Posts from November 2010

It's 2001. You work for a new company in the search engine space. Let's call this company Shmoogle.

Shmoogle has this huge new idea—businesses are starting to grow based on getting found on the Internet. Why not have businesses pay per click to get found? Brilliant!

You're a sales person at Shmoogle, and you know pay per click will be huge. You start prospecting on the phone.

You: Hello Ms. VP of Marketing. This is Lamont Sanford with Shmoogle. I'd like to speak with you for a few minutes about our marketing program that's helping companies like yours generate a lot of leads and new business on the Internet.

Ms. VP (who pleasantly accepts cold calls): Sure. Let's talk.

(FIVE minutes go by. Conversation goes great.)

You: OK, then, I think pay per click search engine marketing is perfect for you. How much budget do you have set aside for this?

Ms. VP: I don't have a budget for pay per click marketing—or a budget for marketing at all right now.

You: (Thinking to yourself: darn, not a qualified buyer.) Well, give me a call when you have one.

Of course, only a complete loon would finish a call like that. The wrong turn was the salesperson's fault, though, for asking the question about budget in the first place.

Salespeople that exhibit the 4 crucial elements are often the perfect fit.

People often ask me, “Can rainmaking be taught?”

It can surely be taught, but the question that people must ask themselves and their teams is, “Can we learn to make rain?”

Makes me think of this one:

Q. How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?

A. One, but the light bulb has to want to change.

Same goes for rainmaking: if you want to turn on your rainmaking light bulb, you can.

If you’d like to discover if the rainmaking bulb can turn on for you (or for members of your organization), you need to know if the following four elements are in place.

Sales people can slip at a variety of different stages during the sales process.

People with kids tell me that sometimes you have to let them fail, even when you could have jumped in to save them, so they will learn. Painful to sit by and watch, but necessary for growth. After being on the receiving end of an awful sales call last week, now I know the feeling.

Poor kid (he could have been 60 for all I know, but he seemed like a kid), started sinking from the get-go. Since I couldn't dive in and save him, the future parent in me is dying to share the learning with someone. So here goes.

While I will protect the name of the innocent, I have summarized my favorite (if I can call them that) 5 deadly sins that pulled him down like a pair of concrete shoes in the Mystic River.