong salespeople. I was relieved to hear that loudmouths, or unequivocally extroverted people need not necessarily apply.

Having built BlogHer's sales organization to its current level, I hardly match what I, myself, would envision as a salesy type (though the propensity to talk is there), and the more I dis-identify from that stereotype, the prouder I feel of my role. Rather than "close," I have this nagging desire to tell the right story to people. I feel compelled to let people know how things have gone right, what not to do, how to do things better based on what I've seen, and in the process sales occur. If I feel the client has learned something, I feel good about the transaction.

Though, Doyle warns, deriving too much personal self-worth from selling is dangerous. We know the types who sell high and live rather low, justifying the low with their sales record. But he warned of a related type, someone who is more concerned with being liked by the client than meeting goals. While strong follow-through often means more sales, we're not always going to do deals and make friendships simultaneously. Sometimes a client has to buy from you because they have to, not because of your astounding selling ability. Sometimes clients don't need your services, and there's not much you can do about it.

I recall a salesperson I worked with once who spent the bulk of his time on leads that weren't interested. On the one hand I admired his tenacity and refusal to be discouraged by the word no. On the other hand he wasted time with no's when he could have been getting to yeses. While a good salesperson has a strong drive to provide value and to win, she must also be willing to accept less-than-perfect fits and walk away from those who don't see your value. We (hopefully) learn this when we date: we must give relationships the college try, but if the other person isn't treating you as someone with commitment potential, move on.

I always believe in a consultative approach to selling, and yet, if a client isn't ready to hear what I have to say or has a different philosophy toward the industry and disagrees with my approach, I'm better off not shoehorning this sale into my program. Rather I can find clients that are open with my take, rack up a success with that client, and then re-connect with the skeptics.

Chip's take on strong sales candidates was psychological. There are types of people who can handle ambiguity much better than others; adding my own take, they can also extract tangible outcomes from ambiguity and know early whether to move on. Anyone who can change is capable of being a good salesperson. During the downturn, as the staff of the start-up I worked for dwindled from 90 to 40 to 20 to 10. I noticed that the people that stuck around were the adapters. They were fine with being moved into new roles, learning the intricacies of them, and leveraging others' knowledge to get up to speed quickly. With so few of us left we all had to take on some form of sales role. Our most successful cold caller was our assistant producer, who was used to having her role changed daily, and liked the challenge of penetrating new companies.

Belief that a no may be turned into a yes with more information about the client.

 

Avoid Bad e-Networking: The Unofficial Laws of Linked-In

My post on BlogHer.org this week. Sure, Linked-In makes networking easier, but it also can make bad networkers worse. Here, my thoughts on how to avoid being a digital outcast.

Armed and Dangerous: H-band now has his own blog--Urban Botanist

Maybe it was my trash-talking around our wedding, or the small burst of pleasure he got when he guest-blogged on Pause and some folks found his voice preferable to mine, or the annoyance of having to constantly answer the question, "Do you blog?" while accompanying me to some digital media shindig.

"No," he would say. "But I'm married to someone who does." This was all he felt he needed at the time.

The next question would inevitably come from his interrogator, "Oh...So then, what do you do?"

He would answer straightforwardly, "I'm a landscape architect."

And the response would always be the same, "Oh, cool, so you do, like, lawns and stuff?" which would elicit a reaction--perhaps even a lecture--about the importance of landscape design and sustainability.

Now H-band will have some cred with the digital dorks of the world, something beyond the fact that he reads Gizmodo, while simultaneously bringing the world up to speed on just how important green design and landscape architecture is--especially now, as our livable space and natural resources are shrinking.

Introducing Urban Botanist--my Baby's baby--where H-band (aka Jesse Markman) geeks out on plants, sustainability, and the joys of single-speed cycling (among every other kind under the sun, what, didya think he was a one-note?).

If anyone from SixApart can offer my husband some advice on getting his banner centered, it would really create some peace in my house. I never got my own banner to look right, so I left it as-is--as if it was intentional. He's a little less complacent with that solution.

Approaching My Blogging MidLife Crisis

I spoke on Friday at an event for small business owners in Phoenix. The topic of my talk: The power of blogging for small business owners. This is a favorite topic of mine, as I've practically lived the results and seen great things happen among my peers. I have to try and control my excitement as I tell people stories of how people have gone from office job to guru consultant in 12 to 18 months. Making success sound that easy scares people; it scares me, anyway. And I don't want blogging to be perceived as the Dexatrim of marketing tools--the quick fix, no-sweat-equity solution--despite my obvious excitement. I'm not selling Amway, after all; I'm evangelizing an important shift in media.

I tend to tone it down a bit; I insist that it takes work, time, and resources to successfully leverage blogging for your business before telling my stories of people's meteoric rise--at the very least a boost in the search engines.

Note: While I don't question the permanence of blogging as a media option, I do think that there will be a shift in the attention paid to bloggers, a shakeout if you will, of those who are simply doing this for quick spurts of Google Juice and free iPods from those who have integrated blogging into their lives as a means of authentic self-expression and self-promotion.

Also Note: I couple the words "authentic" and "self-promotion"; they don't cancel each other out. People can and should make money, get press, get attention from their blogs, if they wish. You CAN be an authentic self-promoter, but currently there's little distinction made by the bulk of marketers between people who blog and people who shill. Editorial standards and personal integrity will have to prevail if we are to make the Andrew Keens of the world wrong about blogs being the death of quality media. We'll have to determine which rung of Maslow's hierarchy we're operating from, and if it's a lower one, know it, own it, and expect fewer and fewer links in coming years. At the end of the day, things level out. The cream rises. Paris goes to jail, and the inauthentic lose attention.