When it came time to learn how to ride a bicycle, how many of you went to Bicycle 101 before taking off on your first venture?  You can Google ‘how to ride a bicycle’ today and find lots of information but back in my day you got on the bike and rolled the dice. I doubt it is different for folks today. Even with Internet links or good advice from parents or loved ones, you don’t really know the ‘how-to’ of cycling until you get on and shove off. Once you’ve paid your dues, then and only then do you know how to ride a bicycle. It is no longer ‘explicit’ information on a written page or computer screen. What you have now is tacit knowing. You have experience.

These are difficult times we’re going through. As is true for all economic downturns, fear and uncertainty creep into our lives. In the time it took to write this article, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell 100 points. What we’re experiencing today is not unprecedented. I went through Black Monday (October 19, 1987) as a stock broker. The DJIA fell 508 points. Stock markets around the world plummeted. It was a terrible bloodletting.

I had an experience last week that shines a bright light on inexperience. We all have to start someplace as sales people. Most often we start with minimal training, minimal product knowledge, a desk, and a telephone. It’s the ‘baptism by fire’ approach. We flounder until we gain enough experience to be reasonably successful. The quotas and expectations are high and the success rate is low. This is a pretty brutal but common path to sales proficiency. We get beat up, our confidence suffers, and not many of us make it. The first months or years are tough. If it is difficult on us personally, it is no less difficult for our prospects and customers. They get beat up as well while we flounder. Carnage is obvious on both sides of the relationship.

In my last blog I talked about how crucial it is to have an opening statement that is compelling, that will engage your client or prospect. The open-ended question is a very effective tool for drawing out valuable information that helps you understand your existing or prospective clients.  A litany of closed questions will typically do the opposite. They result in ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers, which bring a hasty end to the conversation. Closed questions are not to be avoided. They are just as effective as open-ended questions but you have to know the right time and place to use them.

The experience I’m going to share in this article has got me thinking, as I often do, about the plight of sales people that are out there performing a difficult job without the proper training and tools. It troubles me that companies waste many millions of dollars each year because of poor training. It also troubles me that these same companies continue to raise the bar on their sales people and yet shortchange them on the tools to achieve these lofty goals.

You are in the middle of something important, the telephone rings, you have to drop what you’re doing, only to find that it’s a salesperson. This is one of those types that wedge their foot in the door and won’t give you a chance to push it back out. Some of you will be reluctantly patient with them and perhaps most will have little or no tolerance for being flogged.

I’m hearing more and more proponents these days of the belief that cold calling is dead. A host of modern-day teachers and guru’s are preaching that prospecting via the telephone is an old ‘technology’ and should be discarded in favor of email and other modes of more indirect, and perhaps safer, communication. The validity of their claims has yet to be proven.

Referrals can be one of the easiest paths to more appointments and sales. ‘Can be’ is the pivotal term in this equation. For some of you, the ease with which you ask for and receive a referral depends on the relationship you have developed with your client or prospect. For the rest of you, asking for referrals is uncomfortable regardless of the relationship you have with the folks you talk to.

First I want to wish you a Happy New Year and a prosperous 2008. I also hope you had a good holiday season. If it was a time of difficulty, as it is for some, know that you are in my thoughts as well. Life marches on holiday or not.

I also want to thank you for taking the time and making the effort to subscribe to The Producers Spotlight. After 18 years of owning a business that required driving to and from an office, I am in the process of transforming the entire business to the digital world. The ‘Spotlight’ is the first step.

I’ve focused recently on the importance of changing the legacy that the sales profession, in whatever form it has taken, has passed down to us. I was going to shift gears a bit this week but after a recent conversation with an upper level manager about training materials and sales philosophy, I’m going to give it one more shot. Keep in mind this person was not an employee of an obscure company holding onto the last of the old-school sales ideologies. He was in a promient and influencial position in a leading corporation. The teachings of the old school are alive and well. This corporation is propagating the same techniques and tactics to their producers that brought us the legacy I’ve spoken about in the last few articles. It is the one where sales people are some of the most avoided and disliked of all professional people. I’ve borrowed a piece from You Tube to illustrate my point. I’ve provided a link to it in this article. Someone once said a picture is worth a thousand words. This is so very true about this video as well.