Most salespeople arrive in their profession in a roundabout way. Most have already spent some time in their industry doing something totally unrelated to selling. But if they get involved, as many do, with supporting the direct efforts of the company’s dealings with the customer, they are often enticed to cross the line—to get permanently involved in the most important customer facing process, that of sales.

A direct result of this circuitous route to the job of selling is that many salespeople never get a logical step-by-step grounding in the language and science of their profession. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal pointed out that most Universities shy away from implimenting comprehensive programs that teach sales, even though corporate America wants them to do it.

I’m not saying that salespeople don’t get trained, they do. But the training is almost always centered on the immediate needs of the sales team, driven by strategic and tactical considerations. Consequently salespeople are drilled on what to do and say in front of a customer without having a firm understanding of the sales cycle and the fundamental characteristics of the sales opportunity itself. This is why so many salespeople have trouble with forecasting—they don’t understand how to recognize the value of the sale, and what factors determine it. This ignorance is compounded by misunderstanding the underlying dynamics of the customer’s buying process, which means that it becomes impossible to make worthwhile predictions on when the sale will conclude. Faced with this, Managers have a tough time in predicting future revenues, which in lean economic times can have an adverse effect on the health of the business.

This posting is from John Darrin, an old friend who has been involved with sales and marketing for most of his career, with a few interludes – starting and running his own businesses. John worked with me during much of the time that the ideas in Sales Automation Done Right came to being, and was a valuable observer and commentator in those discussions. I hope John will be a frequent contributor to the SalesWays site.

- Keith Thompson

First, the disclaimer. I have been selling for over thirty years. Selling a broad variety of products and services from multi-million dollar projects to $200 electronics to the luncheon special. I have read the Sales Automation Done Right book, and I use similar processes and methodologies and techniques.

In the book, sales automation is defined (Page 7), and I paraphrase that definition to read “efficient and effective, technology-assisted selling.” The precision of that definition, the importance of both effectiveness and efficiency, and the ability of modern technology to support them, is critical to success in selling today.

Now I want to get something relevant to this definition off my chest. Something that continues to nag at me whenever my sales staff, or peers, or even bosses or clients, postulate one particularly absurd assumption. Here is my rant:

IT ISN’T ALL UP THERE.

One of the silliest things I ever heard came from a young, very aggressive, very ambitious, and otherwise very intelligent salesman, while he tapped his head with his index finger. “It’s all up here,” he said.

He meant that he didn’t need technology to record and save and use his sales opportunity information to help him sell, because he kept it all in his head. Technology was good for keeping his contact information and his calendar, but that’s all. Presumably, recording these bits of information on his computer left room for everything else to fit in his head.

Sales people are often smug, pretty confident, sure of themselves. We have to be able to get up every day and go out there and try to convince people to do something. Usually something they should do anyway but are dragging their feet for some reason, and usually with someone else trying to convince them otherwise. Often, we succeed, and this success can blind us to some realities. And when we fail, many times we don’t know why.

I don’t care who you are, or what you sell, it is critical to understand that it isn’t all up there. Some of it is. Maybe even enough to enjoy some success. But never all. If it was all up there, then you would be solving the big bang theory, or playing with super strings, or something equally esoteric. Or, you would be closing 100% of your opportunities.

But you’re not.

Look at it this way – if you had just one opportunity to work, and you could devote 100% of your time, your resources, and your talent to it, and as long as it wasn’t selling a fleet of 747’s or something equally complex, you would have virtually a 100% closing rate. It’s as simple as that.

As more opportunities are added, or as opportunities become more complex and require more activity, focus gets blurred, information remains undiscovered, chances are missed. And sales are lost.

So, whatever you can do as a salesman to focus all of your might on one opportunity before you move on to the next, do it. Even if you have a hundred open opportunities and you have to switch gears fifty times a day, technology can make the transition smooth.

When you do switch those gears, focus on the one opportunity. Treat it like it was your only one. And let technology keep track of the other ninety-nine until it’s their turn.

Do that, and it never will be the only one.

I have been in the high tech industry for all of my life, and have always had the luxury to choose my own computer. As I always worked from both home and the office so I gravitated to portable computers.

I must have worked with all the so called portable computers since the early eighties, although I confess I never had an Osborne, which most computer historians claim to be the first truly portable device (1981), with a five inch monitor and a weight of 24 pounds. Although I did not have one, I bumped into them a lot in my career of a high tech lab instrument salesman. Seems to me that they were light years ahead of their time.

I went through a number of machines of all weights and sizes, but one of my favorites was “the Brick.” The idea of the brick was to put the computer into a very small package (3″ x 8″ x 11″), which could then be transported. When you got to the office you plugged in your keyboard, monitor, and printer and started work. This was in 1990. I loved it, although you had to hold your breath when you plugged it into the docking station, which had a gazillion connectors, anyone of which, if bent, could bring the system down. I must have been through a dozen different portable, laptop, or notebook variants over the years, but my favorite is the one I have now – the Sony Vaio TR3A. I like tiny computers—before the Sony I had a Fujitsu B-Series Lifebook, which is actually smaller than the Sony, but doesn’t have the same features.

My Sony weighs just three pounds, has a 10 inch high resolution display and a built-in optical drive. My requirements are simple—give me the smallest computer that will allow me to touch type and read the screen. Battery life is important too, but I settle for three hours and the ability to replace the battery. It seems to me that the overwhelming factor in of this size thing is the keyboard. I am a new touch typer as I picked the talent up late in life; touch typing is liberating. I’m glad I gave it the three months of effort needed to pick it up. But, if you can type at the rate that you can think quality thoughts, the world opens up. It definitely makes writing a book a bit quicker.