This is an excellent article from the Harvard Business Review on the power of questions. I’ve said for many years that, in selling, 80% of your chance to win or lose the sale is in the questions you ask, and questioning is a key piece of my sales training programs. Still, most salespeople don’t ask enough questions. I ran a poll on the “Sales Best Practices” group and asked how many questions salespeople were asking on the discovery appointment, and the results shocked me. 37% said that they asked five or fewer questions; another 41% said they asked 10 or fewer questions. Only 22% of salespeople ask more questions (wanna bet which group has the better results?). Overlay this with the result from the article that said that there is a significant difference in likeability and rapport building between asking five questions and asking nine – and now extrapolate that to a sales call where you are trying to define customer needs. If you’re not making enough sales, you’re probably not asking enough questions.
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How to Fix a Bad Sales Presentation
We’ve all been there. I don’t care how good you are as a salesperson, a manager, or a speaker – you’ve been in the middle of a sales presentation and realized that it was going sideways. In titling this article, “How to fix a sales presentation,” I don’t mean that I’m going to tell you how to CREATE a great sales presentation. I already have videos and articles on that topic.
No, I’m going to tell you how to do something more challenging – how to fix a sales presentation while it’s going bad. It requires some heavy mental lifting on your part. It also requires an uncomfortable level of transparency on my part, because I have to tell you about my biggest failure as a professional speaker. It’s a story that I don’t enjoy telling, and one that still bothers me, nine years later. But to tell you how to fix a bad presentation, I have to tell you about my worst one and how I didn’t fix it. So, if you’d like to watch me kick my own ass in words, click below.
It was the spring of 2014, and my national speaking career was still very much in the growth stage. I was on a little mini-tour. On Sunday, I was to give a keynote to office furniture dealers in Palm Springs, CA. Then I drove to Las Vegas on Monday to speak on at a different conference on Wednesday (an extra day in Vegas is always a good thing for me). Then, back to Long Beach to speak at yet another conference on Friday and Saturday. Four different programs in seven days, at three different conventions, in three different cities, all of which promised a lot of fun.
It’s that first speech that I want to tell you about. I was delivering a morning keynote. At the time, keynotes were not my specialty (I’ve since come up with a couple of really good ones), but I was pumped up. However, ten minutes into the speech, I noticed that it wasn’t landing. There wasn’t any note-taking. The laugh lines weren’t generating laughter. And worse, the hundred faces staring back at me were blank. I knew it was going bad.
Still, I pushed through. I gave my speech as planned. After all, it was the topic that the head of the association and I had landed on. My speech couldn’t possibly have been the problem. Maybe it was just too early in the morning. When I called for questions after 50 minutes, there was one or two – I can’t remember which. In a good speech, I typically have more questions than I have time to answer. And when I ended, there was the politest of applause, and then everyone filed out. NOBODY came up to talk to me afterwards. That’s when I knew that I had well and truly laid an egg.
When the post-conference evaluations were sent to me, I was embarrassed. The scores were low and nearly every comment was about how the topic wasn’t what they were expecting to hear. I got no business from attendees (unusual), and to this day, that association won’t consider bringing me back. That bridge is burned. Understand – my speech wasn’t offensive, I used no profanity or off-color humor, nothing like that. I just missed the mark by a long shot.
I’ve thought about it a lot since then. If I had it to do over, I’d have done it much differently. You see, what really bothers me is that I knew that I was missing the mark, and I did nothing about it. I wasn’t being lazy – I just didn’t know what to do. Afterwards, I decided that I’d never finish a speech that was going wrong without doing something different. Here’s what I’d have done, if I had it to do over.
I’d have stopped my speech. I’d have said something like, “You know, based on your expressions, I’m not talking about what you want me to talk about. Let me ask YOU a question. What can I do, from this stage, to make the rest of our hour together time well spent for you?” It’s not like I didn’t have other material; at the time, I probably had ten other good speeches, and I’m good at winging it and making up material on the spot. I have a feeling that if I’d asked, they’d have given me an idea that I could have used, and I could have shifted gears and done something they’d have appreciated and enjoyed for the last 45 minutes of my time. Would it have been unorthodox? Heck, yes. But the key is that, at that point, my risk was zero. I was already bombing, and my choice was to either keep bombing or to try something. If that other something hadn’t worked, either, so what? I’d at least have gone down swinging, and I might have saved the speech and the relationship with the association. Instead, I ruined both.
Maybe you’ve had that experience during a sales presentation – it’s going flat and you don’t know why. If that happens to you (and if you sell enough, it either will happen or has happened), here’s how to fix a bad sales presentation.
- The first rule of finding yourself in a hole is: Stop digging. Stop the presentation when you realize it’s going bad. If the presentation is falling flat, always remember that the risk of changing it up is zero – so your fear of doing so should be zero as well.
- The person in the room who knows what they want is right across from you – the customer. Ask why your presentation is going wrong. Put the burden on yourself – “You know, Mr. Customer, I feel like this presentation isn’t hitting the mark. What have I missed? Did I misinterpret your needs?” In my case, the problem was that I hadn’t talked to any of the dealers who were attending the conference beforehand, so I didn’t know what it was that they were looking for. I’d asked the wrong questions of the wrong people. Most of the time, when a sales presentation goes wrong, it’s not the presentation itself – it’s the needs discovery beforehand. At this point, if you have to go back and ask the right questions of the right people, DO IT. Pressing on could cost you the customer.
- Change it up. This step requires a high degree of confidence and mental agility. But we salespeople have that, don’t we? Once you understand the real needs of the right people, NOW you can move forward. Don’t be afraid to create a presentation on the spot. By “presentation,” I don’t mean a slide deck (unless you just happen to have some visuals on hand that can help); I mean your VERBAL presentation that will address their needs.
When your risk is zero, the potential reward is high. High reward with low risk is what we all want. That presentation still bugs me, but I’ve never made that mistake again. Ever since, I’ve been more careful about pre-conference preparation. I’ve never given that particular speech again; in fact, I don’t even list it anymore. And only once since have I ever had that “This is going flat” feeling. That was two years later, and I did exactly what I suggested above. The last 30 minutes of that program were very well received, and I still speak for that association.
That’s how to fix a bad sales presentation. Be mentally agile, able to perceive that “moment,” and mentally agile enough to change gears, and you won’t have to have that feeling that I have as I write about my biggest failure as a speaker.
60 Second Sales Tip: Have An Agenda!
In this video, I show one of the most important aspects of selling: that every call should have a reason for happening! Every sales call needs to have an agenda. This, and much more, is taught in my Fundamental Elements of Sales Training course.
Are You Asking Enough Sales Questions?
Are you asking enough questions? A couple of weeks ago, I ran a poll on a very popular LinkedIn group. The poll question was simple: “On the average, how many discovery questions do you ask a new customer on an initial appointment?” If you’ve read any of my work at all, you know that I believe that the root of good things in selling is asking a lot of good questions; in fact, questioning is the longest unit in my training programs. Well, I’m starting to feel like I’m on an island with a pretty small population.
The results were shocking to me. Spoiler alert: 37% of respondents said that they asked 1-5 questions on a first appointment; 41% asked 6-10. In my opinion, the sweet spot for a quality discovery is 11-15 questions; only 11% of respondents were in that bracket. 12% were discovery overachievers who asked more than 15 questions. After I pushed my lower jaw back up (it had dropped to hit the desk), I realized that within weakness in the market, there is opportunity. And it’s YOUR opportunity. If 77% of salespeople ask 10 or less questions, they’re not getting to know customers very well. That’s your competition. Want to beat them? Ask more questions. But what should you be asking about? I’ll tell you.
- Your contact’s professional history. “How did you come to be in this position?” is a great question. People love to tell their stories, and this question gives you a great window into their viewpoints as well as being a good rapport-building question. For instance, a plant manager who started out turning wrenches might respond to different value propositions than one who came to the plant fresh from getting an MBA.
- The company’s past, present, and future. Yes, many companies put this info on their website. Have you ever seen a website that was out of date? Me too. And if you are working from obsolete or incorrect information, you might end up presenting the wrong solutions. Ask – or, better, refer to what you read and ask for your contact’s viewpoint on it. That way you show that you’ve done your homework AND that you’re curious.
- Company priorities. Just because your “stuff” is the most important thing in the world to you, it doesn’t mean that it’s the most important thing to your customer. Where does your stuff fall on the list of priorities for your company or your contact? This will have a lot to do with the importance and urgency of your proposal.
- Needs regarding your stuff. Notice that we are just now starting to ask about what you sell, and what their needs are regarding it. That’s because your end of the world is a small part of the big picture in their world – and you need to know the lay of the land before you start probing what’s wrong in your part of the world. By the way, don’t neglect asking about what’s right in your part of the world – if you don’t get the sale, this is going to be a big part of the reason why.
- How they define success. Ultimately, all sales questions boil down to understanding how your customer defines a successful purchase, and how you can help them achieve it. Still, at this point, you should probably ask a direct question about how they will define success.
- Process questions. You should also understand the customer’s buying process, and how it will impact this purchase.
- More questions. There’s more to ask – but you get the idea. Are you asking enough questions? Here’s what you should know: If you ask six questions, you are now better than 37% of your competitors. If you ask 11 questions, you are now better than 78% of your competitors. And so on. And you should, of course, drill down on many of those questions.
Is my survey scientific? Nope. It was a LinkedIn survey. This probably skews the numbers, but does so in a positive way. Salespeople on LinkedIn groups who respond to surveys like this one are probably higher on the scale of the profession, because they’re more engaged. So, if anything, that means that the real numbers are worse than what’s reported on my survey. In the comments, some “salespeople” expressed disdain for the very idea that comprehensive questioning is important; one even said, “If a salesperson is a dynamic opener, he doesn’t need to ask many questions and can close the sale in one call.” I suppose there are areas of selling where that might be true, but it’s not in a highly professional sales universe.
The bottom line – when you are considering your questioning and discovery, here are some things to remember:
- More is typically better.
- Asking questions shows you care.
- The worst question is the one you don’t ask.
- From time to time, you should re-ask questions of current customers; things change.
- Great salespeople are always working to improve their questioning skills.
That’s all for now. If you’ll excuse me, I have to get the look of amazement off my face.
The Four Decisions Every Buyer Makes
Sometimes I think we make selling entirely too complicated – and by “we,” I mean my profession of sales authors and trainers. Sure, selling can be difficult. That’s why they pay us the big bucks. We’re dealing with people and trying to persuade them, and that’s always a challenge. Still, why make the sale more complicated and cumbersome than it has to be?
The truth is that, boiled down to its elements, every sale consists of a prospective or current customer making four decisions. The trick is that there’s no gray area – every decision must be in your favor, or you won’t win the sale. Here they are:
Decision One: The decision to engage with you. Yep, the first decision that your customer makes is the decision to talk to you – or to engage with you, if you prefer that terminology (and I do; “engagement” implies a two-way street). If you can’t get an audience with your customer, you can’t sell them. Yes, you can receive an order from someone who doesn’t talk to you (technology these days is wonderful), but you won’t have an opportunity to persuade or affect the outcome of that decision. This means that your approach to them MUST communicate the value of a conversation with you. In fact, in most cases, that’s all you should be shooting for; by trying to sell more than the simple value of the conversation, you can get neither.
Decision Two: The decision that you can solve their need(s). Every customer has needs. Your ability to discover their needs, and then solve them, is the key to getting a “yes” at this stage of the sales process. That means that, first and foremost, you must ask copious amounts of questions. Even if you THINK you know what the buyer needs, you don’t KNOW until you ask them. Ultimately, you must know how the BUYER will define a successful purchase. Not how you define it, not how most of your other customers define it, not how your boss says it’s defined, but how the buyer defines it. Without knowing how the buyer will define a successful work, everything else is just guesswork – and guesswork rarely wins sales.
Once you know their needs and how they define success, two burdens are placed upon you. The first burden is this – if your offerings do not and cannot solve the buyer’s needs, and meet their definition of success, you must bow out. This is the only way to retain your (and your company’s) professional credibility. Yes, I know, there’s nothing more painful than walking away from potential dollars – but would you rather collect the dollars by hammering someone into a bad purchase, and then live with the failure? Walking away early means that you live to sell another day when your solution fits; making a bad sale means that you are forever disqualified. Even pushing a solution when your buyer knows it’s not a solution can forever disqualify you.
The second burden is that, if your solution does meet the buyer’s needs and definition of success, your presentation must be specifically and intimately tailored to those exact needs and definition. This is harder than it sounds, as sometimes (many times) you have to develop a presentation on the spot. Salespeople can get into the “sell sheet” or “slide deck” mentality that says, “I have all this great information, and I have to get it all out,” even when the customer doesn’t care about all the information. If I go to the doctor for a sore shoulder and he gives me a pill that will fix it (I know that’s not a real thing, but work with me here), I don’t care that it will also solve a sore throat because I don’t HAVE a sore throat. When presenting, present specifically to the customer’s needs. Hit the points hard and often that are meaningful and leave out information that is meaningless. If you execute these steps correctly, your buyer will make the second critical decision – that you can solve needs – and move you to the next step of the process.
Decision Three: The decision that your solution represents good value. If your buyer is interested, he/she is probably going to say, “Okay, how much?” At this point (or as soon after as you can), you offer a proposal with price and terms. Your buyer is then going to evaluate your offering and basically ask themselves whether it’s a good spend of money, time, and resources, or not, and make their third decision. If you’ve asked enough questions about priorities, needs, and the impact of solving those needs, you should already be 80% toward the answer to this question. Still, we sell to human beings, and those human beings can be somewhat unpredictable.
Decision Four: The decision to buy from you. “But wait, Troy, isn’t the decision that you represent good value also a decision to buy?” Nope. Not in the slightest. This is where variables outside of your control come into play. Sometimes your solution is a good spend for the department you’re selling to – but corporate priorities dictate that resources go in a different direction. Or, the timing just isn’t right (maybe they have other projects going on that require the attention and resources that would otherwise be devoted to yours). In any case, you can have the greatest solution to a big problem, priced right, and still not win the sale because some externality is blocking you. Your best strategy here is, back when you’re doing the questioning, to ask questions about overall company priorities, ongoing projects, etc. Sometimes you can sell against those priorities if you know about them – but final decision time is too late to ask or sell against it.
Here’s what you need to know. All of these decisions MUST go in your favor, and each one qualifies you to move to the next step. Fail any one and you will not win the sale, even if your buyer “allows” you to keep selling (by offering a price that won’t result in a sale, for instance).
A Don Doesn’t Wear Shorts.
I loved the HBO show, The Sopranos. I’m a bit of a Mafia aficionado; I’ve been fascinated with that culture ever since my grandmother (!) gave me a book by Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno to read when I was 16. In an early episode of The Sopranos, James Gandolfini, playing Tony Soprano (the main character and the leader or “Don” of the Soprano mob) was hosting a barbecue in his back yard for other mobsters. Tony manned the grill while wearing Bermuda shorts, and this prompted a visit the next week.
As Gandolfini told the story, at a shoot the next week on location in New Jersey, he was approached by a man that was obviously a real-deal mobster. The man walked up to Gandolfini and said that he loved the show, “But Jimmy,” the man said, looking dead into James’ eyes, “Dons don’t wear shorts.” Gandolfini took it to heart, and Tony Soprano never wore shorts again in a Mob gathering. In fact, this became part of a Sopranos episode later when Tony was reproached by a boss for the shorts. What the mobster meant, of course, is that when you have that kind of a leadership position, you can’t afford to look too casual to those that you are supposed to be leading. It’s a lesson that’s often forgotten.
I thought about this recently when watching a Zoom sales meeting. Zoom has been a great tool that has enhanced the capabilities of managers and sales reps alike – but it’s also, in my opinion, contributed to a loosening of standards that isn’t healthy for sales managers or salespeople. In this meeting, the sales manager had 20 sales reps on the line, all were ready and able to hear what he had to say.
The problem was that the manager, attempting to be too cute by half, had employed one of those digital backgrounds on his screen. Those backgrounds suck up bandwidth, so instead of being a clear communicator, his image was pixelating, his voice was cutting in and out, and he was virtually unwatchable. In fact, the only clearly visible image was the background itself, and when the manager attempted to share his PowerPoint presentation on his screen, the entire screen locked up. What ensued was ten minutes of the manager attempting to get rid of the background, then logging off, and finally being able to get back onto the meeting – by which point he had lost his audience, in attention of not reality.
The manager forgot that Dons don’t wear shorts. He had important information to convey, but lost his chance to make it impactful because he was trying to take a too-cool, too-casual approach to the meeting. How often have you seen this since last year? I’ve experienced it myself, many times. During a Hiring Assistance program, there was the guy who logged onto a Zoom job interview for a sales position (he was the applicant) in a T-shirt and ball cap, for example.
Video calling is here to stay. I do not expect it to replace face-to-face selling (we human beings crave actual human contact), but the skills and technology will be part of our repertoire going forward, so we might as well do it right. The key to remember is that Zoom is merely another way to communicate messages – and your message should be the star, not the tech! Whether you’re a manager addressing your team, or a salesperson making a sales presentation, there are a few fundamental best practices you should employ:
- Forget the silly backgrounds. Yes, these platforms allow you to use a lot of cool backgrounds. When you use one, in many cases, the background itself becomes the star and you’re just in the way – or worse, the background eats up your bandwidth. Stick with a stationary background. Even a blank wall is fine, or your office, or whatever. If you want your company branding in it, make up a banner for a backdrop and use it, but the background should be a physical background and not an electronic one.
- Dress like a pro. Casualness is the enemy of persuasion; when you are presenting, you should look and dress the part. Dress and prep the same as you would for a live meeting or sales call.
- Get the camera at eye level. Looking down at the screen makes you look amateurish – whether you’re using a phone or a laptop, position it so that you are looking directly into the camera lens while looking straight ahead.
- Look into the camera lens, not the screen. This is the hardest to master, but very important. When you’re speaking, you should be looking at the camera lens – that means that you’re making eye contact with your recipient. Peripheral vision is a wonderful thing; you can always see their movements and expressions out of the corner of your eye even when you’re looking at the lens.
- Get good sound. If they can’t hear you, they can’t buy from you. Make sure that you have a good microphone setup, if your device doesn’t already have a good microphone. Lavaliere or USB microphones are less than $100, which is a cheap investment.
- The best way to get good at anything is to practice, and presentations are no different. Practice, practice, practice, until you know the tech, you know how to quickly share your screen without fumbling, and you are able to handle all other aspects of the technological platform you’re using.
Remember – you want your video presentation to be just as professional as, if not more so than, your live presentation. Dons don’t wear shorts. Be a Don.
The Ten Commandments of Professional Selling – 2023 Version
Yes, I know. There are other “ten commandments” lists out there for every profession you can think of. But if you know me, you know by now that I’m fairly self-determined and opinionated. I also think that “ten commandments” for today might be different than a similar list written just a few years ago. As I always say, “Sales has changed more in the last decade than in the 100 years previous.”
So, if you will forgive me this little bit of “I can do it better” egotism, here are my Ten Commandments of Professional Selling – 2023 version:
- Thou shalt produce positive outcomes. Sales is about producing Too many sales philosophies pit the salesperson against the customer in an “I win, you lose” strategy. Make no mistake, if you aren’t producing wins for your customers, yourself, and your company, thou shalt seldom be employed.
- Thou shalt always be truthful. There’s nothing worse than a salesperson who lies. Well, there are – cancer in various forms, for instance – but in the sales profession? If you ever reach a moment where you feel that the only way to sustain your livelihood is to deceive a customer in any way, shape, or form, please do us all a favor and get out of the profession. And if you are directed to be dishonest by your boss, you have my permission to refuse. There’s no room in this profession for liars – and frankly, with the technology that we have available to us, there’s really no way to get away with it, either.
- Thou shalt be active. “Activity management” gets a bad rap by people who enjoy putting sales managers down. It shouldn’t. In sales, all results are driven by activity – the quantity of activity and the quality of activity. The simple equation is: (Quantity of activity) x (Quality of activity) = results. Never fool yourself into thinking that you’re so good that you’ll sell everyone you talk to. That level of pride usually goeth before a big fall.
- Thou shalt embrace technology. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to salespeople who say, “Ah, I’m just not good with computers and I don’t think I can learn them.” Horse hockey. They don’t WANT to learn. In today’s world, if you can’t competently use CRM, Office programs, email, text, IM, and video technology, you’ve placed an expiration date on your career – and that date is in the past, not your future. Anyone can learn this tech if they want to, and if you would like to continue your sales career, you’d better want to.
- Thou shalt giveth value on every customer contact. This one is important. The days when you could stop by, talk football for 30 minutes, and leave with an order are over. If you expect to get face time with your customers, you need to make it worth their while. This means giving value in terms of advice, counsel, knowledge, and other ways to better your customers’ situation – even when you are not making a sale on that particular day. Otherwise, they will see salespeople who will do that.
- Thou shalt keepeth thy commitments. Sales is about commitment – a commitment to your own career, to your employer, and to your customers. Keeping your commitments isn’t that hard (but it is unfortunately uncommon). It means showing up on time, keeping any and all promises you make, and basically living up to your word. It also means never leaving customers hanging about what the next step is in the sales conversation.
- Thou shalt always seeketh to expand thy business. A salesperson should be a self-contained business generation machine. That means that you must prospect – on at least a weekly basis. Great salespeople are never content. Plus, great salespeople recognize that they will lose business – through mistakes, through management changes, and even through companies being acquired or going out of business – and they know that to keep producing, they need to prospect. Whenever a client tells me they interview a salesperson who says they won’t prospect, I tell them not to hire that person.
- Thou shalt be inquisitive. Questioning – great questioning – is intrinsic to great selling. That means asking lots of questions to gain customer information about needs, priorities, situation, and other aspects of the sale. It also means that with current customers, you should be re-asking those questions from time to time. Always remember – the worst question is the one you don’t ask.
- Thou shalt be prepared. Always be prepared to take the sale as far as the customer is willing to take it. That doesn’t mean being obnoxious or pushy, but it does mean being prepared to do business on every sales call and letting the customer be the first one to pump the brakes. It also means having your act together by doing pre-call research (their website, your notes, and even reviews online) and having an idea of what you want to accomplish in the sales call.
- Thou shalt hold thy customers dear. While you should be prospecting, you should also be tending to your relationships with your current customers. That means regular contact, refreshing your knowledge, and staying abreast of new developments with them, and getting “high, wide, and deep” with your contact base within your current customers.
The Ten Commandments of Professional Selling are not industry-specific or even specific to B2B or B2C selling – but if you, as a salesperson, follow them every day, you can and will build a successful sales career.
A Man Called Bill
Frank was a family friend; I knew him fairly well. In 1990, he was a member of the Toastmasters in Arizona. He wrote a speech about my grandfather, and sent the manuscript to my Grandmother. Grandmother saved it and I ended up with it before she passed. I read it numerous times, and saved it in my filing cabinet. I was going through my files a few days ago and found it. Rather than scanning it and using OCR to parse it into a Word document, I retyped it so that I could really internalize the words on the page. It explains part of why Granddad was an inspiration to me, to my dad, and to many others, and I decided to post it here for posterity. I hope you enjoy it.
“A MAN CALLED BILL”
Presented by Frank Trower to the Toastmasters in 1990
The first time that I saw Bill was at a race at the Kansas State Fairgrounds in Hutchinson, KS, in the spring of 1949. I was one of the pit crew of a friend of mine that had raced that day. My friend had a heating problem with his car all during the 100 mile race so he spent a lot of time in the pits. After the race as we were loading the car getting ready to leave, an energetic man of medium stature came rushing up to my friend and asked, “What happened to you, Glen?” Since then I have realized that wasn’t idle conversation, Bill really was interested in what happened to Glen.
I have also found out that he was always in a hurry. When you walked anywhere with him, he walked, you ran. Anyway, when he left, I asked Glen who he was and he said that was Bill Harrison, he runs a garage on Kansas Avenue in North Topeka.
The next time that I saw Bill was a few weeks later at a race in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I was with Glen again as one of his pit crew and Bill was there with a new 1949 Lincoln. About halfway through this 100 mile race I looked toward the 4th turn at the right instant to see Bill’s new Lincoln on its nose as it was flipping end over end. Bill climbed out unhurt. He left his wife and young son with the wrecked car in Cedar Rapids and rode back to Topeka, KS, with us.
In those days, which were the infancy of “Late Model Stock Car Racing,” we raced our “family” cars, so we drove the cars to and from the races which were usually 200 to 500 miles from home. Anyway, it was 420 miles from Cedar Rapids to Topeka and as soon as we got there, Bill climbed into his wrecker, drove back to Cedar Rapids, got his car, wife and son, and drove back to Topeka before going to bed and resting.
I realized that here was a man with great fortitude and perseverance. At the next race, the announcer nicknamed him “Wild Bill,” a name that stuck with him for several years.
The racing bug had bitten me hard, so that fall I bought a 1949 Mercury and when the 1950 season opened I was ready to start my racing career. I soon found out that Bill was a fierce competitor, like the time that his own race car ran over him. It happened during a 100 mile race when a shifting linkage came off the transmission. He got under the car, with the engine running, shoved the linkage back into place, and with it being an automatic transmission and the selector lever in the drive position the car took off, ran over him with the back wheel, and continued down the track until it stopped against the fence. Bill got in it and finished the race. At the insistence of the promoter he went to the hospital where X-rays showed he had three fractured ribs.
I also found him quick to help a person in trouble. I have seen him loan tools and parts to a competitor so he could get in a race. I raced against him in 1950 and 1951. In 1952 I didn’t have a car to race so Bill offered me the opportunity to race a car for him. I drove the car all season, about 40 races. In this close relationship my respect for him as a person grew. He was a man of his word, honest, considerate, and not two faced, but most of all he made a person feel as if they were important.
I know of many times in which he could have blamed someone else for his misfortune, but didn’t. For instance, the time in 1956 he was going to a race and one of the men with him was driving his 1956 Chrysler 300 and towing his 1956 Ford Convertible race car. By now, we were towing our race cars and when you traveled with Bill, you had to take your turn at driving on the road. Even his wife Grace had to take her turn which caused a lot of “second looks” from people. Anyway, Bill was asleep in the back seat and it was raining. The man driving lost control and rolled both cars. No one was hurt. Bill got the cars upright and determined that the damage wouldn’t prohibit the cars from being driven. He put oil in the Chrysler’s engine to replace what had drained out and drove the car home, towing the Ford. Bill did not attempt to blame the man driving for wrecking his cars. In fact, when someone even hinted that the man errored in some way, Bill was quick to speak in his defense.
The point I want to make is that when something went wrong, Bill didn’t stand around wringing his hands wondering, “What am I going to do?”
Another instance of this was when a bearing started knocking in the engine of that Lincoln during a race. He pulled out of the race and started driving the Lincoln home but the bearing got so noisy that he was afraid it was going to ruin the engine. So he pulled off to the side of the road, removed the rod and piston from the engine, and drove the car on home.
These instances and others showed me that there are ways around pitfalls. By nature I am rather “laid back” and there have been times in my life that I needed an inspiration, and I have stopped and asked, “What would Bill do in this predicament?”, like the time I was coming back from a race in San Francisco, about halfway between Barstow and Needles, CA, in the middle of the Mojave Desert. We came to an accident where a car and a trailer house were turned over completely blocking the highway. It was in a cut through a hill about 10 feet high. I could see us stranded there for at least a couple of hours until a wrecker could come from “wherever” to clear the highway. Traffic was backing up and people were milling around the wreckage. I thought, “What would Bill do?” Look for a way around! I saw a possibility, maybe by leaving the tow car and the race car hooked together with the two bar, both cars running and pulling together, we might be able to go off the highway, but you know how treacherous the sand is in the desert and how easy it is to get stuck. There was one other problem – I had a small wreck in the race in San Francisco and the radiator was ruined on the race car, so it had not water in it. That meant that we had very little time that we could run the engine before it would overheat and possibly ruin it. I had the man with me drive the race car and I drove the tow car. I told him that we had to go “all out,” don’t let up for anything. We went off the highway, over the hill, and just barely made it back onto the highway on the other side of the wreck – but we did make it.
There are numerous other instances when I learned a lesson from Bill. About 15 years ago he had bypass heart surgery and it hardly slowed him down. Four years ago, he and Grace parked their motorhome at our place for a month and I could hardly keep up with him, and he is in his 70’s!
This last Christmas, Grace put a letter in our Christmas card saying that they are planning on driving their motorhome to Alaska and working in an RV Park at Mount McKinley this summer. They thought they’d better do it before they got too old.
It seems that he and Grace adopted me about 39 years ago. They have treated me as if I was their son, anytime that we drive our motorhome into their driveway, he has the electric cord out to plug into our motorhome before I get the engine stopped!
Now I know that he makes most people feel as though they are “important,” but I like to think of him as a man of his word, helpful to his fellow men, and a true friend.
Written by Frank Trower
February 1990
6 Steps to a Quality Sales Call
Salespeople often complain about customers “wasting their time,” but in truth, the biggest wasters of salespeople’s time are the salespeople themselves. Salespeople waste their own time by not having quality sales calls (NOTE – in this article, a “call” can be a phone appointment, a video appointment, or a face to face meeting).
What defines a quality sales call? A quality sales call is one where you have an idea, you know what you want to accomplish, and you work to accomplish that goal in the meeting. Here are 6 steps to a quality sales call that you should be using on EVERY sales call (with the exception of prospecting calls; we’ll talk about those in a future Navigator), to move your sales processes and relationships forward.
- Do your homework first: pre-call research is so easy today that there’s no excuse not to do it – and yet, I bet you’re doing it on less than 50% of your sales calls. In less than ten minutes, you can look at your prospect’s website, review your contact’s LinkedIn profile, and check out recent reviews on the company. You can even do it from their parking lot on your phone, if you arrived early enough. So if you’re not doing it, why not?
- Having a planned result in mind for you: What do you want to achieve with this call? Hint: A “PR” call where we’re going to sit down and talk about sports isn’t a planned result. Ask yourself this: How do I plan to deepen the relationship or advance a sales process when I’m in front of this customer? If you can’t come up with an answer, you’d better get one before you open the door. This video might help.
- Have a planned result in mind for the customer: In today’s selling world, it’s not enough to have results in mind for ourselves; we have to have a way for the customer to gain through the call. We have to earn our spot in the buying process. You can do this by imparting knowledge, by asking good questions, by bringing something to the table that the customer wasn’t aware of, but that can generate a positive result for the customer.
- Be prepared enough to be able to change the above plans as necessary: One of the biggest attributes for a salesperson is the ability to make adjustments on the fly to get the result you want. Maybe you prepared for one set of needs, and he’s throwing you different ones. If you’re still focused on the need you anticipated, you’re going to fail. We can create the best plans in the world, but if you don’t have the mental acuity to shift and change on the fly as the sales call and the customer requires, you’re going to fail – and you’ll lose business (and your sales calls) to someone who can.
- Have a quality conversation: The one thing that is not replaceable by the Internet is the sales conversation – the ability for the customer to have, in real time, a two-way discussion about his/her needs with someone who is expert in their business and in their products and services, and who can use that knowledge to benefit the customer. Don’t ever short-change this. This also means that we have to cast aside old techniques that are designed to maneuver the customer into ‘ordering NOW’ and instead focus what the customer is actually saying, react to that, and generate a positive result for both parties.
- Be mentally charged: This one is going to be controversial. Numerous experts will tell you that you should NEVER, and I mean NEVER, eat lunch alone on a working day. I do just that, quite frequently. I always have. It’s not because I don’t enjoy eating lunch with clients; I do. But, one thing I’ve discovered about myself is that I need a “mental recharge” period at some point during the day, and lunch is very convenient for that. By a “mental recharge,” I mean a time during the day where I can relax, disconnect a bit from selling (or whatever I’m doing), and re-focus myself. My sales calls and meetings are better afterwards. It doesn’t have to be lunch, and it doesn’t have to be long. Several years ago, I managed an inside sales department. I discovered, early on, that my top salesperson used to come into my office and complain about something (usually a bad customer call) for about 15-20 minutes every day. I was concerned about her “negativity” until I realized that she would come in, vent, and then go out and kick tail for the rest of the day. She was awesome until the vent, and awesome after. And if that was my investment in helping her succeed, that was a good investment. That was her “recharge.” Find yours, and take one ‘recharge’ break a day.
Every time you don’t follow the 6 steps to a quality sales call, you’ve wasted your time and the customer’s. If you focus on generating quality (and it’s not that much harder), your results will thank you, and so will your customers.
How to Take Care of Your Most Important Asset
On December 15, I flew home from Louisville, KY, to my home in Kansas City, after speaking at a conference. As usual, I flew Southwest (I’ve been a loyal Southwest customer for over a decade). Unusually, the flights were badly delayed – both my flight from Louisville to Chicago, and from Chicago home. What made these delays unusual were what I call “incompetence delays” – paperwork not being ready at takeoff time, gates not being ready, etc. The flight from Louisville to Chicago takes about 45 minutes of flying time and we spent about an hour and a half sitting on tarmac at both ends of the flight.
I was lucky. I got home that night, albeit four hours later than planned. Watching the current Southwest Airlines meltdown makes me realize how lucky I was – I was seeing a preview of things to come. Right now, Southwest’s biggest problem isn’t getting thousands of people to their destination. It’s not the thousands of bags sitting in airports. It’s not even the outdated computer infrastructure that, according to reports, is the cause of this mess. It’s trust.
Every purchase requires trust. When we purchase a meal, we are trusting that the food will be as represented on the menu, that it will be prepared under safe and sanitary conditions, and that it will be edible without making us sick – or worse. When your customers purchase whatever you have to offer, they are trusting that you will fulfill your promises. Some purchases require a little trust, some require a lot – but all require some.
There are few expressions of trust that are more personal than purchasing a plane ticket. When we purchase a ticket, we are trusting that the airline will get us where we are supposed to be going – and get us home (on a round trip ticket) – in something approximating the schedule of the ticket we bought. A quick search makes it difficult to find an actual number of stranded passengers, but the flight cancellations are running over 2,000 PER DAY, as Southwest runs about 1/3 of their schedule to try to get back on track. Conservatively, I’d say that over 100,000 passengers either didn’t make it to their Christmas, or didn’t make it home. That’s a lot of blown trust.
Southwest’s management made it worse, in my opinion, by blaming “weather” and “staffing” for the issues. The winter storm certainly played a part – but when other airlines recovered within a day or two, it became obvious to customers that something was wrong with Southwest specifically. Numerous social media posts from pilots, crew, gate staff, and other Southwest employees saying that there were planes at the airports and crews ready to fly them, but that the computer system couldn’t match them up, went viral, as did one video of a pilot helping to load bags onto this plane so that he could take off.
So, what did Southwest do wrong here (other than just have a meltdown of their system, that is)?
- They knew a problem was coming (with their system), and kicked the can down the road. Southwest’s new CEO, Bob Jordan, only took over ten months ago, so this was a problem that he inherited. The previous CEO had been in the job more than a decade without making updates, even as the airline grew. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t pretend to know how to fix a software system like this – it’s unbelievably complex. But I do know that other airlines have done it, and Southwest did not.
- They didn’t have a backup plan. If you have a system in your business that you know could cause a problem, but you haven’t been able to address it or fix it yet for whatever reason, you should have a backup plan other than raw panic.
- The worst, however, is that they weren’t honest. The excuse was “weather and staffing.” This angered many of their employees, who posted messages all over social media that “staffing” was not a problem – they were there, planes were there, but Southwest’s antiquated computer system was unable to match planes to people. Hence, many of the flights that are going out on Southwest right now are being done by hand – a tedious and time consuming process. Ultimately, the corporate spokespeople lied to their customers (this, by the way, can be blamed on the current CEO). I don’t know how many times I have to say it, but I’ll say it again: NEVER LIE TO YOUR CUSTOMERS. Today, the truth always gets out, and gets out quickly. You can either embrace transparency or have it forced upon you. Southwest chose to have it forced upon them.
I should point out here that Southwest’s front-line people have always been terrific to me. They have been kind, fun, personable, and to a person dedicated to getting me and my bag where I needed to go. Once, after waiting an hour and a half on the tarmac at Kansas City to fly to Vegas (weather related), the pilot came on the intercom and said, “Hang on, folks, they just gave me the go-ahead and I’m getting in the air before they can take it back. This is gonna be fun!” What followed was the quickest takeoff I’ve ever experienced in a 737 and one of the quickest flights to Vegas (the captain then said, “There are no speed limits in the sky.”). My criticisms are in no way aimed at the people at the airports and on the planes. However, this is out of their hands.
So, what happens now? It’s hard to say. This episode has thrown Southwest’s viability into question. Many formerly loyal customers – myself included – will be switching to other airlines (my go-to now is Delta, if you were wondering). The real costs to Southwest are going to be monstrous. There will be refunds, travel reimbursements, and luggage reimbursements (there are going to be thousands of customers who never see their luggage again, bet on it).
Then there will be the costs of doing what they absolutely have to do now, which is updating their IT infrastructure. Fixing problems at emergency speed is always far more expensive than fixing them on your own schedule – and we all know that updating IT systems usually creates more short-term operational issues. And we haven’t even discussed the likely government actions and fines.
The biggest cost will be in customer trust going forward. How many people simply won’t fly Southwest again? I have a flight booked on them in late January to go to California. I’m going to be watching the situation as it develops, and if I don’t see them running mostly on time in a week and a half, I’m going to cancel and rebook on Delta.
How Southwest will recover from this is yet to be determined. But, I can give you some good advice on how to retain customer trust in your business:
- If you see a problem coming, address it before it becomes critical. Even if it’s an order that you see going out wrong, catch it and fix it NOW.
- Have a backup plan for when anticipated problems happen.
- Be HONEST and own the problem. The truth will get out anyway – it might as well be you telling it.
Whether your business is large or small, the trust of your customers is your biggest asset. Protect it with everything you have.
