Having been in the industry for 27 years, I have seen many sales people come and go. Ours is a tough road to pave on a consistent basis, some come into the industry and light a fire in the first few months and then they seem to fall off the wagon. There are the seasoned veterans with 10+ years of experience, salespeople who know what they are doing and were doing it right and they then fell off the wagon. What is that? What makes most beginners and seasoned veterans lose their touch, their skills or their enthusiasm?
Some of the newbies that I’ve seen come and go were force fed with leads and accompanied by managers at the start of their copier sales career. Most of them had the art of communication but just lacked the product knowledge. When accompanied by their manager these newbies excelled, or was it the manager that excelled?
What about the seasoned sales people that had stellar sales cycles and then loses it. I have seen some of them lose it forever and just decide to get out of the industry altogether.
Most of us on the Print 4 Pay Hotel http://www.p4photel.com/ knows what it takes to sell on a daily basis; they are the ABCs of selling in any industry.
I will touch my own experiences in the field and experiences from others in the industry, it’s more or less what not to do to kill a salesperson.
Our job is not easy, I spend many countless hours researching account volume history, service history and the costs they have incurred over the life cycle of their piece of equipment. For some, selling the customer is easy (great closers), for others they must rely on grunt work, crunching the numbers and making them happen for the customer and presenting the customer with effective ROI’s. Sometimes, it gets old when you have negotiated with the customer, closed the sale and then have to negotiate with management to secure the order. I realize most of this will probably only happen on the dealer side of the channel. However, this tends to be on the top of my list.
Industry Trends: Not all but most Managements inability to know current industry trends, whether they are cpc’s, or document technology. Your competition, what they are doing and how they are marketing themselves. Management that cannot change on a dime or Management that has not done their homework with new technologies and services that can be offered. Management has a tendency to move slowly. I’ve noticed that there are many proactive dealerships that are putting the time and money into becoming the leading Dealers in the merging technology of copiers, printers and document management. Management more than ever needs to be experts in the industry, they need to eat, sleep, and breathe all aspects of the industry.
Vertical Market Selling: New salespeople are not focusing on vertical market applications or selling. Too many dealerships give their salespeople Carte Blanch and let them sell every product to every market! This creates a sales person that does not have enough product or solution knowledge to be effective in selling for gross profit. Gross profit is needed for the health of the dealership! The salesperson is then forced to selling boxes on price rather than solving a problem for a customer or saving them time with new technologies and software.
Training: Many dealerships offer little or no training at all. How can we put people on the street and ask them to sell solutions or be successful when they must decipher the products, features, advantages and benefits on their own time? Time is the key element in sales, time is needed to prospect effectively and find the customers who are ripe for the new services and products that dealerships offer. A true sales person prospects by day and quotes by night!
Selling: Owners in small to mid-size dealers selling machines or taking leads when there are capable sales people to handle the business. Selling Owners must get out of the selling business and focus on financing and marketing of their company. From a first hand experience from two different dealerships, I’ve seen Selling Owners not focus on their business! Taking leads away from competent salespeople and either making the sale or not. Talk about killing someone’s ego, or hurting them financially, nothing lowers the moral more than a salesperson finding out the owner took a lead in that territory. Owners (as long as they have a sales staff) need to focus on vendor or bank financing, expanding profit margins and the marketing of their company.
Commissions: More salespeople come and go because they do not get paid on time or the rules are changed during sales cycles. Some salespeople are paid commissions monthly, some bi-weekly and others earn bonuses either at the end of the sales quarter or the sales year. Changing pay schedules or changing how and when commissions are paid whether it starts bi-weekly and migrates to monthly or the other way around has got be one of the most frustrating times for sales people. Most of us earn 80% of the money we make in commissions or bonuses, changing or upsetting the commission flow may and can cause financial woes with any salesperson. Make a plan and stick to it.
Salespeople: Most sales people in our industry treat the job as a 9-4; most will blame someone else when they lose a sale or a customer. Most will never achieve their quarterly or yearly sales quotas. Most will find a job outside of the industry. Most of them could not care less what happens in their industry after 4PM in the afternoon. Most of them find time to hide and say they are producing work. Most of them will not last two quarters in this business.Yet there are many that are on top of their game and continue to further their knowledge to support themselves and their family and a lot of them make a very good living in the office equipment industry.
My article started out as to how a salesperson can “die” in our industry. How stellar achievers that were once on top were now designated to the trash heap or decided to leave their company for greener pastures. I felt like this story is more about the typical grind that we go through on a day-to-day basis. The great high’s we can get when we’ve closed a deal that we have been working on for months or years or the feeling when you meet someone for the first time and get the order that day, plus getting the price you deserve. Why is it when a customer needs info or a quote we call them ASAP and get them the information RIGHT AWAY. Then after trying to close the customer on numerous occasions you get an answer from the customer stating that they’ll call you in a week. Well it’s been five damn years and I’m still waiting for you to call me back!
In order not to let a salesperson die, companies need to focus on where their company wants or need to go. From there they need to give direction to the sales team for monthly, quarterly or yearly goals. Goals need to focus on new accounts, satisfied accounts and referrals from old accounts.
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