Identifying The Sales Decision Maker

When someone walks into your store or calls to place an order, you’re sometimes dealing with the decision maker. Often, though, that person is simply carrying out the instructions of the real buyer. The sales manager’s secretary who orders “Top Producer” awards from a trophy store, for example, may decide what kind of plaque to buy, but the decision to make the purchase in the first place was made by the manager.  If you want to sell more, you have to persuade that person—the original decision maker—to buy them.

To sell completely new accounts, of course, you absolutely have to find the person who can say “yes.” When you approach a new potential customer on your own initiative, it’s very easy to get stuck dealing with an underling who may or may not be able to give you an order. You need to at least try to see the prime decision maker when you make your first contact. So how do you know who they are?

One way to find out, of course, is to ask. Before you knock on the door with a presentation, call the company and ask for the name of the president, the marketing director, the human resources manager, or whomever you think is most likely to be the person who controls the budget you want to tap. You can also find names on company websites or from services like Dun & Bradstreet. Their reports not only provide data like address and phone numbers, but also whether you are dealing with a headquarters location. Facts you can use include the number of employees nationwide and locally as well as annual sales, both of which can help you estimate how much potential the account has. You’ll also find the names of various executives, a.k.a. decision makers. One nifty feature allows you to store this company’s name online in a tracking folder and be notified of changes.

To carry your sleuthing a step further, type the executive’s name into Google. Do the same with the company name itself. If they’ve been in the news, you might learn that they’re just announced a new product that your product or service could help their sales force introduce. Or you might find that they’re active with a church, youth activities, or a local non-profit, which gives you a way to open the door by offering to support their favorite cause. Other places to check include your local newspaper’s website, which often contains a search feature that will pull up past stories about your prospect from their archives.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Make More B2B Sales

If you’re in business-to-business sales, you know where you and your product generally rank on the list of priorities of most prospects. It’s usually way down there near the bottom of the list simply because a business operator or manager has so many situations clamoring for their attention every day.

Start with personnel (the biggest headache of all) and all the issues that go with it: hiring, firing, motivating, compensating, absenteeism, benefits, training, and on and on. Then there is the cost of goods if the business is a retail establishment or the cost of materials if it’s a manufacturer. These contribute directly to the profit margins, which are thin and getting thinner in most businesses today. There’s the “infrastructure” of the business—overhead items like rent, utilities, computer systems, debt service, and insurance. There are partners and shareholders to deal with, not to mention the most important of all, the customers. And then there’s that old bugaboo: taxes in all their myriad forms.

With all these matters weighing on the prospect’s mind, is it any wonder that it’s tough to get an appointment—especially one to ask a bunch of questions?

It’s even tougher when you factor in the competition—other salespeople. And I’m not just talking about your direct competitors. I’m referring to the army of salespeople peddling items and services that deal with all the above issues. Vendors, manufacturer’s reps, insurance agents; the list is endless. They all want a few minutes of the prospect’s time every day. If the prospect saw them all, they’d never get anything else done. If you want an appointment, you have to break through the clutter. You should pay the prospect for his time, not expect him to pay you.

These days most prospects expect the seller to have done their homework before they come in the door. They barely have time to do their own jobs, much less educate every salesperson who wants to sell them something. So, do the research first, then come up with a product or service that will meet the needs you think the prospect might have. Now, instead of calling the prospect and asking for some of their valuable time to educate you, you can offer to give them something of value—an idea to help their business in some way. Approached that way, the prospect is much more likely to give you a few minutes to make your pitch.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

The Unfortunate Truth About Consultive Selling

Consultive selling, about which shelves full of books have been written and decades’ worth of seminars presented, is based on the principle that you need to understand the prospect’s needs before you can make a sale. Nothing wrong with that. But some practitioners of the approach believe the first step is to set up a meeting to ask the prospective customer a series of questions, the ever-popular “needs analysis” call. By answering those questions, the theory goes, the customer will tell you what they need or want to buy. Then you can come back with a proposal on the next call. There’s certainly nothing wrong with the intentions of that approach, but in my experience it seldom works out quite so neatly.

For one thing, few prospects will give you the time to answer your questions unless they’re already interested in your product, which sounds good until you realize that making presentations only to those people means you’ve eliminated a large group of prospects who won’t give you the first appointment. I’ll grant that pre-qualifying prospects this way may be a good time management method, but I can’t help but believe that the “not interested” prospects could be a very valuable source of new business.

And that number grows every day because the “needs analysis” approach is hugely over-worked as more and more prospects refuse to invest their time in it. Business operators are bombarded with offers to study their financial needs, manufacturing systems, advertising plans, and insurance programs. “It’s a valuable study without any obligation to buy” is an offer they’ve heard so many times that they’ve become immune to the pitch.

What can be even more discouraging is that, in many industries, the same prospect has undergone the consultive needs analysis multiple times with the same company because the vendor has such high turnover in its sales force. And they’ve gotten nothing in return except another proposal to buy which looks suspiciously like the last proposal they got from that company’s previous salesperson. In other words, fewer and fewer prospects are falling for the “needs analysis” gambit.

But what about those who do let you in the door to answer your questions? While generalizations can be dangerous, I don’t believe that they’re going to give you the best, most accurate information on which to base your proposal. They wouldn’t be seeing you unless they already had some pre-conceived notion of what they would like to buy from you. This, in turn, will tend to color the answers they give to your needs analysis questions. Not that the prospect would lie to you, it’s just that when someone already knows the answer, they tend to interpret the question to fit it. And their interpretation of your question may not be the same as yours, with some possible confusion over the answer as a result.

And that’s assuming they’re fully cooperative to start with. What are the things you want to learn when you conduct the needs analysis? Most of the questionnaires I’ve seen can be boiled down to two questions: 1) How can the prospect best use my product and 2) How much money can they spend on it? The variations on the first question will get some fairly accurate answers, but the second will often generate purposefully wrong answers because most people are pretty sensitive about giving out financial information to perfect strangers.

And that’s what you are, after all—a stranger. Since this is the first call on the prospect, by definition you don’t know them and, even more importantly, they don’t know you. All the prospect knows is that you’re there to get something from him (information and time) and he’ll get something in return (a proposal) sometime in the future. You should look on every sales call as a transaction in which items of value change hands. Even if a sale doesn’t occur, information changes hands—and that’s an item of value. In a solid transaction, items of equal perceived value are exchanged in a two-way process. On the consultive sell first call, though, the prospect gets nothing of value in return for his or her time and cooperation.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Don't Consult--Sell! On The First Call

One of the great myths about selling is that you need to make a series of calls on a prospect to determine their needs before you can make a proposal to them. If you’re selling anything less complicated than enterprise computing systems, this is time-wasting nonsense based on a misunderstanding of consultive selling. Why wait? You’ll speed up the prospect’s decision-making process and save yourself hours and hours of selling time (which you can use to make more sales) if you present a specific proposal on your very first call.

This suggestion invariably sends traditional consultive sellers into convulsions and they say things like, “How can you make a proposal without ascertaining the need?” “Won’t the prospect think you’re arrogant to come in with a proposal the very first time you meet them?” “What if your proposal is wrong?”

This response comes from a lack of understanding of my method. You’ll notice that I want you to make a proposal on the first call—but that doesn’t necessarily mean that that call will be the first time you’ve visited the prospect. Nor does it mean that you haven’t done a needs analysis. In fact, the time and effort you put into needs analysis (before the first call) will dwarf that of a typical consultive seller who goes into the first call with questionnaire in hand. And your needs analysis will be more accurate, which will mean a more accurately targeted proposal.

Selling on the first call isn’t as simple as it sounds, of course. It’s not a matter of taking the same product to as many prospects as possible in hopes that you’ll stumble across someone that needs to buy something today. Nor does it mean that you ignore the prospect’s individual needs and try to sell them a one-size-fits-all product. To make a sale on the first call, you need to research the prospect in advance, ask probing questions during your presentation, and be ready to change your design or other elements of your proposal—on the spot. It takes preparation and a set of ears finely tuned to what the customer is saying.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

On-The-Spot Thinking Makes Sales

Watch out for the impulse to “go back to the drawing board” when the prospect throws you a curve.

Inside, you’re dealing with your own desire to get out of a stressful situation when the prospect says that he or she has a need you haven’t anticipated or wants a different design element in the product you’re offering. You’ll want to retreat and regroup and come back another time with a different proposal, but resist the temptation. You are a professional, you know your product inside and out, so be ready to make changes!

Only after the prospect agrees that your product or service will meet his or her needs are you ready to bring up the subject of price and ask for the order. If you never get agreement on your product’s ability to satisfy the prospect’s needs, the price won’t make any difference, so don’t rush into it. Ask your questions, really listen to the answers, then ask the prospect to buy.

Creative sellers with open minds have an endless market for the things they sell. Some of us, though, actually have lots of ideas but are hesitant to use them because we’re afraid they won’t be good enough. The problem with that kind of thinking is that it puts the onus of judgment on the wrong person. The salesperson shouldn’t judge the merits of an idea—leave that to the prospect. If the customer thinks it’s good—it’s good! Put your idea in front of him or her using the best presentation skills you have, and let the prospect make the final judgment.

You’ll be surprised how often they decide they like your bright idea.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Making A Creative Sale

There are two kinds of salespeople, order processors and idea sellers. The first one serves a certain function in any business, but it’s the second one that will make the business boom.

Who are idea sellers? Salespeople who size up a prospect’s business and take them a proposal for a product or service to meet their needs. They plant the idea for the solution to a need in the prospect’s mind even though the prospect may never have acknowledged that need to start with. By doing so, the idea seller creates demand for his or her products.

Here’s an example:  Let’s say the prospect is an insurance agency and you, the idea seller, have a small business making gift baskets—those elaborate assortments of gourmet foods, trinkets, and colorful goodies that solve a lot of gift-giving problems. As a real idea seller, you will take a look at the insurance agency and think up ways they could use gift baskets to sell more insurance. They could buy a basket every week to award the agency’s top producer, for example, or send a basket to every new client as a way to say thanks. Maybe they could reward clients who go three years without a claim or send a gift basket to prospective customers as a door opener. In other words, there are lots and lots of ways the insurance agency could use gift baskets.

But if no one suggests it, the insurance agency probably would never think of it themselves. That’s where the idea seller steps in. You pitch one of these ways the agency could use the product and gives them a specific proposal (how many—of what—at what cost) on which to act. That’s idea selling in a nutshell. It’s very creative.

Gift basket makers are generally very creative people, so they should be very good at this. The key is to put some of the same wonderful creativity that goes into designing baskets into ways that your prospective customers can use them. I’m sure you noticed that the “ideas”  mentioned for the insurance agency aren’t different types of gift baskets—they’re different applications for the gift basket product. It’s conceivable, in fact, that the same gift basket design could be used in all four—or more—ways mentioned above. The creative part of the sales process is in finding new uses for the product.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

How Winning Sales Arguments Lose Sales

Traditionally, sellers walk into the prospect with a presentation listing the many reasons their product should be bought. They present their case to the prospect, giving arguments and evidence much like a lawyer in a courtroom. They then listen to the opposing case (the objections from the prospect) and rebut them as best they can. The whole process becomes about winning a courtroom debate with the prospect. Sound familiar?

Now, in my limited experience in a courtroom, there are basically three parties involved in a typical case: the judge, who hands down a decision based on the merits of the arguments which are presented by the other two people, the plaintiff and the defendant. What’s different about selling is that the “judge,” or prospect, also happens to be the “opposing attorney!” He’s responsible not only for making a decision, but for arguing against it. Not that he can’t be objective, but the odds aren’t with you. That’s one reason closing ratios are typically so low for many salespeople.

But losing the case—or getting a “no” from the prospect—isn’t the toughest part. It’s the fact that once this “judge” hands down the decision, it’s pretty final. There’s not really any appeal in traditional sales and it’s pretty hard to come up with a new case and get back into the courtroom with it. You usually give all your best reasons to buy during the first presentation. To get a second chance to pitch your product, you have to first overcome the prospect’s attitude that he’s “heard it all before.” You have to offer something new to get back in the door.

When you sell ideas (solutions to the prospect's needs), though, you’ve always got a reason for the prospect to see you again—because you can always come up with a new idea. Remember that an idea isn’t a product—it’s a use, a solution to a discovered need. So, as long as you can come up with different ideas, you’ll be able to get back in to see the prospect with them. You’re not coming back to make the same old pitch; you’re offering something new.

Of course, part of your presentation includes the reasons your product will satisfy the prospect’s needs. You do need to make your arguments. But if you structure your presentation the way I suggest, the prospect will focus on the desirability of your idea instead of on the reasons for buying your product or service. Your “arguments” will go unanswered. And you’ll have the opportunity to present them again as you come back over and over again with new ideas. Same arguments every time, just new ideas to get you in the door.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Negotiating With Honor

How do you negotiate honorably and successfully? By negotiating both value and price with the goal of striking the most favorable deal for both the buyer and the seller. If there is a morality problem with a negotiated sale, it’s when one party’s aim is to “win” the game at the expense of the other. If both the buyer and the seller can believe in and practice win/win negotiations, everybody’s life is easier and they can sleep better at night.

Unfortunately, too many people engage in win/lose negotiation. They believe that the only way they can gain value is by taking it away from the other person. They view every transaction as a zero-sum game. This belief is anathema to the Creative Selling System. You can’t build long term customer relationships based on taking advantage of the customer every time you sell them something. Sooner or later they’ll figure it out.

When you engage in win/lose negotiation, you create an adversarial relationship with your prospect. That lifeblood of Creative Selling, information about the prospect’s needs, is cut off at the source because the prospect soon realizes that you’re using that information to gain the upper hand in the negotiations.

That’s one of the main reasons, by the way, that the traditional consultive selling approach is so ineffective—many prospects fear that giving information to the consultive seller will just give him ammunition to use in future negotiations. So they clam up or even give misleading information to confuse the seller.

You can’t create solutions to the prospect’s needs unless you learn what those needs are. Without that information, your selling effort degenerates into a guessing game where you have to keep offering different proposals without having the feedback necessary to come up with good ones. And because your ideas don’t very accurately meet the prospect’s needs, fewer sales occur. The win/lose negotiation attitude may produce a larger single order today, but it reduces the probability of getting better orders tomorrow.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

A Customer-Friendly Retail Environment

We sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that people are so used to shopping unaided in the aisles of mass-market retailers that they don’t want to be bothered by pesky sales people, but nothing could be further from the truth. What customers don’t like is a clerk hanging around putting silent pressure on them to make a decision. While there may be a few independent souls who want to browse unaided through a plan-o-gram full of merchandise, most people appreciate the expert advice and guidance of a knowledgeable retail sales person, especially when they’re shopping for something more complicated than a bottle of shampoo.

A good retail salesperson does their best work when they help a customer figure out what they need in order to accomplish their goal or fix their problem. Which means, of course, that your staff has to know what they’re talking about. They need to know the lines you carry and what the products do—and don’t do. They need to be able to answer the prospect’s questions and even to suggest questions that the prospect should be asking. If they don’t know the answers, they should know where and how to get them—and make it clear to the customer that they’re willing to do the extra work cheerfully.

Helpful service like this means the sales person needs another set of tools, too: good communication skills. Sometimes, it’s not enough to just ask the customer what he wants. The sales person may need to do a little probing about the customer’s needs or desires before he or she can suggest a good solution. They need to know what kinds of questions to ask and—even more importantly—they need to listen to the answers. Some customers will be able to tell you exactly what they’re looking for, what size they want, and even where it’s located in your inventory. A far greater majority of them, though, are like patients in the doctor’s office; they need somebody to listen to their symptoms, to tell them why it hurts, and to prescribe something they can do about it.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Negotiating In The Retail Store

Helpful negotiation tactics for retail salespeople:

● Stay cool. If a customer asks for a lower price, remember that it’s just a business transaction, not a judgmental comment on your artwork, your gallery, or you.

● Know your limits, but don’t go there right away. If the customer can talk you into two small concessions rather than one big one, they’re more likely to be satisfied with the deal.

● Ask for something in return. A customer may be willing to use cash rather than a credit card, put their name on your mailing list, or give you something else of value in return for a lower price.

● Use negotiation to close the sale. “If I give you this price, will you buy it now?” is a great way to separate buyers from lookers.

In today’s economy, you can expect more and more retail customers to test the firmness of your prices. If you keep your wits about you and exclude emotions from the process, though, you can use that trend to build your sales.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Effective Team Sales Presentations

Each team, even if it consists of only two members, should have a leader. That’s usually the senior person on the team and will be the person the prospect will tend to address with questions. It doesn’t have to be, but it usually happens that way. The leader will also generally be the one to open the presentation and ask the closing question. If there is any question about who’s going to be the leader on your team, settle it before you go into the presentation.

But don’t let the leader look like the Grand Poobah attended by his retinue. If the leader delegates all the menial tasks like handing out materials to the lowly lackeys on the team, the prospect is liable to sense a power display in progress, and react negatively. Eliminate this problem before it arises and make sure the leader is perceived as a member of the team, not its monarch.

On the other end of the scale, also make sure that every member of the team actively participates in the presentation. Each person should have a speaking role of some sort, preferably related to their role in the seller’s plan to serve the prospect’s needs. You don’t want the prospect wondering why that guy in the corner isn’t saying anything while you’re trying to make the points in your presentation. The Metropolitan Opera may need spear-carriers, but your sales team doesn’t.

In order to keep your team call focused on results, make sure everyone on the team understands these points about the upcoming call:

What are we trying to do?
If this call is successful, what will happen?
Who are the key players?
What happened on the last call?
What are we going to ask them to do?
Why should they do it?

The choir always sounds better when they’re all singing the same song.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Preparing The Team For Your Sales Presentation

Pre-call preparation for the team presentation is essential. You should each know what your respective roles are going to be on the call before you begin the presentation. Even if the presentation is one you’ve done together many times, rehearse it before you go into the meeting. This means everyone on the team, including your company’s CEO. And the practice must be a full dress rehearsal complete with the actual props you’re going to be using.

One of my most embarrassing moments occurred during a team presentation. It happened because we had not rehearsed with the actual materials we were going to use. There were four of us making a pitch that we had done many times together. Our presentations usually involved the top decision makers and were quite lengthy and detailed. We typically used a lot of boilerplate material, but the key points were always customized for the prospect we were pitching.

The climax of the pitch came when I would present our revenue projections for the prospect. I typically jumped into that page like a preacher at a revival, giving it everything I had. On this occasion, though, when I turned the page I saw the headings of the columns of figures carried not this prospect’s name but the name of the company we had pitched the week before. The figures were correct, but they looked like they belonged to another company.
We all saw the simple little word processing mistake at the same time and everyone in the room was embarrassed, including the prospect. But the damage had been done. This little mistake completely undermined the “personal attention to each client” benefit that was our primary selling point. It cost us a $6 million client. The material had been proofread by three people, including me. But we hadn’t used the actual materials in our rehearsal the night before. I’ll always believe that we would have caught the mistake if we had followed that simple little rule.

In addition to the pitch itself, you should also rehearse the answers to particular questions and objections that you expect to crop up. It’s important to know which person on the team is going to answer which question so that there’s no fumbling when it arises. If the prospect asks you about delivery dates, for example, you don’t want a long awkward pause followed by three people giving three different answers all at once. You also don’t want your team leader to “hand off” a question to someone who’s not expecting it.

You also need to organize your visual aids under the management of one member of the team. We’ve all seen blooper video where three outfielders collide under the same fly ball in short center field. You don’t want that to happen to you in front of a room full of prospects, so make sure each piece of equipment and each piece of hand-out material is one person’s responsibility. Your hand-outs, by the way, should be managed the same way they are in a group presentation—the one team member responsible for them passes them out with the order and flow you want.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Keys To Sales Presentations To Groups

The dynamics of group presentations can be interesting, to say the least. This is a sales presentation, not a floorshow, so you want to encourage questions and comments from the group. In fact, you should plan to ask some questions of your own just like you would if you were meeting with the prospect one-on-one.

Your questions can either be thrown out to the group as a whole or addressed to one person in particular, depending on which is more appropriate. You will find that agreement questions such as “Do you like this idea?” don’t work very well in a group setting. There’s too much danger of the group splitting into factions or a particularly out-spoken member shooting you down before you get into your presentation.

Information questions, though, such as “Who is your biggest competitor?” can work very well. Many times, they’ll spark an intra-group discussion, which is a great time to listen closely and learn a lot. Watch the group dynamics to learn who the leaders really are. Obviously, you’ll want to listen to what they say about their business, their market, and their competitors as well as what they say about your idea, your company, and your competitors.

You should welcome questions or comments that come from the group, even when they break up the flow of your presentation. If the question is one you don’t want to answer yet, it’s perfectly acceptable to say that you’re going to cover that subject in a minute. Just make sure you do cover it before you end your presentation. If it’s a question about your proposal that indicates the listener doesn’t understand something, take the time right then to make it clear. If one person didn’t get it, there are probably others who missed it, too.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Making Complex Sales Simpler

Another element adding to the complexity of the selling process today is the sale of services and product systems rather than items. You probably don’t sell a line of widgets; you sell “widget-based interior manufacturing process solutions.” You don’t sell a bookkeeping service; you sell “digital financial management decision and accounting information systems.”

The more complicated the product, the more “experts” required to make a decision about buying it. And the greater the number of incremental or interim decisions that have to be made before the final order is placed.

One of the many pitfalls in a complex sale is the “whisper down the lane” problem. You’ve probably played that parlor game where one person whispers a phrase to the next, who repeats it in the ear of another person until “Mary is going down to see Phil” becomes “Mary’s gong rang on Sea Hill.”

This is going to happen to you and your proposal when a flak catcher says to you, “Mr. Big is too busy to see you now, but I’ll explain your proposal to him for you.” This is not a good thing.
Not only is the flak catcher unlikely to get your proposal right, it’s a given that he or she won’t deliver it with the same enthusiasm and positive energy as you would. In fact, he’s very likely to start his pitch of your idea with, “I don’t know if you’ll like this, but.…” and go downhill from there. Remember, it’s the flak catcher’s job to say “no” to proposals, so he has to at least imply that answer to Mr. Big.

That’s if he takes your proposal into the inner sanctum at all, of course. Most of the time, he’s giving you that routine for the same reason a prospect says, “I’ll think about it” rather than giving you a simple “no.” It’s a convenient, low-risk way to get rid of you for a while. In fact, when you call back to see how Mr. Big liked the idea, the flak catcher can tell you “no sale” and blame it on Mr. Big. And you have no way of knowing for sure whether Mr. Big actually saw it or not.

This same problem is magnified when you’re forced to deal with a buying agent of some sort. They really have a vested interest in keeping Mr. Big in the dark about your proposals. And they will go to great lengths to make sure you don’t even think about going around them.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

How To Sell Despite Gatekeepers, Flak Catchers, And Other Obstacles

Many times you’ll have to fight your way through an army of flak catchers to get your proposal in front of the people who matter. Flak catchers, by the way, are those people noted author and social commentator Tom Wolfe identified as the ones sitting in the outer office whose job it is to intercept incoming shrapnel, complaints, and sales pitches to protect the real decision makers inside.

There’s a great temptation to try to blow right by the flak catchers and get to Mr. Big. The problem with this tactic is that it backfires too often. You never know just what the relationship between the two may be. Many a busy executive will take cues from an administrative assistant because they work so closely together day after day. And the assistant will know just how much power they have, too, and not hesitate to use it if they feel slighted in any way. Remember how much trouble Marie Antoinette got into because she brushed off the concerns of the little people.

You have to be careful, too, about job titles. Does the Senior Vice President of Marketing make the final advertising budget decisions? Does the Operations Manager buy the production line equipment—or does that job belong to the Purchasing Manager? Maybe. Maybe not. It all depends on the company and their practices. You obviously need to do your homework and ask lots of questions as you’re working your way through the maze.

The decision influencer that will really drive you crazy is the invisible one. I don’t know how many times I’ve worked for months on a prospect, making endless presentations to person after person only to get a final “no” because there was an unidentified decision influencer I missed along the way. You just never know and unfortunately you can’t count on the prospect to offer you all the guidance you’d like to have. Ask, ask, ask.

Another source of sales insanity is the self-appointed expert. Every prospect seems to have someone on staff whose main job responsibility is to pass negative judgment on every sales proposal. They always seem to be hardest on those proposals that didn’t start in their office, too, which is an interesting coincidence.

Some product and service lines draw these experts worse than others. More than two-thirds of American homes have computers, so you can count on at least half the prospect’s employees having an opinion on your product if you sell information systems. Everybody is an expert on advertising too, of course, since everybody is exposed to it every day.

The strategy I’ve adopted to deal with all these contingencies is to make the presentation to anybody who will listen to it, whether I think they’re directly involved in the decision or not. With a complex sale, you can never be sure who’s doing what or who has the stroke, so cover them all. Since a complex sale can take time (weeks, months, or even years) to complete, it’s not unheard of for someone you’ve pitched to get promoted, transferred, or terminated before the final decision is made. So cover all your bases and make the presentation to anybody you can corner long enough to hear it.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Selling In The Face Of Empowerment

Companies who "empower" their employees will proudly tell you that you don’t have to pitch your product to Mr. Big because any number of subordinates can make the final decision. Mr. Big will go along with anything they decide. Did you notice that Mr. Big still has the final word? To me, just saying that he will go along implies that he also has the option to not go along.

Unfortunately, at least in my experience, many of the employees who have been empowered don’t want the responsibility that goes along with the territory. Some people subconsciously feel threatened by the responsibility that comes with decision-making. They may even believe that upper management is copping out on their responsibilities by pushing decisions down in the organization. They’re much more inclined to say “no” than “yes” because keeping the status quo is almost always felt to be the safer decision. And a great deal of second guessing goes on, too, especially among those who live to please upper management and as such are mostly concerned about what Mr. Big really wants them to decide. There’s a tendency to push the decision back up the corporate ladder—or worse, not make any decision at all—if they can.

It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s one that you have to deal with constantly when you're in sales.

The biggest reason you’ll constantly be involved in complex sales is that the fabric and structure of many industries have become more complex. The Mom and Pop grocery store has given way to the hypermart. The independent local realtor is now a franchisee of a national financial conglomerate. The local lumber yard has been replaced by a big box store and the neighborhood hardware store is under siege. Waves of consolidation have swept through every industry from toy stores to funeral homes.

And with size almost always comes complexity. The management of a nationwide chain of service stations has a vastly more complicated structure than the one running your local two-pump corner gas station. There are local managers reporting to regional managers reporting to division managers who draw on the resources of the corporate marketing, finance, legal, engineering, and administrative staffs. The decision to buy a new digital sign, for example, may have to be approved by a dozen individuals. At the local sole-proprietor gas station, one person—the owner/operator—will make that decision alone.

Since creative sellers focus on the larger potential accounts, they almost by definition pursue the national organizations rather than the mom and pops in their industry. You must develop a set of tools and tactics to reach and persuade the multiple decision influencers in your prospect’s company.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Need Help Closing The Sale?

Closing the sale is the most misunderstood of all the selling skills. It’s also probably the most over-rated. But there’s no mystery involved. Just make the goal of every sales call to leave a happy customer behind. If you concentrate on sound communication and long-term relationships, you’ll find it easy to ask for the order.

Approach closing opportunities with the idea that every sales call should give the customer yet another reason to do business with you—again. It’s a pro-active, pro-customer way to look at your job. When it comes time to ask for the order, it’s easy!

“Fear Of Closing” takes the mystery out of the process and puts closing the sale into the context of improving your customer relationships.

“Buying Signals” explains how to recognize buyer behavior that says they’re ready to make a commitment. That’s the time to ask for the order.

“Closing Techniques” explores some of the standard approaches to making the sale happen—as well as some you might not expect.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Selling Hours

If you take the time to consider the break down of your work day, you’ll quickly see that you do not have many selling hours. In reality, you don’t even have the standard eight working hours to devote entirely to your sales. I estimate that most salespeople only have about five and a half hours to make sales every daily. This is because you can only make face-to-face presentations when your prospects and customers are available. Even working an extra hour in the morning and one at night won’t mean getting more face time with prospects.

Occasionally, of course, you’ll have breakfast and lunch meetings with customers, squeeze in one last call at 4:45 PM, etc. But for the most part, you’ll find it difficult to consistently make appointments with anyone before 9:30 AM because your prospects are busy organizing their own day (which does not revolve around you). Much the same holds true for lunch, which seldom starts at noon or lasts exactly an hour for most decision makers and influencers.

Here’s what a typical sales day looks like:
8 – 9:30 AM Arrive at office, attend meetings, organize day, leave for first call
9:30 AM – 12 PM Prime Sales time
12 – 1:30 PM Lunch, return phone calls, paperwork, leave for calls
1:30 – 4:30 PM Prime Sales time
4:30 – 6 PM Return to office, return phone calls, attend meetings, paperwork

As you can see, you have five hours and 30 minutes of prime selling time in the day. How do you maximize it? Using the priority system you’ve set up, you have to plan your activities.

“Plan your work and work your plan” is yet another “golden oldie” sales adage. And it’s a good one because it describes the essence of sound time management. It’s not enough to lay out a plan, you have to execute it to get any benefit from it. In fact, if you don’t “work your plan,” you’ve wasted the time it took to draw it up.

You can spend a lot of time planning. You can also invest hundreds of dollars in account management software and cross-indexed leather-bound time management systems. Or you can make up a “to do” list on a napkin at the coffee shop where you start your day. These are all planning systems that can work. I suggest trying something in between.

You need both long-term and short-term plans. Or call them strategic and tactical plans, if you have a military frame of mind. Which one is more important? Neither. They serve two distinct but equally important purposes.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Selling Is Fun: Benefits of a Career in Sales

The most attractive part of a career in sales is the freedom that it provides. I was able to decide when I was in the office and when I was in meetings or on the road. I could work on the projects that I was most interested in. I could set my own goals and create my own methods for reaching those goals. I did have to follow my company’s policies, but that wasn’t very difficult since we wanted the same things: more sales, more customers, and more income. I learned quickly that if I could produce those things, both of us would be pleased.

But the personal freedom of sales turned out to be just a side benefit to the job. The real source of gratification turned out to be the senior partner of freedom, which is personal responsibility. Selling makes you free to set and pursue your own goals, but holds you responsible to yourself for doing so. When salespeople accept that responsibility, they have taken the first step on the path to satisfaction and success.

Another constant in selling is the need for salespeople to communicate with prospects on a human level. Advancing technology may make some transactional sales functions obsolete, but as long as people make the decisions about what to buy or not to buy, there will be an important place for salespeople in our economy.

And selling will always be a fun thing to do. It combines many of the positive stimulating forces in life: learning new things, facing different challenges, and meeting a wide variety of people. You get to make a pretty good (or even a very good) living and you can take most of the credit for your own success. Above all, you get to take some interesting risks, which adds plenty of spice to your life.

Creativity is a risk-taking enterprise. To endeavor to make something new is to take risks on several levels. Risk might be defined as the ability to fail. You may spend hours, days, even weeks on the project but fail to conceive an idea that’s workable. Even if you do create one, you may fail to complete it satisfactorily and have to abandon it. Even if your idea comes to fruition, you may fail to find a market for it. Even if you sell it, your idea may not produce the results your customer expected. Every one of these potential failures wounds your ego and your pocketbook. With all these ways to fail, why try?

Because not every idea fails and the ones that succeed reward you tremendously. The risk/reward ratio is actually stacked in your favor. What’s even better, you will improve the odds of success as your professional capabilities grow.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Face-to-Face Sales Calls

For salespeople, the correlation between calls made and sales made should be very clear: the more calls you make, the more sales you make. Setting aside time to contact prospects and clients is very important. Consider the words of Woody Allen. He said that “80 percent of success is being there.” As a salesperson, you’re more “there” when you make more calls.

Let’s define a term. A “call” is a face-to-face meeting where you ask a prospect to buy something. It’s not a telephone call to get an appointment or a service call on a current customer, although those activities are certainly important. But when I talk about making more calls in the context of business-to-business sales, I’m talking about asking for orders in person more frequently.

The technological advances of our society are wonderful. You have email, smart phones, instant messaging, video conferencing, and all kinds of other ways to communicate with your prospects. These high-tech wonders can make you more efficient. But they can’t take the place of the face-to-face call. The salesperson who tries to substitute electronic “virtual selling” for personal contact is going to be about as successful as the quarterback who tries to run a play from the bench. The rest of the team may run the play, but it won’t be the same without him there to handle the ball.

There is no substitute for meeting with the client in person. When you’re there face-to-face, you build trust. It’s really hard to believe in what someone’s saying if you can’t look into their eyes while they’re saying it. If you’ve done any telephone sales, you know how hard it is to create a trusting relationship with a prospect who can’t see you.

You also demonstrate your professionalism and transmit your enthusiasm much better in person. “Seeing is believing” is more than just a truism when it’s applied to a sales call. When the prospect can see your animation, can see how prepared you are, can see the masterful way you control your presentation, you gain tremendous credibility. When you’re there face-to-face, you find yourself much more focused on the client, too, which in turn will make your presentation just that much more persuasive.

Personal calls also show the prospect you care. They say you’re so concerned about the success of his or her business that you are willing to invest some of your valuable time in working on it with them. Use all the modern technology you want, but use it to get more face time with more prospects and current customers. That’s where its real value lies.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.