I Would Kill for a Hit Rate Like This One

According to the sales gods, the average close rate for a typical sales rep, across all verticals, hovers around 16%.

While this may sound like an 84% lose rate, it doesn’t compare that poorly to the performance metrics in other industries.

For example, we all know that if you hit .300 for your career, and your name is not included in the Mitchell Report, you have a reasonable shot at the baseball hall of fame, unless of course, you look like a total schmuck while testifying before Congress.

Seth Godin recently posted the following:

In a new study released in today’s Times, it turns out that the typical NY police officer only hits 34% of the time she fires a gun. Even from a distance of six feet or less, it’s 43%. Obviously, Bruce Willis is the exception.
Seth Godin's Blog Entry - Marksmanship

Now, the next time a police officer attempts to pull you over for a speeding ticket, do not get any bright ideas, this hit rate will still get them into the hall of fame.

FYI - You can’t expense bail.

Its About Balance

Candy let out a high-pitched shrill of excitement as she opened the next fantastic, and incredibly expensive, Christmas gift from her husband, Ben. Ben was off to a great start. His first gift was this huge necklace with enough diamonds on it that Leonardo DiCaprio personally sent them hate mail. The second gift was some sort of fur thing. Ben wasn't sure if it was mink, or sable, hell it could have been possum for all he knew.

There were five more gifts on the floor to be opened.

To those family members gathered in the living room that Christmas morning, Ben was looking like a rock star. To Candy and Ben this was one of the greatest fights, and, for Candy, one of the greatest victories, in their marriage.

Ben is the consummate sales professional. Not only was he the manager of the top performing sales team at his company, but also a mentor to dozens of others, including myself.

Ben's drive and commitment to the deal where his greatest professional strengths, and personal weakness. As people stare at the calendar in December, some see Christmas, others see Hanuka or Kwanzaa. Ben only saw one date, the end of the year.

So focused on his team's year end performance, Ben had forgotten to purchase Christmas gifts, for anyone, for three straight years. He made plenty of money, and the family did not lack for anything. However his wife, the only person for whom he had to buy a gift, was tired of spending her Christmas mornings listening to Ben apologize.

Candy decided that she would "help" Ben by buying the perfect gifts that she was sure he intended to buy her if he only weren't so busy. While we don't have exact numbers, judging by the look on his face as he shared this story, any bonus money and/or commission Ben earned during the past few quarters was now "invested" in the boxes laying on the floor.

For Candy, it was one of the best collection of gifts she ever received, but the best gift for her was that Ben never forgot another holiday, anniversary, or birthday from that point forward.

Merry Christmas Everyone.


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Lessons Learned From A 911 Call

A few weeks ago, at a neighborhood meeting, we had a man collapse, become unresponsive, and, in general, scare the holy crap out of all of us.

In short,the neighbor, Charlie, had what equates to a stroke. The following are the lessons that made themselves apparent and the series of events surrounding this emergency as they unfolded.

It is natural not to immediately acknowledge a bad situation

This situated started as I was walking to check on the kids who were playing in the yard adjoining the meeting, I noticed someone laying on the ground, face down. If I showed you a photo it would be quite easy to describe the situation and what was happening. However, as I was walking toward the person on the ground, I kept trying to convince myself that what I was seeing was not what I thought I was seeing. Surely this had to be an odd shadow or a kid playing a game with the others.

As I continued to walk, I was six feet from Charlie when his wife saw what was happening, and cried out. This was the confirmation needed for my brain to take hold of the situation. I jammed my hand into my pocket, retrieved my cell phone, and called 911.

How many times in our professional lives have we looked at a dismal situation and tried to avoid reality?

• "I don't cold call, I only talk to important people"

• "All I need is to close 40% of my pipeline and I'm good"

• "The next bug fix release will help us drive revenue"

Challenges to you and your company's established position will come from areas that you do not expect, and from players with whom you are not familiar. It is extremely difficult to build and maintain a competitive advantage, and it is far too easy to lose it by not staying focused and having visibility to the events and circumstances that surround you.

You have to know what you don't know

I reached 911 immediately and described the situation to the emergency operator.

The operator began asking me a series of questions in order to evaluate the situation and to gather pertinent information that she would relay to the ambulance drivers.

"Name? Age? What was he doing when he collapsed? Had he had any complaints about not feeling well before he collapsed?"

The answers I delivered included "Charlie, mid-50s, no complaints but has a history with a heart condition."

Next question "Has he taken any medication this evening?"

I asked the wife. She replied "He's on heart medication, he's taken other medicines in the past. He could have gotten his pills mixed up."

You need to know what you don't know.

• What is the profile of your typical customer?

• Why do you win (and lose) deals?

• How does your competitor drive 30% of revenue through partners and you can't?

• How loyal are your customers?

"I don't know" can often be the smartest thing you will ever say - it gives you space to think, research, and gauge your colleagues without losing face, or leading someone down a path that will not bear fruit. Never be afraid to admit you don't know something. You can always learn and win, but if you lie, you will lose.

In a crisis, people panic and will put themselves first

With the ambulance on its way, the next question from the 911 operator was "Is there a Doctor or Nurse in the area?"

I yelled the question to our group.

Ms. Houlihan came up and stood next to Charlie. She announced that she indeed was a nurse, a few years retired, but unfortunately she just had knee surgery and could not not comfortably get down on the ground to check on Charlie.

On the ground you have Charlie, my wife who is keeping track of Charlie's pulse, Charlie's wife who is alternating between caring for her husband and freaking out, and myself with my ear to my cellphone communicating with 911. We all momentarily stopped and looked up her. You could tell by her tone she was used to throwing out the whole "knee surgery" ploy to generate sympathy, pity, and maybe cut in line at local buffets, who knows?

When times get tough, two groups usually emerge, those who seek solutions, those who complain about problems.

• "Its sales fault, they are the ones responsible for revenue"

• "You can't cut my department we are too important"

• "We are too busy to do any extra, you get your team to do it"

• "We just need to keep what we are doing"

Assumption is not a replacement for intelligence

As Charlie was loaded into the ambulance and the 911 operator bid me goodbye, I looked around for my kids - ages 8 and 10.

In the commotion they had retreated back into our house. I went inside to survey the level of trauma and try to calm them down.

I found them in my home office with my son playing on the computer. He seemed reasonably unfazed. He is 10, and he didn't really know Charlie at all, so I took this to be a reasonable response.

My daughter however was sitting on the love seat, crying softly.

I breathed a sigh, and sat down next to her. At eight years old, she is definitely the tender-hearted one of the bunch. She has cried after seeing a good puppy food commercial, so this was what I expected.

"Whats wrong honey?" No verbal response, but tears and sniffles.

Mentally Im trying to recall the sage advice from the parenting books on how to communicate with your children during a crisis. I start to panic when I draw nothing but blanks. I flash forward 20 years, a therapist's couch, my daughter, her escort from the correctional facility, and a shrink proclaiming "So your dad royally screwed you up that night, now we know!!!"

I try again.

"Honey, can you tell Daddy what's wrong?" Waiting for the obvious. A moment passes.

Finally, as she chokes back the tears she starts to speak "I was playing hide-and-go-seek and the other kids where playing freeze tag and no one came to find me!!!!" More tears.

Soooo, the whole neighbor collapsing on the lawn and being unconscious, no biggie, BUT, the fact that she spent 10 minutes crouched down in our shrubs, now that was problem.

How common is this in business, where we assume we know marketing conditions, customer preferences, or competitive threats?

• "They have been our customer for 17 years, we know what they want"

• "That company has never been a real threat to us, so we ignore them"

• "Do you know who we are? We do not have to worry about things like that"

I think you would have found these same attitudes at Kodak, Delta, and General Motors.


Charlie is still recovering. We wish him and his family the best.

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From the Gate Keeper

In his book, "Swim with the Sharks" Harvey Mackay states that as CEO of his company he ranks the following two positions as the most key in generating revenue for any organization:

1. Vice President of Sales

2. The Office Receptionist

While the first is pretty obvious, he goes on to explain that the Receptionist, a.k.a. "Gate Keeper" has the power to set the tone of the business relationship. By being the initial contact for the majority of new and existing clients and business partners, their appearance, demeanor, and professionalism can have a significant impact.

In addition to being "the voice" of your company, the Gate Keeper often serves as the "filter" or "tie breaker" when it comes to new hires. If you have a borderline interview, the Gate Keeper can have the swing vote.

We are fortunate to have some words of wisdom from one of the good friends of the blog, Michele, who has graciously agreed to share her insight on the hiring process from the Gate Keeper's seat.

“Signs that your job interview is not going to go well” ….and this is before you even get past the front desk!

• You did not bother to check the company website (or MapQuest for that matter) and print directions to your interview location and therefore you must call the company’s front desk and suck up the receptionist’s valuable time getting directions from her.

• You arrive late and cannot remember the name of the person that is supposed to be interviewing you. You will have to play a game of “Name that Supervisor” with the receptionist till she figures out the name of your interviewer for you.

• You have forgotten to bring a pen to fill out the application, thereby forcing you to sheepishly request a pen from the receptionist. (That look on her face is NOT one of concern, it is disgust at your most basic of faux pas.) If you DO forget to bring a pen, and the receptionist has to lend you one, make no mistake about it, it WILL be "THE RED PEN OF SHAME" and there will be a sweet smile as it is handed to you, with the claim there are no spare pens in black or blue. Going forward, the red ink will alert EVERY person with whom you interview, that you have committed the ultimate sin of not bringing your own writing instrument.

• Then you ask what the date is……

• You attempt to fill out the application but are interrupted by personal calls on your cellphone, which has rung out the most obnoxious tune because you forgot to turn the ringer off. (Trust me, the receptionist is NOT amused, she is annoyed by this.)

• And finally, in the event that your nerves cause you to be a little more awkward than usual and you spill your coffee, clean it up. The Gate Keeper knows all, sees all, but is not responsible for your messes.

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How to Reduce The Schmuck Factor

Anyone who has been in the workforce long enough has had the opportunity to work for, or with, someone who really didn't fit in, didn't perform up to expectations, and basically made you wonder if your employer received some sort of tax credit for keeping this individual employed. It is these individuals that we loving refer to as "Schmucks".

We all have Schmucks. If we are honest, we can agree that we all are subject to our temporary moments of Schmuckdom.

Based on the fact that, on average, 20% of the sales people generate 80% of the sales, the "Schmuck Factor" in most sales teams is higher than in the rest of the organization. Ever heard of "20% of Developers writing 80% of the code" or "20% of Client Supporting handling 80% of the issues"? Nope. Its just sales.

So where does it start? How do schmucks invade our teams, consume our time and resources, and still manage to under perform? Naturally it begins with the hiring process.

Hiring is the process of evaluating and projecting the productivity of human capital. One of the most common flaws is not having HR directly involved throughout the evaluation and hiring process. Most see it as an extension of the responsibility of those with little to no training in this area.

The sales manager hires the sales people, the VP of Development hires the programmer, etc. While these individuals have a level of mastery in their disciplines, that bears far less indication on their ability to evaluate talent than conventional wisdom would dictate.

Sales, Programming, and Hiring are all best executed when a team of professionals can come together and Plan, Prepare, and Execute on a strategy.

Conditions for Throwing the Schmuck Flag

While my track record is far from perfect on making hires, here a few items and practices that you can use to weed out the viable candidates from the next poster child for the Schmuckular Association of America.

Resume and Interview Red Flags

• Long Periods of Unemployment

“I have been taking care of my sick mother/father/aunt/dog” is one of the most common responses you will see when there's a gap in employment.

• Series of Short Term Jobs

Now you have to cut the candidate some slack with this one. In technology, mergers, acquisitions, and implosions are quite common. However if you are looking at a series of short-term jobs 6 to 12 months in length, and the companies are still around, that should be a red flag.

• Many Unrelated Jobs in Work History

In close knit industries a really bad apple will have a tough time finding a job. So if you see someone go from widgets, to gadgets, to midgets in consecutive moves be aware.

• Typos, Poor Spelling, Grammar on Resume

I'll admit it, Ive had a typo on my resume for a few weeks before someone clued me in. I'm a lousy speller and it just didn't catch my eye. For the record I had numerous professionals review my resume and it was my professional doc writer who caught the mistake.

• Lack of Progression in Job History

“I have been an assistant bookkeeper for 20 years” = I haven't been promoted in 20 years.

• Vague Descriptions, Rounded Dates

Can you imagine what the Enron team's resume's look like? “Worked for one of the fastest growing and dominate companies in the 1990s, then took time off to care for my sick father, mother, and aunt.”

Interview Red Flags

• Late or Tardy without Legitimate Explanation
• Dressed Poorly
• Overly Cocky
• Stresses Personal Beliefs Too Strongly
• Overly Defensive
• Perceived Vendetta Against Former Employers

A Lesson Learned

This guy comes to our team through a recruiter. The recruiter says that the candidate matches our "must have" criteria, but really doesn't share any additional or ancillary information or provide his "gut-feel" for the candidate. (Red Flag #1)

Given the candidate's background with one of our major competitors, we jumped at the chance to meet/hire him. We were a smaller, start-up and were practically salivating over the insight and competitive intelligence the candidate bought to the table. (Red Flag #2)

We flew the candidate in to our corporate HQ for an 11am meeting. He arrived, sans coat and tie and looking a bit disheveled. He explained that he spilled coffee on himself and he had to rush to the mall for a new shirt and pants. Looking back, and this will be important later on in the story, he smelled an awful lot like mouthwash.

The candidate spent the day in the office, meeting anyone and everyone under the sun. Everyone was impressed by his aggressiveness and take no prisoners attitude... we hired him immediately. We really didn't evaluate any criteria other than how aggressive he could be, nor did we do any background checking via personal networks, nor did we subject him to any standardized personality tests, because other than the overpowering aroma of mouthwash, the new change of clothes, and the demeanor that bore a striking resemblance to Al Pacino in the climatic shootout in "Scar Face", nothing seemed out of the ordinary. (Red Flags out the wazoo)

The biggest flaw in this process was us. The hiring team was so inexperienced and immature that there were numerous mistakes made based on sheer lack of expertise and alpha-male egos that dispelled any thought of asking for assistance.

Less than 12 months later the candidate would, as part of his retaliation for being fired, send a company-wide email that would eventually wind up on a blog.

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A Rose By Any Other Name

There's a fine line between organic fertilizer and a big steaming turd, its all in the packaging.

Most sales professionals have honed a sense of "packaging" information in a way where it can be easily consumed by the target audience.

For example, instead of "you are going to have to upgrade all of your servers to run the new version" we will typically relay this information in a manner close to "with the power and robustness of the new release, its understandable that the hardware specs have been upgraded".

The old, bad joke goes a sales rep tried this in his relationships. Instead of "I'm having an affair with the secretary", he informed his wife that "he would no longer be making any more sexual demands of her" to which she replied "Thank you dear, that's very sweet".

"Jim" was one of our chief software gurus. I don't remember the pecking order of our developer food chain, but he was pretty high up there. "Pamela" was our head strong, hard charging, take-no-prisoners, SVP of Sales. From the moment they exited the respective wombs, it was written that these two would clash.

One thing I can say about Yankees, my affectionate term for anyone who lives North of Macon, Ga, is that they can party. Every time my Yankee-laden company would have a sales meeting the pattern was always the same; a lot of really boring, borderline unproductive meetings, followed by a great steak at some overpriced restaurant that at some point in its history made one of those lists than you see in airplane magazines, and booze, a lot of booze.

After dinner, as it was custom, our band of semi-intoxicated castaways, would find the nearest bar and spend the rest of the evening in our version of a team building exercises, aka, more booze and golden tee.

Earlier in the day, a long simmering feud among Pamela and Jim finally came to a head. There was shouting, screaming, and the slamming of doors, etc. Which, if you are dude, the worst thing you can ever do is that whole slam the door thing, very wussie-ish.

So some 10 hours later, we learned that the feud was not resolved, and that Pam and Jim were starting to ease back into their verbal boxing gloves. We were standing/sitting in a semi-circle and you could feel the tension.

As the first round of the rematch was set to begin, I was standing next to Jim when he burps. A little burp, nothing too loud. But his reply to the burp was an "oh boy, that's not good". You veterans know where this is going.

The next thing that happens, was one of those things that you can see in slow motion as it happens.

Pam was famous for her fashion sense. Love her, Hate her, the woman knows how to dress well. At the time, the over priced handbag of choice was about the size of a small Samsonite and Pam's was laying on the floor, wide open, like a receptacle.

Back to the slow motion thing, so Jim burps, realizes whats coming and stands up and in probably the most graceful of motions projects the contents of his stomach into the air in a fine rainbow arc. Visualize a water balloon rupturing in mid-flight, but only with puke, in a club. It seems to hang in the air forever, slowing wafting onto those who were unfortunate in their seating locations. Im not sure but I think the hit count topped seven.

For all of his brilliance, Jim was equally proud and humble and naturally was horribly embarrassed at his accident and made a quick retreat. In his haste however he failed to notice what gift that physics had brought.

The next morning, after discussing the evenings events with select members of our team, and receiving a little coaching, Jim's explanation of the evening to the curious masses went something close to this "Pam and I had a fight. She kept on disagreeing with me, so I puked in her purse. That's how the JDog rolls. End of story."

The curious masses were satisfied. Jim's "street cred" increased. And Pam had the opportunity to upgrade her "everyday" purse.

Its all in the packaging.

Perceived Death as a Negotiation Tactic

This one is from a linkedin connection.

After training some great new sales people, I finished the course off with some reminders on the reasons people can employ NOT to buy - and in view of their inexperience, asked them to just use their first couple of presentations as 'target practice' and carry on with a full presentation if at all possible.

One of the trainees (a slightly built Norwegian lady) gave her first presentation perfectly, kept the price to the very end and delivered it perfectly too. The gentleman chose this moment to have a fit. Not throw a temper - a proper medical condition, falling from his chair and going into spasms on the floor.

I saw this going on and immediately went over to help. The guy was on the floor, foaming from the mouth and in need of urgent help. My trusty trainee unfortunately saw this as his reason to leave her presentation, leant over his body shouting, "SO, JUST HOW MUCH TOO MUCH IS THE DEPOSIT?" The young lady went on to be a super salesperson - but did learn to chill out a little from that point........

By the way, we did get a doctor on the scene, the man was OK after some insulin and a rest :-)

- John P.
www.linkedin.com

"Nice Shoes" is not sexual harassment

When people think of the topic of sexual harassment, they usually think in extremes, because "extremes" are newsworthy. We hear about workers who suffered prolonged humiliation, loss of dignity, and sabotaged careers under the oppression of a manager with carnal motives. On the flip side, we've heard of the frivolous lawsuits because an individual felt that "Your Shoes Look Nice" was some sort of secret code for "Let's go back to my place and play naked twister".

Lets be honest, try as we might, guys have a different view on sexual harassment. The odds are extremely low that it will ever happen to us. In fact, in the movie "Disclosure" where Demi Moore is throwing herself at a married Michael Douglas, and he stops her in mid-foreplay. Every guy is like "DUDE, NOOOOO!!!!". Yeah, most guys are really like that.

With my computer programmer physique, I have never been a candidate as a potential sexual harassment victim. However, one of my female associates shared her experience with me. Ill be honest, I didn't think this kind of stuff went on anymore. After she shared her story, I realized that my experience with mandatory "sensitivity training" had actually desensitized me to how powerful and destructive sexual harassment can be.

"During my tenure with a mid-sized professional services firm, I used to be given 'advice' from the CEO's secretary on what to wear to certain meetings. Depending on the location, purpose, and the number of existing or potential clients, some meetings required a little more exposed skin than others. One of my female colleagues, who used to travel with the big bosses, was asked to join the CEO, President, and a prospective client in a hot tub in her bikini. When I asked about what transpired beyond the hot tub and champagne the only feedback I received was "we landed the deal". Later I accompanied the CEO on a business trip to South Beach. Even though I was married, with a small child, the CEO kept flirting with me and repeatedly requested that I show him my underwear. I felt so disgusted that it permanently affected how I felt about the company, my job, and myself.

The Back Button

A few years a go, one of my Sales Engineers was involved in a bake off at financial services firm in Manhattan. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a bake off in the world of enterprise software is used to described when a company, evaluating solutions, brings in a multiple vendors and submits their systems to a series of scripted tasks. The company's evaluation team monitors the performance and attempts to get a handle on what they can reasonably expect from the system, and look for those hidden gotchas that may come back to bite them in the butt.

So we make it into the bake off, and there is a lot of excitement around the office because if this financial services firm is a house hold name and to have them as a client would do wonders for enhancing our reputation as a major player in our field. Needless to say we threw our best people onto the project and sent a small army to pull this off.

Each vendor was assigned two days. We go in for our first day and things are going along reasonably well.

A word here about content management systems. The beauty behind them is that they separate content from its presentation layer. This allows someone to simply fill out a basic web form and have it published into HTML, PDF, XML simultaneously with the proper tags, formatting, etc. The user interface for our system was all browser-based. So you could have two windows open, one where you are typing in your content, and the other as your content appears on your website.

As I mentioned, things were going along great, and we were in the middle of showing how to create a press release by simply filling out one of our web forms, when a member of the evaluation team stops us. "Hit your the browser's back button right now" he ordered.

"Excuse me?" came our reply.

"Hit your back button. I want to see if it saves what you have typed so far or you would lose everything when it goes back to the previous page"

"Ok". Our Sales Engineer navigated back one page. Its at that point that the question was answered. Unless the user clicked on the "Save" button at the bottom of the screen, the newly typed content would be lost.

Awkward Silence.

The evaluation team left the room.

More Awkward Silence.

After 20 minutes, the head of the team came in, thanked us for our efforts, but politely dismissed us by stating that we have failed in one of the major requirements and that there would be no need for us to return the following day.

After our attempts to stay were politely denied, we left.

The bake off was held in Tower 1, World Trade Center. The date was September 10th, 2001.

IM Slang - Learn It Before You Use It

The advent of Internet chat has allowed virtual teams to communicate just as effectively as those in the same office.

One member of my team "Sue" had an unusual perception on the proper use of the "lol" acronym. Instead of relaying the condition of "laughing out loud" she used it as more of an end of transmission signal. Much in the same manner that CB'ers would use "10-4" or the military would use "Roger".

Me: "Hey Sue, How's it Going"

Sue: "Hey, Doing Great LOL"

Me: "How did your doctor's visit go?"

Sue: "After some tests, it was determined that I have a flesh eating virus, LOL"

Sue: "Crap, there goes my left arm, LOL"

Me: "Holy Jesus, Sue"

Sue: "Oh Yeah, the pain can not be described with mere words, LOL"

Sue: "Oh heavenly father, please take me now dear sweet lord, LOL"

While I'm not proud about it, I loved chatting with Sue.

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Long Arm of the Law

Its a true shame that law enforcement isn't involved more directly in the sales process. . .

Summertime, and a few of the sales engineers on the team were on vacation - I cover for someone in Texas, and I have a colleague from San Francisco cover the Chicago trip. Not unusual until I get a call right before my meeting.

"Hey, what's up. Where's *Dave*? We have a meeting that I flew here to cover and he's not here yet. We need to present in 20 minutes."

"I'll check."

20 minutes pass with no sign of *Dave*. *Jennifer* runs the call, no problem.

*Dave,* as it turns out, got into a mild (mild, mind you) fender-bender on the way to the call, with a woman hitting the rear bumper of his car.

*Dave* goes ballistic, screaming at the woman.

Police arrive; *Dave* continues erupting, demanding that the police "do something."

They did.

"Sir, turn around and put your hands on the hood of the car, you're under arrest."

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