After thirty years of corporate solutions sales, I had become quite disillusioned and greatly disheartened at the direction most companies were taking in directing their sales efforts. I decided to take a break from the rat race. Here’s what I came up with, so stand in front of the mirror and take a good look, because the next ten years are going to separate the great from the mediocre.
If you are leading a sales force that is breaking all desired goals on a consistent basis, you are doing everything correctly and there probably isn’t much help I can bring to the party. For the rest of you, tune in.
Predator Sales is a collection of straight up “how to” techniques that will help you or your salespeople close business. My site isn’t flashy because I don’t beleive in bullshit. All I’m interested in is results and Predator Sales will produce results.
Thirty years ago, when I first got into the sales game, the rules were simple. We received whatever little formal training the company offered, we were assigned a territory, and if, in three months time, we weren’t at or near quota with the trend lines going up we got dragged to the back of the building and had a figurative bullet shot into the back of our heads.
This was a sure incentive to the movers and shakers to get moving and shaking. It worked then, and it’ll work now. Darwin knew his shit.
The United States as a whole has been watered down with kindness and understanding. The last crop of college kids I worked with in the Fortune 500 world are entitled, enabled, and completely useless. After a year, many of them still hadn’t achieved more than thirty percent of their quota, yet they still had jobs!
I’m not sure how the math works in that model. Every sales model I’ve ever built was based on an average of eighty percent productivity. In order to cover base salaries, benefits and resources anything less than eighty percent was a model for financial loss.
In the past year, I’ve spoken to dozens of old salts still plugging away in corporate America and the story is the same all over. The sales departments in the companies are relying on the “Circle of Friends” model. Let’s just cover each other with “metrics” and “programs” and “restructuring” and we’ll all be fine. After all, the company needs someone to run the place.
The result of this methodology is that everyone is rising to the level of their own mediocrity. They are reaping the bitter herbs and hiding behind a poor economy. Sure the economy is tough, but a company should have adjusted its sales targets to match the downturn and subsequently made changes to the sales force.
For the sales people who bother to take an interest in this blog, you may learn something. For the upper management types that may be now or soon will be facing the axe of accountability, I am here to help you turn things around.
It’s not the economy that is impacting your numbers, nor is it your marketing, packaging, positioning or product that is at fault. It is your sales team.
These people are being led by ineffective management, using ineffective methods, and attaining poor results.
My close rate at my last corporate sales position was 96%. True, I only closed about 35% of my pipeline accounts in any set period, but I closed 96% of the proposals I presented. Do you understand the implications of that metric?
It’s not about pride, or gravitas, or getting a humanitarian award. If you want to win a Nobel Prize, run for office. They hand them out to anyone. The deal is about the deal. Closing business and doing whatever needs to be done to find it.
I didn’t waste any time pursuing businesses that were non-starters. Relentless prospecting in conjunction with effective use of CRM to build a profile of business that will close with grim certainty is the formula for success. My CRM was the mortar that built the foundation of success by allowing me to date and track business that required time to mature, and enabled me to use perfect timing to have business drop into my bucket like so many ripe plums.
You can bring in all the motivational speakers you like, or provide product training until you are blue in the face. You will still see the same results.
If you would like a gristly old hired gun to come in and turn your sales people into stone cold killers, I’m your man. I will customize a training syllabus for sales people, managers and training facilitators for your team. I will deliver the training with authoritative confidence borne out of years of painful experience. I will provide you with individual assessments of your team members based on their performance. I will follow up with your facilitators to ensure the program is implemented properly. I’m prepared to do whatever it takes except pat heads and rub tushies.
For all the corporate leaders who have the stuff to take a hard look and make some tough choices, reach out to me at jim@predatorsalesb2b.com and let’s discuss a program.
Bring your checkbook. My Uncle Vito the hit man used to say, “The fifty thousand dollars is for my expertise. The bullet is included.”
