sacha chua living an awesome life

I spotted an intriguing book today. Creating Rainmakers: The Manager’s Guide to Training Professionals to Attract New Clients. The book is expensive, but I’ll go back and browse through it tomorrow to see if it’s worth buying.

On Technorati: book, sales, evangelism

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Are you turned off sales because you think everyone has to be a pit
bull? When most people think of sales, they think of in-your-face
salespeople who just won’t take no for an answer. I have to confess
that even *I* have a hard time remembering that I don’t have to be
like that in order to enjoy and do well at sales.

I’ve read a lot about sales, but books tend to be generic sales tips
that try to apply to everyone. How to start. How to ask questions. How
to close. How to build relationships.
Salesdogs
was the first book I read that talked about personalities. Salesdogs describes five “breeds”.

• Pit Bulls: will always go for the jugular
• Golden Retrievers: love customer service and will do anything for clients
• Poodles: intellectual, classy, appearance-oriented, but a little high-strung
• Chihuahuas: combine passion with product knowledge; tends to yip if overexcited
• Basset hounds: loyal to the end, great at building relationships

I’m a Chihuahua through and through. (No, not just because I’m small!)
I *love* absorbing vast quantities of information, and ferreting it
out myself if I must. Learning the product inside and out? Combing the
Web for testimonials in order to find differentiating points? Getting
inside people’s heads? That sounds exciting! I’m always reading,
always trying things out, because I love knowing that one obscure
little thing that’ll get someone hooked. My weakness is that when I
get really excited, I tend to overwhelm people… <laugh>

Pick up the book and find out what kind of salesdog you are. Better
yet, find out how you can improve your performance and that of other
people around you. Don’t have time or can’t stand cheesy metaphors?
Coral.net.au has a great summary of the
different Salesdogs breeds,
including tips for managing them.

You don’t have to be a pit bull. Figure out your personality, play
to your strengths, and cross-train.

On Technorati: sales, books

Random Emacs symbol: custom-save-faces – Function: Save all customized faces in `custom-file’.

I had a terrific conversation with Kevin Magee
over coffee and chocolate chillers at Second Cup this morning. I met
him very briefly at the Mesh planning party—in fact, while I was on
my way out—but within a minute he had set me at ease, established a
connection, and left me looking forward to chatting with him some
other time.

We finally had the opportunity to catch up today, and I’m glad we did.
He had read my blog (and even some of my homework assignments!), so he
knew of my passion for evangelism and my enthusiasm for sales. (Awww!)

Role model

And boy, did he have a lot to teach! He’s the kind of salesperson I’d
like to be. Many people both inside and outside sales think of sales
as a nasty, cut-throat business. Kevin Magee proves that not only do
nice guys finish first, but that it’s really the only sustainable way
to go.

“Have we met?”

Kevin told me about the benefits of having the kind of face that
everyone thinks they’ve seen somewhere. “Have we met?” is one of his
favorite techniques for getting people to talk about their backgrounds
and interests. Looking back, I realized that he must’ve deftly pulled
that on me too! Wow.

You just need 60 seconds

Kevin also shared some of the ways he taught other salespeople to
handle cold calls. He said that for the first 10,000 calls, it’s
truly, truly horrible. After that, it’s just horrible.

You know how many people start their call with, “Have I called you at
a good time?” Kevin shared that “Have I called you at a bad time?” is
much more effective. There’s never a good time to receive a
telemarketing cold call, after all, but in general, people will be
generous and say that it isn’t a bad time.

Then Kevin told me how he taught sales people to ask for 60 seconds,
just 60 seconds to find out if this is the right conversation they
should be having. They would then time themselves, stop at 60
seconds—preferably in the middle of a sentence—and ask for
permission to continue. By so clearly respecting the other person’s
time—and piquing the other person’s interest!—they might be able to
get permission to continue for 5 minutes. And then maybe a meeting in
person. Asking *permission* draws people further in because you
respect their time and allow them to control the conversation.

Recruiters rock

Even with the 60-second technique, though, cold-calling is tough tough
tough tough. You can warm up the call by connecting with people in the
organization. Kevin found that recruiters are *great* for doing that,
which is why he’s happy to help them however they can. See, recruiters
are in the business of connecting with people, and they form special
bonds with the people they place. When Kevin wants to crack open an
account, he’ll ask his recruiter friends if they’ve placed anyone
there—almost always yes—and then he’s in with an introduction!

Wow

So for an hour and a half, this experienced, wonderful salesperson
shared all sorts of sales tips that I would probably have had to spend
years learning. I’ve read lots of books on networking and sales, but
it’s different hearing from people who are actually doing it and doing
well.

I’d love to help him grow, too. Kevin told me that reading my
reflections on this blog had prompted him to think about how he was
doing things and how he could improve. For a 23-year-old, I’ve learned
a fair bit, and that’s because of kaizen – the Japanese
principle of constant improvement. I love experimenting, reflecting on
the results, sharing my thoughts, and working on the next step.
Sharing what I’m learning about life has led to so many more insights
from other people. Wow!

Next steps

So, how can I act on his advice?

His “Have we met?” trick will be very handy for me. I meet so many
people at the local tech get-togethers. That’s one way to make that
connection and to naturally tell people about these events if they
haven’t heard of them yet.

I can look for ways to be more useful to the recruiters in my network.
I would love to introduce them to teachers who are interested in
helping their students find cool work, for example. I can keep an eye
out for students and professionals looking for work at the events I go
to. Still, I’m not adding much value that way, but at least referrals
are handy, and if I vouch for the recruiter, that’s at least a little
bit. If I get to know people better, then I can add more value.

And the things I want to do for my career? I think there’s a big
market for it, bigger than I’d realized… I can do so much to help
people connect!

I’m looking forward to getting to know Kevin Magee better in February. What a way to start my day!

Random Emacs symbol: set-fringe-mode – Function: Set `fringe-mode’ to VALUE and put the new value into effect.

On Technorati: networking, sales

Simon just finished a sales call that came in through a referral. He’s
got a pretty nifty voice messaging system (for non-profits that don’t
do evil!), and he’s starting to realize that he doesn’t have to spend
a lot of time doing development when he’s already got a totally cool product
that he should be selling the heck out of. =)

Yay!

On Technorati: simon, sales, business

I did my first project from the advanced manual on persuasion. Learned
a lot from it, too – and not necessarily what the manual might’ve wanted me to learn… <laugh>

They remarked once again on my lack of energy. I was too low-key for
them. I decided not to use sugar-high-enthusiasm because I want to
learn how to talk to suits. I’m good at enthusiasm. I can bounce up
and down, wave pompoms, whatever. I need to learn how to speak to
people’s serious sides, not just amuse them with my antics and my
enthusiasm. I need to learn how to provoke thought and establish
credibility. I’m not going to be this young forever, and I want to
learn how to speak properly by the time I need it!

Fortunately my evaluator also pointed out that I used a pleasant pace
- accessible! – not like my usual rush of words. Still, this is the
second time I’ve tried my serious voice on Toast I.T., and the
reaction’s always been iffy. They like me breathless with enthusiasm,
bubbly, sparkling – but I’m more than that! I’m having a hard time
getting past this with Toast I.T., even if I wear a blazer and glasses
and everything. I want to be both. I want to blend seriousness and
joy.

Maybe I can save my “low-key” voice for IBM Toastmasters. Hmm…

The three- to five-minute roleplay situation for me seemed constrained
and unnatural. This is strange because I’m perfectly fine with
elevator pitches. I think I just need to get better at roleplaying.

I should probably have tried selling something concrete that I wasn’t
too familiar with instead of selling something intangible. People seem
to think that selling ideas is easier than selling something concrete
because ideas don’t cost money, they just cost time. I wish I could
make _them_ try to sell other people on ideas. Time is money. In fact,
time is a lot more expensive than the gadgets many people would
casually throw money away on.

One Toastmaster was particularly vocal about my being an absolute
failure at “real” sales and how I’d be fired right away if this was
the real thing. He insisted that sales was a hypercompetitive,
cutthroat world and that salespeople are paid tons because of the
competition. Personally, I believe that salespeople are paid a lot
because they clearly contribute to the bottom line in a quantifiable
manner. I also suspect that any numbers-driven sales that’s just
concerned with how much the salesperson makes is totally not for me.
I’m more interested in relationship building. Fortunately, my mentor
called him to task and told him that there were other perfectly valid
ways of selling.

… And this guy also wondered why I didn’t have any flashy slides. After
all, we all know that Powerpoint is _essential_ for sales. Mph. Well,
he was trying to be helpful, and there _are_ some audiences that need
a slide deck. For what I was doing, that was definitely out of the
picture.

The same person thought I didn’t control the conversation enough, and
that I let my roleplay partner do too much of the talking. I thought I
did too much talking and not enough listening. I felt that I broke
into too many long passages, and I hate that. I feel that I’m most
effective when I listen to people, suggesting something after I’ve
understood their situation and validated them by paying attention to
them. I hate it when people fake listening, when they just care about
when they get to speak next. I hate it when people pretend they want a
conversation with you but they really just want to sell you stuff and
their message isn’t individualized at all..

Wish I had my mom’s books to whap the guy with! <laugh> Well, he
_was_ just trying to be helpful, and _his_ world is probably the
dog-eat-dog world he described. I’m 22 and I’m new to the subject, but
I get the feeling that there aree zbetter things out there.

Oh well.

I think I know what I’m going to “sell” for project 2 – houses. Or whatever.

On Technorati: toastmasters, sales

Random Japanese sentence: 机の下から猫が出てきた。 A cat appeared from under the desk.