Kai and Zane stayed over last weekend. This is the way most days start. We went to the Higgins Armory Museum on Friday. It was fun (mostly). So, after they woke up Saturday, Mark called and we met him at Nashoba Valley Ski Area and they had their very first ski lesson. While we were waiting in line for their lesson, I recognized an old friend, Noel Metcalf. I met Noel when he and I were in sales training with Dave Kurlan in the 80’s. He and I were two of the first salespeople that Dave selected to be in his first Black Belt Group. We reminisced about those years and Noel reflected on the fact that he used some of the lessons from our Black Belt Group days in his practice as a ski instructor.

He made comments on Bob’s technique with Kai as we watched and I thought back on that morning, 20 years ago, that Noel taught me how to ski. He taught me how to relax and go with the mountain and although I wasn’t scouted for the Olympics, I could get down the hill.

So, here’s what prompted this post. Noel asked, “So, are you still with Dave, or are you off on your own?” I asked, “What?” He told me that he follows my blog on LinkedIn and he got the feeling that we weren’t getting along. I told him that I definitely was working with Dave, but that Dave really gave me a lot of latitude so that I only worked with clients that I wanted to work with.

But that got me thinking. A lot of bloggers spend a lot of time bashing people. I’ve done it! We write about what somebody’s doing wrong, or how bad a class of people can be, yada, yada, yada. Frankly, it’s negative and I for one am sick of negative. So, here’s the idea.

I am only interested in one kind of salesperson. RainMakers. The kind of person that wants to carry the whole company on their back. The kind of person that builds business relationships to do business, not to have coffee and trade worthless leads. RainMakers are a different breed of cat. You don’t need to make them responsible. They are responsible. They don’t need to be managed. They manage their managers. Marketing for them is Smarketing.

So, let’s make this blog an “idea exchange” for RainMakers and those who want to be RainMakers. Ask how. We’ll answer. Share a technique, a strategy or a mindset that works for you. Let’s share back and forth. If you need more space and want to write a guest post, write it up and send it . If you want to talk about it first, send me an email  and we’ll do that. Who’s first?

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Yesterday, I was talking with a business owner about his business and an apparent slump that he was experiencing. After a bit of digging, he told me about a health issue that he was dealing with at the same time that he was dealing with potentially life-threatening issues with his mother. I consoled him by saying that anybody dealing with that kind of stuff would be distracted and I shared a couple of personal experiences. He told me that he’s a private person and doesn’t let business contacts know what’s going on in his personal life. I asked him why and he replied that he’s always been private and kept his personal life separate from his professional life. I asked him why again and he really didn’t have anything else. So, I asked whether he thought that his customers might like to know a little about the man. While he thought, I asked him if he knew anything about my sons. Yes and he told me where they lived and what they did. He knew some stuff about Elaine. He knew about Maine. He knew about Kai and Zane. I asked him if he thought that knowing that stuff made our relationship stronger or not.

Then last evening, I went to a chamber of commerce meet and greet and had a glass of wine with Maria Hopkins. Maria founded her company 24 years ago. She is THE appraisal company in this market. She is also the rainmaker at her company. She knows everybody and knows her. When I shared the story above and asked what she thought, she replied with “Everybody knows everything about us. We wear our hearts on our sleeves.” Then we started talking about other rainmakers that we know and realized we know their kids, spouses, health issues, favorite (and least favorite) customers.

So, we kind of think that rainmakers share personal information fairly easily and routinely and that it makes them better rainmakers.

What do you think? What do you do?

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I’ve known that December 16th was a very important day for most of my life. It’s on my calendar every year. I have a reminder set. The days not done until I make the call. Why is it a big day?

Do you know that today is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party? (Not on my calendar.)

Do you know that the Battle of the Bulge started today in 1944? (Not on my calendar.)

How about this day in 1977 when John Travolta opened in Saturday Night Fever? (Not on my calendar.)

Honestly, before 5 minutes ago, I didn’t know that any of those things happened on this day in history. To me, December 16th has always been Aunt Joyce’s birthday. I talked to her tonight and I think that I may have been the last of her regulars to call. She sounded very happy. She had a good day and a good week.

Today, I talked to clients in Richmond, Virginia. It was snowing. In Clemson, South Carolina , schools were closed because of ice. And as I write this it’s 80 in Maui, where Phil is talking with West Maui Cycles  and it’s 75 in St. Croix where my brother Vic went after he raised his rates and got rich.

So, what’s the point? …… It’s not about you! Typical saleperson comes along, says boy is it a great day. Still flying because the Red Sox spent $300 million on two players that are gonna rock Red Sox nation. Yankees got beat out of their saviour. Life couldn’t be better. And here I am with a deal for you.

Find out what’s going on in the other guy’s life. Find out what’s important to them. Find out why they do what they do. Where they’re going. What they want. What keeps them up at night. They’ll tell you what they need and how to sell them.

I wrote and published this article in December of 2010.

I work a lot with clients that are consultants. They typically don’t want to learn how to be a professional salesperson, but they want to learn how to sell well enough that their calendar is full and they’re making a good living. Even some contractors fit the mold sometimes. My dad used to install overhead garage doors and I remember him telling me before I could drive that if he could find 5 general contractors like Henry Carini, he’d have a nice business. (How’s that for a name out of the past, Mom?)

So….Let’s make this interesting.

This may shock you, but Dave Kurlan & I don’t agree on everything. For instance, Dave and I don’t agree on how quick my trigger finger is when it comes to getting rid of prospects that don’t fit my mold of my ideal client. I, like my dad, am looking for Henry Carini, who’s customers loved him. Who’s houses were first class. Who appreciated my dad’s work. Who paid his bills on time and was an all round great guy to be around. So, I use Success Secret #3 to eliminate prospects that don’t fit the mold. BOOM! Next!I

It’s not unusual for me to do a pipeline analysis with a new client a few weeks after we start working together. It often turns into a purge of useless “pretend opportunities” that my client has kept active even though they had died months before. Here comes Rick. BOOM! Next. Today, I had a client tell me that her pipeline was empty after the purge. No problem. 10 minutes later, she had three strategies that she could do that would put 12 REAL opportunities into her pipeline within two weeks.

Interestingly, sometimes we complicate things unnecessarily. This particular client works on a retainer basis and she’d be very comfortable if she had 5 retainer clients. (She’s typically had 2-3.) Think about this from the perspective of Success Secret #3. Pretend that your proposals are lousy and you only close one out of ten. Pretend also that you aren’t very effective in the middle of the sales process and only one out of ten people that you have a ‘serious’ conversation with because they ‘should’ need your stuff will even take a proposal from you. That means that one out of a hundred ‘serious’ conversations with people that look like prospects will become clients. So, if you want to have 5 clients you have to have ‘serious’ conversations with 500 people that ‘should’ need your stuff. (I’ll wait while you catch up because I know how you are with this high level math.)

Get it? 500 conversations gets you 5 clients if you stink!

Here’s the rub! How long will it take to have 500 conversations. If you do one a day, it’ll be 2012 and I’ll be retired. If you do three a day, you’ll finish next year, but you’ll have to keep doing it unless your first client re-ups. (Think about it.) If you do 10 a day, you’re a three month project and if you’re ambitious enough to talk to 25 prospects a day (that’s a lot), you are my kind of client and we’ll be done in a month. Why? Because you’ll work hard and I don’t stink.

Wes Powell is one of those clients that works hard. He posted a thank you on LinkedIn today after working with Frank and me for nine (9) weeks and I’m gonna share it here.

“Rick, thanks for all your help. I just closed an $80,000 deal yesterday that I would not have closed in the past due to my reluctance to ask hard questions. I appreciate all the coaching!”

You are welcome, Wes! Incidentally folks, if you know a contractor that’s looking to get found on the internet…Wes is THE MAN!

BTW, registration ends on 12/18 for our next three month program. So if you’re looking to do something big in 2011, send me an email or call me directly.

I read a lot more than I write.

I listen a lot more than I talk.

I ignore most friend requests on Facebook and connection requests on LinkedIn.

I’m not a snob, I just don’t get what value a connection to someone that you’ve never met, never spoken with, and have little in common can do for either one of us.

Twitter is a different animal. I can block people from following me on Twitter, but I don’t. I can make my tweets private on Twitter, but I don’t. However, I still wonder why have the people on Twitter follow me. They’ve never picked up the phone and called me. If we have met, it was a passing acquaintance. Are you trying to steal my stuff?

I’ll tell you a secret. It’s not the stuff.

As you may know, Frank Belzer and I delivered a webinar on August 10th to introduce Hubspot Partners and others to a Kurlan Sales Development Program that was specially design for Hubspot Value Added Resellers (VARs). (If you’re curious, this is a link to the webinar “How to Double Your Marketing Agency Sales in 90 Days “.) The program kicked off the week of August 23rd. Frank and I didn’t really pay attention to demographics, we just started doing what we do.

Now if you know anything about Hubspot, you may be aware that it’s a young organization. As a matter of fact, most of the people that run the company are young enough to be my children. I assumed that most of the people that signed up for our program would be 20 and 30 somethings.

The first two comments that I noticed came from 64 year old agency owner when she said, “I wish I had found this 30 years ago!”… 30 years ago? She also said that she was telling a friend about our coaching and apparently, the friend asked how old we were. She commented that it sounded like we were pretty young based on the energy that she was hearing.

Then, yesterday, one of the particpants in the program started off our coaching call with, “I guess I owe you $650.” I replied with, “Huh?” He said, “You know, you get half of my growth for three months. I grew by $1,300. Half is $650.” He was actually excited that he owed me money and that it didn’t take the full three months to see results. He saw growth after the first month. Love it! BTW, he’s 40 years old.

I started my next coaching call by sharing the $650 story. That owner told me that his agency was $400 short of doubling sales after the first month. I asked him for the numbers, and he was right. We had promised, “Double Your Agency Sales in 3 Months” and he did it after the first month. He’s awful excited for a 50 year old.

Frank and I have been working and we know that they’ve been doing the right things and were sounding right and getting results. We just hadn’t stopped to check the numbers. Those are only the first few and we’ll check the rest of the participants over the next few days, but it looks encouraging!

Remember when you were a teenager…30 was old. Then you got to be 30 and 50 wasn’t really that old. Just an observation, but I guess the lesson might be that you’re old when you know it all and stop learning. Not a challenge. Not enough data yet.

By the way, I’ll be guest hosting on Sales Talk Live for Frank Belzer on October 13th and I’ll have three of these rising stars as my guests. We’ll be asking them questions about being a Hubspot Partner (Value Added Reseller), about the Kurlan/Hubspot Sales Development Program, they’re experience at HUG and IMS and whatever else seems appropriate at the time.

Our guests will be Carole Mahoney of Mahoney Internet Marketing, Dale Berkebile of Brandwise and Phillip Johnson of Fatiguana Endeavors. Mark your calendars to join us live at Noon EDT on October 13th, 2010 at Sales Talk Live.

Incidentally, if you have any questions that you’d like these three to address, leave it in the comments.

Is your competition better than you at anything? Are you better than your competition? Do you learn from them? Do you share with them? I wrote this post over 4 years ago and I’ve been thinking about it lately. In case you missed it, here it is. Please read and share your thoughts in the comments.

Prize Corn

I started a subscription for a friend and set up their username and password for them. When they tried to log in, they got a “Sorry, we can’t help you right now.” error message. I put them in touch with technical support, but technical support had never seen that particular error message and couldn’t recreate the error message and was able to log in successfully from several different computers. My friend gave his username and password to his IT expert and asked him to try. Same error message. Let’s pretend I gave them a username of 2300 and a password of RRoberge2300. Late last night, my friend sent me an email that said that he gave up and didn’t know what to do. I replied that when I got to my laptop, I’d try some stuff.

I wondered if he thought the zeroes were ohs. So, I changed the username to 23oo. I got an error message, but not the “Sorry,…” one. I entered the correct username, but changed the password to RRoberge23oo. Bingo! “Sorry, we can’t help you right now.”

So, I sent this email to my friend. “I did it! I recreated the error. It happened when I used 2300 two three zero zero as the company ID and RRoberge23oo two three oh oh as the password. Were you using zeroes or ohs?”

I received this email from my friend. “I am mortified. I was using zeroes, but when I looked at the userid and password you sent me, what I saw was 2300 for both. Didn’t notice the RRoberge part until you mentioned it in your message below. Big duh.  Am so sorry for wasting your time and Technical Support’s. I am now officially “in.” Good grief.”

Hang in there. Here come’s three points that make the lesson(s).

#1.) Wouldn’t you assume that technical support would know about zeroes and ohs?

#2) Wouldn’t you assume that the IT guy would know about zeroes and ohs?

#3) I assumed that it was the zeroes/ohs problem. I never guessed that it was the username. (I had to read my friend’s response again before I understood this.)

The lesson(s)

Sales people assume that the prospect knows. They assume that they, themselves understand. They assume that they know the answer.

Don’t assume. Ask the questions. Incidentally, you might be worried about insulting the person by asking stupid questions because the asnwers are obvious. Apparently, all answers aren’t completely obvious and do you think your friend would rather be locked out forever or a little embarrassed for a split second?

Do you do anything like this?

Yesterday I had an email exchange with Frank Belzer, who you probably know blogs as The SalesArchaeologist  and the host of Sales Talk Live. I didn’t decide to blog about it until Father Ron talked about political correctness in his homily.

First, excerpts from the exchange with Frank.

Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 7:41 AM
To: Frank Belzer
Subject: RE: Should We Continue Talking about …..

Frank,
It can’t be more ‘tee-d up’ than that.

I read this and find myself asking myself – …..

(text deleted)

Thanks,

Rick

From: Frank Belzer
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 7:54 AM
To: ‘Rick Roberge’
Subject: RE: Should We Continue Talking about ……

Rick.

Respectfully, I hardly see this as “tee-d up”.

It looks like they encountered the same resistance as I did – (omitted) just decided to respond by sending a Roberge-esque email. I decided to ….. (text omitted)
I don’t think it will.

From: Rick Roberge
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 8:13 AM
To: Frank Belzer
Subject: RE: Should We Continue Talking about …..

Thanks, Frank. Perhaps, “tee’d up” was the wrong word choice. What I was referring to was ……(omitted). Either way, we saved time.

Rick

You don’t need to use “respectfully” with me. You could start with “You’re doing it again.” Or “Did you read what you wrote before you clicked send?”

From: Frank Belzer
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 8:40 AM
To: ‘Rick Roberge’
Subject: RE: Should We Continue Talking about …..

Well I do respect you and it’s not in my nature to not “pad” what I say.

I guess I look at this account differently ….. (omitted)

That’s all.

So, when I received the last email from Frank, I started thinking about Frank’s view of his relationship with me, whether he viewed it as ‘real’ and how it related to salespeople. Then we turn to comes Father Ron’s sermon. Be reminded that Father Ron’s been a priest for 50 years. He’s very well respected as well as being well liked. He started his sermon by walking out into the congregation, putting his hands on the top of two ladies’ heads that were sitting near the front of the church and told the congregation that these two ladies were both celebrating their birthdays that day. Then came a round of applause. Then he asked, “How old are you?” One of the ladies just looked at him. The other said, “39”. Then he started talking about political correctness and how our desire to be politically correct takes us in the wrong direction and we often end up in the wrong place. He shared several examples of church leaders being politically correct and winding up in the wrong place.

Now, Frank probably felt that “padding” his pushback was the professional thing to do or the polite thing to do, and it probably was, but think about your ‘real’ close relationships. Can’t they handle the truth? Don’t you think that they see and ignore the padding anyway? Is it really necessary? Remember Jack Nicholson talking to Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men? Tom Cruise wanted the truth and Jack Nicholson said, “…You can’t handle the truth!”

Think about your sales calls. Do you develop a ‘real’ relationship with your prospect, or would you call it professional or politically correct? Do you treat your prospect like they can’t handle the truth? Do you find yourself in a place where you’re afraid to tell your prospect or customer the truth? Is that the type of relationship that you want? Don’t you want to be real?