So Your Easily Offended
Most seasoned Sales and Account Managers are not easily offended.
Instead, they have grown thick skin through the years and are in the habit of overlooking offenses. They will give the offender the benefit of the doubt and move on. I wish more people could learn what we have learned.
What about You?
I often see people that are always getting mad at something or someone. You never know what’s going to set them off. If they feel slighted, don’t get the attention they expect or feel they were in some way disrespected, they get mad or just sulk. I hear people say “they just wear their feelings on their sleeves so don’t worry about it”.
I can’t help but worry. If I have an account manager that fits the description above I know I have a serious problem and must take corrective actions. If we have a customer that is offended over the littlest of things I have a bigger problem. With that customer I often refrain from discussing anything that I think may make them upset or could possibly hurt their feelings and lose the business. This leads to not being able to have honest heartfelt discussions in many cases. I’m not sure who loses, me or the sensitive recipient.
Thinking about this topic, those that are easily offended (at least the people I’m thinking of) are some of the most insensitive when considering others feelings. I wonder if these types of people are mostly self-absorbed or just lack the self-confidence to just move on when they feel offended. I don’t think you can or should always “just move on” when you feel offended but it can’t always be an event. Heck, my feelings are just as sensitive as anyone else’s but you have to develop thicker skin and realize when you put yourself out in the world you will be challenged, disrespected and offended at times.
If you are not being offended “often” – you are probably not out there making a difference.
Sorry for the rant but take a tip from a seasoned salesman: toughen your skin, don’t make everything an event and don’t be so easily offended!
What’s your Specialty?
As I move into the world of Social Media I am struggling with the profile page. This is often referred to as the “About Me” section. I don’t know how much or little to tell the world about myself.
How much you tell about yourself is certainly a personal decision and everyone will make their own decisions. However, there is one section to the profile page that really has me thinking. This is the “What is your Specialty?” section.
Do you let others know what special skills you have? At work, do your customers and co-workers know that you are that go-to person if they have questions or need help with the things that are your specialties? I suspect in most cases you have demonstrated these skills and are already that person in the most obvious circumstances but are you sure?
I see times where someone is struggling with a problem, gets completely stumped and either gives up or makes a bad decision when help was standing right next to them or a phone call away. This person may be the type that is unwilling to seek help, which is a whole different discussion, but what if they did not know help was so close?
Each of us have skills and interests that are less obvious but no less important to our customers and co-workers. These are skills that may not be necessary in you present position but may have been acquired from a previous job or skills you just naturally possess. If you were for example: an electrician, forklift operator, waiter/waitress, worked with computers or captain of your chess club in school, I know you have special skills and interests that can be useful if we only knew.
The specialty and interests sections on the Profile Page are a great place to let these skills and interest be known. The key is you let everyone know!
I would like to take this one step further and ask that each of you think about, then write down the specialties and interests that you feel you have that can be beneficial to your customers. This list should contain skills and things about yourself that your customer may or may not know. Then for each account determine which of these skills would be most useful to that customer. Now share your results with your customer. I would also suggest that you share these results with your sales team and co-workers.
I think you will be surprised at the knowledge, talent and skills in your branch or office. By sharing your results with others you may also see skills that you need to develop and improve upon.
The Key is to let Everyone Know!
My Hardest Sales Call
Starting this blog reminds me of when I first became a salesman and had to make my first cold call. I put it off as long as I could. Worried myself sick. Drove through the parking lot several times. Then when I thought I was ready I put it off for another day.
Luckily, I had a great sales manager that encouraged me and had the patience to help a young insecure account manager get started. I knew what I needed to do and had no doubt I could do it but the time never seemed quite right.
Finally, I got the courage, parked my car, went inside and made my call. I would like to say I got a huge order and they are still a customer but that is not the case.
I’m not sure cold calls have ever gotten any easier for me but without a steady flow of new customers and products your business will eventually fail. We as sales managers must constantly encourage, train and sometimes demand our account managers to solicit new business. If we don’t have them make time in their schedule for cold calling and growing their accounts there will be a time when a customer retires, closes their business or moves their business to a competitor and they won’t have the skills to get back in growth mode.
I’ve seen very successful account managers struggle towards the end of their career simply because they did not keep adding new customers to their account package. Many of their once profitable accounts just slowly wither and die.
Every sales plan must have expectations and goals which require some form of cold calling or as we now refer to it as networking included in the plan. Look for more on effective networking in a future post.
Now back to starting a blog. What I did learn making cold calls was; putting off what I knew I needed to do and worrying myself sick didn’t make the sales call any easier. Without making cold calls I could have never got to where I am now, a much older insecure salesman putting off and worrying about starting a sales and sales management blog.
Time to Start!
For the past year I have been seeking a way to communicate my
thoughts and experiences in a timely and effective way. As a regional sales manager for a large wholesale distributor, I travel most days of the month. Most weeks something comes up or I read an article that I would like to get to our sales team to teach and inspire.
Email would be a timely way to get the information to our team but is not as effective as in person discussions. Waiting for weeks until I can make it to their location would be more effective but is certainly not timely. Email would also limit the discussion to those within my circle of co-workers and friends. In person training would further limit my reach to only co-workers and friends that I actually see.
So it is my hope that this blog site will be both timely and effective. I believe the topics and discussions I’m sharing will be interesting and beneficial to more than those I currently know.
Sales Managers, no matter what industry or products, have much in common. We must:
- Prioritize our efforts
- Create a sales process that is effective and repeatable
- Focus and target our energies
- Maintain and cultivate new and existing customers and products
- Repeat, repeat, repeat
The list above I believe are the basics and have been proven over time to be the skills we as sales managers work with our sales teams to learn and improve upon.
I have attended many sales seminars and worked with several national sales trainers and it seems these are the consistent topics. They may call it:
- Time management
- Sales cycle
- Show a target with an arrow in the center
- Prospect
- Do all over again
The challenge we all have is how to adapt the basics, which have in the past proven to be successful, to a quickly changing sales environment. We must now adapt our training to a younger sales team that has vastly different sets of skills than the sales team of just a few years ago.
We must also focus on teaching our existing sales team how to sell into a changing market that expects more than product knowledge and a lunch every once in a while.
Those who can find a way to meld the old with the new will have the greatest success and most enjoyment.
So here we go stepping into a new and exciting adventure called blogging. I welcome your comments and suggestions. I don’t have all the answers. Heck, some days I feel I have no answers. How about you!
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