Re: And Now - The Rest of the Story

Joe788 <joemama788@xxxxxxx> wrote in news:1177861048.504218.111460
@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com:

Ha! Great story. There's nothing worse than a salesman who knows less
about his product than the person he's selling too!

I disagree Joe. The two best machine tool salesman I know aren't very
technical but they are professional salesman. You don't have to know the
product very well. It helps but in the end it hardly matters.

Larry Winget has a rule called the 20-60-20 rule. It applies to all
organizations, but it is especially true of salesman. If you have ten
salesman working for you, you will have two rainmakers. They have happy
customers and bring in loads of business. You will also have six salesman
that put in a fair days work. They show up when they are supposed to show
up, they put in a full day, and they do just enough work that they don't
get fired. That leaves the last two guys who you should have fired after
their first week but weren't. Obviously Anthony got one of those bottom
20 percenters.

Poor salesman harm the reputation of the product as can be seen in
Anthony's story. I'll bet the machine he's looking at is just fine,
otherwise the company building it would be long out of business. A good
salesman would have interviewed Anthony, found out his needs, and
presented a complete solution. When Anthony raised objections at the
meeting a good salesman would have been prepared to answer those
objections. He would have anticipated them from his initial interview. If
there were something he couldn't answer he should have told Anthony "I
don't know, but you will have an answer by (some date, the sooner the
better)". Then that salesman would make a royal pain in the ass of
himself to the people at the builder or his own company that could
provide an answer to Anthony and his company. Once a professional
salesman has his answer he wouldn't waste a second getting it to the
customer.

A professional salesman also knows that it is perfectly OK to "no quote"
a project. You do it in writing, in a timely fashion, apologize for not
having what the customer needs, and tell them that you value their
business and that you hope that this won't keep you from getting a shot
at the next project. A bottom 20 percenter leaves the customer hanging. A
bottom 20 percenter uses the factory guy not as an aid but as a
substitute for his lack of skill and professionalism. Then he can tell
his boss, "Hey I brought in the expert and we still lost. What can I do?"

A professional salesman knows how to listen. He knows which questions to
ask. He responds quickly. He takes full responsibility for his customer's
satisfaction and he makes his coworkers lives miserable until his
customer is happy.

He doesn't need to know the spindle torque or how to program a rigid tap
cycle. He certainly doesn't need to know if the PMC is locked. He has two
companies behind him full of people that can provide that information.
His job is to get the answers for the customer. Even if it's not what the
customer wants to hear.

IMO, sales is a much harder occupation than engineering, machining, and
programming. You get paid based on results. No results = no pay. As an
added benefit 75% of the people out there will treat you like a disease.
At least until they get to know you, which they will avoid doing at all
costs. It's a 60 hour per week grind with a whole lot of people chewing
on your ass. I have a lot of respect for the top 20 percenters, they make
it look easy.

--

Dan

CNC Videos - <http://tinyurl.com/yzdt6d>
.

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