December 8th, 2009 @ 5:30 am
Think your competitors are your worst enemies? Think again. Your worst enemies — the people most likely to keep you from making a sale — work right inside your own firm!This post reveals these hidden enemies of your sales success. Click on the link below to reveal their true identities… if you dare!
SALES ENEMY #5: THE BRAINIAC
- Typical Job Titles: Chief Technical Officer, Head Engineer, Chief Programmer, etc.
- Distinguishing Characteristic: He’s so proud of his technical achievement that he can’t imagine that a customer might not be automatically impressed.
- Why He’s Your Enemy: He thinks that products sell themselves and therefore sales pros are parasites.
- How He Screws You Up: When he meets customers, he does a memory dump of the internal product workings, and then treats them like idiots if they don’t understand what he’s talking about.
- How To Cope With Him: Keep him away from your customers!! If you can’t avoid such contact, prep up your customers ahead of time so that they don’t take him too seriously.
- Warning: Will badmouth you mercilessly if you dare to question his technical opinions.
- Typical Job Titles: Chief Financial Officer, Chief Efficiency Officer, Head Accountant, etc.
- Distinguishing Characteristic: Obsessive concern for saving money no matter how much it costs to do so.
- Why He’s Your Enemy: He views sales is an expense rather than the core of the business.
- How He Screws You Up: He devises rules and regulations that make it nearly impossible to sell. Example: cutting travel budgets for reps covering the entire Eastern seaboard.
- How To Cope With Him: Calmly point out the revenue and profit impact of the “cost savings.” Be sure to have a spreadsheet to prove your point.
- Warning: If you get frustrated, you’ll only encourage him. He feels that if he’s not making you miserable, he’s not doing his job.
- Typical Job Titles: Chief Marketing Officer, Vice President of Marketing, Marketing Manager, etc.
- Distinguishing Characteristic: He thinks that marketing “drives” sales or that sales is just the operative arm of a marketing campaign.
- Why He’s Your Enemy: He adds to the cost of sales, but adds nothing of value to the sales process.
- How He Screws You Up: He spends big money on product videos and brochures full of biz-blab that makes customers roll their eyes.
- How To Cope With Him: Refuse to let him take credit for any sale where he did not generate the sales lead.
- Warning: He may very well have your clueless top management bamboozled into thinking that he’s actually useful.
- Typical Job Titles: Sales Manager, Chief Sales Officer, Vice President of Sales, etc.
- Distinguishing Characteristic: He thinks that managing a sales team means controlling everything that they say and do, and that screaming for half an hour is “coaching.”
- Why He’s Your Enemy: He creates a negative environment that makes it horribly difficult to sell.
- How He Screws You Up: He goes on your sales calls, screws up your deals, and then blames you for the bad results.
- How To Cope With Him: Stay away from the office as much as possible and keep him in the dark about the sales in your pipeline.
- Warning: He may install a CRM system so he can check up on your daily activity.
- Typical Job Titles: Sales Rep, Sales Associate, Sales Agent, etc.
- Distinguishing Characteristic: You haven’t taken the time and trouble fully develop your sales skills, attitude, business acumen, etc.
- Why You’re Your Own Worst Enemy: Your sales success is up to you, regardless of what problems or enemies you face on a day-to-day basis.
- How You Screw Yourself: Endless ways. You talk to customers more than you listen, you fail to prepare for customer meetings, you don’t follow-through on commitments, etc., etc., etc.
- How To Cope With Your Limitations: Overcome them! Decide, right here and now, that you won’t be satisfied with ANYTHING less than the absolute BEST that you can be. Make a commitment and then take action. You know what to do!
- Warning: If you actually make that commitment and take action, none of the other four enemies can possibly prevent you from becoming wildly successful in Sales!!!
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