Just listened to Rob Jeppsen's Sales Leadership Podcast episode #42, with Joe Caprio of Chorus.ai. This was excellent and I took notes which I'm happy to share below.
Recent posts by Mark Gibson
3 min read
Getting into High-growth Mode - Sales Leadership Podcast #42 notes
Topics: call recording Rob Jeppsen sales coaching chorus.ai
1 min read
Differentiation vs. Competition through Messaging Value
I get a lot of traffic to my site for the keyword "differentiation vs competition" and it's obviously a topic that needs discussion.
1 min read
Whiteboard Selling Best Practices Group started on LinkedIn
Whiteboard Selling Best Practices
If you are interested in Whiteboarding, you are invited to join a new LinkedIn group set up to promote and share Whiteboarding best practices, tips and to advance the art of whiteboarding in sales.
Whiteboard Selling Best Practices is an open group created to share and disseminate Whiteboarding tips, ideas and best practices.
WhiteboardSelling alumni and sales, marketing and enablement professionals with an interest in using whiteboarding techniques for in-person and remote whiteboarding are most welcome.
The goal of this group is advance the art of whiteboarding so as to improve engagement, discovery and differentiation through visual storytelling.
Click on the whiteboard to go to the group.
Topics: whiteboard selling visual storytelling whiteboarding
2 min read
Its Sales Kickoff Season – A time of Rah Rah, Renewal and Hangovers
I'm in one of America's premier convention cities as I write this, having attended a sales Kick-off and sales enablement event for a major technology company. This event, like many prior events I have attend was a lot of fun and a great time was had by all.
Topics: sales kick-off whiteboard enablement
4 min read
Lessons from a Sales Legend - The Vern Getman Story
My friend
Adam Zais is a reservoir of interesting and insightful sales stories based on his own sales experience.
This one is about the lessons learned early in his career from an extraordinary salesperson, Vern Getman.
I was hired as an Inside Sales rep. We had an office environment in the front and a factory in the back. My job was to work with outside rep organizations who called on electrical distributors that carried our line of products. One of these guys was Vern Getman who covered upstate NY from Albany to Buffalo. He had been in the business forever and, in the parlance of today, was absolutely crushing it!
And it was an organization consisting of only him and his wife. He routinely outsold other rep organizations with far larger numbers of reps and, on paper, richer territories. He was a legend around the company. One of the rites of passage for every Inside Sales guy was to spend a week with Vern. So, after getting my bearings and learning the biz a bit, it was time for me to take my turn.
We get up on Monday morning to start the week at 4:30am. Mrs. Getman has prepared breakfast and packed a huge cooler full of sandwiches and drinks for the week. Seriously. We pile into Vern’s car - an absolutely huge late-60’s Mercury - and set off for our first call.
Oh, by the way, ol’ Vern has a unique style - he has a “high-and-tight” standard Army-issue flattop haircut and a uniform. Black suit, white shirt, and a red clip-on bow tie. I kid you not. In fact, he has a box of bow tie’s in the trunk. One gets dirty, he tosses it and gets a new one. He orders by the gross. He hasn’t worn anything different for work in nearly forty years. His biz card has a little caricature of him and his red bow tie. His card says, “Getman Sales, just ask the guy in the red bow tie.”
Every stop we make it’s the same thing. We walk in and everyone greets him with a smile and a big “Vern!” He knows everybody’s name. If there’s a new employee who he doesn’t know, he makes a point of stopping and chatting them, learning their name, asking about their life and congratulating them on their new job and giving them a nice word of encouragement. And he gives them his card and a bow tie. Even if they’re female and have zero intention of wearing Vern’s fashion statement. They only cost him thirty cents each but, as he says, the memory of getting one’s first Getman bow tie is priceless.
Remember that we’re calling on electrical distributors. They sell stuff to electricians and building contractors. They’re wearing Carhartt work pants / overalls and flannel shirts and stuff. And there’s Vern in his black suit, holding court and roaming through the stockroom looking for low inventory and checking on how much of the competitor’s stuff the supply counter is selling, and so on.
Basically, he comes up with the order and brings it to the owner or manager to sign. He NEVER gets resistance or a question about his judgment of what the guy orders. He ask only about the local business climate, housing starts, and so on. He talks about new stuff coming from the factory but only if asked by the customer. Or as a seemingly off-hand remark as part of shooting the shit about how biz is going for the customer.
The orders he gets are strong, but they’re not padded....which he could easily do. He knows that’s not only wrong and a violation of the serious trust he’s built up over the years, but it’s also not in his best interest long-term. He simply checks every possible SKU, not just the high-margin stuff or fast-moving inventory. And he’s ALWAYS asking how he can help in any way. This goes on for a solid week. First calls at some supply house at 6:30AM or so, last call twelve hours later. Same routine.
At the end of the week he’s got scores of order sheets and he knows that he got everything there was to get, he solidified his reputation, and left the customer happy. And I’m exhausted and I’m 22 and he’s forty years older than me! Amazing!
Lessons Learned
Where I Learn Sales Lessons From One of the Best, Vern Getman
My first job out of college was at a subsidiary of the company that had acquired my Dad’s company. It was a lighting fixture manufacturer based in New Jersey.I was hired as an Inside Sales rep. We had an office environment in the front and a factory in the back. My job was to work with outside rep organizations who called on electrical distributors that carried our line of products. One of these guys was Vern Getman who covered upstate NY from Albany to Buffalo. He had been in the business forever and, in the parlance of today, was absolutely crushing it!
And it was an organization consisting of only him and his wife. He routinely outsold other rep organizations with far larger numbers of reps and, on paper, richer territories. He was a legend around the company. One of the rites of passage for every Inside Sales guy was to spend a week with Vern. So, after getting my bearings and learning the biz a bit, it was time for me to take my turn.
My Week with Vern
The way this worked was that I drove up to Vern’s house on a Sunday evening. Vern and his wife hosted each of us on a pull-out couch in their home. A bit unusual, but I didn’t have enough experience at the time to see it this way. Of course, this was all part of Vern’s plan to better size me up. I just thought they were being super nice and hospitable.We get up on Monday morning to start the week at 4:30am. Mrs. Getman has prepared breakfast and packed a huge cooler full of sandwiches and drinks for the week. Seriously. We pile into Vern’s car - an absolutely huge late-60’s Mercury - and set off for our first call.
Oh, by the way, ol’ Vern has a unique style - he has a “high-and-tight” standard Army-issue flattop haircut and a uniform. Black suit, white shirt, and a red clip-on bow tie. I kid you not. In fact, he has a box of bow tie’s in the trunk. One gets dirty, he tosses it and gets a new one. He orders by the gross. He hasn’t worn anything different for work in nearly forty years. His biz card has a little caricature of him and his red bow tie. His card says, “Getman Sales, just ask the guy in the red bow tie.”
Every stop we make it’s the same thing. We walk in and everyone greets him with a smile and a big “Vern!” He knows everybody’s name. If there’s a new employee who he doesn’t know, he makes a point of stopping and chatting them, learning their name, asking about their life and congratulating them on their new job and giving them a nice word of encouragement. And he gives them his card and a bow tie. Even if they’re female and have zero intention of wearing Vern’s fashion statement. They only cost him thirty cents each but, as he says, the memory of getting one’s first Getman bow tie is priceless.
Remember that we’re calling on electrical distributors. They sell stuff to electricians and building contractors. They’re wearing Carhartt work pants / overalls and flannel shirts and stuff. And there’s Vern in his black suit, holding court and roaming through the stockroom looking for low inventory and checking on how much of the competitor’s stuff the supply counter is selling, and so on.
Basically, he comes up with the order and brings it to the owner or manager to sign. He NEVER gets resistance or a question about his judgment of what the guy orders. He ask only about the local business climate, housing starts, and so on. He talks about new stuff coming from the factory but only if asked by the customer. Or as a seemingly off-hand remark as part of shooting the shit about how biz is going for the customer.
The orders he gets are strong, but they’re not padded....which he could easily do. He knows that’s not only wrong and a violation of the serious trust he’s built up over the years, but it’s also not in his best interest long-term. He simply checks every possible SKU, not just the high-margin stuff or fast-moving inventory. And he’s ALWAYS asking how he can help in any way. This goes on for a solid week. First calls at some supply house at 6:30AM or so, last call twelve hours later. Same routine.
At the end of the week he’s got scores of order sheets and he knows that he got everything there was to get, he solidified his reputation, and left the customer happy. And I’m exhausted and I’m 22 and he’s forty years older than me! Amazing!
Lessons Learned
- Doing what Vern does, has nothing to do with what most people think of as sales.
- Vern would hand them the sheet for the customer to sign....Vern was deeply embedded in the customer’s business, he was a trusted partner - he was more help to the business than the other guys....they outsourced the buying to Vern...he was more helpful and more valuable to the business than the others.
- The industry is in denial about the empowerment of the buyer and the disenfranchisement of the salesperson.
- What would Vern do today?
Topics: inside sales salesmanship trusted partner
4 min read
Are Salespeople Needed in Selling SaaS Solutions?
In the past couple of weeks I have spoken to three entrepreneurs who have created, or are creating SaaS solutions to serve very specific needs for a well-defined market opportunity. In conversation it emerged that none of them were planning on having any sales people in their business.
The thinking here is that since the products are so strong and the market need exists, by offering a free trial, the prospect will learn to use and love the product and convert into a customer; all without needing a human touch. Who needs sales people anyway?
This approach is similar to the "Field of Dreams" (if you build it, they will come) strategy; popular with entrepreneurs who are long on product engineering skills but underestimate the importance of marketing and selling in the lifecycle of successful products. This attitude has led to the premature death of many killer-products.
Now let me say here that I would not advocate putting a salesperson in the way of a buyer who was motivated to buy and did not require interaction with a salesperson. Dell recognized this desire early on and enabled people to self-serve PC’s and Laptops nearly ten years ago and cut billions out of their cost of sale. Dell had a couple of things going for it that early stage SaaS companies don’t; - brand equity and market dominance in a mature buying category.
Killer-products, and especially software products don’t sell themselves unless they fulfill the following criteria
- A mature, clearly defined buying category exists,
- Market demand exists for the products/services,
- Acquisition is as simple as buying a book on Amazon,
- Implementing the products is seen as risk-free and the vendor is trusted,
- The products are easy to use, learn and deploy,
- The buyer knows what they want and it's really a matter of what color and how many.
- The market price is established and the vendor offerings are within an acceptable range.
Topics: inbound marketing Saas value creation
5 min read
Boring Your Prospect to Death? Revive them with a Story
Earlier this year I ran a Sales and Marketing Messaging Alignment workshop for an early stage company in the Bay Area. They are not actually a start-up as they have been in business for a few years, but they are still starting up.
The subject of capturing proof points and formatting them to tell stories came up during the messaging workshop and I want to use a story to illustrate the point of using a storytelling and to describe the discrete steps in the storytelling format. I partner with Mike Bosworth and use his Story Seekers method in formatting and telling stories. The format is universally understood and follows the basic "hero's journey" format that powers so many of the scripts in our popular film culture.
The people in the company I'm working with are World-class thought leaders in their field, they have a great product for a well-defined niche, but they are struggling.
Their messaging clarity was 3/10 and their website unclear and they got few inbound leads. Like many other emerging technology companies, they were using outbound cold calling and spamming lists to generate interest and not surprisingly had very little success.
An additional problem was that the few leads they got often proved to be unready for sales contact. We (Kuno Creative and Admarco) were hired to help clarify their messaging and to transform their Website and implement an inbound marketing methodology.
After clearly identifying their capabilities or Win-Themes and applying them to their Buyer Personas in the messaging workshop, I asked a couple of the top salespeople to role-play with me around the buyer persona issues, using the capabilities we had developed.
What happened next is happening in sales teams all over the World and explains why so many salespeople are struggling. They have plenty of success stories or proof points, but they don't have the stories in a usable storytelling form … and salespeople don't have the skills to relate their story.
(The barrier or status quo in the last sentence is the fact that they don't have the stories in a usable form – at their fingertips; the complication is that they don't have storytelling skills - even if they had the stories.)
But let me get back to the story and role-play.
Topics: sales & marketing alignment messaging workshop storytelling
3 min read
PowerPoint Vs. Prezi - Guy Kawasaki and Dan Heath Tell Stories
This post started at the insistence of a colleague who knew of my work with WhiteboardSelling and wanted me to check out Prezi as an alternative to PowerPoint.
Topics: effective presentations whiteboard selling powerpoint
3 min read
Start-up Sales VP Regrets - I wish I had done this 2 years ago
I had dinner with a Sales VP of an early stage technology company this week and discussed her business and her experience in building the startup revenue stream. We got down to talking about "the how" of building the sales team, recruiting the channel and generating revenue.
They now have 6 people in sales globally and their resellers are starting to sell their product, although she mentions it was a painful process in getting there.
Topics: inbound marketing visual storytelling lean startups steve blank
1 min read
The Phoenix Project - A book about IT, Dev-ops and Helping your Business Win - review
"A must read for IT salespeople"
Millions of salespeople sell into IT around the world, but few of them actually understand what it's like to be on the other side of the table. This book changes that.
