Conrey is for Closers

Attention salespeople – I’m tired of reading articles from you about how the Internet has made sales more difficult.
They are blatantly, egregiously, and obviously wrong.

Stop writing them.
Stop reading them.
Stop thinking that it is true.

The internet (and the child trends of social media, reviews, google, SEO, and everything else you are blaming for your sales failures) is not making sales harder.

The Internet makes sales easier

Yeah I’m going to get strung up by many of you who are clinging to your old world views of how sales should be done, but there’s a reason why I’m looking to the post modern sales world.

Yes it has made the pool of competition wider and more accessible to your buyers, but it has also made your pool of potential customers wider and more accessible.

Yes you now have to maintain a web presence and participate socially online to stay relevant – but you don’t have to commit 40 hours per week to it to be successful.

Yes your buyers can now price shop you with the flick of an email – but if that is where you are losing people you’re not a salesman, you’re an order taker. Go work at Burger King’s drive thru window or learn to build value.

Yes there is more information about products and services than any human could potentially ever read – but that allows you to help sift through the crap and find the relevant stuff to your prospects.

Quit your whining about how the world has changed and change with it or you will get run over.

Is your sales team killing your business? Seems counterintuitive, but sadly it is more common that you think. There are many ways they can kill your business in the exploding-train-derailment sort of way, but most of you know how to prevent those. What you are probably missing are these three ways your sales team is killing you slowly:

1. Saying Yes to Every Deal:
   Raise your hand if you think your sales team’s job is to go out and get every piece of business that they can find. Now those of you raising your hand please take that hand and smack yourself. Your sales team’s job is to go out and get the right business for you to complete. It is just as much a function of their job to protect you and your business from bad deals as it is to close good ones. Don’t be afraid to say no to a deal that is going to be more harm than it’s worth.




2. Lowering Your Prices:
   As a sales manager or business owner have you ever had a salesman come in and say “We can win this deal, but only if we drop our price to ….”? Remember that hand you raised earlier and smacked yourself with? Hit them with it next time they ask this. I’m guessing you had a pretty good idea of what you thought your value proposition was when you sent them out into the wild to sell for you. Lowering your prices is a great way to bleed off margin, make for additional stress for everyone in accounting, and kill any chance you have of making the right money on this customer or any referrals they send. More importantly, the first time you lower the price it will feel really bad, you’ll think about it for a while, and then ultimately decide it’s the right play. But the second time it’s not so hard, and it gets progressively easier until without even realizing it you’ve lowered your bar entirely.




3. The Client is Always Right:
   Yup, the tried and true mantra of customer service will kill you. I’m all for pleasing and delighting the customer as much as the next guy, but if you’ve failed at one or both of the above things, my guess is you’ve got clients in the pool who are demanding more of your time or product for less return, holding you hostage for payments because they want “one more thing”, or generally making your life hell because they’re never quite happy. Remember that clients are made just like you and I, human and imperfect. They’ll be wrong just as often as you, and while you shouldn’t go pointing out all of their flaws, you should be willing to draw a line in the sand when you have to. Sometimes you just have the better position to fight from.

No go forth and diagnose these problems within your organization and make the changes to prevent them from leading to a slow painful death.

Today I received a cold email that was as bland and unlikely to get a response as possible (redacted to protect the guilty):

I know you have been approached by other folks that say they are like [REDACTED] but, I want to tell you how we could greatly affect your bottom line. [REDACTED] is an [REDACTED] company that delivers [THEIR PRODUCT] for agencies through intelligence, innovation and technology. I’m interested in scheduling a call to discuss how our services can help grow your online business. I understand you guys already offer a nice array of services and I think there are a number of ways we can work together!

At the bottom was attached two PDFs, a flyer and a brochure for their services.

I tweeted “If you are attaching your brochure or sales materials in your first cold email you’re not getting my business #salestruth” and very nearly got a response asking how I do my first cold email or call from Matt Secoske.

So let’s break it down with the patented Conrey advise:

1. I rarely do what would traditionally be called a cold call or email – I ask for introductions once I’ve targeted someone. I try to find any way in other than just barging down the front door. In the age of LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media tools there are so many options. Even check out the Cold Tweeting Episode from the Don’t Sell Me Bro Podcast for one idea.
2. When those options fail, I will reach out but not like the above. My initial email or call will never say what I’m selling or anything else. I’m going to go in with a listening and learning mindset. Something that is giving and not asking. Compare the following example to the above:

Hi there Chris, I’ve been following YOURCOMPANY for a little while on Twitter/FB/LinkedIn/YourBlog/TradeOrganizationWeAreMembersOf/Etc and realized that we’ve never spoken. I’d love to learn more about YOURCOMPANY and what makes you tick. When would be a good time to get together and let me borrow 20 minutes of your time over coffee/lunch/drinks/phonemeeting to chat with you?

Now for the hard part. When you go to meet with that person – you can’t pitch your services at all. If they ask what you do, sure you can say what it is, but you primary mission in that first meeting is to learn about them. Ask questions and learn where their pains are and what issues they deal with. Then in a second meeting or follow up email you can offer ways to solve those problems – bonus points if it is through referring or connecting them to someone else when you don’t solve their problem directly.

The difference is mindset – you have the sale in mind, but you’re not selling. You’re going in to learn and help, and build a relationship.