Author Archives: Rick Roberge

Ephphatha!

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Ephphatha! translates to “Be opened”.  Yesterday’s gospel related the story of Christ touching the deaf man’s ears to allow him to hear. The priest then said that if we call it a miracle when someone who cannot hear, can, what do we call it when those who can hear, cannot?

As salespeople, we all have a story about the prospect that just doesn’t listen, but it may not be the prospect’s fault. Read the story. There’s a second part to the miracle. Christ touched the man’s tongue to cure his speech impediment. How many salespeople babble on without realizing that their prospect can’t hear them?
As prospects, we all have a story about the salesperson that showed up, told us how wonderful their stuff was, but was totally surprised when we weren’t prepared to buy, then or ever, but we didn’t want to tell them because we didn’t want to hurt their feelings.
As employees, we all have a story about an employer that didn’t listen when we told them that we could run their business better than they could.
And as business owners, we can talk about why financiers don’t think we’re worth the investment, why employees don’t see our vision, why potential partners can’t see the synergy.
Regardless of what our title is, our ability to get others to hear depends first on our ability to open their ears. Want to learn how to open their ears, schedule a 15 minute call with me.

Closing Urgency via Social Security

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I’ve reached the age that the Social Security Administration (SSA) has decided that I need to receive an annual Social Security Statement. This statement estimates what my benefit will be when I retire at various ages. (Boy am I glad I invested for retirement!) It also shows my annual earnings for every year all the way back to my ‘part time job in high school’ years. Here’s the thing. The SSA bases your retirement benefit on your most recent annual incomes, not the incomes of 40+ years ago. Good thing. I don’t know about you, but last year’s income was 100 times better than way back when.

That got me thinking. Maybe the SSA has a sales lesson for us.
(This is my favorite part. It’s where I get to screw with your head!)
What is the value of an hour of your time, TODAY?
I was taught that you take what you earn and divide it by the number of hours that you work and that is the value of your time. So, if you earn $100K/year divided by 2,000 hours, that’s $50/hour. Half that if you earn $50K/year. Double it if you earn $200K/year. Pretty simple right?
So, now let me give you some ‘pretend decisions’ to make.
Play Angry Birds or Solitaire for an 12 minutes/day or engage with prospects?
Invest in Hubspot to grow your business, or not?
Get your professional sales assessment done, or not?
Take an unscheduled, undeserved day off, or not?
So, let me help with the math. (I love this part, too!)
At $50/hour ($100K/year) Angry Birds will cost you $50/week, or $2,500/year. You can’t get it back. The day off will cost you $400. Can’t get it back. How many times a year do you do it? Hubspot and assessments are tools of growth. How much growth are you missing out on? 10% = $10K/year? Every day that you delay a decision that could put $10K/year in your pocket costs you $50. Delay your decision two weeks and that’s $500, gone forever! Oh well! $500 isn’t that much! But what if you realized that growth takes x amount of time. Whether you start now or two weeks from now, it will take x amount of time. And after you do that you’ll continue wanting to grow and continue doing things to grow. So, that eventually, like me and like the SSA expects, your time will be worth 100 times what it is today. What then?
Playing Angry Birds today costs your family $250,000 in future dollars.
Taking that undeserved day off costs your family $40,000 in future dollars. (One day!)
And delaying a step that could grow sales by 10% could cost your family $5,000 a day for every day that you delay. Delay for more days or increase the amount of growth expected…Well, you get it.
You want to argue or fix it, get on my calendar.

August was Awesome!

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Thank you, Arjun Moorthy, for “Sales training for an engineer – lessons from a master“.

Thank you, Carole Mahoney, for “True Colors and Personal Branding.”
Thank you, Carrie Kuempel, for “The Postwire Post“.

Thank you, Dale Berkebile, for “Business Definition: Fortune 100, 500… and a great branding strategy!”

Thank you, Kirk Hill, for “2012 Maine Entrepreneurs Conference“.
If I missed you, send me an email. I’ll add my apology and the thank you.
BTW, one more thank you.

Sales Blogs, Business Blogs, Company Blogs

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If you’re in business and you haven’t started a blog, you are on your way out of business. Start a blog today.

Here’s why.
I wrote my first article for The RainMaker Maker blog on March 18, 2006. So far this year, it’s my 7th most popular post. Six years later! It still brings readers to the site.
I’ve published 569 articles in the past 6+ years and every one of them was read this year. As a matter of fact, my least read article was published on December 6, 2007 and was read 62 times in 2012. 62 times on an article that I haven’t thought about in almost six years.
So, here’s the point. If I can do it, you can do it. 291,932 people visited my blog so far in 2012, but not all of the visits were do to my current efforts. Six year old articles are still working for me. So, if you haven’t started, start. If you’ve started, but haven’t stayed with it, get to it. And if you need help, contact me at @RainMakerMaker or on LinkedIn.
One last thing…There’s a guzillion marketers that can’t sell and most of them will tell you that a blog is the foundation of inbound marketing. I believe that a blog is one of the best SALES tools ever conceived. So, if you want to grow sales, start a blog.

Sales Conversations

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I originally posted this article on my other blog on 1/10/2011. I’m republishing it today because many 2800 attendees are doing a ‘fresh start’ today after returning from Inbound 2012 and many others are doing a similar restart after Labor Day. Just change the dates and if you need me, send me an email.

Let me start with three hopes.

  1. I hope that you wrote down your goals for 2011 and that you’ve checked them for conflicts.
  2. I hope that you’ve converted your sales goals into a behavior plan that’s based on actual historical metrics rather than guesses or hopes.
  3. I hope that you’ve given your written goals and your behavior plan to someone that will check for validity, know when to coach, when to mentor, when to motivate, and when hold you accountable.

I spend most of every day working with business owners that are looking to double or triple sales in a few months and typically, as soon as we do, they raise their sights and we do it again. Today, I’ll be speaking with each of them. We’ll be looking at last week. First week of the year. Did they meet their sales goal? Did they meet their base move goal? Did they meet their conversation goal?

Notice that each of these is a yes/no question. Notice that each yes/no is based on a number. Numbers are concrete and specific, black and white, no gray. You either did it or not. We have to start there. Once we get the quantity, then we can work on quality. Quality will be determined by the quality of the conversation that happens at each step in the process. “Do you want to buy?” is better than not asking, but not as effective as the Inoffensive Close. The quality of a conversation is also affected by

  • tonality of delivery
  • emotional accompaniment
  • business relevance
  • personal relevance
  • depth of engagement
  • a few other factors

So, today, one week in, did you meet your behavior objective? Were your sales conversations effective? Do you need to improve? Where?

Selling for Introverts

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Somebody asked, “What was your favorite part of Inbound 2012?”. There were many great speakers, several exciting announcements and innumerable, useful ‘how to’ tips, but Susan Cain made my trip worthwhile. She twisted my head. She told me that I’m OK. She made me understand the ‘why’ of Rick. She also made me realize how I want to spend my working time.

I will not try to recap her talk, and I haven’t yet read her book. (I will, but I just heard her yesterday.) So, you should visit her website, go hear her speak or buy and read her book.
So, how did Susan Cain make my trip worthwhile?
I knew this before, but Susan (May I call you, Susan?) gave me permission to be OK with the fact that, I am an introvert that is expected to be an extrovert. I’ve been telling people all day about my introversion, and they’ve all been replying with, “Yeah, right!”, but it’s true.
Remember this post? Did you read, “I learned to pretend that I wasn’t smart, shy, or introverted“? My mother (who reads this blog and will probably comment to confirm) has told me that I’m the last one of her children that she thought would ever be a salesman. It took me six months to make a friend in kindergarten. You want further proof? I was smart in school. I always knew the answer when the teacher called on me, but never raised my hand. Class participation or divide up into groups? Yuck! Reading my paper in front of the classroom? I’ll be sick that day!
How come people think that I’m an extrovert? “I learned to pretend…” I’m an actor, but when I get off the stage, I love being alone. I’ve written 823 posts with a total word count of 232,314 words. That’s a lot of alone time. Think about you. If you would rather reply by email than pick up the phone, you might be an introvert and I can relate. I don’t want to talk to people, but I realize that I need to talk to people in order to do my job.
Now, here’s how Susan changed my life. She made me realize that I am not alone. That there are millions of entrepreneurs and small business owners that are introverted. They like being alone and would rather do ANYTHING else than start a sales conversation. So, they nurture their leads using software. They build an on-line following in the hundreds of thousands, but never have a conversation with any of them. Susan made me realize that I like working with introverts more than extroverts because I relate to the introverts because I’ve been there and they realize that when I coach them, I’m using my actual experience and do understand.
So, buy her book, and if you’re an introvert and want to learn how an introvert became a maker of RainMakers,
send me an email
and I’ll do the rest.

True Colors and Personal Branding

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Have you ever had one of those surreal days when you think that this must be someone else’s life? Today was the first full day of Inbound 2012, but for me- it was the day that I met my first ever celebrity- Cyndi Lauper. Of all of the memorable firsts in my life, this is one that has many metaphors. (and I am the queen of metaphors after all, at least according to some colleagues).

When I first found out that I had won a backstage pass to meet Cyndi- I was excited of course. Then, as is my nature, I did a little research. What had my teen idol been up to since “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.’? Turns out, she went from dance pop to blues- no small transition. She appeared on “Celebrity Apprentice” and got fired by Trump for being honest and not playing games. When I told friends that I was “meeting” her, we got into a discussion of what the Cyndi brand meant to us. In short, it meant “who gives a crap what other people think? This is who I am, take it or leave it- it ain’t changing to make you more comfortable”. In the “Apprentice” you didn’t see evidence of her throwing anyone else under the bus in the attempt to “do whatever it takes to win.” It would seem that, in her mind, you won on the merits of what you did, not whomever else you had to walk over to get there.

Throughout the day, I kept getting these looks- like, ‘hey- I know you!’ But I had not idea why. Finally, I stopped and asked- why the look? Apparently, somewhere in Hubspot my picture hangs on the wall. And no, not for darts either. (Yes, I asked…)

I met people in real life who follow me on Twitter, read my blog, and actually said to me, “I am such a fan.” Seriously? I have done nothing special, other than be who I am without apology or regret. Something I learned from Rick…

I met colleagues who were surprised when I said to them, when I think of ABC company- YOU are who I think of.

People buy from people, not brands.

Painful Good Byes

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I expect that this post will be one of my least read posts of all time, but the dozen or so people that do read it mean more to me than the rest of my readers.

Today was the first day of Inbound2012. I didn’t plan on attending, but my son ‘suggested’ that I should and Melissa, my new daughter-in-law was going to attend with her business partner. Two good reasons, so I was there today. I expected to see Carole and Chris there, but I was really happy to see Philip there. Philip is a really good guy and when last I spoke to him, I was worried about him. He and Jennifer have had a heck of a year, but as Philip says, “It’s all good.” Great to see you again Philip. The highlight of my evening was when Stephanie hugged me. I think that it completed a cycle that needed to be completed. Here’s the story…
During 4Q11, I was coaching a dozen or so clients multiple times/week and we had developed a relationship that was easy and caring, but not extremely productive. Yes, they were paying me. Yes, I was meeting their needs. Yes, they were happy. But we weren’t changing the world. When I retired on 12/29, Stephanie told me that I liked her too much to not talk to her again and she was right. When she called, it hurt not to take or return her call. But I knew that if I wanted my clients to grow, they had to learn that they didn’t need me. That they could do it on their own. Stephanie’s fine as is every other client that I stopped coaching that day.
Two things.
The next day, after I ended my relationship with all of my clients, I made my coffee and dialed into my conference line, ready to coach. Then, I realized, what am I doing?
Second, and this may be reflective of a parent talking to a child. Not talking to you hurt me way more than it hurt you.
Love you. Miss you. Thank you.

Are you a Sales Fraud?

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Ask people what they do.

 

Have you ever had a 22 year old financial advisor tell you that he works with “high net worth individuals”? Yeah! Right! Like I’m gonna trust some theoretical kid with my life savings.

I just read a blog post that was written by a marketing consultant. Truth be told, I think that the consultant is a pompous, self-absorbed has been, but the post was tweeted by someone that I respect with a shortened link, so I didn’t know where I was going when I clicked through. I read the article anyway because I didn’t want to have a closed mind. The post had 21 links in it. All 21 were to the author’s website. Come on. Nobody else knows ANYTHING? We’ll see how long it is before his competitors take the rest of his business.

 
 

I had a conversation recently with a CEO that has many clients in the $10M space, but felt qualified to target the Fortune 100 space. Interestingly, the CEO has done very little to get into the space and really has little experience in the space. I was a little surprised that the CEO didn’t ask me if I had any ideas. (Probably figured that I’d try to “sell him”.) Anyway, I decided to check out my ‘one introduction away’ LinkedIn connections to Fortune 100 companies.

  1. Walmart – thirty three 1 intro connections: including an EVP and a Senior Brand Manager
  2. ExxonMobil – three 1 intro connections: including a VP-HR
  3. Chevron – fourteen 1 intro connections: including the COO of a division
  4. General Electric – sixty eight 1 intro connections: including a social media manager and a dozen with SVP or global in their title.
  5. Bank of America – sixty eight 1 intro connections: including 108 VP’s (I thought everybody at a bank was a VP?)

Anyway, the point is, Fortune 100 isn’t my space, and I could get me introduced. If this CEO feels that he fits in the space, shouldn’t he be able to get himself introduced?

I don’t know. That’s what’s on my mind today. 

Understanding Sales VP’s, Sales Managers & CEO’s

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I originally published this articled on my other blog 2/2/11. If you missed it then, I hope that you enjoy it now.

I just read Frank Belzer’s post, CRM – 10 obstacles to making it work. As usual another great post, but he uncovers another issue around the quality of communication between a CEO, his Sales VP and their sales managers.

Communication issues may have several underlying causes..

The CEO hires good people, gives them latitude, but may be somewhat isolated and not aware of what the real issues are ‘on the street’ and he either doesn’t fully listen to his subordinates or he doesn’t recognize that they’re unwilling or afraid to tell him the truth.

The VP’s/managers may know what the answer is, but not be willing to communicate to the CEO that they need help. because they don’t want to appear weak or inadequate or give the CEO a reason for early termination. In some cases, the VP’s/managers may actually tell the CEO that they need help, but the CEO doesn’t listen. He believes that he hired good people that should be able to overcome any obstacle and that they’re just not trying hard enough. Work harder. Work longer. Work smarter with what you’ve got.

Meanwhile, the sales managers are frustrated because they can’t get their salespeople to hit their numbers. The salespeople are looking because it’s better to look for a job while you’re still employed.

They need a sign that change is on the way.

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